After the Museum/ The Home Front 2013
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York City explores the contemporary territory of design, art and craft in a way that highlights the creative process instead of disciplinary distinctions. The current exhibition, titled After the Museum: The Home Front 2013, was organized by Jake Yuzna, the Manager of Public Programs at MAD, and Dan Rubinstein, Editor-in-Chief of Surface. The program presents U.S-based designers and collaborations that have democratized the experience for visitors and asks them to rethink the role of a post-millenial design museum.
The show, which runs through June 9th, 2013, offers an interactive pantheon of works, spaces and dialogic events, all of which encourage the audience (and artists, designers, and cultural producers alike) to reconsider the purpose of a museum. Instead of the institutional, mausoleum feel that can haunt many museums (“where art goes to die”), MAD has worked with a variety of groups and individuals that are emblematic of our post-millenial cultural consciousness, one less fettered by distance, ability, and hierarchy.
Project Projects shows works that experiment with the prototyping of art collections from major museums. There is a modular programming and educational space designed by Snarkitecture (which features Bend, first shown at Design Miami/ 2012) that will host interactive discussions about the processes and research that are involved in design, as well as a digital interface installation titled Are.na, that will allow multiple users to share information in new ways.
Many of the works presented (there are over 30 participating designers and collaborations) seek to get behind or expose the museum experience, inducing a transparency that inculcates puzzling questions about openness. Aaron Anderson and Eric Timothy Carlson, founders of Hardland/ Heartland, installed the museum director’s office chair in the gallery space, while Charlie O’Geen carved a hole into the gallery wall to expose the layers of architecture underneath.
Other participants include Superscript, REPLY, AIGA/NY, BOFFO, Garmento, Leon Ransmeier, MatterMade, Pratt, Rich Brilliant Willing, Type@Cooper, amongst others. This exploratory art and design exhibit unsettles the idea and purposes of a museum, but also shows that the museum can be a house for works that are living, breathing, and interacting with an audience hungry for freshness and relevance.