A Cupboard of Curiosities, Minus the Cupboard

I will likely be upfront: Unusual Denominator: Nina Katchadourian on the Morgan, a collaboration between artist Nina Katchadourian, the Morgan Library & Museum, and Morgan curator Joel Smith, is likely one of the most uncommon and engrossing exhibits that I’ve encountered in years. 

Katchadourian started by asking a number of of the curators to decide on an merchandise from the Morgan’s huge assortment that they cherish; a few of these works are within the present. Then she and Smith set about choosing disparate artworks and artifacts, some very previous, some latest, and all issues in between. Interspersed, and infrequently discretely put in, are Katchadourian’s personal works, together with treasured issues from her household.  

Every little thing connects with themes lengthy essential for her: journey, maps, language, books, our bodies, historical past (together with private and household), and the connection between people and nature. Her sensibility — keenly clever, soulful, playful, boundlessly alert — permeates all. Not simply ideational but in addition ample visible correspondences assist make the present so pleasant and engaging. 

An engraving by Dutch artist Jan van de Velde exhibits a sorceress spreading white, bewitching powder by means of the air to demons (“The Sorceress,” 1626). In Katchadourian’s photograph “Prince Charming” (2012), from her ongoing Seat Task collection, two smiling male airplane pilots eye each other in an airport. Comparable white powder bewitches the 2 males, who appear avid for a torrid encounter. 

The present’s centerpiece is a set of Katchadourian’s 24 lush images, commissioned by the Morgan, from her ongoing Look Who’s Speaking collection. She chosen largely lesser-known books by well-known authors from the Morgan’s Carter Burden Assortment of American Literature, and organized them in stacks with their titles forming messages. One begins: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee). The hilarious reply: Don (Zane Grey), Joey (Henry Miller), Charlie (Ben Hecht), Elmer (William Faulkner), Ferdinand (Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson), and Tiny Alice (Edward Albee); save for tiny Alice, all are males. It’s a sly but potent critique of males frightened of highly effective females. 

The present simply traverses eras, classes, mediums, genres. On one wall, in an assortment of body-themed works, is a fascinating chalk drawing by Antoine Watteau of a younger lady, her rippling gown half sliding off her shoulder, her face turned to 1 facet as she appears to be like out and up (“Seated Younger Lady,” c. 1716). Close by are facet by facet images in an alarmingly titled 1926 e-book Ein anatomischer Totentanz (An anatomical dance of dying) of a male javelin thrower and a skeleton seemingly poised to hurl a javelin, by Albert Hasselwander with Fritz Skell. That’s fairly a shift from the Watteau.

A complete shock in an exhibition that abounds with them is a handwritten and illustrated e-book concerning the human physique, enchantingly titled The Human Physique: The Incredibal Machine (1975–76), which Katchadourian made when she was seven years previous. One web page options her drawing of a smiling “human skeloton”; beneath is the emphatic “Magnificent!” in daring crimson tinged with blue. Discovering this childhood e-book in an establishment famend for books, a lot of them uncommon and well-known, is fantastic.

Among the many nearly 130 issues on show are the jagged remnant of the champagne bottle that christened J.P. Morgan’s yacht, together with sundry gadgets from Katchadourian’s household. Her Finnish grandfather meticulously repaired and restored a secular plastic lid. This minimalist object is odd and alluring, though the grandfather by no means thought-about it artwork. Close by is Katchadourian’s hanging, colourful {photograph} “Renovated Mushroom (Tip-Prime Tire Rubber Patch Equipment)” (1998); as an alternative of fixing a tire she altered a mushroom. Renovation and transformation run within the household.

At first, the exhibition can appear overwhelming — a panoramic cupboard of curiosities writ massive, minus the cupboard. However after a while and exploration, the ultra-creative logic turns into obvious, with issues organized in thematic clusters. Crops? Golding Fowl’s 1839 photogram of ferns, the primary printed photograph, and an nameless c. 1860s photograph of a jungle scene in India. Close by is an English lady’s album, that includes precise seaweed and a poem, and Katchadourian’s vastly synthetic inexperienced plant made out of paper-covered wire, gouache, and product packaging (“Plant #32,” 2021), from her appropriately titled Faux Plant collection. Animals? A hanging, nameless Sixties {photograph} of a shaggy black canine on its hind legs at a window, Robert Benecke’s grisly 1873 photograph of buffalo heads, and a 3,000-plus-year-old Mesopotamian alabaster seal displaying bovine animals at a byre. Informational charts? J.P. Morgan’s 1853 pocket diary itemizing numerous steamers from Liverpool, third mate L.R. Hale’s logbook of a prolonged 1857–60 whaling voyage, Saul Steinberg’s desk of nation noises, and Katchadourian’s teenage “Beatle Log” (1981), a pocket book chronicling each time she heard a Beatles tune. 

Most, perhaps all, of the non-art objects have most likely by no means been in an artwork exhibition. A shocking star is an assortment of small leather-stamping instruments in a good-looking wooden case that Katchadourian spied within the Conservation division. Used to decoration leather-bound books, they resemble a mysterious pictorial language. 

Instantly throughout is an embroidery sampler by the younger Lucy Katchadourian, who was orphaned in the course of the Armenian Genocide (1915–16), made it to a refugee camp in Lebanon, and later joined the Katchadourian household, changing into the artist’s “bonus, third grandmother.” The attractive multicolored sampler likewise suggests a pictorial language; it additionally appears religious, with its intricate designs — perhaps even cosmic. That Lucy composed it within the aftermath of immense trauma, struggling, and dying makes it all of the extra particular, a charming diasporic work made by a younger survivor. 

Katchadourian generally is a riot, and this exhibition is commonly refreshingly humorous. The champagne bottleneck is subsequent to a mannequin of J.P. Morgan, Jr.’s yacht — I assume yacht-owning oligarchs go approach again. Above, every in a unique language, are 31 copies of the e-book Survive the Savage Sea, lengthy essential to the artist (“Each Model of Survive the Savage Sea in Each Language and Each Version,” 2021). Bottle, yacht, and books evoke impending catastrophe: a yacht is christened, it units sail, then yikes! 

The exhibition can also be usually deeply touching. For 12 years, Katchadourian’s Finnish grandmother, Runa “Nunni” Lindfors, took photographs of her daughter, Stina (Nina’s mother), on her birthday, sporting her first nightgown. The beautiful accordion-fold e-book exhibits Stina getting greater, the nightgown getting smaller. Notice the Swedish title of “The story of why Stina’s first nightgown grew to become too small” ( 1939–52): “Berättelsen om varför Stinas första natipaitu blev för liten.” Katchadourian’s maternal household is from Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority.

Behind it on the wall is Katchadourian’s “Lake Michigan” (1996), during which minimize paper maps of the lake develop successively bigger. The 2 serial works echo each other, linking the 2 girls. These connections underscore the creativity of what’s certainly a outstanding present.

Unusual Denominator: Nina Katchadourian on the Morgan continues on the Morgan Library & Museum (225 Madison Avenue, Murray Hill, Manhattan) by means of Could 28. The exhibition was curated Joel Smith, the Morgan’s curator of Pictures and division head of Pictures.