The Secret Happy End by Othoniel in the Brooklyn Museum, July 2010

Artist: Jean-Michel Othoniel

Title: The Secret Happy End

Date: 2008

Medium: Murano glass, Saint Just's mirror glass, metal, vintage carriage

Classification: Sculpture

Dimensions: Display dims: 106 5/16 x 145 11/16 x 59 1/16 in. (270 x 370 x 150 cm) Storage dims: Wagon without wheels and glass: 98 1/2 x 71 x 142 in. (250.2 x 180.3 x 360.7 cm) Storage MOVE DIMS (crate group as stack on pallet CR6, 3, 9): 65 × 42 × 48 in. (165.1 × 106.7 × 121.9 cm) Storage MOVE DIMS (crate group as stack on pallet. CR11, 12, 10, 13, 16): 80

Credit Line: Gift of Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris/Miami, and the artist

Accession Number: 2010.11

Rights: ©Jean-Michel Othoniel

Jean-Michel Othoniel has transformed this utilitarian vehicle—a nineteenth-century covered wagon known as a prairie schooner—into an elegant object of beauty by remaking its canvas cover with panes of blown glass and adding swags and finials composed of oversized glass beads.

The artist, who favors alterable materials, began working with sulfur and wax and since 1993 has also experimented with the possibilities presented by glass. The potential for transformation that occurs with this material is echoed here by themes of migration and social change suggested by the covered wagon, part of the collective memory and mythology of American culture.

Text from: www.brooklynmuseum.org/objects/188967