2008 Woodie Awards
Tacoma Art Museum
Jessica Corey-Butler
Issue date: 4/6/06 Section: Arts & Entertainment
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The Tacoma Art Museum's latest exhibition, The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915-1935 ambitiously brings together 130 American art icons. The collection displays "Americanness" seen through the eyes of the artists.
I'm never quite sure my critical impulse is the correct one. So I decided to bring my four year old and see Americanness, art, and the TAM, through her eyes.
Upon entry to the museum, we experienced Leroy, a 15-foot puppy reminiscent of our Bill, give or take a few feet. He sat over a box soliciting donations, begging in a more polite and serene way than Bill could ever manage. Abby thought, initially, that Leroy needed his name changed to Jasmine. Later she recognized, loudly, an unmistakably male body part, and revised the name-change.
We progressed to my favorite part of the gallery, the spatial-acid-trip hallway mirror that reflects the stone sculpture "room" outside that's too fluid to be hard. In the past, I never "got it" but it's always left me pleasantly discombobulated regardless.
Currently, Chihuly's collaborative Ma Chihuly's Floats, a series of globes ranging in size from bocce-ball medium-small to mega-beach-ball huge adds dimension to the stone, and my brilliant four-year -old "got it" immediately. "It's kind' like the sea," she suggested, before I even read the wall text confirming just that.
In the main gallery area, we found The Great American Thing. Abby was unimpressed until she happened upon the Kiddie Kar by William Zorach. Unfortunately for all involved, her hand reached out to touch on its own accord, and from that point on we hustled in an un-organized, "just the highlights please" fashion.
I loved the use of cubism updating folk in the Marguerite Thompson-Zorach Ella Madison and Dahlov, and I loved imagining the artists as "doting parents." There was something profoundly graceful, and yet disquieting in Ella, reminiscent of my experience with the Joseph Stella painting American Landscape (Gas Tank). I solicited the young art professional's opinion, and received "I don't like it, can we go now?"
I'm never quite sure my critical impulse is the correct one. So I decided to bring my four year old and see Americanness, art, and the TAM, through her eyes.
Upon entry to the museum, we experienced Leroy, a 15-foot puppy reminiscent of our Bill, give or take a few feet. He sat over a box soliciting donations, begging in a more polite and serene way than Bill could ever manage. Abby thought, initially, that Leroy needed his name changed to Jasmine. Later she recognized, loudly, an unmistakably male body part, and revised the name-change.
We progressed to my favorite part of the gallery, the spatial-acid-trip hallway mirror that reflects the stone sculpture "room" outside that's too fluid to be hard. In the past, I never "got it" but it's always left me pleasantly discombobulated regardless.
Currently, Chihuly's collaborative Ma Chihuly's Floats, a series of globes ranging in size from bocce-ball medium-small to mega-beach-ball huge adds dimension to the stone, and my brilliant four-year -old "got it" immediately. "It's kind' like the sea," she suggested, before I even read the wall text confirming just that.
In the main gallery area, we found The Great American Thing. Abby was unimpressed until she happened upon the Kiddie Kar by William Zorach. Unfortunately for all involved, her hand reached out to touch on its own accord, and from that point on we hustled in an un-organized, "just the highlights please" fashion.
I loved the use of cubism updating folk in the Marguerite Thompson-Zorach Ella Madison and Dahlov, and I loved imagining the artists as "doting parents." There was something profoundly graceful, and yet disquieting in Ella, reminiscent of my experience with the Joseph Stella painting American Landscape (Gas Tank). I solicited the young art professional's opinion, and received "I don't like it, can we go now?"