Nostalgia & Technology: Embracing the New through Art and Design
New Exhibition at BYU Museum of Art Explores Relationship of Nostalgia and Technology PROVO, Utah — At first glance, the terms “nostalgia” and “technology” make an unlikely, even incompatible combination. Technology invites change. Nostalgia resists. Technology looks to the future. Nostalgia clings to the past. But for centuries, these adversarial ideas have been harmoniously fused together, facilitating an acceptance of change and innovation by appealing to the past. “Nostalgia & Technology: Embracing the New through Art and Design,” at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art from Dec. 2, 2005 through May 13, 2006, explores the role of art as a mediator in society’s acceptance and use of new technologies through objects, art, and ephemera representing a selection of domestic technologies. From the scientific instruments that shared shelf space with art objects and taxidermy in the collections of 17th-century nobility to the cabinet radio disguised as period furniture, technology often enters the home with familiar company. “We go about our lives as if nothing could be more natural than to consult Jeeves (the internet butler) for help with homework, to buy faceplates for our cell phones and skins for our IPods, or to step around the trilobite-shaped robot that’s vacuuming our laminate ‘wood’ flooring. We don't give a second thought to the fact that our television is hiding inside a piece of fine furniture or that deceased world leaders, like Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr., try to sell us computers. We forget the foreign that has been grafted onto the familiar,” says Marc Olivier, BYU professor and guest curator of the exhibition. [ read more ] >>
BYU Museum of Art web site >>