From TV ads with roving cursor arrows to horror films about chat-room predators, our so-called entertainment elite is deeply fixated on the culture and symbolism of the Internet. One hundred years ago, it was the burgeoning vogue of vaudeville theater and moving pictures that blew the American zeitgeist wide open, and painters of the day were no less fascinated by its new-school guiles. In both cases, the acceleration of mass culture and exploding modes of entertainment provided working artists with a wealth of inspiration—visual and contextual—and it doesn’t take a student of meta-anything to appreciate the significance. Among the artifacts on display at this compelling Weisman exhibition (headed for other U.S. museums after this summer) is a Howard Thain painting of New York City’s Times Square circa 1925. Even then, electrified signage and beckoning searchlights signaled the arrival of a bigger, more spectacle-hungry viewing public. Could Thain have actually foreseen the coming of MTV’s TRL? Probably not (although Carson Daly does appear in certain translations of Nostradamus). But his work here, along with vintage posters, photographs, and paintings by the likes of Edward Hopper and Walt Kuhn, demonstrate a keen awareness that popular culture is as much a mirror as it is a screen. An accompanying series of free lectures and film events delve deeper into select topics. Weisman Museum, (612) 626-474
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