Duro Olowu Has Curated a Cooper Hewitt Show on Pattern Where More Is Definitely More

The design does not detract from the objects and vice versa. It actually will help you to understand how non-fussy factors of design can require pattern and print and repeat. You know the expression “more is a lot more is more”? Folks laugh, and they usually imagine that it indicates piling factors on, but I’ve generally felt that a lot more is additional due to the fact a lot more is additional of a little something that should really be with a thing else it ought to be with it. It’s not compelled. It just is crucial to have it with or close to it. And then it will work. If you get absent any of the objects in the display, they stand on their personal.

Would you describe your curation as inclusive?
The complete thought with a museum, let’s be trustworthy, is that every thing in the museum is precious, and I generally discover that a really tough matter to grasp. This is how for a lot of, many a long time institutions allowed for separation and noninclusion, irrespective of whether it was noninclusion of African artwork or the noninclusion of ladies artists due to the fact they were building points that were being additional domestic. As shortly as I wander into a museum, I’m constantly pretty conscious of that. With this exhibition, it was a lot more about the structure of almost everything concerned. So whether or not it was art—an artist doing the job no matter if it was industrial—a document go over, salt and pepper shakers irrespective of whether it was more artisanal—a 17th-century Mexican embroidery, intricate beading from South Africa—everything in some way was accomplished with the intention of schooling the eye to see further in. I find it’s a type of hidden language of authentic intent and integrity and of revolution. A large amount of wonderful things—great movement, terrific changes—have been represented in the way sample and print and repetition have been made use of in day to day objects. And a whole lot of items we comprehend we need to have to reexamine because they are just not suitable out of this tradition.

In some cases with appropriation, the appropriator is innocent. They seriously imagine, Oh, I’m heading to just use this motif from Papua New Guinea and combine it with a French toile de Jouy. It’s no major deal. But in some way it basically would make the viewer far more acutely aware of this abuse. When you seem at it, you assume it is rather but anything isn’t suitable. You know, and you truly feel it. I enjoy the truth that it also shows that artists are not snobbish if they appreciate anything. So irrespective of whether you have a jazz document go over developed by Josef Albers or a wallpaper by Niki de Saint Phalle, the exact precision, thought, and work they put into earning functions of art they set into producing every day objects. What they are trying to do is develop a pattern in their model of perform as well as on the surface. I just sense that [pattern is] the most recognizable issue. Prospects are the very first thing that catches [a child’s] eyes is some kind of sample, and it in no way goes absent.

“Duro Olowu Selects: Performs From the Everlasting Collection” is on look at from March 18 to August 28.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.