ArtEdge on Brand
Anne Kaplan describes ArtEdge as a way to develop an identity for the MCA.
Each [ArtEdge] projects or explains that we are risk-taking, adventurous, new, interpretive, bold. We actually did list adjectives, which I have forgotten, but that’s how we started. We just listed those adjectives. We just blared at them, and then every single one of our ArtEdges is—and we decided to develop a brand name. And that came about, I think, with the one we had in the West Loop that Cari Sacks was chairman of. It became ArtEdge. And ArtEdge became our brand. So, we then developed a brand, but not from the right side of it, but as we went along. So, ArtEdge became our brand, and our foresight and our vision now and our concepts are inherent in each one.
So, we get great chairmen, but they don’t have to say, “Should we have fabric and flowers?” They don’t have to do that, because we look at that event, we see what it’s about, and we determine how we’re going to get those particular ideas across through that event. And, of course, our latest achievement is ArtEdge Murakami, ArtEdge at 50—our 50th anniversary and our Murakami exhibition—which was the most complex of them all, because it celebrated the opening of an exhibition, an artist, and our 50th anniversary, our birthday.