The Home Show

March 22 to June 2, 2013

What does access to a museum collection mean? How do personal taste and experience inform a selection process? What does it mean to curate?

The Home Show is part of a series of investigations into the Mendel’s permanent collection that advance the collection as a site of shared encounters and as a way of making meaning. This exhibition takes a collaborative approach, where different points of view and diverse sensibilities inform the selection of works on display. Staff members at the Gallery have been invited to step beyond their usual tasks and delve into activities that are typically the purview of the curator.

Associate Curator Sandra Fraser, who organized this exhibition, asked participants to choose works from the permanent collection that relate to ideas of “home.” Notions of home are immediately understood, yet they provide endless permutations. The experience of home is universal, yet multi-faceted; highly personal, yet ubiquitous. What can the chosen objects say about individual knowledge, or about how the permanent collection itself is a representation of this community? Will you see yourself reflected in the exhibition?

The Home Show explores a populist impulse, recently manifest in the rise of crowdsourcing, and the many participatory activities on the Web. Although the title of the exhibition points to a certain democratizing of culture and creativity in this time of narcissism, the exhibition proposes a site of reflection, using the permanent collection as a social agent to instigate an exchange of ideas and experiences.

Explore the exhibition on The Home Show website.

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