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Hidden Gems

The medium, the message and the power of design

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My travels for both work and pleasure have taken me to remote art galleries, and some of the world’s finest museums. Spending a morning with Botticelli and Rafael at the Uffizzi in Florence, or an afternoon with Michelangelo at the Accademia is magical. Visiting the Louvre in Paris is akin to a kid being set loose in a candy store; one could spend weeks there and never tire of the sweets. And, as a New Yorker, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is my cathedral, as I often reflect in the halls of Monet, Degas and Pissarro. And, of course, there's Rome — the Eternal City is one big, glorious museum, from the Column of Trajan to the sculptures of Bernini.

And then one finds hidden gems, small-town museums housing bigtime treasures. Who would have imagined a drive through the Lincoln Tunnel would lead to the Montclair Art Museum and its extensive American collection, or that a Diebenkorn and Georgia O'Keefe creation could be found at the Neuberger in Westchester County? In the back reaches of Barcelona, a city known for its eclectic architecture, the Joan Miro Foundation provides a new understanding of the Spanish painter, while the Ducal Palace in the medieval hilltop city of Urbino, the true seat of the Renaissance, brings one face-to-face with Piero della Francesco's Flagellation of Christ.  

But it was on a snowy Sunday in February, when I found yet another jewel far off the beaten path. Wishing a distraction from winter's crazy cold, I boarded a train at Grand Central Station on the Hudson Line. As the name implies, the train hugged the banks of the frozen Hudson River and took me to Beacon, N.Y., home of Dia Beacon. Opened in 2003 in a former Nabisco box printing factory, Dia offers stunning views of the river, and a wonderful stage for both contemporary and conceptual art. Dia was among the first to convert a forgotten industrial space into a showplace for large scale art installations.

Much like the many small town museums which may require work, persistence and an open mind to even find, some lesser-known works of art require the same due diligence to understand and appreciate. At Dia, I walked through galleries exhibiting works from Andy Warhol to Richard Serra, and bypassed what seemed the innocuous 'date paintings' of On Karawa. As an educator teaching visual merchandising and store design, a critical objective woven into course outlines is teaching students to see. We want our aspiring retail designers to take the blinders off and see things others don't even know is there. And when I removed my blinders, Karawa showed me a fresh perspective, a way of seeing what others don't know exists. Marshal McLuhan told us, “The medium is the message.” He explained, “What you print is nothing in comparison to the effect of the printed word (the medium). The printed word sets up a structure that effects everybody.” In keeping, Karawa stripped art of personal emotion and projected it as a conduit of information; so appropriate in our world of information-overload.

Karawa's work illustrates an interest in time, whether it's the recording of days, centuries or even eons. His work, started in 1966, is a compilation of printed dates on simple monochromatic canvases. While at first blush these paintings meant little to me, upon closer inspection, I recognized their value as manipulations of the medium. Subtle variations in the size and font in each painting created different relationships within each written word, as one hand-painted letter reacted to the qualities of adjacent letters. Analogously, on the canvas of a retail environment, designers must establish tangible relationships that project information. The store environment is the medium; it's the manifestation of the brand, the embodiment of the image, and the essence of the message.

As in the work of Karawa, my travels, and subsequent 'collection' of museums, also represent an appreciation of time as documented by the work of time honored, iconic artists from Michelangelo to Monet. But in addition to the obvious icons, I'm reminded to search for hidden gems, as their medium will always provide invaluable messages.

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Eric Feigenbaum is a recognized leader in the visual merchandising and store design industries with both domestic and international design experience.  He served as corporate director of visual merchandising for Stern’s Department Store, a division of Federated Department Stores, from 1986 to 1995. After Stern’s, he assumed the position of director of visual merchandising for WalkerGroup/CNI, an architectural design firm in New York City. Currently, he serves as the chair of the Visual Merchandising Department at LIM College (New York), and was also an adjunct professor of Store Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. In addition to being the New York Editor of VMSD magazine, Eric is also a founding member of PAVE (A Partnership for Planning and Visual Education). Currently, he is also president and director of creative services for his own retail design company, Embrace Design.

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