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“Muster the Peacocks!”

Cranbrook Kitchen Sink blog

June | 2024

https://cranbrookkitchensink.com/2024/06/14/muster-the-peacocks/

“Step-back with a Peacock”

Cranbrook Kitchen Sink blog

May | 2023

https://cranbrookkitchensink.com/?s=step+back&x=0&y=0

“Kalevala Curtain?”

Cranbrook Kitchen Sink blog

December | 2018

https://cranbrookkitchensink.wordpress.com/?s=Kaleva+Curtain&x=0&y=0

“Review: Creating the Visitor-Centered Museum by Peter Samis and Mimi Michaelson”

The Museum Scholar, Volume 1

November | 2017

http://articles.themuseumscholar.org/vol1no1mager

“Tea Urn”

Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

April | 2016

https://center.cranbrook.edu/discover/things-cranbrook/tea-urn

“Repetition and Difference”

ExhibitFiles.org

May 25 | 2015

https://www.exhibitfiles.org/repition_and_difference

[UPDATE: website no longer active | article reprinted below and listed under reviews at: [https://web.archive.org/web/20150528022628/http://www.exhibitfiles.org/]

I stopped off at The Jewish Museum with the intention of viewing Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television. It was my first visit to the museum, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. While I found Revolution of the Eye to be both edifying and evocative (who can resist an exhibition that opens with a giant screen filled with Barbra Streisand belting out a fast-paced number filmed in the modern galleries of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1966?), it was the sleepy second floor exhibition Repetition and Difference that made me pause and wonder. A juxtaposition of contemporary works of art with historic ritualistic objects from the museum’s permanent collection, Repetition and Difference asks us to look at series and multiples with a discerning eye and an open mind.

A room with deep gray walls provides a dramatic backdrop for Abraham Cruzvillegas’s artfully arranged grouping of found 2D objects painted a uniform gold, in conversation with a series of richly decorated Jewish marriage contracts. What do these random pieces of ephemera—from receipts to clippings, and shopping bags to padded envelopes—all elevated in status with a wash of shimmering gilt have to say to or about the formality and permanence of illuminated handwritten documents irrevocably binding two individuals for life? The combination is both evocative and haunting.

Additional galleries present groupings and installations that stand alone, yet play off of their neighbors. A series of finely embroidered skullcaps serve as reminders of skilled craftsmanship and infinite human design possibilities, while Walead Beshty’s series of flat-screen TVs, boldly and systematically drilled to their core with varying pixelated results, present a manipulation of mass-produced goods that defies thrifty sensibilities and challenges idolized consumerism. A collection of late eighteenth- to twentieth-century ornate silver spice containers, representing similar yet unique naturalistic plant and animal forms, beg to be touched behind a Plexi vitrine that reflects a series of three provocatively flashing neon messages from Hank Willis Thomas, which randomly combine, to skillful effect, Visa credit card and Caesars hotel and casino advertising slogans…”It’s everywhere you want to be”…”The life you were meant to live.”

Unifying the exhibition galleries and reinforcing the themes of repetition and difference are custom-designed repeating wallpapers and borders presenting various historic photographs of the museum’s French Gothic chateau-style architecture, originally designed as a Fifth Avenue residence in 1908, and home to the museum since 1947. Thought-provoking exhibition labels explore the intellectual nuances of contemporary art and illuminate religious objects from the collection whose history and purpose are less obvious to those of us not of the Jewish faith. Wall text and a well-written gallery guide introduce the exhibition, and a family guide provides in-gallery and at-home looking activities focusing on shape, size, color, and pattern. 

The exhibition title, based on French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s 1968 text of the same name, presents a concise premise…repetition is an “active force producing difference.” The installations depict the simultaneous uniformity and uniqueness in repetition—whether that repetition is found within a series, a set of multiples, copies, iterations, or groupings of similar objects. Ultimately, Repetition and Difference is a successful celebration of the subtle, the obvious, the humorous, and the profound. Its takeaway message: notice and honor the similarities and the differences around you!