Cocurated by Tracy Atkinson and John Lloyd Taylor of the Milwaukee Art Center, Options was the first in a series of exhibitions at the MCA, in conjunction with the Friends of Art Lakefront Festival of the Arts, aimed at exploring recent developments and growing trends in contemporary art.

All created in the 1960s, the works featured in Options allow for a range of possibilities, leaving their activation to the discretion of the audience. Among these are objects that light up, move, reflect, blink, roll, walk on, heat up, cool down, revolve, and distort images. Viewers can rearrange, knot, switch on and off, squeeze, dial up or down, sit on, angle, bounce, rotate, push, empty, fill, and voice-activate these objects. Among these works was Theodosius Victoria’s Sound Construction (1968), which included two radios that viewers could sit on or lean against to elicit differing audio levels. Although primarily physical, visitors had to be open to the perceptual, mental, and emotional elements that these frequently changing objects presented. Gene Davis’s Micro-Paintings (1966), for example, consists of small acrylic paintings placed randomly along walls to produce various points of color. The “options” presented by the work are defined by where a visitor stands in relation to the paintings, producing perceptual differences between individual canvases. Although fixed to the wall, the possibilities, as with all works in the show, are not fixed.

This profusion of choices suggests an act of learning or discovery. In the exhibition catalogue, art historian Lawrence Alloway includes an essay referencing Swedish artist Öyvind Fahlström (1928–1976), who suggested that spectator participation leads to greater discovery about oneself. Our responses to the various choices offered are an exercise in exploring our own personalities.