Pertinent
Randolph Rogers || Nydia, 1861 & The Lost Pleiad, c. 1874-75 || Marble
August 25th, 2019
Living in a Bubble
Tag: brooklyn museum
Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion
Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion was a retrospective of the work of the pioneering couturier, known for his futuristic creations and extensive licensing, which ultimately had a negative impact on the brand’s image (I remember growing up, the Cardin signature was omnipresent, from exclusive, out of my reach fashions, to cheap lighters and pens sold at the corner newspaper shop). The exhibition presented over 170 objects drawn from Cardin’s atelier and archive, which may sound like a lot, but was a mere fraction of the designer’s work over the decades.
August 25th, 2019
[L]Overuled
Invariably
Hank Willis Thomas || LOVE RULES, 2018 || Neon tubing, transformers, and electrical wires
August 25th, 2019
Triangles of Light
Brooklyn Museum
February 16th, 2019
Frida & I
And a lot more on display in Brooklyn Museum.
Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving was ongoing, a collection of her clothing, jewelry, and other personal possessions like her corsets and prosthetics (themselves works of art), which were rediscovered and inventoried in 2004 after being locked away since Kahlo’s death, in 1954. Photography was strictly prohibited and all I managed was a couple of sneak pics. But, as is always the case in a museum, a whole world of other treasures is waiting to be discovered, photographed, and shared.
Ceremonial Wine Vessel on a Wheeled Phoenix, early 18th century
China, Qing dynasty
Head of Wesirwer, Priest of Montu
Green schist
Late Period, Dynasty XXX, ca 380-342 B.C.
Figure of a Recumbent Jackal (God Anubis)
Wood
Late Period-Ptolemaic Period, ca. 664-30 B.C.E.
From Saqqara
Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving
Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving
Ran Hwang (South Korean, b. 1960)
East Wind, 2012
Plastic and metal buttons and beads, metal pins, wood panel
Kwang Young Chun
Born Hongchun, South Korea, 1944
Aggregation 18-JA006 (Star 1), 2018
Mixed media with Korean mulberry paper
Kwang Young Chun
Born Hongchun, South Korea, 1944
Aggregations (detail)
Kwang Young Chun
Born Hongchun, South Korea, 1944
Aggregations
Kwang Young Chun
Born Hongchun, South Korea, 1944
Aggregations
Kwang Young Chun
Born Hongchun, South Korea, 1944
Aggregation 15-AU043, 2015
Mixed media with Korean mulberry paper
Philip Pearlstein, b. 1924
Portrait of Linda Nochlin and Richard Pommer, 1968
Oil on canvas
Joan Semmel, b. 1932
Intimacy-Autonomy, 1974
Oil on canvas
Brookyn Museum
February 16th, 2019
Happy
Weekend mood
Ferdinand Preiss (German, 1882-1943)
Torch Dancer
Berlin
Ivory, bronze, marble
Talking Heads
Fred Wilson
Grey Area (Brown Version), 1993
Paint, plaster, wood
Brooklyn Museum
February 16th, 2019
David Bowie Is…
Farewell to April and farewell to David, who is now and forever somewhere else. First time I listened to his music again, since he became immortal in 2016. It was well curated, the exhibition in the Brooklyn Museum, a bit smaller than the original in the V&A but, after David’s passing, all the more emotional.
Back to Manhattan, into the alien world of NYC Subway. Ensamble Ferroeléctrico de Marte, anonymous musicians with iron masks that look like animals. Music for the urban jungle.
April 29th, 2018
PS: My take of the original exhibition in V&A London in 2013, is here{x}
They come in all sizes
Museums come in all shapes and sizes, integral parts of our society and pivotal in preserving, studying and expanding knowledge about the culture, heritage and nature of our world. And in an ethnically diverse metropolis of the magnitude of New York City, Museums come in every conceivable type: from the matchbox Mmuseumm to the jewel box Frick Collection, the Ambassador of Modernism that is the MoMA to the National Museum of the American Indian, advocate of Native American heritage, there are weird museums, pop up museums, museums of gigantic proportions like The Met; there is something for every interest, taste and even physical condition.
The Brooklyn Museum falls under the category of those Tardis-like structures that are surprisingly ”bigger on the inside”. How else can I explain the seemingly endless space when, after going through the galleries hosting the extensive Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition occupying -what we thought was- the largest part of the Museum, we found ourselves walking through corridors and galleries, monumental installations and even reconstructed period rooms, only to end up in this vast open space, its glass-tile floor reflecting the natural light coming from a skylight as large as the ceiling, enhanced by a huge chandelier?
It was only afterwards I looked it up and realised we had just visited the third largest Museum in New York City! 
This is the ”Beaux-Arts Court”, where the portraits of Washington A. Roebling and his wife, Emily Warren Roebling, fittingly hang side-by-side. Mr. Roebling was the chief engineer during the construction of Brooklyn Bridge, visible through the window in his portrait. When he fell ill, it was his wife who stepped in and oversaw its completion. Mrs. Roebling was the first person to cross the bridge, carrying a rooster for good luck.
Portrait of Washington A. Roebling, 1899 by Théobald Chartran
Portrait of Emily Warren Roebling, 1896, by Charles-Émile-Auguste Carolus-Duran
Brooklyn Museum
July 22nd, 2017
Haunted
By benign spirits.
1/Henry Trippe House; Secretary, Maryland; c. 1730
Major Henry Trippe, a gentleman landowner and planter of English origin, built this one-and-a-half story brick home he called ”Carthagena” between 1724 and 1731 on land he head inherited from his father. The house faced the head of Secretary Creek on the eastern shore of Maryland. This orientation indicates the importance of water access before the development of good roads.
Greatly altered, the house still stands on its original site. A model and its living room can be viewed at the Brooklyn Museum, one of the twenty-three American period rooms installed as part of the Museum’s decorative arts collection.
2/Raphael Soyer (American, born Russia, 1899-1987); Café Scene, ca. 1940; oil on canvas
Raphael Soyer had a lifelong interest in the daily lives of working-class New Yorkers. His paintings of lone women in the early 1940s suggest the absence of husbands or sweethearts who had been called up to serve in WWII.
3/Luigi Lucioni (American, born Italy, 1900-1988); Paul Cadmus, 1928; oil on canvas
Luigi Lucioni and Paul Cadmus probably met as students, and they doubtless shared acquaintances within New York’s circles of gay artists and writers.
4/Reginald Marsh (American, 1898-1954); The Bowl, 1933; egg tempera on pressed wood panel
In this vivid Depression-era painting of one of the wild “bowl” rides at Coney Island, friends and strangers alike are thrown into contact by the overpowering centrifugal force. Reginald Marsh described the chaotic tangle of female bodies with the sensual physicality for which his work was best known.
5/Abbott H. Thayer (American, 1849-1921); The Sisters, 1884; oil on canvas
The women in this portrait were Bessie (left) and Clara Stillman, the sisters of the powerful financier James Stillman.
Abbott Handerson Thayer’s biographer, Nelson C. White, recorded an anecdote about his own experience of viewing this painting at an exhibition in 1922: “I was looking at the picture when two elderly women came and stood before it. As I glanced from the canvas to their faces I suddenly realized that they were the subjects of the portrait. Thayer had rendered their character in their youth with such insight and feeling that the likenesses survived the modulations of age and easily identified them.”
Brooklyn Museum
July 22nd, 2017
The Humble Fabulist 