Can an Exhibition Be a Portrait? The Hammer Museum Paints a Complicated Picture of Joan Didion With
Each gallery of the Hammer Museum’s recently opened exhibition, “Joan Didion: What She Means,” explores a chapter of the revered writer’s life—from her roots in Sacramento to her last years in New York.
The final room is titled “Sentimental Journeys” after a 1990 essay that Didion, who died in late 2021 at age 87, published in the New York Review of Books. Centered on the 1989 Central Park jogger case, the essay unravels the threads of race, class, and “preferred narratives,” which, tangled together, led to the unjust conviction of the young Black men known as the Central Park Five (now the Exonerated Five since their convictions were vacated in 2002).
Over Zoom, we talked with Kruger about her career, media diet, and political views; the internet; the ever-churning flow of images and words; and — what else — reality television.
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Artnet News website.
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