February 1988: The Reverberation, a large site-specific project installed in the Grand Lobby at The Brooklyn Museum by French artist Daniel Buren, opened January 28 and will remain on view through April 25, 1988. Conceived as an allegory for the Museum, the installation comprises 130 multicolored striped canvas panels arranged in chambers or passages. In these spaces are displayed works selected from the Museum’s permanent collection reflecting the richness and diversity of the Museum’s holdings. The Column of Mirrors Viewed from a 45-Degree Angle, a work located within the installation and created by the artist, represents the Museum’s contemporary collection.
Born in 1938, Daniel Buren is one of the most cerebral artists from the Conceptual movement of the 1960s and the one who upheld its ideas most consistently. A student of both art and philosophy, he is not only a highly recognized artist but also a distinguished author. Since 1966, Buren has used striped sheets of cloth or paper, alternating white and color stripes, each of which is 3 1/2 inches wide. These are stretched or otherwise attached to the interiors and exteriors of buildings, put into doorways or windows, or slipped over gates or fences. The artist’s work is almost always created for a particular space and situation and therefore non-transferable. The site-specific qualities of these works create another element frequently explored in Conceptual art, which is the question of temporality.
The Grand Lobby installations are made possible, in part, by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1988, 022.
