Remember: Exploring the Jinks Room's past

The intervention entitled “remember” explores the relationship between artwork and viewer, as well as the ways in which the changing interpretation of an artwork throughout time manifests the evolution of an individual and of a generation. For this intervention, I explored the history of the Jinks Room murals as told through the eyes of the viewers that have been a part of that history. Six interviews with alumni and faculty of the Anoakia School tell the story through a short video documentary (filmed by Grace Talice Lee). 

Before arriving at the USC Fisher Museum of Art, Maynard Dixon’s Jinks Room was housed at the Anoakia Mansion in Arcadia, California (pictured below).  The mansion once served as a lush pad for Anita Baldwin and her entourage, but was later converted into an all-girls boarding school and then a co-ed day school in the latter half of the 20^th century.  Our interviewees are all associated with Anoakia, whether they themselves are alumni whom attended music lessons in the Jinks room, school librarians and staff members searching for an escape from their daily routine, or a young boy encountering the murals for his first time.

The meaning and reception of artworks evolve over the course of time and with changing contexts of display. To fully understand a work of art, it is important to realize that its original location, maker, and viewers cannot tell the entire story. Rather, we must research other places, other people, and other rooms to truly understand a work’s history, significance, and long-term impact upon our society.  More to come on days one and two of filming in the near future – stay posted!

Retrieve: Inside the "Icebox"

Presumably, the average museum visitor gives less thought to what it means for a museum to have a “permanent collection” than to the actual art on view. To be brief, what isn’t shown is stored--a much larger percentage of the collection of works remains normally unviewed. And if what’s in storage is “unseen,” then more so is the room itself; USC Fisher Museum’s storage room is a very small space concealed slyly within the USC Roski School of Fine Arts, an ordinary doorway un-announcing to the everyday student-passersby.

Behind these double-doors are a variety of artworks resting within a climate-controlled environment. All along the walls hang paintings, drawings, prints and mixed media works, while framed photographs are shelved on what appears as a tall, black bookcase at the back of the room. Older/larger paintings/works take their residence on sliding metal racks. Pulling out a single rack without knowledge of the collection is as if to uncover a treasure; you’ll find a painted portrait of Lincoln on one, a Warhol screenprint on another.

Reproduce: Our Baby's Conception

Have you ever found yourself standing in front of a work of art, wishing you could steal have it? Maybe you even went so far as to think about how amazing it would look above your fireplace or in your dining room. But masterpieces, especially oil paintings, can never be reproduced…right?

Wrong! Thanks to Ocean’s Bridge, an oil painting reproduction company/ artist collective, you can now buy your very own hand painted masterpiece, free shipping included! According to Ocean’s Bridge, they are able to reproduce a bevy of renowned oil paintings because a painting enters the public domain once the artist has been deceased for more than 70
years ago (so make sure that your desired oil painting was done by an artist that has been long gone).

I can say from experience that Ocean’s Bridge is a dream to work with. I contacted them when we were first thinking about buying a reproduction for re:View. After fully interrogating the company through emails, I got all my questions answered and concerns taken care of. After deciding to purchase the Jacque painting for our exhibition, I have continued to keep in touch with James at Ocean’s Bridge. He sends me reassuring emails that our painting is in good hands, even sending me pictures of the “artistic process.” James has become our painting’s surrogate mom and we are so excited for our baby’s arrival!

- Jayme Wilson

Reconsider: Palm Trees Found

From an early stage in planning our intervention, Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966) was identified as a potential work to add to the exhibition’s landscape painting galleries. Every Building, a small object in book form, unfolds into a 25 foot long accordion with two continuous horizontal bands of photographs depicting both sides of the Sunset Strip. Every Building is one of many artist books Ruscha created during the 1960s and early 70s that have subsequently been identified as significant across multiple historical categories: pop art, conceptual art, artist books, post-war photography and theories of postmodernism being a few. The USC Architecture and Fine Arts Library has many of Ruscha’s books in its collection (including two copies of Every Building), but (of course?) they are now held in the libraries rare books section.

While doing research on Every Building and other books by Ruscha I noticed that A Few Palm Trees (1971), the last book Ruscha published in this period, was listed as “missing” at the AFA library (concerning), however another copy was available at Leavey, a general reference library at the university. I thought this seemed peculiar and possibly just a typo on the library’s website, but to be thorough I decided to investigate.

Reconstruct: Part One

The USC Fisher Museum of Art has in its collection a mural cycle painted by the Californian artist Maynard Dixon, called the Jinks Room. The Fisher Museum has six of the original nine segments; the other three segments have remained with the donor family.

For the portion of the intervention re:View called reconstruct, all nine mural segments needed to be studied. Reconstruct aims to recreate the original architectural space of the Jinks Room. The permanent collection exhibition happening right now at Fisher is Four Rooms and a View, which presents the Jinks Room murals with only the six mural segments in the Fisher Collection.

Below is a video of the installation of the Jinks Room murals in Four Rooms and A View.



The mural segments in the Fisher’s collection (the ones in the video) were:

Procession with Couples
Feast with a Friar
Dance with the Fairy Queen
Monk with a Leprechaun and a Jester
Procession with Reluctant Monk
Reluctant Cat

This means I need to track down the three unknown segments.

- Francisco Rosas

About re:View

It is not everyday that two professors of art history have the opportunity to work together on a dream project. This year, however, we were granted just such an opportunity by the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences and the Provost’s Fund for Innovative Undergraduate Teaching. The result—a new, undergraduate course titled “Contemporary Art and the Art of Curating”— combines the study of contemporary art with the realities of making a museum exhibition.

Given a modest budget, a year to work with our students, and complete access to the Fisher Museum staff and permanent collection, we sought to bridge the gap between academic art history and hands-on curatorial practice. Our course was conceived neither as a vocational exercise nor as a curricular requirement for art history majors.

Rather, it was designed as an experiment in critical and creative thinking. Educated citizens need to be able to dig beneath the surface of what is presented to them as authoritative—in museums, on the internet, and in every aspect of their daily lives.