Curatorial Walkthrough: The Clamor of Ornament
Margaret Concha, Applique and Embroidered Coverlet, 1943. Watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on paper. 23 7/16 x 19 13/16 inches (59.5 x 50.4 cm). Courtesy National Gallery of Art
Explore The Clamor of Ornament with the exhibition’s curator, Emily King.
Bringing together more than 200 objects produced over the past five centuries, The Clamor of Ornament: Exchange, Power, and Joy from the Fifteenth Century to the Present explores ornament in architecture, art, and design through the lens of drawing. The exhibition foregrounds ornament’s potential as a mode of communication, a form of currency, and a means of exchange across geographies and cultures. The Clamor of Ornament seeks to address the multilayered complexity of the history of ornament, including the dissonance between the unequal and destructive relationships that mediate its movement between sources. Together, the objects on view both celebrate and interrogate ornament’s fluidity by making connections between motifs, methods, and intentions.
Emily King is a London-based design historian who works as a writer, editor, and curator. Her PhD thesis explored the typefaces to emerge from the early years of desktop publishing technology in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and her longstanding focus has been two-dimensional design. She has produced books and curated exhibitions on leading figures in graphic design including Robert Brownjohn, Richard Hollis, and Peter Saville. She was recently the guest curator of the London Design Museum’s 2020 “Designs of the Year” show. King is a regular columnist for MacGuffin Magazine.