Francis Bacon

The museum exhibition that I want to discuss is something that I saw when I studied abroad in Florence, Italy last year. I originally went to the exhibit because the museum was hosting a student art showcase. However, you had to go through most of the main exhibit to find the smaller presentation room, which is actually pretty brilliant. The theme of the exhibit as a whole was existentialism in contemporary art and was mainly focused on the Irish artist Francis Bacon, although there were several other installations included from artists all over the world.

Part of what made this exhibit so interesting is that it was firmly rooted in the contemporary art world. In Florence, a city built on and dedicated to the great Renaissance and Classical masters, this seems like something of an anomaly. Also, the museum that held this exhibition is a 15th century castle that was owned for a time by the Medici family, who were Italian royalty throughout the Middle Ages. The chronological dissonance between the content of the exhibition and its physical place in Florence is massively interesting to me.

The progression through the exhibit was not particularly linear. It did not feel as though the museum curators were trying to guide guests through a certain path. I don't know that I can adequately describe how off-putting the majority of the art was in this exhibit, but I think the video does a pretty admirable job.