Out From Under Glass: Fashion in Chicago Museums
Image via Culture Type
‘You’re Obviously In The Wrong Place.’
The neon decree buzzes with an alien absoluteness. Glows with judgemental tone; possesses poignant potency yet remote relatability. Infiltrates the Instagram and Snapchat stories of Chicagoans all summer long, rippling this very sense of othering distance across all of social media.
But the irony in the message may be even deeper than originally meets the eye, perhaps more than the artist’s “manifesto on how the modern girl doesn’t really work on convention,” greater than a hyper-aware museum piece and reflective social commentary.
Just as it spoke to the countless visitors at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” exhibit, the fluorescent sign perhaps transcends one-dimensional communication, instead directly — knowingly or unknowingly — shedding a more critical, lesser-considered light on the adjacent rooms’ Off-White clothing, prototypes, and mockups.
Off-White: the streetwear juggernaut and brainchild of Illinois-native and world-renowned fashion designer Virgil Abloh, a mainstay as one of the most celebrated and accomplished creative minds in pop culture for the better part of two decades. Artistic director for Louis Vuitton, his collaboration roster includes Kanye West, Jay-Z, Takashi Murakami, IKEA, Nike — and these are only the abbreviated highlights from his more recent Paris Fashion Week and international appearances. His 2018 recognition by Time Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World perhaps best consolidates his lifetime of achievement into one convenient accolade.
As such, Abloh’s exhibition at the MCA, like all his other endeavors, was a massive success. With his artistic recognition running the gamut from Milan manufacturers to mainstream music fans, the space’s sleek design and attractive aura was wholly impressive enough to garner at least 180,000 visits and record pop-up store and gift shop frequenting.
Image via Culture Type
But Abloh hasn’t been without harsh criticism in his career, and his place in the MCA again provided a pedestal on which to discourse Off-White’s celebration within a museum setting. Northwestern University sophomore, disc-jockey, writer, and fashion-designer Sheyda Tribble is among one of Abloh’s critics, citing his inauthenticity and inconsistent representation.
“Inaccessibility has been part of the appeal of fashion ever since its creation or elevation into how we know it today,” Tribble says. “But the idea of having flannel shirts, screen-printing them and charging 200 dollars — it’s inaccessible and it’s not even, to me, high fashion necessarily. It’s not going after the idea that it’s something worked for and created with a lot of intelligence and intent.”
Other fashion publications have echoed Tribble’s comments, questioning Abloh’s intentions and price points. His cheeky artistic response, in the exhibit’s very first room, was a welcome mat conspicuously bearing a quote from a critical 2013 Complex article: “It's highly possible Pyrex simply bought a bunch of Rugby flannels, slapped "PYREX 23" on the back, and re-sold them for an astonishing markup of about 700%.” Touché, Virgil. But is he always operating at this creative higher-level? Tribble isn’t convinced.
“There’s a quote I always go back to: if it’s inaccessible to the poor, it’s neither radical nor revolutionary,” she says. “Do I think he comes from a place that is always genuine or has the best interest of other people, or his community, or the black community in mind? No, not always.”
The question of inaccessibility rings especially true when juxtaposed with the presentation of Chicago youth artists just outside the “Figures of Speech” exhibition. DIY endeavors such as structurally-sound furniture made from cardboard — cut from the same cloth as Abloh’s beginnings, but remaining more accessible to its audience — resonate more directly with Tribble and others’ definitions of contemporary art as “always supposed to be pushing the bounds of what should be accepted, where new ideas are always evolving.”
Image via Culture Type
But the showcasing of Off-White by the MCA isn’t an explicit knock on budding underground and grassroots artists. Nor are the choices Abloh has made in building his Off-White empire. Even if his product isn’t always perceived to align with his voiced intent, the same criticisms can be doled out to countless other comparable entities, such as Supreme and Bape. With Abloh’s success and influence greatly palpable, as Tribble says, “his presence gave a platform” to aspiring creatives with similar goals.
Nonetheless, the evolution from streetwear to high fashion remains an intriguing dichotomy, especially within an acclaimed, sterile museum environment. Tribble reflects: “Streetwear is counterculture, essentially. For the counterculture now to be this inaccessible entity, then what’s the new counterculture?”
A few miles away, a similar version of this question is being answered with institutional change and community organizing.
Image via Chicago Mag
Since the 1893 World’s Fair, the Field Museum has been a conservatory of millions of artifacts and cultural collections, including Native American and indigenous clothing, art, tools, and religious items. But with display cases and exhibits remaining unchanged and un-updated since their original installation in 1952 — marked by dark and shadowy lighting, dramatically sinister music, faceless mannequins, and dated signage — the Field is certainly showing its age in the homogenous erasure of Native culture. Championed by Jemez Pueblo artist and Chicagoan Deborah Yeppa-Pappan, along with her husband Chris Pappan, these halls are now being re-framed and challenged by activism and art.
“We had a Yupik artist who came in,” Yeppa-Pappan explained. “Yupik people have been called Eskimo; Eskimo is derogatory. She came in here and we found all the signage that we could that had the ‘E’ word, and she taped them up with black tape.”
Image via Chicago Mag
Chris Pappan has also left his artistic mark in the museum’s hall, covering the glass cases with contemporary drawings and renderings of Osage culture. This fusion of voiceless past with dynamic present, Yeppa-Pappan says, is crucial in giving Chicago’s Native American population an active, leading role in the community.
“Visitors are expecting to see arrow-heads and all the archaeological material, but instead they see this contemporary leger drawing by Chris,” she said. “It really helped people to question the older cases and what’s really happening in that exhibit hall.”
Image via Chicago Mag
Led by Yeppa-Pappan and a committee of Native American scholars, the Native North American Hall will reopen in 2021 with a series of modern, rotating exhibits of music, writing, and clothing. Digging into the museum’s archives, the new exhibit will provide a more holistic and informed view of Native American culture.
“We’re on the inside, trying to change it from the inside out,” Yeppa-Pappan said.
With clothing and fashion an omnipresent element of Chicago’s museum scene, the curators and presentation — and what is exhibited and what isn’t — remain essential to the complete understanding of artistry and culture. Though museums dictate what is shown to the public, it is important to view ‘objectivity’ through a critical and informed lens, bringing exhibits out from under glass to shed proper light on their complexity and place in the art scene.