Earlier this year, following a multi-year closure for renovations, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery reopened with a blockbuster exhibit, Wonder. If you’re a regular reader, you may already know that Wonder is my word for the year, so I was determined to go and see this stately town house’s galleries filled with nine temporary, interactive, room-sized installations.
The crowds were insane. The museum received 100,000 visitors in the first month, more than they’d normally see in an entire year. I tried to go a few times in the winter, but the lines snaked around the building, and I know my kids’ limits. When we finally made it through the door in the spring the crowds had thinned a bit, a few of the original nine works had been dismantled, but enough remained for the exhibit to induce it’s desired state in my family members.
Wonder seemed tailor made to blow up Instagram. “Photography encouraged” signs, selfie-sticks excepted, were prominently placed throughout the museum and between the room-sized string rainbows, the woven human-sized pods that you could enter, and the rapt crowds on the floor gazing up at the ever-changing technicolor light show fabric cloud in the main salon, each one of these installations all but begged to be photographed. Before I got to see the exhibit in person I’d already seen elements of it roughly a bajillion times on Instagram.
Despite all of the previews, though, seeing the exhibit in person was still awe-inspiring. The scale of the pieces and the ability to be immersed in all three dimensions of them made for a distinct and wonder-filled experience. But I had a camera with me, and so not only did I want to experience the art, but I also wanted to try to figure out a way to fold those three dimensions back into two. And, since I like to challenge myself not to take a picture I’ve seen before, I wanted to figure out a fresh way to photograph one of the most photographed exhibits in Smithsonian history.
I thought multiple exposures might convey sense of taking in these amazing structures alongside so many others.
I played a bit with vantage point.
In the end my favorite image of the day is a pretty straightforward observation of not the art itself, but the wonder it induced.
Keep your eyes wide open,