Will Farrell attempts to understand conceptual art in this hilarious short film for the Hammer Museum’s new “Stories of Almost Everyone” exhibition. Via Adweek:
Museums are often pretty humorless when it comes to their artwork. It’s rare for them to acknowledge that art can be confusing—particularly conceptual art, where the artist’s choices can seem self-indulgent or bafflingly arbitrary.
But the Hammer Museum at UCLA leans into that confusion in an amusing new short film made by some A-list talent in front of, and behind, the camera.
The six-minute spot stars Will Ferrell and Joel McHale as museum goers who are refreshingly honest—and funny—as they tour the Hammer’s new “Stories of Almost Everyone” exhibition. Viewing piece after piece—guided by Hammer curator Aram Moshayedi—the pair are openly bewildered, sometimes verging on disparaging, by the everyday objects that make up the show.
A pair of socks thrown on the ground? A handful of giant telephone poles lying across the gallery room? The museum’s actual mail, unopened and thrown in a corner? Ferrell and McHale try to make sense of these oddities, and more, in what turns out to be an engagingly counterintuitive way to get more people to visit and see the show.