Fashion and art have always existed in tandem, but luxury powerhouse Bottega Veneta has taken it one step further, serving as the official sponsor of a monumental moment in the Guggenheim’s 67-year-old history—the first time the museum’s rotunda has been dedicated solely to a new body of work by an artist working in photography and video. “America is the best story on Earth, if you could find someone to tell it,” artist Taryn Simon’s father revealed to her in the wake of an Alzheimer’s takeover. Unable to hear that story from him, Simon spent the following decade unearthing it herself. Leaning heavily on the life of an unnamed federal agent, in FATHER COUNTRY I DO LOVE YOU currently on view at the Guggenheim, Simon illustrates a single human’s influence on the world, even if those impacts can’t always be seen. Through multipart artworks that synchronize disparate moments, she expresses the interconnected nature of individual existences. As billiard-like balls zip by museum goers, it becomes clear that one does not exist in self-containment, and instead, our individual contributions to society, or lack thereof, shape one another. In finding the story of her father, she found the world.
To mark the occasion, Bottega Veneta’s Creative Director, Louise Trotter, and the museum’s newly appointed director, Dr. Melissa Chiu, co-hosted a dinner to celebrate the opening. Ahead of the show’s exhibition, we spoke with Chiu, in just her fifth week on the job, discussing the importance of Simon’s work and Bottega’s collaboration with the Guggenheim.
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Let’s jump in at the deep end and talk about the evolution of Taryn’s work. This show feels like such a pivotal moment in her career.
In some ways, it’s a way of thinking for her, where she’s taken the information that she’s gathered from her interviews with a government official from essentially a 10-year period and distilled it into a series of historical moments that she then has created artwork from. That’s both text and photograph and, in some cases, sculptures and installation. Then, running parallel to that is her coming to terms with her father’s mortality. It’s a huge undertaking to figure out how to take on the Guggenheim rotunda, which is no small feat. Her artwork is completely in sync with the building because she created it just for the rotunda. It’s the largest project that she’s undertaken to date, and it’s really considered in some ways one work and a series of chapters, which are really the stories of these historical moments and the agent’s participation in it.
Why do you think this work feels so important right now?
I think this exhibition gives visitors a way of looking at both history and the role of America in the geopolitics of this moment. It’s timely because we have 50 years worth of narrative stories about America’s role in the world, in nation formation, and so on. It’s also a moment where people are questioning the politics around the nation state, which I don’t think has happened in a long, long, long time, if ever. This show challenges all of these ideas, and it sets more questions than it seeks to answer.
Where did the collaboration between the Guggenheim and Bottega come from?
Art and fashion both live at the center of their DNA. There are some synergies at play, and I think the more people who want to share the work of museums—which is fundamentally a nonprofit mission about education—the merrier. It’s been a great collaboration so far for us, and the Guggenheim has had a history of engagement with fashion.
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