Return to the White Cube

re:View closed this past Saturday, and on Monday de-installation began.  Myself and the other four students joined the preparators and curator of the museum and helped to take it all down.  Jayme took down her wall text, making sure to save the photos of “Tom,” Raylene was busy putting many many paintings back into real storage, David hoarded all of his wall quotes, wall text, and labels, Lauren ejected her DVD…Actually, Lauren did a lot more than that, and was pretty fierce when it came to wielding a drill; she helped to removed the mountings that the Jinks Room murals had been attached to.

I was charged with the task of removing my “blueprint” from the Center Gallery’s floor.  What had taken two semesters to research, develop and execute, was removed and gone within five minutes.  The painted plastic sheets were ripped off the floor and were crumpled into a big heap.

 

Taking down our individual projects wasn’t the only thing that needed to be done; we also took down all of the wall text from re:View and from Four Rooms and a View, and also took down our big blue title.

 

What did we do with all of this trash?  Jayme turned it into a Lady-Gaga-inspired outfit, that she plans on wearing out this weekend in Hollywood.—Just kidding.  After prancing around with all the discarded plastic Jayme tossed it.

Some people asked me if I was going to try and save any of the silhouettes, m response was that my project was really about expanding the known knowledge about the murals.  All of the expanded research will be added to the museums file, and will be preserved there.  So saving the plastic sheets wasn’t really a priority of the project for me, so much as a creative way to display my research.

The museum galleries have once again been returned to the white boxes.  The next thing to go on display in the Fisher is the SOFA show, which will showcase works from students in the Roski School of Fine Art.  However one things remains from re:View, and will stay on view until fall.  Susan Silton’s work, which was commissioned for re:View still adorns the facade of the Fisher.  It reminds us, the student-curators of our project, and welcomes visitors into the museum, and asks them to question what they are seeing.

- Francisco Rosas

Reconsider: On my reading list

Over the past week I have been reading Patti Smith’s recently published memoir Just Kids about her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and her life in New York during the late 60s through the 1970s. Smith’s account of Mapplethorpe and their simultaneous pursuits in art, poetry and rock ’n’ roll is incredibly charming. I’m enthralled with everything she has to say—I love Patti. But aside from my personal infatuation, throughout the book Smith discusses the state of photography in the 1970s, recounted Mapplethorpe’s own movement toward the medium, deeply indebted to his relationship with curator and collector Sam Wagstaff, his patron and lover. Here Smith recanting her trips with Wagstaff and Mapplethorpe to purchase photographs, and how Wagstaff and Mapplethorpe’s personal interests in photography informed each other’s pursuits:

The three of us would scour Book Row, the dusty secondhand bookstores that once lined Fourth Avenue. Robert would go through boxes of old postcards, stereo cards, and tintypes carefully to find a gem. Sam, impatient, and not impeded by cost, would simply buy the whole box. I would stand aside listening to them argue. It sounded very familiar.

Scouting bookstores was one of my specialties. In rare instances, I would root out a desirable Victorian cabinet card, or an important portfolio of turn-of-the-century cathedrals, and on one lucky excursion, an overlooked Cameron. It was on the cusp of collecting photography, the last period where one could find a bargain. It was till possible to come upon gravure prints of large-format field photographs by Edward Curtis. Sam was taken with the beauty and the historical value of these photographs of the North American Indian, and acquired several volumes. Later, as we sat on the floor looking at them, in his large empty apartment flooded with natural light, we were impressed not only by the images but by the process. Sam would feel the edge of the photograph between his thumb and forefingers. “There’s something about the paper,” he would say.

Reconsider: Three for a dollar

The last Reconsider post discussed the unease with which the intervention displays non-art photography within a museum space given the medium’s historically problematic reception within art institutions. It did not however discuss photography in a broad sense, as a popular medium that has structured our understanding of history, others and ourselves, or photography as a ritualized mode of understanding in modern society. This is after all a vital facet of the intervention: that depicting the American landscape was radically altered through the photographic image—that the ability to capture, reproduce or purchase an image with considerable ease initiated a new understanding of the land in American society, one alternate to but equally embedded within the visual language of an early moment, being painting. In considering the scope of the “image-world” photography produced (here specifically related to the American landscape and the West), the twenty-one images displayed in Reconsider are not significant in themselves, through there are certainly captivating photographs. What I am interested in is the picture as examples of the vast amount of photographic images produced of the West at the turn of the century, many of which are now lost. These twenty-one images, produced for commercial, tourist or sentimental reasons, were saved and are the fragments of cultural production that have survived.

Written on back: "32"

"The Jinks Room, Remembered" Now Playing @ Fisher!

The final cut of the Jinks room documentary written by myself and directed by Grace Talice Lee is now on display at the Fisher Museum. The film entitled "The Jinks Room, Remembered" features six alumni of the Anoakia School (the original location of the murals). The project investigates memory and film documentation as a contemporary means of writing art history, and sheds light on the significant relationship between work and viewer, which is an important tool in gaining greater understanding of a work of art. Please come visit our show, running until the 17th of April.

Chronicle of Higher Education

The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a piece today about re:View: "Sorry, Museum: This Is For Your Own Good." Francisco, Jayme and Richard were quoted:

"In this case, the class really has become the exhibition. There's a certain kind of authority that you give up to the students. I love that, and it's also strange." - Richard Meyer

Band Branding

In addition to being an Art History major, I am a Public Relations major at the USC Annenberg School. When this class began, we were told that we, the student-curators, would be overseeing all aspects of this intervention project; this included publications and public relations. (Below: Exhibition Brochure with, and without the "bellyband.")

The publication that we created for re:View is an exhibition brochure, one that is exactly the same size as the existing brochure for Four Rooms and a View. We bound the two exhibition brochures together using a strip of paper called a "belly band."

On the front of the belly band is Susan Silton's work that was commissioned specifically for re:View, and that now hangs on the Exposition-side of the Fisher Museum. Once this band is removed the two brochures come apart and the title for re:View is revealed. (Below: the exterior and interior of the belly band.)


On the exterior of the belly band are the titles of the five projects that were developed for re:View: Reconstruct, Remember, Reconsider, Reproduce and Retrieve. The title are in white text on a blue background. This color of blue, and the idea of the band became elements of the branding for the intervention. (Below: a walltext designed for re:View.)The wall panels that were added to the museum for the intervention are distinguishable from those that remain from Four Rooms and a View because of their distinctive blue bands across the top of each panel. We also decided to intervene with the main title of the permanent collection exhibition; we designed a custom vinyl title for re:View that covers (but not completely) the title from Four Rooms and a View, and again uses the idea of the band.

Finally we extended this idea of band-branding outside the museum on posters in several locations. The concept was to create a subtle and savvy method to distinguish our student-curated intervention from the permanent collection show. (Below: posters outside the Fisher Museum.)

- Francisco Rosas

Retrieve: The Resulting Display

The transformation of the Quinn Wing is now complete, and will be on view through April 17. The once-virtually empty space now holds 35 landscapes in a storage-like display; the works include drawings, paintings and prints spanning from the 17th-21st centuries, some in greater condition than others, and many by relatively unknown (or even just unknown) artists. Here's just a glimpse of how things have changed:



















--Raylene Galarze

Shots from the Opening Reception

Some pictures of the student-curators with their projects at the opening reception for re:View, which happened this past Saturday.  The intervention will be up until April 17; admission is FREE.

Los Angeles Times article

Amazing piece about the exhibition in the Los Angeles Times this morning! Gerrick Kennedy, a Times' reporter, spent a great deal of time at the Fisher Museum during the actual "interventions," talking to student-curators, the professors and artist Susan Silton -- and his article is a thoughtful and well-informed look at the project and its place within the curatorial world. Some choice quotes:

"We wanted them to develop a constant consciousness that everything you see in museums is choreographed." -- Richard Meyer

"Going into the class it felt really experimental. . . . I didn't know anything about curating. It's an art form within itself." - Jayme Wilson

Read the full article here on the Los Angeles Times Web site.

re:View Installation Complete

The wall text is up, and we're windex-ing the display cases.

Throughout re:View there is a consistent presence of this color of blue, so that the interventions can be easily identified.

The wall labels for re:View have a similar blue band across them, and the intervention brochure has a band around it too.  Look for an update about the design of the brochure next week.

re:View open tomorrow!

- Francisco Rosas

TOMORROW: "Museum of Ideas"

WHAT: The Contemporary Project and the USC International Museum Institute present a symposium exploring the value of placing ideas -- as well as art objects -- on public display. Leading thinkers in contemporary art and curatorial practice will construct a free, one-day-only "Museum of Ideas" at USC.

ALSO: "Museum of Ideas" coincides with the opening of re:View. A free lunch reception and curator-led tours will take place between 1 and 3 p.m. at the Fisher Museum.

WHO:
• Julie Ault, artist and author
• Carol Duncan, art historian and critic
• Helen Molesworth, chief curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
• Connie Wolf, director and CEO, Contemporary Jewish Museum

Moderated by Selma Holo, Richard Meyer and Britt Salvesen, Department Head and Curator of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography and Department Head and Curator of Prints and Drawings, LACMA.


More info here. Hope you can make it!

Reconstruction: Wall stencils

The show opens tomorrow!

Reconstruction: Painting

Lauren and Jayme filling in outlines of jesters and leprechauns on the floor of the gallery.

Retrieve: New Room, New Meanings

Spring break has just come to a close, and it’s now the final week before re:View opens. Though we’ve been progressing well with the storage display, I have a bit left to accomplish…





Here’s what was settled in the past week: finishing the fabric “wall,” spray painting the “metal racks,” (which, many cans later, are now a very convincing silver), gathering more accurate dimensions of the space, and finalizing my layout of the paintings.

I had to figure out how/where each piece would fit together within the wall décor, and to attempt to create a balanced display—by no means an easy task, and add to that the fact that my physical layout on paper was not to scale!

Now to retrieve each work from storage and hang the pieces where I’ve planned, beginning today: nine works have been freed from storage, one at a time, and are now propped against the walls of our newly constructed “storage,” awaiting their proper display. The very presence of color instantly transformed the white cube, so I anxiously await the finished result!

This entire process has given me a lot to think about. I think about my goal in making this display a “de-curation.” In recreating storage I tried not to put too much of an aesthetic eye toward deciding which painting will hang next to which. Still, the display could never have been executed without a plan—not only must everything fit together, but it seems more striking if they contrast one another.
I also think about my own relationship to these stored artworks. Since I’ve been working so closely with the permanent collection, the Art feels less…inaccessible? I’m not sure if this is quite the right word, so I’ll try again: It’s a rare experience to be able to raid storage, to physically handle the ‘sacred’ artwork (in white gloves), to truly see each piece originate from the same place, only to garner ‘meaning’ or ‘importance’ once inside the museum.
As these works travel a very short distance from the storage room into Quinn Wing, it’s amazing to think how their meanings will change/evolve upon inclusion in the exhibition. On the eve of the public display of my chosen landscapes, I can’t help but feel as though I’ve become a part of their story.
--Raylene Galarze

Retrieve: White glove treatment

Raylene -- rocking white gloves -- as she carries paintings from the storage room to the gallery.

Hanging the banner

Susan Silton's banner commissioned for the show went up today, outside the Fisher Museum facing Exposition Blvd. and the Natural History Museum. Frankie was a natural on the ladder.

Reproduce: In the gallery

Top: Jayme. Bottom, from left: Richard, Selma, Jayme and David. The hand-painted reproduction of Return to the Fold by Charles Emile Jacque (unframed, next to the 19th-century original) was painted from the Norton Simon Museum's version of the Jacque painting, and there's a major difference: it's missing a chicken.

Reconsider: Display Cases

David (red hoodie) in the Fisher Museum courtyard building display cases. From his last post:

". . . the photographs will be shown in display cases, laid flat, positioned throughout the gallery. While they are still “under-glass” (actually plexi), it is my hope that viewing them off the walls, not framed as singular works, will signal their alternate existence as objects of tourism and commerce verse their confusion as “art.”"

Beginning Reconstruction

Now that I had images of all of the mural segments from The Jinks Room, it was time to assemble them in the correct order.  This meant more than just organizing the segments from left to right; reconstructing the room meant knowing where columns, doorways, windows, and a large fireplace were located in the room.

I had seen some archive photographs of the murals in situ, but could not determine definitely the correct arrangement of the room.  That was until I went through the museum files on The Jinks Room again.

I found in a conservation report (which was written before the murals were removed from Anoakia) a detailed list of which mural segments were located on which walls.

North Wall:

Monk with Jester & Leprechaun, Jester & Leprechaun, Procession with Couples 

East Wall:

Jester, Procession with Reluctant Cat

South Wall:

Feast with Friar, Dance with the Fairy Queen, Procession with Reluctant Monk
(segments separated by columns)

 

On the west wall there was only one segment, Jester with Baton, which seemed strange to me because if there was only one segment on this wall that meant there was a lot of empty wall space.  But further on in the conservation report it said that the west wall was mostly made up of windows.  This was unexpected since The Jinks Room was located in the basement of the mansion, and I had automatically assumed there wouldn’t be any windows in this room.

Now that I have the correct organization of the mural cycle I can start installing silhouettes of the mural segments in the galleries.  Installation started this week!

- Francisco Rosas

Le Monde Blog

The Le Monde blog "Lunettes Rouges" linked to us and gave us a shout-out in a review of a Master's curatorial student exhibition at the University of Rennes:

"Their colleagues at the University of Southern California are rehanging the museum's collection."

Reconsider: Photographs In (and Out) of the Museum

This intervention is concerned with how America chose to depict the national landscape across alternate historical moments. In addition to displaying artist books by Ed Ruscha (see previous post), late 19^th and early 20^th century photography will be exhibited from the California Historical Society archive in Special Collections at the USC Doheny Memorial Library. Specifically, the majority of images are from an extensive photography collection within the CHS’s holdings assembled between 1860 and 1930 by relatively unknown photographer C. C. Pierce. 

The collection includes images taken by Pierce but also numerous works by other western photographers. Some of the most well known images within the collection to be shown in the intervention are by George Fiske, whose photographs of Yosemite were widely distributed tourist items sold in the national park at the end of the 19^th century. In fact, an advertisement for Fiske’s studio was featured in Galen Clark’s 1910 tourist guidebook The Yosemite Valley: its history, characteristic features, and theories regarding its origin. In addition to Pierce and Fiske, the intervention will also utilize images by photographer Adam Dove (who I have been able to find no information on), as well as other anonymously produced pictures.

 George Fiske, Galen Clark on Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park, ca.1900, Special Collections, Doheny Memorial Library

Advertisement for Fiske's Studio in The Yosemite Valley (1910)

Reproduce: Mommy, where do Jacques come from?

Throughout the creative process the location of where our Jacque was being created was quite ambiguous. Most of us had heard horror stories about reproduction paintings being out sourced to China where the artists are treated as...let's just say "starving artists," literally. When we received a biography of our Ocean's Bridge artist we learned that he was from China, leading us to imagine our hand painted masterpiece being conceived in China under sweatshop-like conditions.

However, on the Ocean's Bridge website there is a whole section dedicated to showing the prospective customer "the studio." According to their Web site their studio is "Located at the foot of a mountain yet just 200 yards from the beach, we've 20,000 square feet of studio space spread over three different European-style buildings." The description is supplemented by photographs of lush landscape and beautiful buildings.

I am by no means saying that Ocean's Bridge is one of the reproduction painting sweatshops mentioned above, but when our Jacque arrived this week the return address (Hong Kong, China) did make us question the journey of our Jacque.

Remember: Day one of Filming

Day one of filming was a success. Five hours of tape, one Kleenex box, and countless memories later, Grace and I managed to wrap filming three of our six interviews for the project.

Marti and Sue, two of our interviewees, were already waiting, snapping photos of themselves in front of the Jinks Room murals in various poses mimicking the figures in the murals. Both brought folders, documents, Anoakia memorabilia, and photographs to share. They each told their respective stories, shared memories and reminisced about different wild things they did together years ago– both on and off the record.

Both told stories about sneaking back into Anoakia after its closure in the 1990s, and both regretted not having a grand sleepover at the mansion, which was believed to have been the home of several legendary ghosts! The interview was an emotional process for both of them – both Marti and Sue shed tears for their nostalgia for Anoakia, and explained how important the school was to them and how they hoped it would carry on in the future through our memories. Both women were wonderful to work with and provided a ton of new information about Anoakia.

Bede, our third interviewee, was a student at Anoakia from the 3rd to the 5th grade. He provided interesting perspective into how his experience of the murals had changed from when he was a child to his current experience as an adult. He was kind and very thoughtful, and we’re also thankful for his help.
By the end of the day, we had a ton of new material to work with and a pretty sound idea of the direction in which to take our film. We’re excited for day two, and will give more updates in the near future. That’s all for now!

Retrieve: Pre-Installation, Pre-Retrieval

After several weeks of planning the display of storage and searching for the necessary materials, the concept really seems to be coming together. Today, the Quinn Wing is still a white cube; chairs and other materials are taking temporary residence here before we begin installing. Tomorrow should begin the physical intervention...

Attempting to reveal what's inside storage along with the room itself will involve two main things: re-creating faux metal racks on the walls and constructing a partition to shorten the wing. Working with Fisher's Chief Preparator Richard, we were able to find a lightweight barrier fencing to mimic the metal racks on which stored paintings hang. This bright-orange will soon get some much-needed paint treatment!

To shorten the space, we found fabric to serve as a temporary backwall; the plan is to hang some paintings here after it has been put up and reinforced from behind. Hopefully there is enough material...

I'm still working on visualizing the entire layout -- though the first steps will involve these details of construction, soon will come the time for physical retrieval. Along with picking up ordered materials and ensuring the gathering of other supplies, this week has included visiting storage to hand-measure each framed work (everything must fit in the "new" space!). Next up -planning the hanging of paintings!

But before departing to this next stage, I will say that finding the materials initially was not easy -- the fencing in particular was hard to find, and it seemed that waiting on out-of-state shipping might pose unneeded setbacks. Yet, after a little searching, we found everything locally downtown...Just another reminder that L.A. really is our laboratory.

--Raylene Galarze