Brooklyn Museum
Joseph Russell House Activation by Anne Chu
The Brooklyn Museum is using a cultural—and generational—mash-up to draw visitors to its period rooms. And despite its name, the Playing House exhibit is anything but pretend. Instead, four artists place contemporary interpretations of how people used to live throughout the existing rooms. The new installations are made from a range of media including ceramics, textiles, paper, and even video. Eighty-year-old ceramicist and sculptor Betty Woodman launched the project, and her designs replace the ceramic, pewter, and silver items in the early-to-mid 18th-century Cupola Room with handmade porcelain cups, saucers, and vases. She also installed a white ceramic tabletop sculpture shaped like a letter holder in the late 18th-century southern Cane Acres Plantation Room. The exhibition’s other designers and artists include Anne Chu, Ann Agee, and Mary Lucier. The show continues through Aug. 26.
