All Smiles at The Mouse Museum on 53rd St

Posted on July 29, 2013 by MsSusanB

View of Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum/Ray Gun Wing at MoMA. Photo: Jason Mandella. © 2013 The Museum of Modern Art

Is it the best museum in the world? One of the happiest places to be in New York right now is Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum and Ray Gun Wing, currently installed in MoMA’s atrium as the scene-stealing companion to the Fifth Floor exhibit, Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store, which ends August 5.

You’ll want to take your time contemplating the Pop master’s 1970s curated collection of average, everyday stuff that he showcased inside a geometric mouse-head structure, originally a design he proposed for Chicago’s (then unbuilt) Museum of Contemporary Art.

In the mid-1960s, Oldenburg began collecting souvenirs, rubber toys, and crazy stuff he found on his wanderings and storing them on shelves of his 14^th Street studio. An early idea was a display of artificial vegetables and other food with Fluxus genius George Maciunas. It never happened, but luckily some of the 1960s-style replicas repurposed here in the Mouse collection.

Inside view. On loan from the Austrian Ludwig Foundation, since 1991. © 1965–77 Claes Oldenburg. Photo by MoMA Imaging Services Dept. © 2013 The Museum of Modern Art

Oldenburg decided to submit his museum to Documenta 5, whose theme was “inquiry into reality—today’s imagery.” He washed off his dusty collection (you can hear the tape of that inside) and he and some friends organized 367 objects into display categories. For Documenta, the little building itself was fabricated in Germany.

What’s really inside? In a riff on the classification systems that were then in vogue by conceptual artists, Oldenburg “classified” all his fun stuff – landscape, human beings, food, body parts, clothing (including makeup), tools, animals, buildings (including monuments and souvenirs), money containers, smoking articles, and studio remnants.

Here’s MoMA’s take on the importance of this little museum and its Ray Gun Wing:

Now, enjoy a virtual walk-through to examine this tiny museum’s treasures, shot by Christian Zurn when it was on display at MUMOK in Vienna last year. Do yourself a favor and go see this spectacularly funny, whimsical collection for yourself.

Want to spend some time with Claes himself? Here’s a YouTube of the master recollecting his life in the Sixties, travels to LA with Warhol, and how his soft sculptures came to be, click here.

Amazing Baby Shoes Under the Met’s Stairs

Posted on July 25, 2013 by MsSusanB

Infant-size palm leaf sandals (only 2 x 5 in.) made at the Kharga Oasis, Byzantine-era Egypt (4th-7th c.)

Will all the excitement over babies this week (the Royals and the Fallons), you might want to sneak a peak at some of the most perfect infant shoes ever, on display at the Met’s micro-exhibit, Objects from the Kharga Oasis, right under the grand staircase just past security until August 4.

Back in the 1930s, Metropolitan Museum archaeologists found this pair of infant sandals crafted beautifully from palm leaves at an oasis in the western Egyptian desert that was one of the earliest frontier Christian communities serving the trans-Saharan caravan routes.

The shoes are tiny – only about 2 x 5 inches – and were made during the Coptic (Byzantine) era sometime between 300 AD and 600 AD. There are also 1,500 year-old linen tunics and caps for kids and adults nearby, too. It’s amazing that the clothing survived at all.

Totally wearable Kharga bracelet. Iron from 4th-7th c. Egypt. Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Besides building churches (and there are plenty of photos and illustrations in the show), the communities around Kharga were busy growing grains, sesame, olives, and grapes. They apparently had a huge business making and exporting wine to the thirsty Egyptians 150 miles east along the Nile and 400 miles northeast in Cairo.

Drawing upon a ceramic craft tradition that was happening at the oasis since Old Kingdom times (2600 BC), potters cranked out transport jugs for the vino (shown here) and decorated them with grapevine paintings. The show has jewelry, tombstones, and photos of early Christian churches, but the brand-new-looking baby shoes are really the stars of the show.

Among dozens of ceramic items dug up by the Met are grapevine-decorated earthenware jugs to transport locally made wine from the Oasis to the Nile and upriver to Cairo.

First Ladies of Spanish Dance at NYPL Performing Arts

Posted on July 23, 2013 by MsSusanB

There’s no way to cool off the Spanish heat you’ll experience at the dance-til-you-drop exhibition Flamenco: 100 Years of Flamenco in New York, currently in the last weeks at NYPL’s Library of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center (until August 3).

NYPL gives us videos, recordings, a few costumes, and other memorabilia, but mostly you’ll hear the castanets and rapid-fire footwork of the best of the best. Who knew that the first woman to appear in front of Edison’s movie camera was Carmencita, the Spanish sensation who debuted at Niblo’s Garden in 1889, and had a fairly good run at Koster & Bial’s Music Hall on 24^th and Sixth Avenue. Her portrait by Sargent is at the Musee d’Orsay and her portrait by Chase at the Met. Here’s a link to Edison’s 1894 flick.

Carmencita’s fan photo (c. 1890). Source: NYPL Billy Rose Collection

This first Spanish-dance craze was further fueled in 1916 by the arrival in New York of La Argentina (Antonia Merce), Spain’s first modernist dance artist who fused classical dance, regional styles, and Flamenco. A decade later, she returned with a full company and presented New York’s first full-length Spanish dance-theater piece. By then, Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham, and Ted Shawn were already incorporating Latin moves, gestures, and rhythms into their performances, and La Argentina’s company had a spectacular run. Here she is in a solo.

Although there’s lots more to the story, one of the best parts of the exhibition features photos, albums, videos, and recordings of the fast footwork of Carmen Amaya, who Sol Hurok billed as “The Human Vesuvius” in her 1941 New York debut. She could kick the 15-foot train of her dress right into the air.

Amaya’s innovation is that she injected a bit of the Gypsy style into Flamenco and was somewhat of a Spanish-dance rule-breaker – sporting tight-fitting trousers to show off her super-fancy footwork. Superstars Dietrich and Hepburn were also wearing trousers at the time, but it was a first in Amaya’s field of work.

Good move, Carmen, as shown in this clip from Follow the Boys, a 1944 all-star vehicle released by Universal to boost morale during the War. It’s like watching a great jazz tapper at work. Move over, Riverdance people.

Source: Archival clip, Follow the Boys, from the DVD, Queen of the Gypsies, A Portrait of Carmen Amaya.

Virtual Visit to the Met’s Punk Couture Show

Posted on July 19, 2013 by MsSusanB

Too hot to get over to the Met this weekend and climb up all those high stairs out front? Stay in the comfort of your air-conditioned home and take this virtual tour of the Met’s Punk: Chaos to Couture show (closing August 14).

Curator Andrew Bolton explains the real-life inspirations for much of the iconic looks in this show –people from music, pop, and celebrity worlds, taking you through the galleries one by one, emphasizing the importance of recycling and deconstruction to the haute couture designers of today.

Our favorites: Rodarte’s crochet looks alongside those of Westwood and McLaren, McQueen’s faux recycled trash bag dresses, Chris Bailey’s spiked Burberry ensemble, and the great finale – Comme des Garcon’s amazing collection with trousers, mutton sleeves, and disassembled pieces of clothing brilliantly attached for maximum punch to the runway models.

Look closely, remember, and enjoy.

Warhol, The Queen, Madonna, and The Scream

Posted on July 14, 2013 by MsSusanB

Warhol’s 1984 silkscreen, The Scream (After Munch). Source: Part of the founding collection contributed by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to The Andy Warhol Museum; ©2013 AWFVA/ ARS, NY

Andy is kicking Mr. Munch’s Scream up a notch on Park Avenue, all to the delight of the Queen of Norway, in the Scandinavia House’s stellar exhibition, Munch, Warhol, and the Multiple Image through July 27.

Actually, Queen Sonja herself was one of Andy’s subjects in his Celebrity series, so it’s no wonder that she flew in to preside over Mr. Munch’s 150^th birthday at a New York show where his most iconic work is appropriated and reimagined by the Master of Pop.

Andy first encountered Munch’s woodcuts in Oslo in the 1970s, and took home reproductions. So, when a now-defunct 57^th Street gallery invited him to their 1982 Munch exhibition and offered him a commission to make 15 paintings and 30 silkscreens about the work, Warhol accepted.

The Scream was so iconic, Andy considered it almost a “ready made”, as ripe as any other pop culture image for his flat, unemotional, Day-Glo serial treatment. Ditto for Munch’s Madonna and Self Portrait with Skeleton Arm. He photographed reproductions of four Munch works, blew them up, traced on them, and rephotographed what he had traced. And then he turned it all over to a master silkscreen printer with suggested colors. So totally Andy.

Room full of Munch Madonna prints seen from gallery with Warhol silkscreens of same. Eileen Travell’s photo for Scandinavia House/The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 2013

With all the commotion earlier this year at MoMA over The Scream (like fans along the red carpet, jockeying to get their photographs taken with the world’s-most-anxious celebrity-on-a-bridge), this show deserves similar crowds. Because Warhol’s prints were never published, you’re seeing one-of-a-kind prints that are dispersed around the world and rarely on view.

The curators have also brought together (with the help of The Munch Museum in Norway) multiples created by Munch. It’s fascinating to compare the five controversial Madonna prints side by side, walk into the first Warhol gallery, turn around, and see both Munch and Warhol Madonna interpretations right in front of you. It’s a smart, immensely satisfying installation.

You’ll enjoy listening to what the Queen had to say (first 8 minutes of the video) and see photos of her younger self at The Factory with Andy and Mr. Rosenquist.

Oh, and the photo below isn’t a disco queen from Studio 54. It’s Andy’s wall-sized reinterpretation of Munch’s The Brooch, Eva Mudocci, a lithograph originally done in 1903 to celebrate the beautiful, talked-about violinist.

The last 15 minutes of the video features the curator showing the work of the two Modern masters who knew how to leverage print technology and multiples into fame, fortune, and icon status.

Washington, D.C. Museum Videos Reach 14 Million YouTube Views

Posted on July 1, 2013 by MsSusanB

Since Smithsonian branches and other Washington, D.C. museums, zoos, and gardens began posting videos on line in 2007, collective YouTube views have climbed to 14 million, as chronicled in our latest report, Washington D.C. Museums: 2013 Video and Social Media Rankings.

Although the 14 million total is less than the 49 million views racked up by New York museums, don’t forget that two high-profile DC institutions – National Geographic and the Smithsonian – produce significant amounts of programming distributed on their popular cable TV channels, dedicated apps, and snazzy web sites. Even though it has a DC museum space, NatGeo (a joint venture with Fox Cable) has largely abandoned YouTube; however, the 18 individual Smithsonian branches are all still posting their own stuff regardless of the more comprehensive joint venture with Showtime.

In the Top 2012 Cultural Museum Video, archival footage is cleverly coupled with behind-the-scenes looks at the National Archives’ 1940s Census release

In the Top Cultural Museum Video, archival footage is cleverly coupled with behind-the-scenes looks at the National Archives’ 1940s Census release

Here are some findings from our report on video and social media produced by DC institutions:

As of year-end 2012, the Washington museums having the highest number of total YouTube channel views were the Library of Congress (4.5M), the National Archives (2.1M), and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (1.6M). The top two are information powerhouses with massive collections to push out for public consumption, and the third is right on their heels with an innovative series with curators interpreting interesting items from their collections.

All-time top DC museum video, one of Edison’s earliest films, with over 329K hits on YouTube

Edison still delivers. It’s interesting that the top ranked DC museum video of all time is Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, Jan. 7, 1894, the earliest surviving copyrighted movie – suggesting that our greatest media innovator is having the last laugh, contributing over 329,000 hits to the number-one ranking by Library of Congress on YouTube. It’s short enough for Fred Ott to be on Vine.

Four museum video channels have surpassed 1 million views. To put the DC numbers in context, if they were merged with the New York museum video rankings, the Library of Congress (4.5M) would rank seventh, just ahead of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Library of Congress would rank eight (2.1M), just ahead of the New York Public Library.

The National Zoo produced Washington’s top-viewed 2012 museum video – Shanthi, the National Zoo’s Musical Elephant, Plays the Harmonica!. Over 290,000 viewers watched this middle-aged mom experiment with a musical instrument in her enclosure and listen to her keeper talk about her performance. Shanthi’s viewership greatly surpassed the numbers generated by the most popular 2011 Washington museum video, the National Portrait Gallery’s Conan O’ Brien as Seen by Artist John Kascht. Surely, Conan would be amused.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Top Exhibition Video of 2012 features curator Chris Melisinos describing why video games belong in an art museum

The top cultural video was a behind-the-scenes work at the National Archives for the release of the 1940s census. Over 115,000 family historians watched Learn About the 1940s Census, which showed the Archives census team, provided information on how to find your family’s records, and worked in interesting archival footage from the original census.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum produced Washington’s top video about a museum exhibition. Over 28,600 people watched The Art of Video Games: Chris Melissinos, Curator, a brief look into the evolution of the stories, technology, and visualization advances of this mass entertainment medium.

A few of the Flickr sets from Library of Congress

The most active Twitter users are the National Museum of American History, the National Air and Space Museum, and the National Postal Museum. But except for Air and Space, it’s a different set for Facebook followers.

The most active Flickr users are the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The Archives has organized its photos into creatively themed sets, such as “White House Wednesdays,” “Millinery Monday,” pictures of the 1940s census being taken, and pets of the First Families. The Library of Congress also posts a folder containing “mystery” photos and asks the public to help to identify them.

All the detailed video and social media statistics on 42 museums are in the report. Click here to see what’s included and make a purchase from our Its News To You Reports shop.

Enjoy the most popular DC museum video, a musical visit with the National Zoo’s sensation, Shanthi:

Mardis Gras Indians Land in NC Beach Town

Posted on June 28, 2013 by MsSusanB

“Chief Albert Lambreaux: No Hum Bow, Don’t Know How” costume. In the pilot, the character returns to his devastated home six months after Katrina, enters, and emerges in this costume.

Towering feathered headdresses, intricate beaded panels, plumes, and miles and miles of ruffled edging adorn more than a dozen Mardis Gras Indians that are camping out until November 3 at the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina.

The dazzling incarnations are all part of the exhibition, Well Suited: The Costumes of Alonzo V. Wilson for HBO’s ® Treme. Alonzo was on hand for the opening, where he explained the challenges he faced designing elaborate, 60-lb. Mardis Gras Indian costumes for the actors playing characters living in New Orleans’ Tremé neighborhood (the Third Ward) in the months after Hurricane Katrina.

The African-American men who bead the panels and feather the elaborate costumes for their Mardis Gras Indian tribes typically take all year to execute their visions, which reflect their position in the tribe (e.g. the Big Chief, Second Chief, Spy Boy, Wild Man). To meet HBO’s production schedule, Alonzo and his team often had a much shorter time to create the patches, headdresses, staffs, panels, and shoes for the script’s characters.

Alonzo Wilson explains how the cycle of life and the seasons are reflected on the beaded apron of the “Big Chief: Tree of Life” costume.

For the series, Alonzo felt it was important to embed part of each character’s story into the stories being told on the panels, even if the costume was only seen for a few minutes on TV. Thankfully, the exhibition (and our Flickr feed) lets you closely examine some of this character development-in-beadwork – a chief shedding a crystal tear for his hurricane-damaged home, a white buffalo evoking the return of bounty post-Katrina, and stunning use of hurricane weather symbols amidst a bold S.O.S.

Originally mounted by the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, curator Bradley Sumrall was impressed by Alonzo’s use of narrative that broke through the typical Hollywood stereotypes of African Americans and Indians. “We could have just done a show with traditional Mardi Gras Indian costumes, but Alonzo’s work had so much narrative built in.” With the mix of African-American, Native American, government, city, and current-event references, Bradley felt the layers of meaning in such intricate craftwork was an achievement worthy of a fine-art exhibition.

"Spy Boy: Katrina Memorial" costume. Feathers on lower half spell out "S.O.S.", the international distress signal, using the universal symbol for hurricanes from weather maps.

“Spy Boy: Katrina Memorial” costume. Feathers on lower half spell out the “S.O.S.” distress signal, using the universal weather-map symbol for hurricanes.

The NC stop for the show is a way for others to understand a bit more about New Orleans people, neighborhoods, and culture. Plus, Wilmington is Alonzo’s hometown. The movie and slide show inside the gallery provide an even deeper window into to this achievement – showing how Alonzo and his crew learned from the traditional craftsmen, shared new beading techniques, and received some “rescue help” from the locals when the production deadlines were too much to handle.

The exhibition all adds up to win-win storytelling about Alonzo, his team, New Orleans, and the Indians. Read an interview with Alonzo on the HBO blog and see behind-the-scenes production photos on page 40 of the Wilmington magazine Salt.

More Time Tripping at Grand Central

Posted on June 26, 2013 by MsSusanB

Annex window view of Lothar Osterburg’s model of his dream of Grand Central as a zeppelin docking station back in the 1930s

Even if you didn’t manage to board the historic train cars at Grand Central in May, you can still go back in time, courtesy of 18 artists featured in the GCT exhibition in the New York Transit Museum Annex, On Time: Grand Central at 100.

Inspired by The Clock and the continual flow of people and trains through Grand Central, MTA Arts for Transit cooked up a delightful mix of contemporary 2D works, models, videos, and digital art that puts a smile on the face of every commuter, tourist, and art-seeker that we’ve seen inside the tiny Annex.

Look closely to find this minute secret portal: Ledge with Lunette, 2013 by Patrick Jacobs

Look closely to find this minute secret portal: Ledge with Lunette by Patrick Jacobs

Have you seen the mysterious Zeppelin posters by Lothar Osterburg on the subway? Right in the Annex window you’ll see the gigantic, fun-house model that he created to photograph as one step in the process of making the photogravure you see on the A train. Kids and parents can’t resist Lothar’s newspaper-covered multi-story GCT impression and the funny, fat yellow old-time taxis and zeppelin ends that poke out. Right next to it, you can examine his resulting print, Zeppelins Docking on Grand Central.

People are usually transfixed by the 2008 video documenting Frozen Grand Central, where Improv Everywhere staged a 250-person flash mob, where people “froze” for 5 minutes as commuters, tourists, and workers wondered what was going on.

Another hit is Grand Central Diary. London Squared Productions interviewed tourists and commuters about GCT, animated the furniture and items around the terminal, and…well, just watch The Clock and the Maintenance Cart speak for themselves:

Nearby, several small digital screens show Alexander Chen’s Conductor, a 15-minute video loop that animates the subway lines, suggesting trains moving through the system. He turns the subway lines into an animated stringed instrument. No wonder he’s working for Google Creative Labs. Spend a few moments, take a look, and experience it here.

Close-up of Viewmasters and other leave-behinds inside Jane Greengold’s Lost and Found.

Another must-see piece (among many) is Jane Greengold’s Lost and Found. She’s created a sort-of fiction about the dozens of tagged items in the vitrine, evoking the memories and observations of generations of conductors who found items that train passengers left behind. Actually, the items you’re looking at are actual leave-behinds collected by real-life conductors, so Jane’s work isn’t entirely made up. The archeological discoveries include things from the old Lake Shore Limited on the NY Central, a 1948 boxed baby tooth, 1943 ration cards, 1952 Viewmasters, a Kennedy campaign button, and a Kindle.

Get to the Annex before July 7. In the meantime, check out curator Amy Hausmann and her artists telling about the fun they had contemplating time, architecture, fashion, and Jackie O.

Mary Cassatt’s Tech Start-Up Chronicled by NYPL

Posted on June 18, 2013 by MsSusanB

Woman Seated in a Loge (1881). The only lithograph Cassatt ever did, personally inscribed to Mr. Avery.

Still using a flip phone? Don’t know how to code? There’s nothing wrong with sticking with what you know, but expanding horizons with new technology is always good. In 1876, it’s exactly why Mr. Degas invited 32-year-old Mary Cassatt into his studio, showed her some of his printmaking techniques, and encouraged her to jump in and try something new. She did, and her technological triumph is the story of NYPL’s illuminating third-floor show, Daring Methods: The Prints of Mary Cassatt, which ends Saturday.

The show gives you a new slant, documenting this American artist’s struggle to make new work, push her technical boundaries, and mash up styles to total critical acclaim at the turn of the last century. NYPL found itself in a unique position to mount this show, since art dealer/print collector Samuel Putnam Avery made an unprecedented donation back in 1900 — more than 17,000 19^th-century prints, including dozens and dozens he purchased directly from Cassatt as evolved her printmaking between 1878 and 1898.

The Letter – 1891 color print with drypoint and aquatint. This is an earlier state (iii/iv) of Cassatt’s famous print minus the wallpaper pattern and letter on the desk

This show provides art-lovers with a unique, chronological walk-through of Cassatt’s technical trial-and-error, beginning with her early drypoints (1878 costume studies suggested by Degas), simple drypoints and etchings, and her only litho (see right). Cassatt continued to experiment throughout the 1880s, perfecting her softground, drypoint, aquatint, and etching techniques, often mashing them together – brave moves by a stylish, curious female artist of the modern era.

Gallery visitors walk slowly from print to print, taking in the subtle changes, redirects, and reworks of this modern, mid-career artist determined to find status and success in the male-dominated Parisian art scene of the late 19^th century.

The NYPL curators decided to hang multiple versions of similar subjects side by side, so you can really examine the mind of the artist at work. It’s interesting that Cassatt let Avery have prints off cancelled plates that she pulled after the “good” print run was finished. You’ll see the scratched-up images in the show next to the best ones.

The Fitting – 1891 color print with drypoint and aquating, printed with three plates

The Fitting – 1891 color print with drypoint and aquatint, printed with three plates

In 1890, everything changed for Cassatt, when she saw an exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints took the Parisian cultural community by storm. It was the moment that her technical experiments paid off and her printmaking vision, style, and legacy became sharply focused. In the last portion of the show, you witness her brilliant response — making intaglio look like woodblock, applying multiple areas of bright color, injecting pattern into domestic surfaces, and zooming in for low-angle close-ups of private moments in women’s lives.

Enjoy NYPL’s selections from Mr. Avery’s collection and spend some time examining the multiple states of the most beloved prints in the Impressionist canon, mash-ups of aquatint and drypoint. It’s a master class in color, ink, and composition.

If you can’t get to the show this week, download the PDF and take a look at Ms. Cassatt’s technical journey. Then go out and try something new.

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Category Archives: History