HUNTOPIA - Catalog - Page 16
located in an old warehouse in Brooklyn. As major
or isn’t working in the space, get a lot of it. Placing things
contemporary art collector Beth Rudin DeWoody
in groups always works in a mystifying way.” Speaking
has described, “Hunt Slonem is the kind of artist whose
broadly of Hunt’s interior and architectural design
life becomes his art. Walking into his studio is like
reincarnations, in which the artist’s own works find
entering a magical world of a Victorian-era mansion
ever new evocative configurations next to the historical
in the middle of a rainforest.”
artworks and artifacts he continually collects, the art
dealer and former professor Dr. Ted Vassilev has rightly
The Taubman Museum of Art presents the first
observed, “In Slonem’s renovated landmarks and
exhibition in an American public museum where Hunt,
uniquely restored residences, his artworks co-habitate,
co-curating with the Taubman’s Assistant Curator,
conjugally creating an utterly new visual and tactile
Eva Thornton, has been given full rein to indulge in
retreat…. Slonem’s greater whole, as a conceptual artist,
his “deco-exotic” impulse throughout two main
provokes and challenges our perception of history.”*
galleries of the Museum. Divided into several different
“rooms,” including what Hunt calls the Lincoln Séance
Ultimately Hunt himself, reflected as he is in his richly
Room (honoring the famous President’s practice of
and singularly decorated studio and faraway estates,
holding séances in the Red Room of the White House),
suggests the idea of a character “reincarnated” from
the galleries feature an abundance of Hunt’s own
the pages of a fantastical non-fiction story, such as
artworks from his studio, private collectors, the Taubman
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
Museum of Art, and other area institutions. Comingled
(incidentally, Berendt co-authored a book on the artist
with these are historic art and furniture from the
in 2014). Although Hunt was born in Maine and has
collections of the Taubman, the Salem Museum &
lived in locales throughout the globe, we could easily
Historical Society, and the History Museum of Western
imagine him sitting on a screened-in Savannah porch—
Virginia; and antiques, bric-a-brac, old furniture
perhaps one painted Haint blue and full of his art and
(some pieces refurbished with the artist’s contemporary
accoutrements—and sipping a mint julep or bourbon
designs), and even a marble fireplace and arched bank
and soda as he communes with the yellow-and-red
entryway, which the artist discovered during trips to
parrot on his shoulder, and with the other animate,
stores in Roanoke and the surrounding region. Among
inanimate, and otherworldly beings that surround him.
objects that are not his own, Hunt only selects those
that possess an appropriate patina of history, yet in
Patrick Shaw Cable, PhD
another respect his choices are quite democratic; he has
Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Education
pointed out, “If you have an object that you don’t like
Taubman Museum of Art
* All citations of Beth Rudin DeWoody, Hunt Slonem, and Ted Vassilev are taken from the 2018 Assouline publication
Gatekeeper: World of Folly, by Hunt Slonem and Sara Ruffin Costello, pp. 150, 140, and 124 respectively.
14