This is what I posted there today:
This past weekend we put our membership to good use and wandered the museum with a couple friends. I think they enjoyed the café and the view from the tower more than the exhibits, but it was still fun to go.
Maya Lin is in the midst of an installation for an upcoming exhibit. Each time I've visited the Vietnam Memorial, I've been in awe of her genius. Her trust for simple, powerful forms and materials is amazing, especially considering she was in grad school when she designed it. For her installation, she's using 2x4's of different heights to create a hill with surrounding undulations. The repetition remains organic since the differences in height vary as board jumps to next board. I can't wait to go back and see a bunch of her stuff.
One of my favorite pieces at the museum is this one, Cornelia Parker's Anti-Mass.
You walk into a new gallery and turn left, looming at the end of the room is this shadow. Pieces of burnt wood dangle from the ceiling creating a new shape, their ragged edges somehow shaped into the clean lines of a cube. The tension of air, charcoal, wire, contrast of shapes all create a powerful silence. You walk closer, examine the remnants, then wander to the wall to read the label.Cornelia Parker, Anti-Mass. The wood is from a Black Southern Baptist church that was torched by arsonists. From that devastation, Parker has given shape to the redemption of suffering. I think of that old black phrase, "and still we rise". Knocked down, battered, held under, "And Still We Rise."
Makes me want a house so I can find objects to reclaim and hang from the ceiling. I miss having a house...but that's a whole 'nother post.
1 comment:
ooh... will have to be super spy like and lurk. I like the idea of hanging things from the ceiling... gives off an idea of attainability.
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