Chapel Hill
The Spectacular of Vernacular
Ackland Art Museum
101 S. Columbia Street
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
January 14–April 18, 2012
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
5216 Montrose Boulevard
July 23–September 18, 2011
Walker Art Center
725 Vineland Place
January 29–May 8, 2011
Montclair Art Museum
3 South Mountain Avenue
October 8, 2011–January 1, 2012
Curated by Darsie Alexander
For this show, Alexander explores regionalism and the culturally specific, calling on some thirty artists to consider the ramifications of the “vernacular”—particularly as formulated by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour in Learning from Las Vegas (1972)—in light of our changing relationship to mass culture during the past four decades. Featuring artists as diverse as Louise Bourgeois, Walker Evans, and William E. Jones, the exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue that includes a substantial essay by Alexander. As the show proposes a newer view of the vernacular as entwined with spectacle, hopefully attention will still be paid to its etymology as firmly located within historical questions of ownership, race, and class.