Art lover's delight

Friday, November 20 2009

I think the facade of MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit) is funny.  It has no permanent exhibits, and today all they had were two video shows, neither of which captured my attention.  Besides, I can't imagine how this museum can compete with DIA (Detroit Institute of Arts), a few short blocks away, which has a dynamite, dropdead contemporary collection that left me exhausted and exhilirated.  DIA is a world class museum, as had been reported by friends Rena and Margaret who've been here before.  But still.  I simply wasn't prepared for its depth and breadth.

My first stop (after a nice lunch in the cafe) was to the Rivera Court, which is just as beathtaking as one imagines.  Snapshots can't do it justice, but just to give you the flavor, here are a few:

Not only are the murals magnificent, but you see them in a beautiful interior courtyard, a bit reminiscent of the Spanish courtyard at the Met.  I noticed that as people came and went, they quieted their voices whilst walking through.  It's that kind of space.

As befitting a major art museum in a city like Detroit, there is an emphasis on African-American contemporary artists.  My favorite was "Officer of the Hussars 2007," by Kehinde Wiley (b. 1977)

based on the 1812 painting of the same title in the Louvre by Gericault.  I was a bit weary in this gallery, and luckily there was a chair placed in full view of the painting, so I could rest up while concentrating on it. 

One of my favorite artists is Jeff Koons, whose three "Bread with Egg" were in a case.  Here's a shot of one of them

The little description on the case said that Koons was making a political statement by using the traditional Jewish challah with a painted Easter Egg in the center.  Whatever. 

Today I learned about the artistic movement Fluxus, apparently created in 1963, of which Yoko Ono is a practitioner.  There's a whole room devoted to Fluxus works, which are ironic in intent and reception.

Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures of the African-American Museum of History, which is a block away from DIA.  It's one of the friendliest museums I've been to, with guides wanting to help at every turn.  Their main exhibition is "And Still We Rise," a multi-media examination of African-American history, going way back to the earliest time in Africa.  They do a vivid, rather painful job of taking the visitor from Africa to America, and then through slavery.  The recordings that accompany the installations are jolting.  Looking at a portrait of slave owners branding their slaves is accompanied by terrifying screams.  One walks through the hold of a ship, packed with bodies.  It's meant to be creepy and unsettling, and it is.  It's also hard to go through this and not wonder how we allowed this to perpetuate itself.  It was one thing to see the illustrations of slavery, and quite another to go through the exhibits of the crimes perpetuated against blacks after the Civil War.  Sanctioned by our Supreme Court.  And our elected leaders.  Between almost wiping out Native Americans and brutalizing the slaves, we've got quite a history to reckon with.  I know we all know that, but going through this museum today reminded me of painful truths we tend to ignore in our everyday lives.

The African-American Museum is sponsoring a Genographic Project, which asks African-Americans to use a blood sample kit for personal ethnographic research.  By giving the museum a blood sample, they'll use the DNA to help recipients identify their original tribe or country of origin.  Kind of cool.

Louisville has Muhammed Ali, and Detroit has Joe Louis, to whom an exhibition space is donated. 

It wasn't all just deep thoughts from museum attendance today.  At Rena Zurofsky's suggestion, I went to the Detroit Artists' Market, also in the cultural neighborhood where I'm staying, and had a delicious time looking at the wonderful pieces of arts and crafts for sale.  Temptations ran amok also at the DIA gift shop, truly a wondrous store.