‘Very significant for women’: how American artist Barbara Krueger’s art changed the life of a Hong Kong gallerist
- Amanda Hon, managing director of Ben Brown Fine Arts in Hong Kong, encountered Krueger’s work for the first time at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art
- The exhibition made Hon question what she wanted to do and who she was – ‘it was definitely the beginning of a journey for me’
American artist Barbara Kruger is best known for her black-and-white collages featuring bold white-on-red captions that pose questions about subjects such as power, gender relations and consumerism.
In 2000, New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of her work, which had travelled from its original home in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Amanda Hon, managing director of art gallery Ben Brown Fine Arts in Hong Kong, tells Richard Lord how it changed her life.
My high school took us on a trip to the Whitney. I was living upstate (in New York) at the time. They chartered a bus and drove us down. It was my first experience of contemporary art. I was in ninth grade.
We’d been to the Met (New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art) several times – it was the obvious introduction to art history, starting at the beginning. I remember really liking Egyptian art when I was young, and I’d always loved drawing classes and art history; I just really like looking at things. But I’d never been to the Whitney – my family didn’t do contemporary art.
Going to the Whitney, you don’t know what to expect, especially if you don’t understand contemporary art. I understand why people think it’s hard to grasp.
I went in there, and Barbara Kruger had done this huge installation that took up the whole room, which is something you don’t usually see. It was palatable, not so obtuse, yet also very significant for women.
She’s a huge feminist; she broke down language in a way that made me think about women’s rights and how we live today. At that age you’re very impressionable, and you really need to find your own voice.
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That exhibition was important because it made me question what I want to do and who I am.
It was definitely the beginning of a journey for me. I didn’t know much about the art world but I knew it existed. When you don’t come from a family with an art background, you don’t realise what careers there are in the art world. I didn’t realise people could own these things.
Unless you come across, say, a (work by sculptor Alexander) Calder in someone’s home, you don’t know. I thought it was just about going to museums – I didn’t understand all the facets of the art world that bring works into people’s homes.
I studied communications and art history in college. Then I went and did a law degree, thinking about a career in IP law, but I didn’t like it. I moved to London to get a master’s in the art business from Sotheby’s, and started to understand a bit more about the art world.
I went to Barbara Kruger’s latest show, which just finished at MoMA in New York. I still walked into it in awe. It still brings me back to that first time of seeing her work, and the impact and influence it had on me.
