Soo Sunny Park Selected for Smithsonian Reopening

Workers construct a portion of the “Futures” exhibition. Credit: Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Soo Sunny Park (Sculpture ’00) was one of six artists selected by the Smithsonian for the new “Futures” exhibition marking the reopening of the Arts and Industries Building. According to Ashley Molese, an art curator charged with the project, her work was selected because she was one of a diverse cadre of living artists who were already, “contending in deep ways with the themes we’d identified” for the project, which included “helping people imagine the future they want, not the future they fear.”

According to The New York Times, to enter “Futures,” all visitors will walk through the artwork “Expanded Present,” a cocoon of translucent plexiglass and dichroic glass (a material forged by Romans and reinvented by NASA) made by Park. Her work functions as a portal into the North Hall where a grouping of exhibits deemed “Past Futures” showcases the innovations, predictions and provocations of previous generations, including marvels of the past that have troubling consequences today. (That compulsory entrance is no accident; it suggests that to get to the future, you must first navigate the past.)

The exhibition and its month-long opening festival, starting Nov. 20, are the centerpieces of the Smithsonian Institution’s 175th anniversary celebration.

Read the full article in The New York Times here.