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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2007 > September > 11
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
We didn’t mean literally
Things got a little frisky at the Blanton Museum of Art’s B Scene Friday night. Seems one patron took the giveaways that accompany the new exhibit ‘Mike’s World: Michael Smith & Joshua White’ a little too literally.
See, artist and UT professor Michael Smith has over the course of his 30-year artistic career developed an alter ego ‘Mike’ — a endearing but hapless dude who optimistically strives for the Next Big Thing, but never seems to get it. Convinced that our computer age means more lounging around in a private utopia, ‘Mike’ conceives of a multimedia information kiosk that admonishes everyone to ‘Take Off Your Pants!’ After all, you’ll be doing nothing but sitting around in your underwear at the computer anyway.
And so to augment the installation in ‘Mike’s World,’ yellow lapel buttons emblazoned with ‘Take Off Your Pants’ are given away to exhibit viewers. But Friday night, sources say, one man decided that it would be good to actually take off his pants at the B Scene.
UT police and Blanton officials thought otherwise and the man was asked to leave, which he did. With his pants on, we understand.
(“Take Off Your Pants,” photo from installation. Michael Smith & Joshua White, 2005.)
