I Feel Different Curator Walkthrough

This provocative project explores both the experience of feeling different from others and the transformational power of art to make one feel differently. Most of the time, we attend museums and galleries with our social armor “up” – approaching art with sophistication, irony, and even a degree of cynicism. This exhibit gathers together artists working in the unusual registers of the sentimental and the sincere – testing the limits of what kinds of emotional expression are possible within art. In doing so, they ask us if tears register as “real” in art (and what happens when they do), what happens when we are asked to take on an artist’s outrage, depression, or pleasure as our own, or how much can an artist can really change how we feel (and if this what we want from them). The show acknowledges that contemporary art is powerfully defined by the relationship between art and the spectator, and asserts that emotion plays a major part in this story.