The Classical Wing

For PMOMA in the Square, a weekend-long outdoor modern art museum at Pioneer Courthouse Square, Julia Calabrese built The Classical Wing — an interactive fun-house subversion of a museum’s Classical Wing. Calabrese played a power suit-sporting docent Susan Baxter who led audience members on tours through hand-made Renaissance works, with holes cut out in novelty photo op fashion. Part performance, part sideshow, part installation, The Classical Wing offered onlookers, audience members and passers by the chance to physically embody classic works and become instantaneous patrons of the arts, while simultaneously re-envisioning preconceptions of what art looks and feels like and and whose face belongs in it.