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At times, we can get lost in the plethora of platitudes about art. Some people only like art that is beautiful; some people stake a claim for art that is socially meaningful; some only pay attention to art that is pre-approved by prestige and price. We often hear echoes of these camps via visitors’ comments—as if beauty were mute, meaning ugly and money the only measure of quality!

Yet this litany persists in spite of the fact that beauty and brains co-exist in art as in life. Dumb-blond jokes are just that: jokes. And the art market, like the public’s taste in art, is an economy that ebbs and flows. I once worked at a museum where the staff, (in a fit of renegade humor during a tough recession), had t-shirts made with the slogan, “prestige is not enough.” It can be fleeting and fickle.

Such common pigeonholes, of course, may provide comfort but rarely really make much sense. Set expectations often foreclose prospects for understanding and appreciation. Our self-made habits can be a blinder—particularly when it comes to contemporary art, which is typically far more encompassing than any given category and is usually always a step ahead of us. The forward momentum and risk-taking of contemporary art thrill some people yet bewilder others. Personally, I am eager for the mental wild-ride but run from the physical disorientation of even the tamest rollercoaster. Everyone tries to defy gravity in his or her own way.

So, as you visit the exhibitions this spring at SMoCA, try something new. Take a moment to slow down and observe not just the art, but your process of perceiving the art. Suspend categorization and reactivity: try to watch, and to question, the turns of your mind. Lyle Ashton Harris’s monumental collages set the stage for such critical self-awareness, as he juxtaposes images in ways that tweak syntax and meaning. His exquisite images also raise hard questions and thus resist all tendencies to use beauty as an escape valve. The art works in Car Culture become a mirror that may clarify your personal take on the subject of the automobile. They reflect, too, bigger cultural conditions that often remain below our daily lines of sight. In her fetching installation Every way in is a way out, Melinda Bergman reminds us that ambiguity and chaos are facts of life, if but we could find a psychological pathway between fight or flight. As the visionary H.G. Wells posed the challenge, “You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.“

Susan Krane
director