Museum World places a lens over those aspects of art museums that exist primarily in the background—the conventions and structures that aid the presentation of works of art. It makes a case for their urgency—their value—while acting to construct what we consider when we think about “art on display." Buildings, frames, wall colors, descriptive labels, pedestals, and security lines are all included. 

 

The central aim of this collection is to explore structures of the museum world—to highlight the subtle beauty of items that are meant to be afterthoughts—objects whose primary function is to enhance the meaning and value of something else. In essence, these works seek to pay homage to the overlooked beauty of the art museum. 

The collection consists of five works: Museum Border, All the Gallery Wall Colors at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Frame, Label, and Please Do Not Touch

Museum Border: A graphite drawing of 36 tiny, delicate representations of American art museum facades. These stamp-like drawings are laid out in a line along the perimeter of the paper. As the first work in the show, it directs attention towards the notion of reframing absence and background detail—a central concern of the exhibition. Visually, the work is akin to a wallpaper border in a child’s room, but instead of zoo animals, assorted cartoons, or soccer balls, it depicts different art museums.

All the Gallery Wall Colors at the Cincinnati Art Museum: An array of 33 acrylic paint colors displayed on a wall, hand-matched and hand-mixed by the artist. Using a Porter paint deck, the artist visited each gallery, determined the closest color match in every room and, with the marked paint deck, remixed the colors using acrylic paint. The sequence of colors is arranged on the wall in the order closest to a color spectrum—the paint thickened to affect a sculptural sensibility when applied with a painter’s knife. The piece attempts to recontexualize these colors into a self-contained work of art, transcending their previous state as a mere backdrop for other works of art. 

Frame: A full-scale graphite drawing on cut paper depicting an ornate traditional frame. The frame floats on the wall, but frames only absence: a blank, white field. The piece flattens a three-dimensional object into a drawing, reframing it as the type of object it is traditionally meant to support.

Label: A recreation of a display label for Mrs. Pryce and Her Daughter, a piece by George Romney and part of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s collection. Within the exhibition, it constitutes a conceptual inversion of Frame, taking a flat object and exaggerating its depth in order to make a clear reference to a pedestal. The work takes on a dual identity as both a label and a pedestal. 

Please Do Not Touch: A floor installation constructed from cut vinyl, a direct representation of the security line encircling Donald Judd’s Untitled (1970) at Cincinnati Art Museum. Using a signifier that is normally employed for protection purposes, it is multiplied and overlaid in Please Do Not Touch, creating a design that blurs the lines between what is mundane and aesthetically engaging.