Harvard Art Museums’ exhibit uses potatoes to make serious point
What do you do when earthy potatoes are part of a contemporary artwork in one of the most important University museums in the country? Well, you act like a savvy shopper. You monitor the product closely and you make regular trips to the grocery store. Such is the care needed for a sculpture resembling a quirky science experiment in the first-floor modern and contemporary galleries of the Harvard Art Museums. Despite the shopping-cart component, though, “Analogia I” by Argentine artist Victor Grippo is a serious piece, one of the museums’ many works by artists who were redefining their field in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. “Analogia I,” consisting of a series of small potatoes nestled in individual square compartments and connected to wires, electrodes, and an electric meter, was created during the political upheaval in Argentina in the late ’60s and early ’70s, when government censorship and even brutality were...