13 / 19 · An exhibition as a case study
Learning from Brooklyn: how does an exhibition welcome you?
How can a sofa, a wall label and a monumental painting work together to change looking?
In this chapter
From February 10 to July 7, 2024, the Brooklyn Museum presented Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys, organized by Kimberli Gant and Indira A. Abiskaroon. Works by Black and African diasporic artists connected generations within a private collection. “Giants” referred to scale, influence and relationships of support.
Follow Gant’s interview during the exhibition alongside records from the Brooklyn Museum and the Fowler Museum to explore how works were selected, interpreted and placed in relation to exhibition design. These details belong to the 2024 exhibition, but offer questions for future visits: what makes you stay, keep looking and think further?
Turn an interview into a way of looking
Four gallery details, four lines of inquiry
A monumental work
First encounter
Notice the size.
Stay a little longer
Compare scenes, movement and power.
What everyday details does scale bring into view?
A comfortable seat
First encounter
An opportunity to rest or talk.
Stay a little longer
Notice how staying changes looking.
Which work changes when you sit down?
Labels and voices
First encounter
Receive an account of a work.
Stay a little longer
Identify sources and perspectives.
Who is speaking, and where can you investigate further?
A private collection on view
First encounter
Notice the collectors’ names.
Stay a little longer
Examine selection, research and relationships.
What knowledge does the exhibition add for the public?
A historical reading of the 2024 exhibition and supplied interview, not a current visitor guide.
What happens between a collection and an exhibition?
The interview describes a focused selection, not the relocation of an entire collection. Curatorial selection considers the works’ force, relationships among artists, available space and interpretive routes for visitors. A famous collector’s story can attract attention, but it does not alone explain why these works should be encountered together in this institution.
Gant discusses placing familiar names beside artists some visitors might not yet know, hoping to prompt further learning. She also notes that many participants already had substantial exhibition histories. Museum exposure can add recognition and research opportunities without creating an artist’s entire significance at once. Inclusion on loan also differs from accession into the collection.
How can monumental painting make everyday life historical?
Meleko Mokgosi’s Bread, Butter, and Power offers an entry point. The Fowler Museum’s 2018 account situates it within Democratic Intuition and its examination of feminism and gendered labor in southern Africa. The scale associated with history painting carries everyday figures and power relations, expanding what can count as a subject of historical importance.
In the interview, Gant connects school uniforms, educational opportunity and roadside selling with class and economic conditions. She describes a work without a compulsory reading direction. Moving between scenes allows visitors to compare details and circumstances. Scale therefore does more than impress: it creates time and space for revisiting relationships across the paintings.
Art histories involve inheritance and rearrangement
The collection’s approach, as discussed in the interview, connects support for living artists with attention to earlier generations. New work and historical inquiry can reinforce one another. Bringing generations together allows comparisons across photography, painting and sculpture without reducing Black art to a single style or assuming that all artists share the same experience.
Gant uses Kwame Brathwaite’s photographs to discuss natural hair, clothing, posture and self-affirmation. Their visual force also involves models and the making of styles. Jamel Shabazz’s street portraits bring everyday self-presentation and urban memory into view. Historical attention can include pride, friendship and pleasure alongside the pressures people face.
Offer tools while leaving room to think
The interview identifies a practical challenge: a short wall label cannot contain every political, educational, gendered and linguistic question raised by a complex work. Choosing what to introduce is part of interpretation. A label can establish context and a way of looking, while catalogues, books, guides and research provide further routes.
Gant describes wanting people to feel welcome while learning and to retain space for their own understanding. This does not make every interpretation equally supported, or remove the curator’s role. Distinguishing visible details, historical evidence and personal associations gives curiosity something to work with while keeping claims open to examination.
Sitting down is part of the exhibition
The interview’s sofas and living-room settings make exhibition design tangible. Gant connects them with the relationship between art and design in the Deans’ home, and with familiar complaints about insufficient seating. Resting, reading and conversation can change the time available for looking. Physical comfort is part of the conditions under which attention becomes possible.
Gant also discusses colors, furniture collaboration and music assembled by Swizz Beatz. These choices are not a recipe for every exhibition. Sound, light and seating can support some visitors while distracting others. Ask which work a seat faces, how music affects conversation, and whether people needing quiet or longer rests can also find a place.
What work remains behind the gallery walls?
Gant credits colleagues working on writing, design, lighting, programming, space preparation and security. Her account emphasizes sustained collaboration rather than a single person’s inspiration. A curatorial proposition becomes an environment through loans, handling, installation, education and care. Recognizing that labor changes how we understand both the exhibition’s achievements and its practical constraints.
She describes advantages in working with one principal lender, alongside the need to explain museum schedules and procedures. Private-collection exhibitions also raise questions about independence and institutional credibility as works gain attention. Asking how relationships are disclosed helps assess their public contribution. The interview’s speculation about future projects should remain speculation, not be converted into established plans.
READING COMPANION
A few useful terms
- Curatorial selection
- Choosing and organizing works through research questions, relationships and exhibition conditions.
- Canon
- Artists and works repeatedly treated as significant in teaching, research and display, and subject to revision.
- History painting
- A tradition associated with historical, religious or mythological narratives whose scale and authority artists can rework.
- Interpretation
- Providing routes to understanding through text, sound, display and research, while distinguishing evidence from inference.
- Exhibition design
- Arranging works, routes, seats, light and other conditions that shape movement and attention.
- Lender
- A party supplying works for an agreed exhibition or study; a loan ordinarily does not change ownership.
YOUR TURN
Someone says, “Sofas and music only make a museum look like a living room.” How could this case develop that observation?
Consider another way to think about it
Ask how these choices affect time, conversation and attention, beyond their appearance. In Gant’s account, seating was one strategy for inviting people to slow down. Assessing its effectiveness still requires visitors’ experiences and feedback. Comfort and deeper learning can support one another, but the connection is not automatic.
TAKE THIS THOUGHT WITH YOU
Read an exhibition through what is selected, who interprets it and how bodies can stay, then connect those observations to research and public responsibility.
Reading notes & references
Art Value Lab has reworked the supplied English and Chinese art-business course transcripts into this guide, reorganising its structure, examples and questions and checking key concepts against the references below.
Connect the ideas
Continue into people, works and research.
Connect welcome with public purpose
Connect seating and interpretation with access, participation and community decisions.
Continue readingPractise looking in another setting
Compare a fair booth with a museum exhibition while distinguishing observation, explanation and inference.
Continue readingReturn to the beginning of collecting
Consider how supporting artists, enjoying works and sharing collections connect.
Continue reading