In our journey to find artwork for Saltonstall House, we came across many perfect fits and many not so perfect fits. This untitled piece by Keiji Shinohara was considered for many weeks and even brought to be framed, until the more detail oriented Japanese prints became evidently more eye-catching while this piece was often described as "flat." One reason for this may be that the print was actually an attempted copy of Hiroshige’s Miyanokoshi which made the artwork feel somewhat less genuine than the other Japanese original works the gallery owned. The piece, due to its cartoonish simplicity, was unofficially titled MS Paint (Microsoft Paint) during the process by the curatorial team and ultimately felt too simplistic and uninteresting to be placed in the dining room alongside more sophisticated and original artworks.
At the beginning of fall term, Ms. Durand, the Lamont Gallery Manager, reached out to us because of our displayed interest in the gallery and/or from our prior work with the gallery last spring. She proposed the idea to Principal MacFarlane of curating her dining room in Saltonstall house with pieces from our immense archive. Principal MacFarlane, eager to customize the home, accepted and funded our project (after we came up with a budget, of course). "Watermelon Sleeves," or more properly known as The Red Death , by Federico Castellón . For the next few months, Ms. Knauss, the Collections Assistant and Archives Coordinator, supervised our meetings. Fueled by pizza, we first reviewed most of the items in the archive digitally, noting the pieces that evoked strong emotions from us. As we reviewed the collection, we began to notice themes and nicknaming the pieces such as ‘Watermelon sleeves’ and ‘MS Paint’. There was a section of about a...
Comments
Post a Comment