“Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve” is duly installed and opens this Friday, the 12th. It is always thrilling to see something that has been mentally visualized turn into physical reality. That’s one of the pleasures of being a curator. There are the hours of planning on paper, of restless paging through plate books, consulting reference tools, and then making decisions that can all too easily evaporate over time. Above all else, there is the necessity of distilling the exhibition’s premise into several clear, presentable ideas.

I remember when I started this blog that I promised how I’d take readers through some of the ideas taking shape for the exhibition. Dealing with Art Deco quickly made me realize how our own perceptions of modernity really began in the 1920s and 1930s. Then there were the ways in which the French conceived of Art Deco as a style, and how other countries, particularly the United States, made their own contributions to the style.

At long last, I’m no longer standing in my own inner world. When the exhibition opens, you, too, can gaze at the colorful images that parade within the Wachenheim Gallery, and hum along with the bouncy music of those decades. Please visit and get a feeling for what happened to modern design in that not-so-long-ago era. And do not imagine that I’m not mindful of what a sad anniversary this day is. September 11, 2001 didn’t receive the emotional resolution that Pearl Harbor created, when the nation immediately girded itself for war. My teenaged father, like so many others, lied about his birth date in order to enlist, and spent four years in the South Pacific. Our war on terror has taken a different form altogether. Sometimes, in the morning, when I’m stopped on the corner at Fifth Avenue, waiting for the light to change so I can cross and go to the Library, I’ll screw my eyes shut and look south, opening them in the hopes of getting a glimpse of the Twin Towers. Inevitably, even after seven years, what I see when I open my eyes is the terrible yellow dust of that week, and a void that can never be filled…