The Work of Randall Hoyt randall@randallhoyt.com
203 444 2243
Acquiring Taste
Acquiring Taste is an exhibition of contemporary art, music, and some unexpected objects selected
from the collections of Janice and Mickey Cartin, Robinson and Nancy Grover, Peter Hirschl and Lisa Silvestri,
and Sol and Carol LeWitt. These collectors, in different ways, play notable roles in contemporary art (and
music) through their activities as collectors. I designed the printed, web, and exhibition graphics for this
show with Mark Zurolo.
Acquiring Taste featured contemporary work that gave a sense of how these collectors collect,
and included some work that had never been seen in public. The design of the catalog reflected the idea of
collecting by combining the databases of the four participating collectors to pay homage to what was excluded.
The collections combined are a database of over 10,000 entries. This extended text was exported
and typeset to form the body of the book. The excluded works were printed in a tinted varnish, while the work
included in the exhibition were printed in black next to their image. The one hundred page text for the entire
catalog was exported in alphabetical order from a master database.
The work gallery for the catalog displays the image on the left ‘page’ and the
navigation on the right ‘page.’ The primary menu was set, like the printed catalog, as an
impenetrable brick of text. Each image loads as a separate Flash file which keeps the original download quite
small. Launch the site.
One of the collectors, Peter Hirschl, has an extensive collection of music which the curator
Steven Holmes wanted to include. After much discussion about a cost effective way to provide the music, I
suggested that the gallery buy a few iPods. It may seem obvious now, but in 2002 the iPod was still a curiosity.
