Best Museum Show of 2008
It’s been brought to my attention that Glasstire.com has a poll (on the right side of their site) for readers to vote the best Texas museum show of 2008. Two Fort Worth shows are in the poll, both from the Modern – Kara Walker and Martin Puryear. Of all the choices, as of this writing Kara Walker is winning.
Go Fort Worth and all that, but seriously? I thought the Kara Walker exhibit was the most overrated thing I’d ever seen. Puryear was freaky, but I think it’s more deserving than Walker’s aggressively mean pseudo-Victorian silhouettes.
(For the record, the current Hubbard/Birchler + permanent collection setup is way better than the Kara Walker show, for my money.)
I am so glad you said this about the Kara Walker exhibit. It was my first encounter with her work and that was unfortunate. When I told my friends I didn’t care for it, they couldn’t believe it because they have seen her other works and not this one.
Once I started looking into her older works, I could see what they were talking about. The older works were amazing but as you said, this show was mean-spirited.