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.