What could be a better contrast to Kylie, an exhibition as fun, bright and vacuous as the diminutive Australian's work, than a show about the (literally) deadly serious slave trade and its impact on art and design?
Doubtless it was an accident that the two shows coincided at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), but after the hilarity caused by the pop singer's gold hotpants, the museum seems to be recovering the intellectual high ground.
Uncomfortable Truths is not so much an exhibition as two related trails around the giant rabbit warren that is the South Kensington building. The first, the Shadow of Slave Trading on Contemporary Art and Design, runs until June and features the work of 11 contemporary artists.
The second, Traces of the Trade (until December), sets out five routes around the museum picking up high-status objects with connections to the slave trade. Commentaries are provided by four voices - a writer, artist, actor and rapper. Both trails are set out in two free guides that are well designed, written and illustrated.
It is not the first time that the V&A has used the trail as a way of juxtaposing contemporary art with its permanent displays (Give and Take in 2001 was one of the most successful examples), but the usefulness of this style of presentation is open to debate.
People familiar with the museum tend to love it as they enjoy the opportunities to compare and contrast or (as happened in Give and Take) finding themselves in truly out-of-the way corners of the museum. But there are always concerns that people who do not know the venue find these trails much harder to 'read' than curators believe.
In the case of The Shadow of Slave Trading each art intervention has been accompanied by well-written labels, but the whole presentation probably means more to those with an interest in museum classification and histories of collecting and display than anyone else.
Curator Zoe Whitley has assembled an interesting group of international contemporary artists who use very different media and ways of thinking to discuss shared interests in race, history and inequality. The pieces range from Michael Paul Britto's video to Lubaina Himid's simply painted cut-out figures and Christine Meisner's delicate, figurative pencil drawings.
Some of the contributors, such as Fred Wilson and Yinka Shonibare, are big art world names. Others, including the 27-year-old British artist Anissa-Jane, are relatively unknown. One of her pieces (which features four inlaid colonial chairs, inherited from her family, upholstered with paper treated to look like skin and stuffed with coffee beans) was particularly arresting.
The work slid unobtrusively into the recreated 18th-century interior of the Henrietta Street House. But it is a pity that visitors cannot sit on them, as this means the sensual, pungent smell of the coffee has to be imagined not experienced.
Some of the artists, such as Wilson and Keith Piper, have a history of making works that deconstruct museums, and both have produced clever pieces. Wilson's glittering copy of one of Queen Victoria's crowns in (real) black diamonds and pearls seems eye-catchingly at home in the Norfolk House Music Room.
He seems to suggest that museums hide the context of objects under superficial glamour and beauty. Piper's Lost Vitrines almost disappear into the upper level of the British Galleries.
The cases contain what seem like 18th-century books on science and design: on closer inspection one is showing decorated bull-whip handles, another, convoluted devices for restraining slaves. The realisation is a shock and - most uncomfortably - funny, witty and sly.
This does not work for everyone. Mike Phillips, the author and curator who created last year's acclaimed Seeing Africa display at Tate Britain about readings of European artists' images of Africa, has been quoted as saying 'the display rehearses all the familiar themes'.
The ideas may not be new, but I'm not so sure they are not relevant. How many V&A visitors realise that items held up as the epitome of elegance and taste were bought by or created for people who made their money on slave-trading? Do people (or museums) think today about the multi-millionaire donors whose fortunes are based on cheap labour or political exploitation here or abroad?
Uncomfortable Truths has received few reviews outside the specialist press, with the longest by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Independent. She expressed a few doubts, preferring some of the most emotionally powerful pieces over artists who are clever and cool.
For me, some of the quieter and more insidious pieces provoked a longer lasting - and more uncomfortable - reaction. But why has there been such a silence, when this is an exhibition that should provoke debate? It is tempting to think it is the modest size of the exhibition, but I fear it is the subject.
Journalist Gary Younge wrote in one trail booklet: 'When it comes to excelling at sport… everyone reaches back to the past to lay claim to their national identity. "We won two world wars and one world cup," chant those whose parents were not yet born when any of these events took place.
But collective responsibility for "our" past successes soon subsides… Those who say "we" slaughtered the Mau Mau, imprisoned Gandhi or owned slaves are rare.' It is not at all comfortable for a nation with so much wealth and influence built on slavery and empire to look these subjects in the eye.
As if to make the point my three hours around the trail was a surprisingly solitary experience, with just one or two lone visitors taking notes here and there. Most interest seemed to be generated by Romuald Hazoumé's sculpture, Arc-en-ciel, in the renovated central garden, which was constantly viewed, despite the rain, by small, shivering, gaggles of people.
Large, ugly and uncompromising, it is a formally 'simplified' snake, its scales made out of tatty interlocking jerry cans, swallowing its tail. It refers to the dangerous trade of transporting fuel by bike in these plastic canisters, and the unending cycle of poverty that many in Africa face.
Yet as I walked past the last Lubaina Himid figure of a domestic slave in an upmarket European interior, out of the deserted British Galleries and looked across the mezzanine, I saw the masses pressing up the opposite staircase to a clearly much more enticing gallery of glitter and ostrich feathers. What a depressing truth.
Jane Morris is a freelance arts journalist and editor
Project data
Cost: £39,000 (new commissions)
Funding: V&A
Curator: Zoe Whitley
Guide design: NB:studio
Exhibition ends: 17 June 2007
Doubtless it was an accident that the two shows coincided at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), but after the hilarity caused by the pop singer's gold hotpants, the museum seems to be recovering the intellectual high ground.
Uncomfortable Truths is not so much an exhibition as two related trails around the giant rabbit warren that is the South Kensington building. The first, the Shadow of Slave Trading on Contemporary Art and Design, runs until June and features the work of 11 contemporary artists.
The second, Traces of the Trade (until December), sets out five routes around the museum picking up high-status objects with connections to the slave trade. Commentaries are provided by four voices - a writer, artist, actor and rapper. Both trails are set out in two free guides that are well designed, written and illustrated.
It is not the first time that the V&A has used the trail as a way of juxtaposing contemporary art with its permanent displays (Give and Take in 2001 was one of the most successful examples), but the usefulness of this style of presentation is open to debate.
People familiar with the museum tend to love it as they enjoy the opportunities to compare and contrast or (as happened in Give and Take) finding themselves in truly out-of-the way corners of the museum. But there are always concerns that people who do not know the venue find these trails much harder to 'read' than curators believe.
In the case of The Shadow of Slave Trading each art intervention has been accompanied by well-written labels, but the whole presentation probably means more to those with an interest in museum classification and histories of collecting and display than anyone else.
Curator Zoe Whitley has assembled an interesting group of international contemporary artists who use very different media and ways of thinking to discuss shared interests in race, history and inequality. The pieces range from Michael Paul Britto's video to Lubaina Himid's simply painted cut-out figures and Christine Meisner's delicate, figurative pencil drawings.
Some of the contributors, such as Fred Wilson and Yinka Shonibare, are big art world names. Others, including the 27-year-old British artist Anissa-Jane, are relatively unknown. One of her pieces (which features four inlaid colonial chairs, inherited from her family, upholstered with paper treated to look like skin and stuffed with coffee beans) was particularly arresting.
The work slid unobtrusively into the recreated 18th-century interior of the Henrietta Street House. But it is a pity that visitors cannot sit on them, as this means the sensual, pungent smell of the coffee has to be imagined not experienced.
Some of the artists, such as Wilson and Keith Piper, have a history of making works that deconstruct museums, and both have produced clever pieces. Wilson's glittering copy of one of Queen Victoria's crowns in (real) black diamonds and pearls seems eye-catchingly at home in the Norfolk House Music Room.
He seems to suggest that museums hide the context of objects under superficial glamour and beauty. Piper's Lost Vitrines almost disappear into the upper level of the British Galleries.
The cases contain what seem like 18th-century books on science and design: on closer inspection one is showing decorated bull-whip handles, another, convoluted devices for restraining slaves. The realisation is a shock and - most uncomfortably - funny, witty and sly.
This does not work for everyone. Mike Phillips, the author and curator who created last year's acclaimed Seeing Africa display at Tate Britain about readings of European artists' images of Africa, has been quoted as saying 'the display rehearses all the familiar themes'.
The ideas may not be new, but I'm not so sure they are not relevant. How many V&A visitors realise that items held up as the epitome of elegance and taste were bought by or created for people who made their money on slave-trading? Do people (or museums) think today about the multi-millionaire donors whose fortunes are based on cheap labour or political exploitation here or abroad?
Uncomfortable Truths has received few reviews outside the specialist press, with the longest by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Independent. She expressed a few doubts, preferring some of the most emotionally powerful pieces over artists who are clever and cool.
For me, some of the quieter and more insidious pieces provoked a longer lasting - and more uncomfortable - reaction. But why has there been such a silence, when this is an exhibition that should provoke debate? It is tempting to think it is the modest size of the exhibition, but I fear it is the subject.
Journalist Gary Younge wrote in one trail booklet: 'When it comes to excelling at sport… everyone reaches back to the past to lay claim to their national identity. "We won two world wars and one world cup," chant those whose parents were not yet born when any of these events took place.
But collective responsibility for "our" past successes soon subsides… Those who say "we" slaughtered the Mau Mau, imprisoned Gandhi or owned slaves are rare.' It is not at all comfortable for a nation with so much wealth and influence built on slavery and empire to look these subjects in the eye.
As if to make the point my three hours around the trail was a surprisingly solitary experience, with just one or two lone visitors taking notes here and there. Most interest seemed to be generated by Romuald Hazoumé's sculpture, Arc-en-ciel, in the renovated central garden, which was constantly viewed, despite the rain, by small, shivering, gaggles of people.
Large, ugly and uncompromising, it is a formally 'simplified' snake, its scales made out of tatty interlocking jerry cans, swallowing its tail. It refers to the dangerous trade of transporting fuel by bike in these plastic canisters, and the unending cycle of poverty that many in Africa face.
Yet as I walked past the last Lubaina Himid figure of a domestic slave in an upmarket European interior, out of the deserted British Galleries and looked across the mezzanine, I saw the masses pressing up the opposite staircase to a clearly much more enticing gallery of glitter and ostrich feathers. What a depressing truth.
Jane Morris is a freelance arts journalist and editor
Project data
Cost: £39,000 (new commissions)
Funding: V&A
Curator: Zoe Whitley
Guide design: NB:studio
Exhibition ends: 17 June 2007
