Art Museums, Discourse, and Visitors
The book explores the evolving role of visitors in museums, highlighting a trend where institutions increasingly view them as self-directed 'users.' This shift emphasizes the importance of personal agency, allowing individuals to create their own meanings and experiences during their visits, transforming traditional museum interactions into more personalized and engaging encounters.
The artist's deceptively beautiful work--colorful tapestries and garden-inspired installations created out of faux flowers, glitter, sequins, fabric, toys, beads, jewelry, and other embellishments--comes to life at The New York Botanical Garden, where she employs the beauty and symbolism of living plants to unearth the complex entanglements of race, gender and colonialism. Accompanying a major site-specific exhibition of sculptural and horticultural installations by artist Ebony G. Patterson at The New York Botanical Garden, this volume provides deeper insights into Patterson’s multilayered practice. The artist’s work has long examined and experimented with the concept of the garden through a practice that uses beauty as an invitation to confront larger societal questions and concerns.