"Dara Birnbaum: Arabesque"

Birnbaum rose to prominence nearly four decades ago, with videos that subjected images appropriated from mainstream television to a sharp feminist critique. Several single-channel pieces from that period are included here, but the show's centerpiece is a new multichannel installation titled Arabesque. In it, Birnbaum uses YouTube clips and excerpts from a 1940s Hollywood melodrama to meditate upon the relative renown of two pieces of classical music: Robert Schumann's Arabesque Opus 18—which he wrote for his wife, Clara—and Romanze 1, Opus 11, which Clara Schumann, a composer in her own right, penned for her husband. Would you be surprised to learn that there are way more instances of the former appearing in YouTube videos than the latter? We didn't think so.