Have you ever gone on a "hooky day"?
Not as dirty as it sounds!
Even if you haven’t read Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, I bet you’d know what I meant if I talked about an “artist’s date.” That’s what she calls them — a monthly appointment with oneself to do some sort of creative activity.
But I’ve been referring to these as “hooky days” ever since I started working on my own and didn’t have The Man to answer to for my productivity.
I only have the 9-to-5 societal assumptions of our capitalist culture to deal with, but that’s another rant.
So a few weeks ago, I took myself on a little hooky day-slash-date to the Museum of Arts and Design to see the "Taylor Swift: Storyteller" exhibition and, by extension, everything else on view in the museum as well.
(Despite its vertical presence on Columbus Circle, the exhibition space in the museum amounts to four large rooms. It's quite manageable for a two-hour visit.)
As a Threat Level Yellow Swiftie, I was heart-ily pleased by the show, featuring 25 (yeah, I counted1) full lewks from Swift’s tours, videos, and various promotional concert moments, along with a few shirts and coats, a smattering of guitars, one piano, one mandolin and some (be)jewels.
But the rest of the museum was a treasure trove as well — especially ”Generation Paper,” an exhibition dedicated to the paper dresses that were such a fad in the 1960s. Do you know about these things?
Yes, wearable paper. Or, actually, fire-retardant paper-ish fabrics like rayon, many of which looked so flimsy and uncomfortably itchy that I’m not sure how anyone managed to keep one of these garments on for a full day.
“Only bought this dress so you could take it off” indeed.
The patterns were eyepopping, and the ingenuity (and sheer marketing cray cray) in these designs was hella fun to see. Bikinis! Caftans! Matching dresses, aprons, and paperware so the hostess could match her table! A-line dresses printed with Warhol soup cans and Allen Ginsberg poems!
If you count Taylor Swift as a savvy self-marketer of her image through the visual choices she makes — and I very much do — then these two shows make for a fabulous compare-and-contrast moment.
The Generation Paper show is only up through August 27, but the Swiftstravaganza has been extended until March 24, 2024. So if you’re in New York City this month, all that’s left to do is run up to MAD and take it all in.
The reason I counted is because four of the outfits were designed by Jessica Jones, who happens to be the cousin of one of my besties! Not a bad ratio and one of the pieces was my favorite hooded look from the opening of the reputation tour.