&Now 2019 Conference

The Ambrose J and Vivian T Seagrave Museum of 20th Century Art (Acre Books/University of Cincinnati Press, 2019) is a novel told mostly in the form of exhibit labels for art in a fictional museum. As an experiment in formal appropriation and constraint, the novel explores the convergence of art, museum, and narrative through the limit of the exhibit label. The ekphrastic novel interrogates the relationship between curator, museum, art, visitor, and narrative through descriptions written by an increasingly unstable curator. Juxtaposed with the narrative of a museum visitor with a personal connection to the displayed art, the novel provides multiple, often oppositional, perspectives on the role of the museum, collective and individual memory, and how value is assigned to artwork.

In 2020, the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning will host an exhibit of art created from the labels in the novel by artists commissioned for the project. At &Now, I will create a companion exhibit by displaying labels from the novel alone on a blank wall. By presenting the label on a blank wall, the exhibit inverts the traditional experience of the museum. Rather than making meaning of art via its supplemental information, the exhibit asks viewers to imagine art using only a description of its materials and prescribed meaning.