GRAND LOBBY INSTALLATION BY REEVA POTOFF TO OPEN AT THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM

New York-based artist Reeva Potoff will create a site-specific installation for The Brooklyn Museum’s Grand Lobby. Entitled Sewing and Reaping: A Weaver’s Tale, it will open January 18 and remain on view through April 1, 1991. The installation incorporates twenty years of Potoff’s experience with large-scale projects in which she uses the fragile and transient materials frequently found in nature that have become her trademark. “I have always used nature as a touchstone for my work,” explains Potoff. “It has been in turn a reference for my imagery as well as a methodology but most importantly it is a container for my experience. It allows me to work out of that nexus of experience that fuels our lives, that is, our dreams, our drives, and our feelings. In addition, it becomes a pool reflective enough for others to gaze in and see themselves.”

The artist will use the Lobby’s two existing columns to open up a dialogue of dualities. The right column will be enveloped by pages of the 1911 eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, arranged into a conical shape spanning the height of the Lobby and opening like a calla lily at the ceiling. The book represents something that is simultaneously of value, containing a record of fixed histories of Western civilization, yet it is utterly out of date, with its antiquated scientific and geographic information.

The left column will be encircled by a skirt made of carbon paper, which like the encyclopedia is also of a dual nature. It is at once obsolete in the age of the photocopier and yet the necessary element of every organic compound.

At the back wall, the shape of the columns will be repeated by two forms constructed of tall branches and connected to the columns by transparent netting stretching diagonally through the Lobby. One curtain will be composed of carbon paper and thread, while the opposing veil will contain translucent skeletal remains of large leaves sparsely adorned with color.

The installation\'s title is derived from a painting by Velázquez entitled The Fable of Arachne (1644-48, the Prado Museum), in which the beautiful weaver Arachne, a mortal, challenges powerful Athena, goddess of arts and crafts. When Arachne loses Athena punishes her by turning her into a spider, so she could forever perfect her craft, spinning her endless webs. Potoff alludes to this morality tale and to the duality of "sewing" or "sowing" and "reaping" to remind us that underneath our successes looms our inevitable downfall.

Potoff graduated from Yale University with an M.F.A. degree, and is an Assistant Professor at Columbia University. Her work has been featured nationally, most recently in Artpark in Lewiston, NY and the Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island, NY.

The installation, the twenty-fifth in a series of Grand Lobby projects, is organized by Charlotta Kotik, Curator of Contemporary Art, and assisted by Laura Deer Moore, a Curatorial Intern funded by the Lila Wallace-Reader\'s Digest Fund, with additional support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. The exhibition, and its associated Artist-in-Residence program, is made possible by the Lila Wallace-Reader\'s Digest Fund. Additional exhibition supports is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Source: Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1989 - 1994. 10-12/1990, 182-183.