Don’t Forget to Call Your Mother
Dec 18, 2023 to Sep 15, 2024
Official Site
At a time when photographs are primarily shared and saved digitally, many artists are turning to physical snapshots in albums or pictures in an archive as a source of inspiration. On view from December 18, 2023 through September 15, 2024, the exhibition Don’t Forget to Call Your Mother—the title is drawn from a photograph by Italian provocateur Maurizio Cattelan (born 1960)—consists of works in The Met collection from the 1970s to today that inspire reflection on the power of found objects and the complicated feelings of nostalgia and sentimentality they can conjure.
Among the featured artists is Sadie Barnette (American, born 1986), for whom photographs open a portal to forgotten histories—in this case, the first Black-owned gay bar in San Francisco and her father’s life. The newly acquired multimedia Photo Bar (2022) acts as an altar to The New Eagle Creek Saloon, which was operated by her father from 1990 to 1993. Located in the heart of the city, it served a multiracial queer community as a space of gathering and resistance amid the pain and loss of the AIDS epidemic. The assembled photographs, given to the artist by friends of her father, show moments of celebration and regulars at the bar. They resemble snapshots that might have been tacked to the space’s walls. Enlivened by a neon embrace and embodying the bar’s original slogan, “A friendly place, with a funky bass, for every race,” Photo Bar reclaims Barnette’s family legacy, highlights an unwritten LGBTQIA+ history, and encourages the unearthing and illumination of other forgotten stories.
Like Barnette, many of the artists in the exhibition seek to fortify family legacies, emphasize intergenerational relationships, and illuminate and complicate the past. Some artists, such as Sophie Calle (French, born 1953), Ilene Segalove (American, born 1950), and Larry Sultan (American, 1946–2009), explore their own narratives to reveal the construction of desire, while others including Taryn Simon (American, born 1975) and Hank Willis Thomas (American, born 1977) examine histories that have shaped cultural and political dialogue. For many, including Darrel Ellis (American, 1958–1992) who turned to his father’s snapshots to negotiate the trauma of police violence, the personal is political.
Displaying a range of methods and strategies, these artworks reveal how a collection of images—much like a talisman or an altarpiece—can forge links across time and transform our understanding of the present.
Author: The Met
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Museums
East 80s
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028
(212) 535-7710
Site
Map
All events and times are subject to change.
Sign up for our newsletter !