Coosje van Bruggen
American, born the Netherlands, 1942-2009
Claes Oldenburg
American, born Sweden, 1929-2022
Corridor Pin, Blue, 1999
Stainless steel and aluminum with blue acrylic polyurethane enamel, ed. 3/3
Museum purchase, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Foundation, 2004.118
Stretching over troubled water
looking nothing like a bridge
feeding off a comrade’s horror
laughing, lying in a ditch
So if you find yourself haunted by therapists and self-care menus that haint paint cannot chase away ask if it points at you
like Rhapsody in Blue
Sorrow doesn’t need a reason
but it always has a cause
a child’s death or just the season
when your teeth begin to fall
And truth might not be worth that much it persists nonetheless and if your beginnings are too sharp leaving you not much left you’ve got to walk on through
this corridor of blue
UNTITLED SHAPIRO
Joel Shapiro
American, born 1941
Untitled, 1991
Bronze
Gift of Sydney and Walda Besthoff, 98.213
Installation funded by Mr. and Mrs. Ralph O. Brennan
We fit wrong over the phone
We fit wrong face to face
We fit wrong when I’m touching your cheek, telling you what I regret
Yet I would sit at this coiled wire forever
I have only built this shaky bridge a day
Time twists on itself like our bad attempts at romance
leaving me with memories that never happened and may not
Our misfitting doesn’t mean much
but it isn’t a mistake
Our dysfunction doesn’t offer the condemnation we rely on to excuse our horrid fit
I will reach for you every night
and cup my hand around you
in ways that never seemed funny or cute
Happiness is not a birthright
happiness ain’t even real
but all our bad connections will remain timeless, a hunk of unnamed bronze
SPIDER
Louise Bourgeois
American, born in France, 1911-2010
Spider, 1996
Bronze
Gift of Syndey and Walda Besthoff, 98.112
Installation funded by Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Freeman Jr.
Is there room for anxiety here?
Is there room to float, to hang, to twist one’s head around
like a nightmare of green vomit and no brakes?
We are getting better. Yes,
we are growing and strengthening and chasing our higher selves
Is it too late for failure?
For I feel failure coming on
Raising itself above me
Defeat in a moment of celebration
and I don’t see a space for that anymore.
I don’t see much of anything
when you cut down past the poison dreams.