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.