Come to Dada

On a field trip to the National Gallery of Art* last week, my students and I stumbled across the Dada exhibit currently in residence there. A thoroughly appropriate stumble, for reasons too complex to bother with at this hour.

If you live within a 2-hour radius of me, this exhibit is not to be missed. If you're me, and you live even beyond that radius, it is a must-see.

Of course, if you're me, you live right here, and you have no idea the exhibit has opened even though Modernism is your specialty and Dada and Surrealism your psychic homes, because you yourself are Dada through and through.

Da·da or da·da ( P ) Pronunciation Key (dädä) n. A European artistic and literary movement (1916-1923) that flouted conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty, and incongruity. (French dada, hobbyhorse, Dada, of baby-talk origin.)
* The National Gallery of Art is no relation to the Smithsonian, for those of us who've always assumed so.

[image: Objet Indestructible by Man Ray, my iconic hero. Via The Newark Museum]