Early in the twenty-first century, I resigned my volunteer docent position at the Des Moines Art Center.
A few weeks into my retirement, I read an article about artist Marina Abramovic. Here was a familiar name! I remembered her difficult to pronounce last name when describing her work, Flock II, to fellow docents. And now here she was doing performance art! I marveled that she could do so many things!
For the next several years, every article about Marina further cemented my bond with her. I knew her real work – it was at the Des Moines Art Center!
In my new Des Moines Art Center Collects seven pound book, the vital statistics of the artist who created Flock II, the work I described in my presentation, didn’t make sense to me. It said she was born in 1930. How could this be? The latest article reported that she was 67. And when I looked closely, her name was Magdalena Abakanowicz.
Yes, years ago I mistakenly decided that Marina Abramovic was Magdalena Abakanowicz – the Polish artist of my docent presentation.