Hollub Homes Presents: Opening Nights

The Wolfsonian-FIU debuts Myth and Machine: The First World War in Visual Culture

Alicia Zaitsu and Ron Andruff

On Veteran’s Day, The Wolfsonian–FIU welcomed guests for the opening night of Myth and Machine: The First World War in Visual Culture, an exhibition marking the centenary of the First World War. Organized into three sections including War Machines, Unknown Soldiers, and Loss and Redemption, Myth and Machine explores how artists, designers and filmmakers confronted the birth of industrialized mass warfare. The opening also marks The Wolfsonian’s 19th anniversary.

Guests enjoyed opening remarks by Wolfsonian founder Mitchell Wolfson, Jr., exhibition curator Jon Mogul, and Interim Co-Director Sharon Aponte Misdea. Perrier was a proud sponsor of the opening night festivities.

War Machines, addresses how artworks and propaganda turned armaments such as aircraft, submarines, tanks, battleships, and machine guns into visual icons of a new kind of war. Unknown Soldiers examines representations of fighting men under conditions that, many argued, rendered them mere cogs in the machine of industrial warfare. Loss and Redemption, the final section of the exhibition, examines works produced in the decade after the war that sought to find an overarching meaning in in the experience of four years of death and destruction.

Myth and Machine: The First World War in Visual Culture will remain on view at The Wolfsonian through April 5, 2015.