This summer I visited the MFA on one of the free Wednesday evenings. I spent a couple hours there and focused on a few specific parts of the museum. I first spent a little time in the Mexican Print show, and being a printmaker I thought I might enjoy this. Some of the prints were pretty cool, but it was nothing earth shattering to me.
The music theme of the night began in the musical instrument permanent collection. There are some beautiful, complex, and elaborate pieces in this gallery. I only wish I would have been there during one of the Lecture/Demonstrations to see some of the instruments live in action! On the MFA website, you can listen to some of the instruments, but I could not get them to load very quickly. I wish this sort of feature was more available in the gallery, because I don't remember seeing anything like it.
My favorite exhibit was the special exhibition: Contemporary Outlook, Seeing Songs. There was an interesting and ecclectic mix of visual artists interperting the esoteric idea of music and sound. My absolute favorite piece in this exhibit was Queen, a Portrait of Madonna by Candice Breitz. It was an amazing grid of TV screens with individual portraits of people singing the whole Madonna album. It is a strange commentary on the fanatic fans of pop stars, and not the first time the artist used this format. It is sort of like seeing a car wreck - you can't stop looking! So captivating and good/bad at the same time. There was also a karaoke party at the MFA in conjunction with this piece. Here is a video commemorating the "wonderful" singing voices of those karaoking on a nice looking summer's eve: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQb4kT5Xtmc
Here is the artist's website: http://www.candicebreitz.net/
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That exhibit looks like so much fun! I just watched the video and I jsut loved watching everyone having such a great time. The first two minutes everyone was timid and then about halfway through the whole crowd was dancing and doing the Vogue dance. I now definitely need to go and see that exhibit!
ReplyDeleteI thought the exhibit was hilarious!! I liked that you can hear it from the other galleries, and I immediately gravitated toward the sound (maybe not expecting so many over-enthusiastic Madonna fans, but it was still pretty exciting). The best part was the old man next to me bopping his head along with the singers.
ReplyDeleteI would have really loved to see Malcolm Rogers dancing around the plaza!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post- It looks like a fun exhibit- and another way to attract different visitors to the museum. I have to say the Madonna impersonator on the video scared me a little. Flash back of the 90's came flooding back to me.
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