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Voices
IV h a t's the
most memorable
exh ibition
opening y o u ’ve
ever attended?
I traveled to Chicago in July
2004 with my 12-year-old son,
and we stumbled upon the open-
ing day of Millennium Park.
The place was jammed with
humanity. The two main public
sculptures—Anish Kapoor’s
Cloud CateQ
and Jaume Plensa’s
Crown Fountain—were
being
loved to death by hordes of en-
thusiastic kids, teens and adults.
Kapoor’s sculpture was mostly
polished, but a lot of exposed
welds were still rough, so I got
a sense of how much work went
into generating the soon-to-be-
seamless form. At the Plensa
fountain, businessmen were
taking off their shoes and wad-
ing in the water. Both pieces are
models of brilliant public art.
— Tom Looser,
furniture maker
and professor, Madison, tv I
Once, at an opening at a promi-
nent gallery for contemporary
glass, I watched an uninvited
guest wander in off the street,
immediately stumble, collide
with a pedestal, and send a large
sculpture by a big-name glass
artist crashing to the floor in
a thousand pieces before the
stunned and horrified gather-
ing.—J oyce Lovelace,
jou malist,
Los /lngeles, CA
For our joint opening of “Eero
Saarinen: Shaping the Future”
at the Minneapolis Institute of
Arts and the Walker Art Cen-
ter, the exclusive donor event
was held at the MIA first. A
large video monitor was promi-
nently placed just outside the
exhibition’s entrance, showing
a portion of the film
Monument
to the Dream,
about the construc-
tion of the St. Louis Gateway
Arch. A very dramatic film, it
was meant to convey the monu-
mentality of Eero’s work and
to draw visitors into the show.
Moments before the event
started, the Walker curator and
I realized the video monitor
was not working. Panicking, we
tried everything we could dis-
creetly do to get it to turn on,
but were not successful. No a/v
people were there. Consequent-
ly, it was a blank, black entrance
to the exhibition during the
viewing! We later learned that
it was on a timer not set to run
on a weekend night. Good thing
we had another version going
in the main show!
—Jennifer Komar Olivarez,
associate curator o f decorative arts,
textiles and sculpture, Minneapolis
Institute o f Arts
Right after grad school, I felt
lucky to be included in a group
show in a New York gallery.
I scraped up enough money to
fly to New York for the open-
ing and I stayed in a $20 per
night hotel on the Bowery that
catered to both transients and
backpackers. During the open-
ing, a prominent artist who
works in my medium stormed
up to me and accused me of
stealing the unrealized work
he’d been formulating in his
head for the past few years. He
left, but returned with a friend
who works in a similar vein.
I think he was hinting that I was
stealing her ideas too. This was
my introduction to the glamour
of the art world.
— Garth Johnson,
ceramic artist
and blogger, extremecraft.com,
Eureka, CA
The opening of “ CR AFT TODAY
U SA ” at the Zacheta National
Gallery in Warsaw on Mar. 23,
1990, was an especially memo-
rable event, as it took place
when a new, free society was
emerging after the fall of the
Berlin Wall. It was exciting to
witness the enthusiastic recep-
tion of American work from the
new minister of culture, the arts
community and the press who
attended the preview. “The
exhibition is a must for every-
body to see and to learn what
contemporary craft is and can
be,” wrote a reporter in the Pol-
ish daily
Gazeta Wyborcza.
“The
show presented by Americans
is so artistically perfect, that we
have nothing to do but drop to
our knees.” During the month-
long showing there, the exhibi-
tion attracted 40,000 visitors,
a record attendance for its 15-
city European tour.
— Paul J. Smith,
director emeritus
o f the American Craft Museum
(now Museum of Arts and Design),
New Tirk City
For “Touching Warms the Art”
at the Museum of Contempo-
rary Craft in Portland, OR, in
January 2008,1 was one of 67
artists from 12 countries chosen
to create jewelry from nonpre-
cious materials that would be
handled by the public over a
two-month run. I was working
with Legos (perfect for repeat-
ed handling) and was beside
myself with excitement that
a museum was brave enough
to tackle such a registrar’s-
nightmare concept!
What a buzz the opening
was. People were trying on any-
thing and everything, investi-
gating the work and discussing
it with others. Wow, an open-
ing where the jewelry was ac-
tually given attention and
enjoyed!
— emiko oy
e, jeweler, San Fran-
cisco, CA
For more o f emiko oye’s story, see
“It's Touching”at americancraft
mag.org.
016 americancraft feb/mario
www.journal-plaza.net & www.freedowns.net
Photo Тош Loeser.
