Sideboard with Blue China
Artist
Beth Lipman
(American, born 1971)
Date2013; reworked 2017
CultureAmerican
Mediumglass, wood, paint, glue, light
ClassificationGlass
Credit LineMuseum purchase with funds from Daniel J. Denton, 2015
Object numberSN11484
Sideboard with Blue China (2013) resides as a monumental memento mori, or reminder of our life and mortality. Based on two pieces of furniture from the Victorian era, one by Bulkley and Herter exhibited at the New York City Crystal Palace in 1853 and the other housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Sideboard with Blue China represents the Victorian belief that objects reflected the social and moral standing of the owner. The title references a quip by Oscar Wilde, “I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china,” which alludes to the pressures of conforming to societal standards. Lipman’s Sideboard is populated with objects one might have traditionally found on a Victorian sideboard as well aspects of the bodily—organs and sinews—so that it literally becomes the “embodiment of us in our objects.”
On View
On viewLocation
Dimensions118 × 302 × 23 in. (299.7 × 767.1 × 58.4 cm)- Kotler-Coville Glass Pavilion, 2nd Floor, gallery, wall north
Unknown
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