Museum Guards in Derby Hats

A big new retrospective of the work of surrealist René Magritte will open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Anderson Building next Sunday. But it won't be just any Magritte show.

The installation for "Magritte and Contemporary Art: the Treachery of Images" was designed by artist John Baldessari. "The entrance will re-create 'The Unexpected Answer,' a Magritte painting of a door with a cutout silhouette of a ghostly figure," notes the L.A. Times. "Visitors will walk through the open silhouette into galleries carpeted with a woven version of a Magritte-style blue sky with fluffy white clouds. The ceiling, where the sky should be, will be papered with images of freeway intersections. A big square window will be covered with a transparency of the New York skyline. The guards will wear derby hats."

The show features 65 paintings by Magritte and 65 works by 31 different modern and postmodern artists whose work was influenced by Magritte.

Posted by: MIKE JOHNSTON with a tip o' the hat to D.E.