Written for acting Consul General Damien Laban
Dear Matthew Yokobosky,
Dear friends,
It is a pleasure to welcome you to the French Consulate this evening to honor and celebrate the work of Mr Matthew Yokobosky, one of the most exciting and creative museum exhibition designers and curators of our time.
Mr Yokobosky who has conceived and overseen more than 100 expositions at major institutions, such as the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburg, the Whitney, and the Brooklyn Museum, including blockbusters like Basquiat (2005), Annie Leibovitz (2006-7), The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier (2013), Killer Heels: the Art of the High-Heeled Shoe (2014), and many more.
Dear Matthew, while you began your career as a curator of exhibitions on film and video, you pivoted to designing exhibitions in the late 1990s, when you joined the Brooklyn Museum.
And since you’ve taken on this role, you’ve been part of the team that has made the museum one of the top cultural destinations in this thriving city.
You have created stunning, unique experiences for us visitors.
When an interviewer asked you how you went about designing a show, you said that it was a bit like making a small city. You tried to imagine what the visitor would see and feel, and to encourage them to pay attention to particular angles, objects, and combinations.
So, for example, the exhibit on Georgia O’keefe (in 2017) called “Living Modern” wanted to show us a 3-dimensional O’Keeffe, and to make clear that her sense of design wasn’t just to be seen in her paintings, it was something that infused her entire life. For example, it included her sense of fashion and the décor she chose for her home.
To illustrate this, you presented some of O’Keefe’s dresses directly across from her artworks, revealing that they had similar patterns and were similarly color-coordinated, and of course, just as beautiful.
The exhibitions that you design are also very much in tune with the times: You have said that one of the questions you always ask yourself is, ‘How does this look on social media?” “Is it Instagrammable?”
I can confirm that your shows are Instagrammable, my daughters reposted pictures of the Thierry Mugler dresses that were on display at the Brooklyn Museum last year for days 😉
Here at the Consulate, and at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, we’ve also been impressed by the ways in which you’ve presented some of our French artists and fashion designers. You’ve allowed the public to see the full range of their oeuvre, from the “prêt à porter” garments they invented, to the fantastical outfits they dreamed up for mega-stars, in stunning, and often dramatic settings.
But the exhibits that you have overseen or curated have done much more than brilliantly recreate their aesthetics, by demonstrating that fashion icons like Jean-Paul Gaultier, Pierre Cardin or Thierry Mugler helped shape our culture in forward-thinking, positive ways.
The Jean-Paul Gaultier exhibition that you designed in 2013 was set against gorgeous walls of graffiti, a wonderful way to show appreciation for this artform, which has deep roots in Brooklyn.
It allowed US audiences to see up close the costumes that Jean-Paul Gaultier made for Madonna, including the corset that she so often wore on stage. It showed his punk collection and men wearing brassieres.
To heighten the drama, his ensembles adorned mannequins that had interactive faces that were created by high-definition visual projections.
This exhibition also showed the cultural impact that Jean Paul Gaultier had as a designer, who was one of the first to take issues of multiculturalism, body positivism, and trans visibility in high fashion seriously.
Clips from his runway shows in the 1990s were played at the exhibition to remind us of the gorgeous models of all genders, shapes and forms that he brought to the world of haute couture: models who were non-binary, models of color, models old and young, as well as plus-size models like Beth Ditto.
The exhibition also shows us that Jean Paul Gaultier was forcing his audiences to think about gender clichés and the absurdity of binaries. He put men in skirts and cone-like bras, and women in oversized power suits, as if to say, what is masculine and feminine, anyway?
The Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion that you curated showed us his 1960s and 70s collections of high boots and tight, brightly colored synthetic dresses against dramatic black and space-inspired backdrops.
It reminds us that Cardin was one of the first to bring high fashion to the mass market by designing ready-to-wear clothes for the general public. In the 1950s, he was one of the first to hold the then-revolutionary view that women and men of all classes should be able to wear distinguished, nicely-styled clothes.
And he was not afraid to put his name on it! Cardin was one of the first celebrities to embrace the concept of branding, by selling his logo, and placing it on everything from furniture to household objects, to perfume.
The Thierry Mugler exhibit Couturissime, which you brought us last year, showed us La Chimère, a dress that was made of iridescent beads arranged to create a rainbow effect, which took thousands of hours to produce.
Mugler’s ensembles were set against smooth, rounded backdrops, with special effects by the company that worked on “Dune.” The idea was to recreate the theatricality of the shows that made Mugler famous.
The exhibit also reminded us that the silhouette that Mugler became known for: Broad, imposing shoulders, and tiny waists, was meant to be an aesthetic of female empowerment. It was an aesthetic that was supposed to make women feel that they were leaders and the engines of society.
Last but not least, the Christian Dior show that you designed was so gorgeously extravagant, with ceiling-high displays of the couturier’s dresses in the Brooklyn Museum’s Beaux Arts Court, that the New York Times wrote that it had eclipsed the Dior show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s concurrent exhibition.
Dear Matthew Yokobosky, we have been impressed by the flair and creativity with which you have presented and staged the work of great artists and fashion creatives throughout your career.
We have also been moved by your ability to present these icons in ways that are so contemporary, and that highlight the role they played in democratizing our ideas about what’s beautiful and what isn’t, who gets to look good and who doesn’t, who has the power on the runway and in the boardrooms, and who doesn’t.
And it is for all these reasons that France decided to award you the insignia of Chevalier (Knight) in the National Order of Merit.
Dear Matthew, we are looking forward to seeing what magic will happen at the Brooklyn Museum next, and will be sure to head on over to see your latest creations.
Merci.
And now I will proceed to the award.
