Learning from Yard Art, a cool summer show at Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art
July 23, 2024
Josh T Franco, the artist curator of Where I learned to Look: Art from the Yard at the Institute of Contemporary Art, grew up seeing his grandfather build annual, outdoor altars in the garden of his Marfa, TX home. Franco is also an art historian, so was challenged by his town’s proximity to the house, studio, and foundation, Chinati, that Donald Judd established in Marfa, which has turned the small, Southwest Texas town, where the train no longer stopped, into an international, art pilgrimage site.
Franco approached the exhibition as a way of thinking about the relationship between a vernacular art form created by working-class individuals as an extension of their personal, domestic spaces and Donald Judd’s large-scale project of siting his own work and that of artists he respected within and adjacent to his home, studio, re-purposed military buildings and outdoors.
Exhibitions that explore ideas face a high bar for making convincing arguments, and Where I learned is best approached as work by a number of artists whose relationship to vernacular yard art are varied, rather than as a tightly-organized proposition.The artworks will certainly interest a broad audience; they are intriguing, thoughtful, visually arresting and in some cases, great fun. It’s just right for a summer outing.