Previous exhibit(s)
Introductory panel.
Objet d'Étude took as its subjects the material world of contemporary North American scholarship as it occurs in (or near) the academy. Artifacts, images, and accounts represented the experiences of teachers and students seeking to acquire, remember, sort, and transmit knowledge in an era of so-called "information overload." Curated by Anne Callahan, Elise Hodson, and Allison Stielau. At the 139th St Branch January 26 – March 1, 2008.
Review(s)
At the 139th Street Branch a new exhibition opened last night. In a break from their heavy diet of decorative arts topics, they have turned to material culture. And not only material culture, but the material culture of thought itself. Objet d'étude—the French title giving only a whiff of the irony and intelligence so garrulously mixed therein—casts its gaze on the way in which scholarship leaves traces in the sand. Because of course, scholarship is about staking a quest for the eternal, even if the seminar room or the journal article has never quite found its Pindar. And yet, and this is supremely intelligent, even a quest for eternity produces as collateral damage a whole host of fascinatingly transient detritus.
Both the sublime and the ridiculous, the eternal and the throw-away, have been wisely brought into conversation in the gallery of the 139th Street Branch. Taking advantage of the perfectly adapted physical setting, and with an extremely wise and effective, and always surprising display, the curators give us a thought-provoking view of the workaday side of thinking. Heroes of western scholarship—or at least images of them as they were idealized by heroes of western painting—flit by on the flat screen, while across the way student notes and student papers and student exams testify to the ever-yawning gulf between man's reach and his grasp. And where the mind flails, the body can never be far behind. The curators of this show, Anne Callahan, Elise Hodson and Allie Stielau, are mindful not to fall into the ancient Platonic mind-body trap. The body and its needs here get equal billing. Stimulants have always been central to scholarship. Coffee began its life in the world of Sufi spiritualists seeking a way of transcending the flesh's weak craving for horizontality; chocolate helped those needing to stay awake on the way to the sacrifical altar; cigarettes helped yeshiva bochers master the intricacies of talmudic Alltagsgeschichte. And all of these, along with No-Doze, Jolt, Coke and who knows what else, are still in order when the paper absolutely, positively, has to be delivered the next business day. Where one works helps too. And here the horizon of ritual beckons invitingly. If the curators were to think of a sequel it would have to broach the horizons of the neurotic practices by which scholars—and would be scholars—seek always to lower the heavily guarded frontiers of the creative realm. Special lighting or music or furniture would seem to present a wealth of opportunities for the materially-minded student of the scholarly habitus. But that only means that we have much more to look forward to at the 139th Street Branch.
Peter N. Miller