At the recent Association of American Art Curators meetings in Detroit, in my very first PechaKucha, I presented the exhibition proposal for Guilty Pleasures shaping the discussion around the three organizing themes in the show: Self-Indulgence, Irony and Judgment. Response to the talk was lively, to match the pretty courageous approach I took –why does an exhibition idea like this, timely, fabulous work, fresh, have such trouble getting launched?
Talking with colleagues at this confab of some 250 curators, the most fruitful part of the experience, I learned that Rene Barilleaux from the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, has organized Beauty Reigns: A Baroque Sensibility in Recent Painting, opening in June; he too is sensing this expression of excess.
Another kind of pleasure, but here controlled and restrained, permeates Cranbrook Academy of Art, where we spent our second day, a place where thoughtful design rules, from Eliel Saarinen’s house, his Art Deco masterwork, to the new storage and studio facilities for the museum’s remarkable collections.
Ginger