Thursday 19 October 2006 — This is 18 years old. Be careful.
The venerable Tate Modern has a new art installation: Carsten Höller’s Slides. It is what it looks like: a handful of big slides that “patrons” slide down.
What interests Höller is both the visual spectacle of watching people sliding and the ‘inner spectacle’ experienced by the sliders themselves, the state of simultaneous delight and anxiety that you enter as you descend.
I wish it were in Boston. I think it’s an art museum I could get my kids psyched about. BTW: Here’s the cool thing (for me): I discovered this via this tabblo.
Comments
But the slides (and the building's architecture, really) are a very small feature of the museum. The works themselves are amazing. I've never been much of an art geek (I was the one making fun of art majors in university), but what I saw at the Tate really made me change my mind about art, so much so that I may have found a new hobby (both as a painter and collector).
I also agree 100% that museums like this would help reduce the "stigma of uselessness" surrounding art in North America. I think a lot of art skeptics could find a few pieces at the Tate to be cool enough for them to want on their walls at home. And to me, that's what art appreciation is all about.
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