In celebration of Pulitzer Arts Foundation’s tenth anniversary year, the artist Gedi Sibony was invited to curate an exhibition from the personal collection of Joseph and Emily Rauh Pulitzer. Conceived by Sibony as a large-scale, temporary work of art, the exhibition was composed of forty-four objects arranged to create an involving, inspiring, and surprising experience. Unlikely pairings and unexpected installations offered visitors a narrative experience that was alternately historical and intimate in scope. As it recast familiar art into new and unconventional contexts, In the Still Epiphany recalled Pulitzer Arts Foundation’s inaugural exhibition, which also drew exclusively from the Pulitzer family’s collection.
For this exhibition, Sibony combined modern and contemporary European and American paintings, sculptures, and works on paper—many of them chosen for their depiction of domestic interiors and the figures that inhabit them—with African, Asian, and South American ritual and decorative objects. The works were then arranged in a manner that reframed the individual galleries as abstractions of familiar spaces and environments. Nested within the meditative character of Tadao Ando’s architecture, the installation demonstrated both the artist’s subtle powers of perception and the architect’s sensitivity to space and light.
In the Still Epiphany included works by John Singer Sargent, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, Lucia Moholy, and Lucio Fontana, as well as items as varied as medicine pots, staffs, figures, and currency. By inviting a dialogue among the works themselves, the installation allowed for chance encounters to emerge between objects across various geographical areas and historical periods.
