Perspective is one of the fundamental elements of art. Looking back at history, we can see how trends in artists’ approaches to perspective have tended to mirror the values of the place and time they inhabited – from the flatness of medieval art, to the single vanishing point of the renaissance, to the distortion of post-modernism. These patterns are easy to see in retrospect, with a little distance, but it’s harder to get a good view from inside any particular place and time.

Meet your docent at Magdalena Abakanowicz’s Figure on a Trunk in the plaza of Bass Concert Hall.