Getting ready for Dodo
Posted by admin | 23rd June 2012Head of Curatorial Services, Rachel Dickson, talks about the magic of Dodo that is revealed during installation of the exhibition at Ben Uri.
I’m writing this during a break from installing the Dodo exhibition and feeling the anticipation because this is the point where the alchemical process of curating an exhibition begins – and suddenly what may have started out as an idea or a conversation takes on a tangible form.
It's great to see the Dodo works brought together, including some shown previously in Berlin but others never displayed before, interspersed with the works from Ben Uri's permanent collection. Together for the first time, they form a rich narrative of émigré stories.
Equally, a number of the Ben Uri works haven’t been seen for a generation, so they are also a wonderful discovery. Seeing these works again is fascinating, and there’s a real difference between seeing works reduced to fuzzy photographs in a catalogue and seeing them 'in the flesh'. Installing the exhibition is the first opportunity to get up close and personal.
It is also interesting to think how Dodo’s earliest works have travelled on their own journey across Europe in the last 80 years, reflecting the path taken by many émigré families through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: from Berlin, to London, to Greece, Berlin, and back to London.
Then, quite unexpectedly, there are the works that appeared mysteriously at auction in the UK only a few years ago, much to the surprise of the family. It was really this revelatory cache that started off the whole Dodo revival, as these works were spotted by an alert German collector, who wondered how these powerful expressionist works came to be offered by a regional auction house.
And now, finally, starting with that meeting between the collector, the museum director in Berlin, the family and myself, Dodo is back in London, in our Olympic year - poignantly echoing the artist's own émigré flight from Berlin in 1936, the year of the Nazi showcase Olympics.
There are still a few days to go until the exhibition is completely ready but already press interest is building. We have articles promised by a range of publications including the Jewish press, a glossy lifestyle magazine, cultural – and a fashion magazine blog.
We are delighted. Dodo's appeal is wonderfully broad, and there is an extra layer of context through the integration of the Ben Uri works, and the loans of pieces by other women émigré artists and illustrators. Overall, there's something for everyone: 1920s fashion designs, social and political commentary from Weimar Germany, harrowing personal revelations through art, children’s books, family photographs and needlepoints …. And so the excitement begins.
Blog
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Getting ready for Dodo
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Head of Curatorial Services, Rachel Dickson, talks about the magic of Dodo that is revealed during installation of the exhibition at Ben Uri.
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