21c Museum Hotel

A new installation at 21c Museum Hotel explores the memories of the 1974 killer tornado and how tragedy alters perspective. The installation, Wheel of Fortune, runs June 4 through October, and is free to the public.

Physically, Wheel of Fortune at 21c Museum Hotel’s Atrium is as mammoth and threatening as the tragic twister that inspired the installation: The scuplture’s sheer height of two stories and its swirling intricacy conjure up the memory of the tornado that swept through Louisville in 1974, one of 148 tornadoes that struck 10 states over a two-day period. In all, those tornadoes left 315 dead and more than 5,000 injured. The tornado outbreak ranks as the second-worst of the 20th century.

Louisville-born artist Anne Peabody remembers that April 3, 1974, tornado. She has incorporated those memories into the huge tornado commissioned and presented by 21c Museum Hotel.

“I wanted to look at the clash between devastation and beauty, and the unexpected consequences of disaster,” Peabody said. “I started from my own childhood memories of the 1974 tornado, which left my house untouched but my neighborhood devastated and my yard filled with other people’s possessions. While Wheel of Fortune grew out of events in own my life, I want to speak to the experience of anyone touched by the bizarre dislocations of calamity.”

Steel bars of varying thickness form the interior coil of Wheel of Fortune, which measures 25 feet long diagonally and  18 feet wide at its broadest point. Thousands of objects — hand-carved wooden items and found objects of glass —are each silvered and attached to the understructure to form a dense and coruscating tornado inside the museum. The items range from the ordinary — eggshells, flashlights, dolls’ heads, turkey basters, batteries — to the rarified: mink coats and candelabra. The overall impression is one of jumbled devastation and despair.

Said 21c Museum director William Morrow: “Anne’s installation transforms 21c Museum Hotel into a space for reflection, not only on the 1974 tornado, but on the larger theme of our society’s value systems. Her work explores how catastrophic events alter our perception of the objects we live with and the world around us. In Wheel of Fortune mink coats and candelabras mingle with cigarette butts and broken bits of glass, all equally beautiful and equally damaged.”  The opening of Wheel of Fortune coincides with the 40th annual Glass Art Society conference in Louisville this June. That three-day conference is expected to bring thousands of glass enthusiasts — artists, educators, collectors, business executives, museum curators and gallery owners from across the world — to Louisville.  

Peabody’s work was featured in the 2009 Venice Biennale.

- by Ivonne Rovira, Louisville Reporter for HelloMetro  (Click to leave a message)

Ivonne Rovira

A graduate of the prestigious Columbia University School of Journalism in New York City, Ivonne Rovira worked as a reporter for the Miami News, The Miami Herald and The Associated Press. She has written articles for The National Catholic Reporter and The Courier-Journal. For more than 15 years, Ivonne wrote and edited articles aimed at middle-school children.