NAME: Ann Prentice Wagner

OCCUPATION: Curatorial associate, Smithsonian American Art Museum

RESIDENCE: Bethesda

WHAT I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT THIS PIECE: Ilya Bolotowsky was a Russian immigrant in New York City. He’s a major modern artist, known for the abstract geometric work that he was doing not very long after this. He was already going in a very abstract, modernist direction at the time, but he knew that for the [Public Works of Art Program], he had to do some something people would enjoy looking at and know what they were seeing. So on his [application] form, he said, “The problem is to show a typical, average, drab barber shop, and at the same time, get a decorative effect through color.”