Harappan Mother Goddess

The current exhibition at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts is In the Still Epiphany curated by artist Gedi Sibony. He selected numerous artworks from the collection of Joesph and Emily Pulitzer and designed their layout and cases in the galleries. His arrangement of these paintings, sculptures, and artifacts relates a story about a moment of clarity in a young woman's life. It's a very intriguing exhibition, and if you can visit please do.

Because the epiphany is that of a young woman, much of the art emits femininity, domesticity, and beauty. From Picasso's Woman in the Red Hat to Matisse's The Conservatory to a cleverly designed case of vessels and objects that exudes the Virgin Mary, women are the center of attention and absolutely everywhere. As they should be. But no object strikes me as so ultimately feminine as the terracotta Harappan Mother Goddess figurine. Seeing that she is a goddess that might be a bit unfair to all the other mortal women in the show. Nonetheless, she is my favorite so far.

The goddess figurine comes from the Indus Valley in Pakistan and dates to approximately 3000 BC. The exhibition photos are not available online yet, but you can see some similar terracotta figures here. It is believed, due to the emphasis of the female form, that these are fertility figures. The Pulitzer's little goddess has a bust that would make Pam Anderson jealous and she grasps her left breast with her left hand. On display she hangs out with an African humanoid fetish that foils the feminine and busty goddess with its stocky and ambiguous shape.

I think what I like the most about this object is her timelessness and staying power. As small as she is, which is about four inches tall, she stands out as powerful. It's a uniquely feminine strength that reigned for centuries before the uprising of the patriarchal pantheon, that makes a woman feel empowered rather than objectified by her own chest and bum. I love the idea of curvaceousness as something to be worshiped, as it represents a uniquely female capability, which is of course the ability to bring forth human life.

At the moment I have found the Harappan goddess the most intriguing, but the show has only been open for nine days. After some more exploring and contemplation I will surely find more to blog about since the range of the Pulitzer's collection is amazingly diverse.

Weekly Reading Assignment: Marking Objects

In an effort to make sure I remain current and maintain the information I learned as a museum studies student, I have decided to assign myself weekly readings in museum standards, best practices, ethics, and codes of conduct. I will utilize online resources, the vast majority of which will be from the American Association of Museums information center, and provide a link here on my blog. This way I can ensure that I accomplish a weekly goal and share it with others. Please feel free to read along with me each week. I am eager for suggestions (i.e., you read my source on a given topic and you are aware of another source and wish to suggest it here for myself and other readers) and commentary on the readings.

This week I read a section of the National Park Service's Museum Handbook which discusses the procedures for applying and removing object numbers, which you can read here. It lays out very clear and concise guidelines for how and where to number objects. It also lists specific archival products and tools which are very useful references. It is a very good read, especially if you want to refresh your memory and be prepared for unusual situations.  

Did you find the NPS object marking section helpful? Do you know of any other online resources concerning the application and removal of object numbers?

No Fishing

Yesterday evening my sister-in-law asked me what I know about silverfish. This was not a question concerning my amazing longline fishing skills, because I don't have any. She was asking about some insects she recently discovered inhabiting her basement. I happened to know exactly what she was talking about due to this insect's infamous repute in the museum and historic site realm. Thanks to their bad reputation they are mentioned a lot in museum studies courses and preservation workshops. Once during a course I was actually given a poster with many blown-up mugshots of the bugs that are considered the most common and destructive by preservationists. I had no more desire to hang this poster on my wall than I would a poster of third degree burns or Justin Bieber, but I do keep it safely tucked away in a drawer. One of the persona non gratas on this placard is the silverfish. Now let me tell you why and share some facts and links about this bug.

Silverfish are dreaded due to their diets, which consists of a lot of carbs and starches. Now in our obsessively weight conscious society this is bad enough, but these bugs don't get their polysaccharides from coffee and donuts they way we do. They prefer the carbohydrates and starches found in carpets, glue, clothes, and certain types of paper. They are capable of getting away with eating a lot because they are nocturnal and it would be a fluke to see any out during the day. Even so, they generally cause little to moderate damage unless a large infestation goes unchecked. I once visited a historic house where over half the original silk carpet of a period room had been overridden, eaten, and destroyed by silverfish. It went undetected for years because the insects were devouring it from the bottom up, starting with the glue and the woven substructure. The original carpet had to be removed and replaced with a less historically accurate carpet, which, as a precaution, was made of starch-free fibers in order to prevent another infestation. So in some rare cases the damage can be very bad. 

The name of the silverfish comes from their appearance. They have a long and thin silver body, though they are also sometimes red, brown, or black. They usually grow to up to a half inch or a full inch in length and their bodies have a flat, carrot-like shape. It is their silver coloring and the wiggling motion they make when they move that led to the silverfish comparison and their name. You can learn about the appearance and nature of the silverfish here.

The presence of silverfish in a home or storage area is a distinct sign of high humidity. They love damp and cool areas and in the house they are often found in basements, bathrooms, or kitchens. In a museum the best prevention is to maintain a low humidity level. When silverfish are detected there are a number of ways to eliminate the infestation. You can read more about silverfish and how to detect and remove them here. 

Silverfish may sound like the pretty, darting creatures that occupy and hypnotize from a household fish tank, and sometimes they are, but in the instance a silverfish is a carb-addicted pest that wiggles its way across the living room carpet, it's best to find a way to track and eliminate them immediately. Not only do they cause some damage, but they could also end up attracting other bugs into the building. I'll be sure to let my sister-in-law know. 

Have you ever dealt with an infestation of silverfish? What damage did they cause and how did you remove them?

Museuming in Chicago

Last weekend I spent some 72 hours enjoying the St. Patrick's Day atmosphere and museums in Chicago. Since I was staying with a friend we agreed on two museums we both really wanted to visit together: the Art Institute of Chicago and The Field Museum.

We went to the Art Institute first, which is right next to Millennium Park and easily accessible by public transportation. I found it an excellent institution with some really amazing art. I greatly enjoyed exploring their European Art galleries and was pleased to come across many familiar artists and artworks. I am grateful to any institution that provides me personal experiences with unique and beautiful works of art, and at the Art Institute this happened in practically every room. I was also tickled to see the Art Institute kicking it old school, as it were, with the presence of hygrothermographs in some of the galleries. Aside from my favored European Art, I spent a lot of time in the Indian, Southeast Asian, and Himalayan Art gallery enjoying beautiful artworks which the Pulitzer Foundation's Reflections of the Buddha exhibition has definitely given me more appreciation for. The only disappointment was that the Ancient Art galleries were closed for renovation. Even so, the gallery mockups they had accompanying their apologetic signs looked wonderful. Being a glass-is-half-full kind of girl, I say this just provides me with an excellent excuse to return to Chicago in the very near future.

After a quick lunch my friend and I headed on over to The Field Museum. I had not been to the museum since 2006 when I visited Chicago for the sole purpose of seeing the traveling King Tut exhibition. I remembered being impressed with the museum then and it's still impressive. I just love their natural history galleries displaying dioramas of African, Asian, and North American animals. I always get a bit of a goose-bumped thrill when I behold those maneaters from Tsavo. I rank their presence in the museum up with the ever-impressive Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

In addition to visiting the regular museum galleries at The Field, we also purchased tickets to see the Opening the Vaults: Mummies exhibition. I have to say that, overall, I do not give the exhibition a high rating. They are presenting some very remarkable samples of mummified human remains alongside spectacular graphics of x-rays and MRI's, giving visitors a whole new way of looking at what makes a mummy. But I found the information presented in the text some of your very basic, run-of-the-mill mummy stuff with a bit of new information. I even missed some of the text because initially I did not see it since it's displayed along the top edges of the cases. I had to look up to read it, and I do not see how putting the text so high is in any way accessible to children or visitors with disabilities. They did have some excellent back-lit panels along the walls, though, which were very easy to spot and at the proper height. I was also a little dumbfounded to see many of the artifacts, in perhaps about half of the cases, not displayed with mounts but in storage boxes. Archival, blue storage boxes everywhere! It gave the whole exhibition a real slapdash feel for me. Museum staff might have thought the average museum visitor would not notice, being unfamiliar with storage materials, but I do recall a young boy asking his father why there were so many cardboard boxes. To wrap up, I found the mummies and artifacts very impressive but the displays themselves very mediocre, with the exception of the computer graphics and interactives which are very cutting-edge.

I greatly enjoyed my trip to Chicago and I am looking forward to a year of other such trips and museum adventures.

A Short Book Report

This week my post will be short and sweet. I want to share my thoughts about a book I am currently reading entitled Dry Storeroom No. 1, The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey.

It tells an engaging behind-the-scenes story of the Natural History Museum in London, England. Fortey recounts his own personal encounters and adventures at the museum. The reader discovers things along with Richard as he reminisces his early explorations and discoveries in the hidden areas of the museum, and his initial and fascinating discovery of a miscellaneous storeroom; dry storeroom number 1. He spends a lot of time explaining the study of natural history and the classification systems used for specimens of the natural world, but he combines his technical explanations with personable whisticisms and humor that keeps the reader engaged. All information provided is very important to understanding the storage methods and organizational systems used in natural history museums. I highly recommend this book for any one interested in collections management, museums, and natural history. I am enjoying this book very much and will provide a more thorough review once I have completed it.

This week I am in Chicago and will share accounts of my adventures to local institutions and museums in my post for next week. 

My Favorite Pairs: John Stezaker at the Kemper

I remember making collages in my third grade art class. Taking bits and pieces from magazines and juxtaposing pictures with varying contours of construction paper and covering all with a varnish of glitter. Even my most thoughtful works seemed fragmented and haphazard and I have carried this attitude of collage ever since. I doubted that collage could ever be termed an 'elegant' art form. Even Picasso's Bottle of Suze (see previous post Bottle of Suze Anyone?) does not seem fluid or lovely to me, though I find the subject matter and materials fascinating. I suppose I could only see collage as a collection of materials meant to be studied in separate parts with the composition as a whole being a complicated and sloppy secondary form. In short, collage had no aesthetic appeal for me... until now.

John Stezaker is an exhibition that surveys approximately the last forty years of this English artist's work and is the exhibition that altered my perception of collage. Before the show officially opened I had a chance to view these artworks as they were hanging in storage. As my supervisor slowly pulled out the rack of pictures I saw my first dozen of the close to ninety artworks in the show and was immediately charmed. Stezaker's works are seemingly effortless compositions of two or three images pooled together to form a single, surreal picture with a natural flow running across and connecting its separate parts. In other words, they are 'elegant' collages.

John Stezaker creates his collages using found images, often pictures and postcards he has purchased from antique shops or garage sales. He then cuts, trims, slices, and overlays images in order to create a new composition. Though his found images often consist of very different subjects and scenes he combines them in such a way that there is a seemingly natural connection from one image to the other. In this way he creates a surreal picture that our eyes and brain process as one continuous image. The images are simultaneously both beautiful and bizarre. Stezaker has stated he likes to make the final artworks as ambiguous as possible so interpretation is left up to the viewer.

I would now like to discuss my two favorite pieces from the exhibition, or should I say my two favorite pairs? The collages are entitled Pair III and Pair IV, and are a part of the artist's Masks series. Both of these artworks consist of two parts: a movie still photograph and a scenic postcard. Both collages also utilize the same movie still with different postcards located in the same position over the couples' faces. In Pair III the tops of the two cliffs that flank the stream line up seamlessly with the round curves of the figures' heads. It is the same with Pair IV, with not only the cliff faces lining up but also the gently swirling curls along the bottom of the woman's hair lining up perfectly with a rock outcrop on the cliff.

I interpret these pieces as the evolution of a deteriorating relationship that the couple has somehow managed to hide from their closest friends, but cannot hide for much longer. I see this because I imagine the couple underneath the postcards passionately kissing. While they kiss for their viewers, apparently very close and comfortable, the postcards show that there is actually a rift between them. The water is gradually widening this gap with a consistent, steady flow that wares away at the stone faces of the cliffs. The couples' actual faces are stone themselves, a frozen facade to hide their true feelings. Pair III shows the water flow when it was just a stream and Pair IV shows it later when the rift has widened into a river. There are some people on the bridge overlooking the water, representing those who have observed the separation and can see the relationship for what it truly is; the secret is out. What started out as two separate images, a young couple locked in passionate embrace and a picturesque postcard, with two different meanings, true love and the beauty of nature, ends in a combination that tells the sad story of a weakening relationship.

So simple, so beautiful, so elegant. John Stezaker has shown me that collage is not a clumsy art form and has the potential to emanate a harmonious and beautiful image. I will continue to enjoy his works as I patrol the exhibition gallery until they are taken down in April. It's one of the parts of the job I love the most.

What do you think of John Stezaker's collages? Do you have a favorite collage artist? What are your feelings about the collage as art?

a woman like that & Some Thoughts on Copyright

Today I attended the presentation of a documentary film about Artemisia Gentileschi, a 17th-century female artist and painter. The 93 minute film, entitled a woman like that, combines filmmaker Ellen Weissbrod's own coming of middle age story with her quest to learn more about this evocative artist. You can read more about it on the film's website here. The presentation and discussion of the film was promoted by the Saint Louis Art Museum and presented in the Brown Auditorium at Washington University in St. Louis. After the film viewing, Dr. Judith Mann, Curator of European Art to 1800 at the Saint Louis Art Museum (and a friend of mine), gave a short presentation about a recently discovered cache of Artemisia letters. The whole experience was very enlightening and not only presented new and interesting facts about Artemisia, but also struck on some prevalent museum issues.

The most significant issue discussed, which dominates the opening of the film, concerns the copyright restrictions of artworks in museums. The film begins back in 2002 with a dismayed Ellen talking into her camera about how she had just received an email from the Saint Louis Art Museum denying her permission to film the exhibition Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy. Not allowing this upset to prevent her from pursuing her goals, Ms. Weissbrod purchased a hidden filming device and drove all the way from New York City to St. Louis. Using her James Bond-esque equipment, which involved a pair of camera-spectacles, she filmed her stroll through the Saint Louis Art Museum's special exhibition gallery and the paintings of Artemisia and Orazio Gentileschi. Her adorably covert operation spurred her on to continue her quest for the woman behind the artist. I really enjoyed and highly recommend her film.

There are clearly no hard feelings on the part of the Saint Louis Art Museum about Ellen's actions or filming techniques. The film is in fact being embraced and promoted by the Art Museum. It was described to me by my friend as "a very personal look at Artemisia, with humor and some real insights," and I was encouraged to attend and bring friends. So why all the red tape when the Ellen initially wanted to film? Dr. Mann explained during a question and answer session that the Saint Louis Art Museum was unable to acquire permission from all the loaning museums to film the artworks. When they could not guarantee the permission of all the loaners they had to tell Ellen she could not film. After this explanation, Ellen also made it a point to state how great and supportive staff at the museum have been in helping her complete this project. The truth is many museums have to be very mindful of copyright when they are borrowing artworks from other institutions. There is a really great post about this type of issue on the blog Musematic entitled Museums Are Not the Enemy.

The copyright of museum images is a topic of growing concern for museums all over the world. In an age when information can be shared instantly in a digital format on the world wide web, art institutions are encountering new challenges and issues concerning the ownership of the images of their artworks. There is a very great article about this in the American Association of Museum's Museum Magazine entitled "Copyright Clearance for Online Images: A Lesson Learned." This is a different aspect of the copyright debate, but it still relates to the issues Ellen Weissbrod encountered on her journey.

Another related issue is when museums charge publications for the right to print images of their artworks, thus gaining a profit from their copyrighted images. There are some that disapprove of this. They ask why do museums "sell" images of artworks that they hold in trust for the general public? If the artworks are already rightfully ours to be shared, then why are the images not also shared? I have heard that museums will often use their copyrighted images in order to help raise funds to care for the collections. This seems fair; if copyright enables institutions to secure additional dollars to care for the artworks then maybe it's a small inconvenience the public can pay for the greater good. On the other side of the coin, I have also heard it argued that using staff time and energy in order to deal with photography and image rights issues ends up costing the museum more money than they gain. I really cannot say if it's either-or unless I spend some quality time with the budget reports, which I doubt I can get my hands on. But if so, why all the hard work? Do you have any insight on this debate? If you do, please share.

The copyright of museum images is not the prevailing theme of this film, but it is a significant topic I wanted to spend some time discussing. As far as the documentary is concerned, if you get an opportunity please do watch it. You will learn a lot about Artemisia and have a few laughs along the way. As you watch, spend a little time pondering poor Ellen's plight at the beginning of the film.

Do you think she should have been allowed to film or did the Saint Louis Art Museum make the right ethical choice? Do you find Ellen's actions in any way inappropriate or do you think she crossed a line in her attempt to film the exhibition? What are your experiences with some of the above-mentioned copyright issues?