Here Chwast supplies the vintage Hollywood musical with a tinge of Pop Art cool to attract a broad 1960s audience to a two-month-long series of movies at the Gallery of Modern Art in Columbus Circle in tribute to MGM lyricist and film producer Arthur Freed (seen at right in the guise of impresario and at lower left as a songwriter at the piano). (The gallery had been built only a few years earlier in 1964 to house the figurative art collection of the A & P supermarket heir Huntington Hartford; it has been occupied by the Museum of Arts and Design since 2008.) Chwast’s design incorporates the names of many of the lavish technicolor integrated musicals (in which songs were integrated into the narrative rather than performed outside it) with which Freed established his stellar reputation between 1944 when he made Meet Me in St. Louis and 1958 when he made Gigi. Curiously, however, Chwast does not include Singin’ in the Rain, which stands out among Freed’s works as one of the most beloved film musicals of all time.
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