Sunday, January 20, 2008

Some Culture: Kara Walker at the Whitney Museum of American Art

Of all of the things I saw on my trip to the Whit this weekend with Brooklyn's favorite mommies, Ingrid and Liz (and beautiful happy baby Clyde), I loved a stone bench with all of these fantastic, simple, punctuation-less statements carved into it. From a quick Google search it looks like the artist may be Jenny Holzer. I found a couple of lists of her "truisms" from some very non-respectable looking sites like this and that but I'll take what I can get (the one that sticks out in my head from the museum: "murder has its sexual side"). I wish I could tell you more about her, but this space isn't for such journalistic endeavours such as those with research and facts, it's a blog with my thoughts and links.

The other thing I saw that I loved was what we originally intended to see, an exhibit from New York-based artist
Kara Walker. She creates black paper cut-outs of antebellum-era people to comment on race, gender, sexuality and class from then through now. It was striking and intense while whimsical and at first breath reminded me of what Disney's telling of a pre-Civil War plantation complete with violence, rape, and slavery might look like. Below is a picture to give you a feel of how well the work was presented. I think "hung" is the proper museum way of saying it, but that makes me think more of the back pages of HX.
Photobucket

More photos.

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