The Curse of Bigness
The Curse of Bigness
May 16 – October 03, 2010
Opening Reception May 16, 2010 2-5pm
(click here for more information)
The Queens Museum will be presenting The Curse of Bigness, a group of new projects by people working in the theater, graphic design, fashion, jewelry, performance, music, and art scenes, often as part of small-scale, self-reflexive partnerships or groups. Inspired by the “gigantic miniatures†in the Queens Museum collection–The Panorama of the City of New York, the Unisphere, and the model of the Watershed of New York City–the exhibition looks at human relationships in the same terms: small vs. large organizations, weak vs. strong ties, and the way high and low technology is used to propose new relationships between country (wildness) and city (civilization).
Great Small Works, The Toy Theater of Terror As Usual, Episode 9: Doom 1996 A photomontage news serial, created by John Bell, Trudi Cohen, Stephen Kaplin, Jenny Romaine, Mark Sussman, Roberto Rossi; first performed at Performance Space 122, NYC Photo courtesy of Mark Sussman
NanoQMA, Jessica Rylan, 2010. Dimensions approximately 40 micrometers by 110 micrometers. Fabricated by Laser Zentrum Hannover.
Last year the Queens Museum started construction on 50,000 square feet of new gallery space. The projects of Bigness also humorously nod towards the QMA of the future-in which our challenge will be to maintain intimate, responsive relationships with our community as our square footage doubles. The phrase “curse of bigness†was coined by Progressive-era lawyer and anti-trust reformer Louis Brandeis in 1914, when America, which thought of itself as a nation of small entrepreneurs, confronted an intense concentration of industrial and finance capital for the first time.
The Curse of Bigness includes new work by Karin Campbell, Dexter Sinister, Great Small Works, Mended Veil & Tara Delong, J. Morgan Puett and Mildred’s Lane, Jessica Rylan, Hiroshi Sunairi, and existing pieces by Survival Research Laboratories, Guy Ben Ner, and Dennis Oppenheim.
Organized by Larissa Harris
The Curse of Bigness is funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Cowles Charitable Trust.
Additional support provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts.