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A Pair of Flying Slippers: Phil Patton reviews the Buckminster Fuller exhibition at the Whitney

Posted July 1st, 2008 by notesdesign
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"An exhibition is a verb," writes Whitney museum director Adam Weinberg bravely, in his introduction to the catalog of the museum's Buckminster Fuller show, Starting with the Universe.

He is echoing Fuller's own famous phrase "I seem to be a verb." But in fact, a museum show is necessarily more like an arrangement of nouns. And this one includes nouns like drawings, photographs, and models, with a few verbs of video of Fuller talking.

"His vision is difficult to approximate and present, much less encompass in an exhibition," Weinberg continues. The show does the difficult ably enough, providing a good chronological sample, thoughtfully arranged.

If Fuller saw himself as a verb it may be because his life was dominated more by activity than artifact. He truly found himself in his presentations and lectures, from his first talks to a handful of people in Greenwich Village salons to the vast college audiences he drew in his old age. His real skills were "synergistic," all right, but it was the synergy of networking, propaganda and performance.
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