Since opening in January 2012, the gallery Will Brown has made an effort to exhibit almost everything but “art.” At least, art in the sense of work made by local living artists pursuing a career in the field. Their first show featured a number of heavy-hitters, but the pieces were displayed covertly in the gallery basement; all were acquired illegitimately and loaned anonymously. The second show, Untitled (Black Painting), removed the pretense of even showing objects, opting for chalk outlines of famous monochromatic paintings from throughout art history. In this, the gallery’s third full exhibition, the space transforms once again. For the next month Will Brown plays host to the Manitoba Museum of Finds Art, formerly housed (unsanctioned) within a larger and possibly better-known institution: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
The brainchild of SFMOMA employee Alberta Mayo, the MMOFA existed within her office (the waiting room for SFMOMA Director Henry Hopkins’ office) from 1975 to 1978. Beginning with a show of photographs by fellow museum employee Joel Sackett, May expanded her programming to include artists who might not necessarily be noticed by the museum at large.
In the Will Brown installation, objects from the MMOFA permanent collection are displayed much as they were in Mayo’s office, on rows of shelves above her desk. These tchotchkes run the gamut: a prank pat of butter, a handmade MMOFA porcelain piece, a small bottle of International Klein Blue pigment balls, a signed baseball, multiple “Manitoba” trinkets. In this current display, the shelves gradually devolve into moose paraphernalia (a result of wordplay and the alternate title of “mooseum”), with multiple Bullwinkle figurines featured prominently.