Special exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., through May 13.
This past weekend, Sean and I visited Washington, D.C., a relatively spur-of-the-moment trip inspired in part by Sean's desire to see the new Art of Video Games exhibit at the American Art Museum. Frankly, we were both a bit disappointed in that exhibit, which was diverting enough but shallow and predictable.* Later, though, we visited another Smithsonian art museum on little more than a whim and were absolutely enchanted with the featured exhibit there.
The irony was that Suprasensorial is an exhibit of art explicitly described in the literature as "accessible," rejecting the "exclusivity and elitism of the art world"—a philosophy that the Video Games curators no doubt had in mind as well. And yet Suprasensorial was far more compelling, beautiful and evocative and unusually emotional for abstract art. It was a reminder that accessible doesn't necessarily indicate lowest-common-denominator work.** At its best, accessible describes something elemental, something universal, something worth aspiring to.
Much Review About Nothing 