The Gallery of Crossed Destinies
Video Transcript: Chad Therrien
In my opinion, the natural light is the driving force for this gallery, which makes this gallery unique in the museum.
I chose the windows as a major point, since this is the first time that they have been open in over a decade in this gallery. The light that the windows would cast into this gallery would be a primary focus. So I chose to put the three-dimensional objects in the window, so that as you walk around them, you’re sort of getting the natural light that’s cast upon them.
So the objects sort of go from the lightest part of the room, which I imagine to be at the windows, to the darkest part of the room, the farthest from the windows. So the darker objects are sort of toward the back. And the lightest objects—or the most affected by the light—were the closest.
The gold olive wreath—I wanted to highlight the sparkliness of beautiful gold. That is located where I think that the sun will hit it, so you can get the best effect out of it. You know, that’s literally affected by the light.
Next to it is Georgia O’Keefe’s Skunk Cabbage, which is not necessarily, literally about light. But the lighter colors in the painting are more of a representation of the heat, the internal drive of life, to get this small little plant up out of the snow.
Louise Nevelson’s tower of blackness is farthest from the window because it is almost like a pit of black. It just sort of, like absorbs as much light as possible. From this side of the room, it just looks like a shadow. So I decided that farthest away from the light was the best place to really accentuate that.
I put the Head of a devotee and Saint John the Baptist together in order to show that in addition to actual physical light, there is enlightenment. So they’re paired together because they’re both seeking enlightenment.
I was surprised by the collection of objects that were chosen for this gallery. They seemed to span from the Ibis, being an antiquity, to a painting that was painted in the 1960s. There seems to be a little taste of everything in the museum in this gallery, and that was rather exciting.
It was amazing to see the pieces just sort of brought into the room—here are these priceless objects, and usually you just see them hanging.
Oh my goodness…I don’t know anything about art! But I thought it would be an adventure—something…how many people actually get to experience like going into a museum and deciding where things are, and being able to see things from very close, and make choices that, you know, museum curators get to make? It’s a wonderful opportunity for a lay person to do. And I was glad that the museum chose me.
Now when I go into a museum it’s almost like I want to re-arrange what another curator has done and sort of set it up the way that I would like to see it. I’m able to cue into the idea that the curator has created in the installation of the objects.