Skip to main content

a museum visit

a necklace made out of safety pins

Yesterday, my older son and I went to the Museum of Art and Design. I went to see the exhibit "Second Lives" with my mother Thanksgiving weekend and I have been bugging my boys to come see the exhibit with me.




The exhibit features work, both functional and decorative that was made out of material originally made for a different purpose. So there is a chair made out of high heeled shoes, a chaise made out of welded quarters, a Egyptian style necklace made out of carpenter's folding rulers, a giant flower made out of plastic forks.




When I went Thanksgiving I was struck by the pure enjoyment of the museum goers. How often do you go to a museum and hear the visitors laughing with pleasure at seeing such cleverness?




This large scale piece is made up entirely of collaged clothing labels

One piece I particularly loved was a Shaker style highboy made out of junk yard metals. The door panels were made up with Gees Bend Quilts inspired stripes of varicolored metals.

There were chandeliers of all sorts, one by Ron Arad was made out of empty toothpaste tubes and LED lights. It elevated the mundane to the spectacular. Another fabulous chandelier was made out of several chandeliers cobbled together, then chrome plated draped with delicate chains of hypodermic needles and pill casings.

The exhibit also has touch screens which allow visitors to access short videos about the construction of the pieces and the intent of the artists. I loved seeing the artists at work. It is so good to so how hard it is to produce beautiful things.

I found though that again and again I was irritated by the wall notes. Too many of the curatorial comments were drawing all sorts of silly conclusions about the intent of the artist. As someone who works with her hands it was pretty clear to me that many of the decisions made by the artists have more to do with the practicality of physical production rather than being, say a comment on the future of the universe. I find that comment of that sort make it hard to be a civilian rather than an arts professional while visiting a museum.

It could just be that I am just a cranky and shallow person. I find again and again that the crafts that are simply decorative, to be ultimately shallow and useless and self indulgent. I do regularly fall in love with the pieces that bend the rules, force you to re think and object and yet are useful.

It could just be too many years of apartment living, but in my book, if it isn't useful, why bother?

To see more about the museum - http://madmuseum.org/

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

I love hearing from my readers. I moderate comments to weed out bots.It may take a little while for your comment to appear.

Popular posts from this blog

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee.  If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it.    My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid.  I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed.   A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee  and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...
1 comment
Read more

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

 I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night.  I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1)  אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה  God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2)  אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר   May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3)  יָאֵר יְהֹ...
8 comments
Read more

A Passover loss

 My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of  linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin.  You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...
2 comments
Read more