Lightner Museum is housed in the former Alcazar Hotel built in 1888 by Henry Flagler. Today it is home to one of the best collections of fine and decorative 19th century art in the country.
The current mission of the Museum is to preserve, maintain, research and interpret the Museum's collections for the educational benefit of the visiting public. The museum is a non-profit cultural institution sustained by admissions and donations, and it is supported by a dedicated staff of volunteers.
I just saw BDV's exhibit in Legion of Honor in SF last week. I do admire this artist's unique imagination, vision and obvious skill sets applied in a very unorthodox reinterpretation of beautiful damaged objects. Listening to the artist, he is very excited in breathing new life in a most mutable way - it is HIS great artistic discovery. However, I had a visceral dislike and unsettling sense of its (for lack of a better word) emotional manipulative quality. I don't think it was intentional but his works, as I stand there gritting my teeth, just rubbed me the wrong way. Gimmicky at times, inventive most certainly, quirky and sometimes poetic . One's inherent wish to preserve or recapture the beautiful past is strong and to artistically explore, reinvent and exhibit its "brokeness" in new forms is a jarring contradiction.
