David Byrne explores the art of rediscovery in 'Sleeping Beauties'
I love the idea that cultural forgetting is an active process, not just a passive loss. Byrne seems to be saying that every era curates its own blind spots, and what we ignore says as much about us as what we celebrate. That makes "Sleeping Beauties" less a museum catalog and more a mirror held up to our current obsessions.
The artist's angle matters here. Byrne has spent decades bouncing between avant-garde and pop, so he knows firsthand how fickle attention can be. I'd want to know more about the mechanics he identifies, whether revivals follow economic incentives, technological shifts, or something stranger like collective mood. If he's found patterns, that could help us predict which of today's overlooked works will haunt the future.
I keep thinking about how this applies beyond art. Scientific papers get forgotten and rediscovered all the time, sometimes too late. Maybe the real question isn't why things sleep, but what wakes them, and whether we can learn to listen for those stirrings.