Wednesday, November 24, 2010

SFMOMA 3: Wine and Design



On the fourth floor of SFMOMA, next to the "Exposed" photography show, a new exhibit has opened called "“How Wine Became Modern: Design + Wine 1976 to Now.”



There are soil samples, wine labels arranged by theme, smelling stations, architectural models and photographs of modernist wineries, videos and so on.



Henry Urbach, curator of architecture and design, talked and talked about what it all meant in a wider cultural context, but I felt rather like Axel at "Not For Fun Only" who thought the exhibit seemed like a particularly luxe Visitors' Center at a winery, except there was no Tasting Room at the end of it.



The 1976 starting date commemorates "The Judgment of Paris," the famous blind tasting in Paris between French and California wines where the California-bottled Chateau Montelena Chardonnay 1973 and Stag’s Leap Cabernet 1973 beat their French counterparts.



There's a good 2008 movie with Allan Rickman about the event called "Bottle Shock," which strangely enough isn't mentioned in the exhibit, possibly because of copyright problems. Instead, the museum has photoshopped together a mural of photos of the original participants in the style of "The Last Supper." In front of the mural above is Harvey Steiman, the longtime "Wine Spectator" writer and editor, who blends in quite nicely. He also has an interesting write-up of the show at his "Wine Spectator" blog.

4 comments:

  1. Have you ever seen the documentary Mondovino? very entertaining!

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  2. Somehow I thought you'd be more critical of the outright merchandising as well as the BS introducing the show - and their take on history? Pretty inaccurate

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  3. Dear momo: No, I haven't.

    Dear nancy: You mean to tell me there is commercialism at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art? I'm shocked, I tell you, completely shocked.

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  4. Oh dear. I am SO sorry to have caused you distress. Now, how much do you know about Santa Claus?

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