The Mobile Museum of Art
I love art. Always have. I have to credit my parents for that. They took me to art museums starting when I was small.
I remember sitting on the floor of the Baltimore Museum of Art and drawing my own version of the masterpiece that loomed above me. I don’t remember the artist or even the full composition. But I do remember the lion I was doing my 4-year-old best to draw.
Being in the art museum made me feel happy and safe. It also made me feel excited and inspired.
At home we would play the board game Masterpiece where players buy and sell master works. I can still name every painting and artist in the game. I loved trying to “trick” my parents into buying pieces worth very little for massive amounts of play money.
In college, I studied art history. As a college instructor years later, I taught humanities, including a section on art. I even bought several Masterpiece games on eBay for my students to play.
Now when I travel, I almost always seek out the local art museum. I have been to Museo del Prado and Reina Sofía Museum, both in Madrid. I cried upon seeing Las Meninas and Guernica for the first time.
I went the Chicago Museum of Art and marveled at O’Keeffe’s clouds hanging in the massive stairwell. I walked Kusama’s infinity rooms at the Tate in London, and I flew to Brooklyn to see the work of KAWS.
I even sat in a pit of thousands of oversized beads at the Cj Hendry Pastel show at Salon 94 Design on the Upper East Side. And I trekked all the way to Cannes to witness the opening of the cheeky new gallery and concept La Scène des Artistes.
I have seen art, written about art, reviewed art. I have interviewed artists. I have gotten lost in the labyrinths of galleries all around the world.
I almost always expect to be wowed. And I almost always am.
On a recent trip to see a gallery show, though, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. The show is in Mobile, Ala., not the first place — or even in the top 10 — to come to mind when it comes to art, especially edgy contemporary art.
But brace yourselves, because after seeing GATEWAY: From Graffiti to Gallery at the Mobile Museum of Art, I only have one thing to say: Wow!
The show features five artists: Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, KAWS, Banksy and Kenny Scharf, all of whom “transformed street art from acts of self-expression to a widely recognized art form.”
These are not only artists you are unlikely to get to see together. They are artists that, when it comes to an art museum and especially one down South, it’s unlikely you’d get to see at all, not to mention so many of their works collected in one place.
Gateway is organized by Masterworks and Level & Co. Gallery in partnership with the Mobile Museum of Art with sponsors that include presenting sponsor Lexus Mobile. Those sponsors make the show possible funding-wise.
But it is the vast community of people who support the arts in Mobile that are already making this exhibit a success, with more than 400 people at the show’s opening members-only party, five days in advance of the shows official opening on Sept. 1.
The show is stunning. It doesn’t hurt that the building itself is gorgeous — modern, open and strangely warm and inviting despite its size and open concept.
To be honest, I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing at first:
- Two works from Scharf that completely filled the length of the walls on either side of the gallery space
- A massive Banksy titled Banksquiat: Boy and Dog in Stop and Search, Banksy’s work in direct conversation with Basquiat’s work and the political climate
- Enormous cut out Chums in an array of colors from Kaws
- Harings the likes of which I have never seen before.
- Ephemera relevant to the artists and their work
- Even a real bench on which you are invited to sit with the back drop of waiting for a bus at the corner of Broadway and Canal in New York City.
I could not keep walking around the show. And I could not stop thinking about both how vital these shows are and how imperative it is to have them in places like Mobile, Ala., a place about which people who have never been there make all too many assumptions. I am here to remind you: Most of those assumptions are wrong. All of them are dangerous.
I was honored to get a preview of the show. I loved staying at the gorgeous Admiral Hotel, eating at local faves like Noble South and digging through their impressive array of vintage shops.
But what I could not get enough of was the people. Everyone was so warm and welcoming.
Everyone seemed invested in making Mobile a place to love, a place of art and culture, a place of joy. Everyone was so invested and excited and alive, from the museum’s stunning board chair, Hayley Van Antwerp, to the museum’s electric executive director, Jon Carfagno, to the staff and guests and museum board members.
I left incredibly inspired — by the work, by the people, by the truth to which I was witness once again: Above all else and perhaps now more than ever, art matters.
