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