Lessons from Bernard Rudofsky

Thank you

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:35:44 -0700

for this description of such an interesting exhibition. I went online to see how long it would remain up at the Getty and found out that it closed last Sunday. Too bad!. I would have flown down to LA specifically to see this exhibition. What I love about the idea of the exhibition was your use of Rudofsky's comments and perspectives about exhibitions as the conceptual framework for your exhibition. The design seemed to mirror his pithy statements--great on the cafe tables as well. I want to know much more about Rudofsky and his work. Did you do any visitor evaluation? Was there a catalog?

Re: Thank you

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:59:59 -0700

Hi Kathleen, Yes, the run dates seemed to come and go all too quickly. There is a catalog, Lessons from Bernard Rudofsky: Life as a Voyage.
The informal visitor information that I have at the moment, from our comment book in the gallery and anecdotal, was that it was very well received. The Getty Research institute seems to have a frequent core audience, that responded positively to the atypical installation. The exhibition link from the Getty's website was almost the most frequented during the run dates as well as the brochure being downloaded from the site.
I'm not sure of the dates, but the exhibition will be installed at the Bard next, although I'm not certain if they'll adopt the same presentation as we did at the Getty.

Now I Lay Me Down to Eat was fabulous

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:30:13 -0700

I saw this exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt and still talk about it. I'm adding this comment first before I tell you about it because I wrote a long piece that I thought i was adding and it vanished into thin air rather than showing up. So my real thoughts will be in the second comment I make. Anyone else had this problem? I wish I had written it in my word processor first and then pasted it in so I wouldn't have to do it twice, but so it goes. Clifford Wagner

Now I Lay Me Down to Eat was fabulous

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:54:45 -0700

Here's what I still remember from seeing this exhibit in 1980. How many exhibits do you know of that you have seen that you still remember 28 years later? THAT is a good exhibit. The title refers to the last supper of Jesus. The description passed along of the Last Supper says that John had his head in the lap of Jesus. So what do western painters of the last supper do? They show everyone sitting in chairs with John keeled over 90 degrees to fit the truth. But the truth was they weren't sitting in chairs- they were reclining. (DaVinci had the chairs but no strange John pose. Did he not have the complete description? What other facts might the great DaVinci have ignored??! Would we have had flight 500 years earlier?) So this exhibit was about juxtaposing western cultural ideas and artifacts with other cultures, blowing out of the water the theoretical superiority of western culture. There was a Japanese bathroom and a western bathroom. This was very interesting. Rudofsky could have said look at your own bathroom or this museum's bathroom and compare it to this Japanese one, but it was a lot more powerful to present the western bathroom as an artifact to study and contrast right in the exhibit. So he did. But the story I tell the most from Now I Lay Me Down to Eat is my favorite static display of all time. It was a 1.75 meter square table with a Plexiglass cover. One half was painted red, the other, white. No Text. In the red half were about 100 different forks, from a plastic fork to the most ornate gold/ silver/ivory fork you could imagine. There was an electronic fork with a red and green LED that would time for you how long you should chew your food (It occurs to me I may be wrong that the case had no text- there must have been descriptions of the individual artifacts

Now I Lay Me Down to Eat Part 2

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:10:53 -0700

otherwise how would I have known what that fork did. But there was no text referring to the overall concept.) Juxtaposing the forks in the red half was a single plaster cast of a hand in the white half, in a pose that gracefully suggested the holding of food. You could not miss the unsaid message- Why forks? It made you laugh and think hard at the same time. Juxtaposition can be such a good exhibit technique. Anyone have other good examples of it used in exhibits? I would love to brainstorm an exhibit on Sustainable Well Being where we juxtapose doing this behavior to doing that behavior. Rudofsky did his part for trying to get civilization back on the rails. What can we do? Clifford Wagner clifford@scienceinteractives.com