PostSecret

“Sometimes when we think we are keeping a secret that secret is actually keeping us.”

— Frank Warren, founder and curator of PostSecret

“Everybody has a secret lurking somewhere in the closet of their soul. Frank Warren harbors a half-million of them.”

– Wendell Brock, Atlanta Journal Constitution

In November 2004, Frank Warren began his community art project by handing out postcards to strangers or leaving them in public places in the Washington, D.C. area. Each self-addressed card invited people to anonymously share a secret. The two requirements were: The secret had to be true and it had to be something that had never been told to another person. Today, Warren has been mailed more than 500,000 highly personal postcards, many of them artfully decorated, illustrating the soulful secrets we carry with us but never voice. His local art project, which soon grew into an international phenomenon, has spawned five New York Times bestsellers, an award-winning website that receives more than four million visitors a month, and an art exhibition that theWashington Post has ranked among the top five of 2005.

This extraordinary exhibition of more than 400 postcards brings together the most powerful, poignant, and beautifully intimate secrets Warren has received. In many cases, the illustrations on these cards are just as compelling as the confessions themselves. PostSecret unflinchingly exposes our rich interior lives, revealing the best and worst of what dwells there.

The exhibition came fully designed with a mounting system of 15 wall-hung and 5 free-standing units; enlarged postcards; a DVD of the media coverage (Good Morning America, CNN, and more), as well as a music video inspired by the project. Additionally, museums had the option of supplementing the exhibit with a wide range of programming, including a book talk and signing with the author; a collecting of anonymous secrets from visitors for a local reaction to the topic; and more.

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