"How is a museum like a bird house?" asks Thomas Huston, who walks us through the philosophy and magic of the ways museums install art work—the usually unseen process by which the skilled labor of art handlers transforms intentions into aesthetic experience. His stories cover the wonders of legerdemain, the Digesting Duck, Renzo Piano, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Elvis, shims, vitrines, hygrothermographs, autopsies and condition reports, Amazonian parrots, mechanical watches, the polyurethane sculptures of John Chamberlain, pretty much everything from the white cube to the Atlantic Ocean. It's all there. No art historian could have written this book, or even imagined it. But every art historian should read it. And artists too. And art handlers. And Magicians, who could probably learn a thing or two from art handlers. — Joseph Grigely
Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25 x .5"
Materials: Paperback book
Thomas Huston
(Portage Park)
Thomas Huston is an artist and writer in Chicago. Through his studio practice, books, and exhibitions he has worked with artists including Yani Aviles, Shir Ende, Noel Madison Fetting-Smith, J. Michael Ford, Joseph Grigely, Max Guy, Cathy Hsiao, Jennifer Chen-Su Huang, Arnold Kemp, Gary LaPointe Jr., Frances Lee, Kelly Lloyd, Devin T. Mays, Matt Morris, Risa Recio, Edra Soto, Derrick Woods-Morrow, and Ang Ziqi Zhang, among many others. He currently works as an art handler at the Art Institute of Chicago, and recently completed a MA in Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His mother is a priest and his father is an ecologist.