Exhibit at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, December 1, 2012 to March 24, 2013.
The Hargrove Family Exhibition is an art installation featuring artifacts from the Hargrove family archives. The exhibit follows the genealogy of the fictional Hargrove family and their interactions with the world of art dating back to the American Revolution. The exhibit contained artifacts curated from the Nelson-Atkins Museum's archives that were given a fictional provenance in the book The Hargrove Family History. The book's author, Tara Hargrove, is the last descendant of the Hargrove family, and was played by Tara Varney in a series of on-site lectures at the museum. The exhibit artifacts were selected with the help from museum curators Lisa Fanning and Scott Heffley, and arranged with assistance by Elisabeth Batchelor and Amber Mills. The project was spearheaded by Rose May.
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Reviews
"It could be a hit. Or it could be a big flop. In any event, a new exhibit at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art pushes well beyond the museum’s comfort zone in a bid to attract visitors in the 20- to 40-year-old range." ~ Alice Thorson, Kansas City Star
"The exhibition was immense fun. The organizers had been given an all-access pass to cut across the departmental boundaries of the great museum (boundaries that traditionally were inhospitable to cross), and they had been allowed to pick and chose the whimsical, the curious and the truly bizarre and, furthermore, to juxtapose them with utter disregard for chronology, geography, or any other known methodology for subdividing human knowledge." ~ Terry, Vertigo
"Heffley is an insatiable collector of “things of beauty and curiosity.” Roughly 50 works from Heffley’s collection are displayed as part of “The Magnificent Collection of Gilbert G. Hargrove,” a show of odd and wondrous things based on the story of a fictional 19th century adventurer, on view in gallery P10 through March 24. Items lent by Heffley include a trio of suspended pufferfish, crystal balls and a Victrola." ~ Alice Thorson, Kansas City Star
EXHIBIT PHOTOS
