Brooklyn Museum Current Exhibition Review& Archive: What it means to be Interactive in Art

The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago

I hope everyone is doing well wherever you are when reading this blog. 

I am sharing pictures I took from the exhibition as usual for my personal record and anyone who cannot make it to the shows. You can read or skip my writings and just check out the pictures. 

About a week ago on November 20, I visited Brooklyn Museum for the first time this year. It has been busy weeks for me but I wanted to start posting my museum visiting records before it's too late. and I am starting with the most recent one. I may rewrite/refine this blog content, or shorten my personal comments later, but for now I will post with my rough writings.

So, if you also recently visited Brooklyn Museum, which exhibition did you like currently on view at Brooklyn Museum? Jeffrey Gibson? JR? or Judy Chicago? John Edmonds: A Sidelong Glance was also on view..., but I exclude from this question as the exhibition was to me very questionable in concept and quality.

I would go with Judy Chicago and Jeffery Gibson with no question. To me, their works and the exhibitions are more interactive and stimulus to my mind in long term. 

What I often realize about Brooklyn Museum exhibitions is that the amount of time and perhaps passion and effort (and maybe budget) to make one show is dramatically different in each show even comparing exhibitions held at the same timing. Even in the shows happening at the same time the difference in quality is drastic compared to other museums I visit, which is quite interesting to me.

I will write more later in this blog but the JR's exhibition about what kind of quality was lower than my expectation, but basiclly not the actual work he made in the digital format, but how it was realized into a physical exhibition. Although the new challenge of using smart phone apps was innovative and impressive (same technique that Barnes Foundation uses for their museum artworks today that JR used to identify each individuals in his work). 

It was entertaining and impressive yet I had to wonder what happened for the exhibition to have such rough installation (why the show was so roughly made considering that it's a museum exhibition) because there are amazingly set up exhibitions in the same building. 

I will always prefer an exhibition of my own to be Judy Chicago and Jerrery Gibson than JR's (this specific exhibition) as a visitor and as an artist.

Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks

February 14, 2020–January 10, 2021

Jeffrey Gibson, an artist of Choctaw and Cherokee descent, incorporates elements of Native American art and craft into his practice, creating a rich visual and conceptual dialogue between his work and the histories that inform it. In Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks, he selected objects from our collection, which are presented alongside his recent work. The resulting multimedia, floor-to-ceiling installation questions long-held institutional categorizations and representations of Indigenous peoples and Native American art. It also provides a context for Gibson’s work and acts as a contemporary lens through which to see historical works by both Indigenous and non-Native peoples.

Gibson’s works on view include garments, beaded punching bags, paintings on hide and canvas, and ceramic vessels. Collection objects include moccasins, headdresses, ceramics, rawhide, and examples of beadwork and appliqué. The exhibition also features rarely exhibited materials from our Archives and Library Special Collections that shed light on the formation of our Native American collection in the early twentieth century by curator Stewart Culin.

Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks is organized by Jeffrey Gibson and Christian Ayne Crouch, Curatorial Advisor, with Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, and Erika Umali, Assistant Curator of Collections, with support from Nancy Rosoff, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator, Arts of the Americas, and Molly Seegers, Museum Archivist, Brooklyn Museum. -Brooklyn Museum

JR: The Chronicles of New York City

November 18, 2020–February 14, 2021

Over the past fifteen years, French artist JR has emerged as a powerful storyteller, using primarily photographic murals and other public art to honor the voices of everyday people and connect diverse communities around the world. The Chronicles of New York City is an epic mural of more than one thousand New Yorkers that is accompanied by audio recordings of each person’s story.

In the summer of 2018, JR and his team spent a month roaming all five boroughs of New York City, parking their 53-foot-long trailer truck in numerous locations, and taking photographs of passersby who wished to participate. Each was photographed in front of a green screen, and then the images were collaged into a New York City setting featuring architectural landmarks. The participants chose how they wanted to be represented and were asked to share their stories, which are now available on a free mobile app. The resulting mural, The Chronicles of New York City, premiered at the Museum in 2019 as part of the exhibition JR: Chronicles (October 4, 2019–October 18, 2020).  -Brooklyn Museum

JR's work is more interactive, but at the same time the audience is more passive. Art in/for the moment. It is not the kind of art that makes you think back to remember something important, something that changes one's action by remembering. 

It's the experience that is the new art here. His work performs as a commercial of own work. His work is like fashion. Visual oriented, participating, very inviting work. It's not the same but shares a common characteristic to Yayoi Kusama's dot stickers interactive Obliteration Room, for instance. Also very clever in terms of the commercial and advertising side of large scale work, to have many citizens involved in his work, that all of them and their friends will be his audience. At this point his work is also like a film with many extra. The photo quality of each individual was amazing, I wish if the printing and pasting on the wall was handled much carefully and professionally. I guess this is the difference between classic visual artists and large format contemporary artists that they can be less careful with what their staff (or whoever put together the prints, his work, on wall) do to their work. 

Much preparation to make his work, as much as paintings, but it also has music live event, or movie, that kind of lively quality which is relatively new/unique face I think for photography based single work and that is his signature. 

There is a difference between"Simple, clean and well composed neat", and "simple and rough and random". What I saw in JR's exhibition, the impression of "We need three big walls to put that large works on." I wonder why this happened and why the artist was okay with it considering he is still alive, he did not come to check the show before it opened? Was the artist absent to realize this exhibition? and created only with their curator and maybe the artist's assistants or whoever poorly pasted the print (his work) together? It's a mystery to me. Or he cares more about the overall atmosphere than the quality of each artwork on the wall. (the collaged work itself looks amazing and I'm sure they look superb as digital images. 

I should note that I still enjoy his work, what I wrote is my simple question to art and artists and who create exhibitions.

the prints are not matching t

The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago

The Dinner Party, an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art, is presented as the centerpiece around which the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is organized. The Dinner Party comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history. The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with raised central motifs that are based on vulvar and butterfly forms and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honored. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table. This permanent installation is enhanced by rotating Herstory Gallery exhibitions relating to the 1,038 women honored at the table. -Brooklyn Museum 

I really liked the installation, in person, it has a strong presence. The shape, the way it is installed, the lighting, and of course the work itself, has power, almost spiritual like. I am glad to see it,  only one thing I wonder about this work is why the other 999 women's names are inscribed on the floor, it seemed not the best way to mention names of someone the artist thinks is important. Anyway, the work is extremely detailed, well crafted, beautifully made and customized to present the 39 female individuals on table. I highly recommend going to go see this work.