In the arts, the real typically has been understood in the narrow terms of realism, a style of representation that has been opposed to the ideal, the romantic, and the new (modern). Reviewing the Real will showcase the various ways that the idea of the real has been invoked, utilized, and mobilized by artists. The exhibition is presented in six sections: documentary, pictures of pictures, the thing itself, traces, uncut, and utopia/dystopia. In presenting selections from the Weisman’s collection in this manner, the exhibition seeks to look again at key pieces in the collection in a way that moves beyond the traditional and limiting strategy of a necessarily hierarchical opposition between the abstract (modern) and the real (tradition).
Some of the museum’s best-known works are featured, such as Duane Hanson’s realistic sculpture Mary Weisman, Jacob Riis’s iconic late-nineteeth-century photograph Blind Beggar, and Marel Duchamp’s La Boîte-en-Valise.
Artists in the exhibition include: Berenice Abbott, Vito Acconci, Marjorie Alexander, Edna Wright Andrade, Eugène Atget, Oscar Bluemner, Edward Chavez, Chuck Close, Howard Norton Cook, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Charles H. Currier, Edward S. Curtis, Allan D’Arcangelo, Julio De Diego, Le Ba Dang, Honoré Daumier, Gladys Rockmore Davis, Burhan Dogançay, Marcel Duchamp, Michael Eastman, Steve Fitch, Audrey Flack, Robbert Flick, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Giacometti, Robert Gwathmey, Gary Hallman, Richard Hamilton, Duane Hanson, Keith Haring, Dave Heath, Barbara Hepworth, Lewis Hine, Joseph Hirsch, Martha Holt, Peter Hutchinson, Lee Krasner, Sol LeWitt, Marilyn Levine, Edmund Lewandowski, Gary Loch, Edouard Manet, Alfredo Ramos Martínez, Ed Moses, Barbara Morgan, Robert Motherwell, Simon Norfolk, José Clemente Orozco, Max Pechstein, Robert Polidori, Jacob Riis, Mac Le Sueur, Paul Shambroom, Joseph Stella, Harry Sternberg, Peter Voulkos, Andy Warhol, Mason Williams, and Jerome Witkin.