Featuring over 350 objects, including more than 100 loans from local institutions and collectors, the show filled the fourth floor of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art during spring and summer 2020.
Instead of traditional organizational strategies, objects were arranged to highlight shared artistic and aesthetic concerns. The exhibition treats the works as equals, regardless of geography, date, or artist’s pedigree. In this way, the exhibition proposes a more democratic organization inspired by visual pleasure and discovery.
With this approach as our guide, our team developed vignettes for review with Olowu and the museum team, refining the layouts through collaborative virtual meetings. Through this process, broad organizational categories were established and arranged within the museum’s barrel vaulted galleries.
With the organizational strategy determined, we worked closely with Olowu and the museum team to refine each grouping, highlighting unexpected relationships among objects and artists.
The design goal was to create a maximalist, sensory-rich overall experience without overwhelming the individual artworks. This balance was achieved by maintaining a white wall backdrop for the majority of the work while introducing two distinctive display strategies: screens and color.
