PAST EXHIBITION

Hammer Projects: Jamie Isenstein

September 28, 2007—November 11, 2007

Jamie Isenstein presents a project inspired by a story of deceit: At his American Museum (1841-1865) P.T. Barnum placed a sign over an exit door that read, “This Way to the Egress.” Spectators unfamiliar with the word 'egress' (a fancy term for exit) followed the sign expecting to find an exotic bird. Instead they found themselves outside the museum (and having to pay another entrance fee to get back in!) Barnum’s museum visitors’ entire conception of what they just saw in the museum was thrown into question. Isenstein explores this “self-reflexive moment of looking and understanding artifice” in her Hammer Projects exhibition taking on the role of the exotic Egress bird.

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