20. Darryl Lauster, One of a pair of Regency Klismos Side Chairs, Philadelphia, c.1770-1825
Darryl Lauster’s poetic ghost of an American antique reaches across the centuries, reminding us how the time of its making is in the rearview mirror, yet remains with us, part of our nation's cultural and political DNA. There’s a not-quite-rightness to this beautiful but unusable suggestion of a chair. It’s lovely and still, but there’s also a sense of hollowness here, which hints at how the impassioned dreams of equality that were conjured during the Revolutionary period were not, and still aren’t, met by reality. A reminder that we have come so far, and we have so far to go.
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