Museum of Arts and Design Unveils a Taylor Swift Exhibit

Table Of Content

• Ricky Martin to headline LA Pride in the Park festival
• The spectacle of Swift draws (me and) fans to the museum
• Here’s how Taylor Swift’s prolific run of albums stacks up against the all-time greats
• ‘I love when we get crazy’: Swifties revel in the ‘joy’ of Taylor Swift’s album release and their avid fan culture
• Museum of Arts and Design to Open Costume Exhibition Highlighting Eras of Taylor Swift
• All the Downtown Los Angeles Spots Featured in Taylor Swift’s “Delicate” Music Video
• Where can you call an artist on a lobster? Find out in the quiz

Besides being a household name for her catchy songs, Swift is also known for the many elaborate looks she wears in her music videos, on tour, and on the red carpet. The exhibit also pays tribute to Swift’s current Eras Tour; spotlighting looks from all 10 of the singer’s albums. It also includes larger-than-life recreations of Swift’s handwritten lyrics and projections of her music videos.

Ricky Martin to headline LA Pride in the Park festival

The exhibition is on view until Sept. 4, 2023, according to the museum. The exhibit, on display through Sept. 4, is accompanied by a playlist of Swift’s music videos — including her short film for the 10 minute version of “All Too Well” — which are projected on screens around the room. Lyrics scrawled in Swift’s handwriting adorn key walls in the space. Swift’s video for “Shake It Off” made her the only female artist to hit a three-billion view count on YouTube, but also illustrates her wont of playing to and against archetypes.

The spectacle of Swift draws (me and) fans to the museum

I went to the exhibition the Friday after Swift's MetLife concerts, and the Swift bubble had yet to burst in New York. The exhibition, which opened on May 20 — a week before the MetLife shows — and runs through September 4, attracted 3,685 visitors on the weekend of The Eras Tour's New Jersey stop. For these visitors, it was not enough to see Swift perform her past eras in concert; they needed to see the source material in person.

Here’s how Taylor Swift’s prolific run of albums stacks up against the all-time greats

Her ex-boyfriend, Matty Healy, also has been public about his affinity for typewriters, which is seemingly an Easter egg for the lover Swift is referencing in the song. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Arrival, Spotify commissioned a mural on a building at the corner of Melrose Avenue and North Stanley Avenue, which displays vertical stripes color-coded and decorated for every era. Swifties are visiting and sharing their own Top 5 Swift eras on social media. Swifties are taking over the Santa Monica beach, which will be transformed into a lounge for the day as fans gather for tarot card readings, games, contests and giveaways. They can also trade bracelets, dance and sing along with Swift’s hits.

‘I love when we get crazy’: Swifties revel in the ‘joy’ of Taylor Swift’s album release and their avid fan culture

The tailgate party hosted by Power Radio Nation is a chance for fans to mingle before the concert. There will be Swift backdrops for photos and access to licensed Swift merchandise, as well as food, drinks, live games and giveaways. MAD’s commitment to embracing diverse perspectives and fostering dialogue around contemporary art and design has established it as a dynamic cultural institution that continues to inspire artists and audiences alike. With its dedication to pushing the boundaries of creativity, MAD provides a perfect platform for an artist like Taylor Swift, whose multidimensional artistry and transformative storytelling align with the museum’s mission.

The San Fernando Valley cafe specializing in homemade treats is introducing 13 brand-new dishes this week that bring Swift’s lyrics to life, including “Lavender Haze” pancakes, “Gold Rush” waffles and “Love Story” crepes. The cafe will be donating 13% of sales from these special menu items to a cat shelter in honor of Swift’s love for cats. The music video for an early favorite -- a collaboration with Post Malone called "Fortnight" -- was also released Friday. "Aaron Dessner is my favorite the producer she works with, so fact that he did most of his album made me so happy," one fan said.

See Iconic Taylor Swift Costumes at NYC's Museum of Arts and Design - Untapped New York

See Iconic Taylor Swift Costumes at NYC's Museum of Arts and Design.

Posted: Thu, 25 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Museum of Arts and Design to Open Costume Exhibition Highlighting Eras of Taylor Swift

Four more sound installations generate some artful noise all their own. But the show’s true subject might be our very relationship to music. Lyrically, The Tortured Poets Department is a euphoric rejection of societal expectations. It embraces all the Taylor-isms her fans have come to know and love, from her one-note melodies to her recitative delivery (sung in the rhythm of ordinary speech). And it features her signature frank and open autopsies of relationships, delivered with maturity not only in the choices of language and obscenities (“fuck you if I can’t have us”) but in Swift’s outlook on her life and relationships.

As hinted at by its title, the exhibition is intended to showcase Swift’s storytelling prowess, which has grown in scope and ambition throughout her 10-album-strong discography and expanding videography. Smith also asserts that “melodrama presses its own extreme conflicts to extreme conclusions”. This speaks to the extremes of emotion explored in The Tortured Poets Department, including frequent references to death. “I might just die, it would make no difference”, Swift opines on Down Bad. “Lights, camera, bitch, smile / Even when you wanna die” is how she describes her emotional state during the recent Eras Tour in I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.

Yet this isn’t the breakup album — or the new-love album — you might’ve expected. The LP turns out to be something of a heel turn; it’s got a proudly villainous energy as Swift embraces her messiest and most chaotic tendencies. Swift opens the video in solitary confinement, chained to a bed, where she's delivered medication that she reluctantly takes. The singer is unchained, walks over to a mirror, and stares at herself as she wipes away her makeup, exposing face tattoos. Her tattoos disappear once more as the video jumps to Swift in a new setting, and viewers see the rapper's signature ink covered up throughout the start of the video. Following the release of Taylor Swift's 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, the singer-songwriter put out a video for the album’s first single, “Fortnight,” the same day — and it features Easter eggs galore.

Directly in front lies a small collection of outfits from the self-referential "Look What You Made Do" music video and others from "Shake It Off." It is not unlike arriving at The Eras Tour, Swift's stadium tour devoted to celebrating all of her past selves. Many of the outfits are the very same that Swift and her fans recreate in homage. Throughout her career, Taylor Swift has undergone significant artistic growth, transitioning from a country music prodigy to a pop sensation and later embracing alternative and indie elements. Beyond the glitz and glamour of her costumes, the exhibit delves into the emotional core of Swift’s songwriting, which serves as the driving force behind the captivating stories she tells through her art. Her music videos feature a diverse range of characters, each brought to life through costume and a powerful narrative that challenges traditional female archetypes and addresses gender norms. To complete the experience, MAD will also display props from some of the most iconic scenes and looks, project clips from Taylor Swift’s music videos, and host a few karaoke events for fans to sing along to Swift’s music.

She now hopes to similarly influence another generation of kids from Columbus visiting the museum with her paintings. The future artist wasn’t a frequent visitor to the CMA during childhood. One memory of the place she does carry was a visit with her dad when he bought her a book of postcards from the giftshop featuring the work of well-known American painters. As a student at Thomas Worthington High School in Columbus, OH, Robin F. Williams (b. 1984) remembers marching to the principal’s office with her art teacher to defend a painting the school wanted removed from the senior art show. She had copied a painting of a nude woman out of “Art in America” magazine, obscuring the figure’s face with pixelation.

An “alchemy” that turns for her own “tortured” nights into communal therapy. "When I was writing the Fortnight music video, I wanted to show you the worlds I saw in my head that served as the backdrop for making this music. Pretty much everything in it is a metaphor or a reference to one corner of the album or another," she wrote. "For me, this video turned out to be the perfect visual representation of this record and the stories I tell in it."

There is every likelihood that the exhibition will be inundated by ardent Swift devotees (hence the timed entries and a gift shop stocked with Taylor Swift merch), but Rodgers is adamant that you don’t have to be a deep-dyed Swiftie to get sucked in. All purchases support the artists we represent and the Museum of Arts and Design. This article is part of our Museums special section about how institutions are striving to offer their visitors more to see, do and feel. This week began with everyone's favorite festival of corporate greenwashing, Earth Day.

But as the video concludes, it continues to cut back to a rain-soaked Swift singing and clips of her other personas destroying her surroundings, from wreaking havoc through the file cabinets to trying to escape solitary confinement. Gisselle Medina was a summer 2023 intern with the Utility Journalism team at the Los Angeles Times. They are a proud Latino and queer individual who was born in L.A., raised in Fresno and has found a home in Berkeley. They received their bachelor’s degree in English from UC Berkeley in 2022 and will graduate with a master’s degree from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2024. Their work has been published in the Daily Californian, Greater Good Science Center, the Oaklandside, the Frisc and much more.

"It's magic for a museum director to see an audience that's new to your institution go to different shows that they didn't expect to see and enjoy them," he told me. Her 2017 video presented us with a whole new slew of characters, including one dressed in an oversized Gucci hoodie sequined with a tiger’s face and wearing a cat mask. It’s in this costume that Swift is filmed amid a rifled bank vault, dollar bills at her Louboutin boots, practically inviting all manner of cat burglar puns.

Taylor comments on female archetypes and gender norms by embodying a broad array of characters in her music videos and concerts. It's this visual storytelling that drew MAD to the idea of an exhibition devoted to Swift. "We were fascinated by the way in which she was using costumes in order to tell the stories that she was creating in her lyrics and in her songs," explained Rodgers. "We wanted to highlight her as a storyteller, the person who's writing the lyrics, who's performing the lyrics, but then is taking it as another step, and actually performing as the characters in her lyrics." The video for Swift’s 2019 single is less a music video than a series of random celeb cameos (RuPaul! Katy Perry! The guys from Queer Eye!).