Frida Kahlo at the Walker

Yesterday, I finally made it to the Walker Art Center for the traveling Frida Kahlo exhibit celebrating the 100th anniversary of her birth. I was over the moon to see her work in person having admired it for some time. Many of her pieces are so intensely personal that it was hard not to get a bit emotional in response. Also on display were about 80 photographs of Frida, many of which had never been on public display. They were truly remarkable and provided some amazing insight into her life. January is not a great time to come to Minnesota, but if you can make it just to see this exhibit, it is well worth it. I bought the exhibition book and have been gobbling it up. I heart Frida. The exhibit is traveling next to Philadelphia in February, then San Francisco in June. See it.
While at the Walker, I decided to tour a few other galleries. As much as I am loathe to admit it, I am not much of a museum person, particularly when it comes to modern art. I have some shame about this, being reasonably well educated, articulate and appreciative of the arts. Anyway, one of the galleries was carrying an exhibition called Brave New World, which apparently was about globalization. I missed the point completely and gave up trying to understand when I came to a pile of camping equipment, looking suspiciously like the corner of someone's garage.
Another exhibit that had gotten some good media attention was the Tino Sehgal exhibit. Tino Sehgal's work is not art objects, but people behaving in a manner that is scripted by the artist. The gallery that I visited was about 1500 square feet of completely white room. At the far end of the room was a young man lying face down near the far wall. As I approached, he began rolling on to his back in slow motion with his fingers near his eyes. I was the only other person in the room despite the museum's other galleries being quite busy. I'm guessing the other guests had assumed that a homeless dude had wandered in and fallen asleep and decided to leave him alone. Anyway, he rolled back and forth a bit for me, occasionally opening his eyes, and I left the room. I guess I'm not very cool or deep for not getting this- sort of like when I left the movie PI annoyed at having lost two hours of my life, while 20-somethings were all around me proclaiming it a masterwork.