Inauguration Theme of Downtown Exhibition

An exhibition at the Future Tenant gallery downtown is based around a presidential theme. "Sworn In" opened on Friday. Curator Lauri Mancuso says she began planning it long before anyone knew how the election would turn out. She says Future Tenant contacted her about a year ago to invite her to be a guest curator, and January 2009 happened to be open. When she began brainstorming ideas, the inauguration came to mind. And although she says at the time no one knew who was going to win, she says she had a feeling that the inauguration would be a special time.

The exhibition consists of oil paintings on canvas. Mancuso says she modeled it after the White House art collection; she wanted to create a parlor-type setting. Artists created portraits. Mancuso says there are a few of Barack Obama. But she says the theme may be less clear in some other works. Some artists interpreted the theme to imagine the type of art they would like to see in the White House collection. The exhibition runs through February 14th.