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Can a piece of jewelry also be a sculpture? Can artwork be wearable? These were among the questions that the work of Pittsburgh artist Aaronel deRoy Gruber (1918-2011) prompted when I looked through her work and stumbled upon a small selection of her plastic necklaces and belt buckles that looked like mini versions of her more famous sculptures. From there, I got my idea to propose a project looking into the concept of “wearable art,” and how these pieces came to be.

On February 18, 1976, painter Frank Mason (1921-2009) led a group of around fifty protesters to the steps of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. One might guess that their complaint concerned the museum’s political stance, or perhaps the exclusion of contemporary art from an exhibition. But the motivation for this march was more unlikely, as the group was protesting the museum’s approach to cleaning and conserving Old Master paintings. 

         “Where are you from?” Nicolas Trigault, in his Daopao, of 1617, politely asks the Fonthill Vase of 1300 in the National Museum of Ireland.

         “I come from Jingdezhen in Jiangxi; I come from Székesfehérvár, I come from Naples, Normandy, Paris, Wiltshire, and Dublin.”

Jasper Johns working in his East Houston Street studio on Map (Based on Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Airocean World), December 30, 1970. Photo by Hans Namuth. 

What does it mean to translate something? And what does this have to do with space and place?

Carrie Mae Weems, “A Broad and Expansive Sky-Ancient Rome, 2006.”

From Paul Goodman, Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals (1962).

Sonia Boyce, In the Castle of My Skin, 2020, sculpture, Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK.

Damaris Cruz, Recolectando la Semilla, 2017, Calle Aurora, Ponce, PR.

Figure 1. A Digital Artwork Blending Different Photographs of Landscapes. Amrita Vinod, “Landscape Collage,” 2024.