Topographic image of the Bay Area and continental shelf and slope. The coastline during the peak of the last ice age was at the shelf edge near the Farrallon Islands.

Before reading this post, make sure to check out QUEST’s video segment from last week about sea-level rise in the San Francisco Bay, which provides a nice overview of the problem low-lying areas in the greater Bay Area will face in the coming decades. As good as it is, the QUEST piece is really just an introduction to the problem of current sea-level rise. Sea-level rise is happening and more than 100 million people could be affected globally over the next century even under somewhat conservative projections. This is an tremendously complex problem that will require research across numerous scientific disciplines and creative problem-solving from engineers and urban planners. Like many of the posts I write for QUEST, I’d like to zoom out in terms of the timescales we are used to thinking about and share a little information about geologically recent sea-level changes in the Bay Area.

Over the past few million years, the Earth has flipped back and forth about 20 times between periods of significant continental glaciation, or ice ages, and briefer periods of much less ice. The peak of the most recent ice age was approximately 18,000 years ago. During this time, referred to as the Last Glacial Maximum by Earth scientists, the continental ice sheets that covered much of northern North America and northern Europe reached their largest extent in area. When such vast continental ice sheets grow they “borrow” water from the Earth’s water budget and, as a result, global sea level is lowered. Only 18,000 years ago sea level was 120 meters (400 ft) lower than it is at present.

The map above is a simple sketch map of the paleogeography of the Bay Area at this time*. Think about this for a moment — if you were standing at Land’s End Park on the northwest corner of San Francisco you would not be at the land’s end! The coast would be about 20 miles offshore of the current coast, just beyond the uplands that are now poking out as the Farallon Islands. What is now the Bay was a network of flat valleys with the ancestral Sacramento-San Joaquin River and tributary streams making their way through the narrow notch in the hills at Golden Gate. As temperatures warmed and the continental ice sheets began to melt sea level started to rise. That’s a simplified picture of what the landscape may have looked like at different stands of sea level, but what about the rate at which the sea rose?

The Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research institute based in Oakland, published a thoroughly researched and very readable report on sea-level rise and its impact on the California coast, which is also featured in the QUEST report. Estimates of future sea-level rise as stated in their report are between 1.0 and 1.4 meters (40-55 inches) by the year 2100. To be conservative (and to simplify a bit) let’s assume this present rate of sea-level rise is 1 meter per 100 years. If we now look at a reconstruction of sea-level changes since the Last Glacial Maximum we see the rise in sea level was not constant — depending on the rate of warming along with other factors the rate of rise varied. As you can see in the graph below the rate of rise slowed significantly about 8,000 years ago. From 18,000 years ago to 8,000 years ago sea-level rose approximately 100 meters (330 ft), which is an average rate of 1 meter per 100 years. In other words, the Earth will soon be experiencing a rate of sea-level rise it hasn’t experienced in several thousand years.

The most important uncertainties regarding our understanding of current and near-term sea-level rise are magnitude and rate — that is, how much and how fast. By studying the relatively recent past (geologically speaking) we can learn something about the effects varying rates of sea-level rise might have on the Bay Area. For example, how did bayshore ecosystems respond to rapid sea-level rise thousands of years ago? How will tidal marsh ecosystems respond to slow versus rapid sea-level change? The map below from the San Francisco Estuary Institute shows the different types low-lying bay shoreline that will be affected by future sea-level rise.

These environments, some of which are entirely human-made, will respond differently to sea-level rise. Further study of past environments and ecosystems and how they were affected by sea-level rise since the last ice age will play an important role in the broader goal to mitigate the consequences of a rising San Francisco Bay.

-

* Check out this fantastic slide show from UC Berkeley Earth scientist Lynn Ingram here (link opens a PDF). This is  a great resource for learning more about the information scientists are collecting from the Bay’s sedimentary record to answer some of the questions I pose above.

Tags: Climate, climate change, Geology, Oceanography, sea level rise, SF Bay, water

During a recent visit to Exile Gallery, I spoke with guest curator Billy Miller about his concurrent shows Head Shop/Lost Horizon, which were a part of Exile’s annual Summer Camp Series.  We chatted around a courtyard table, as a giant tarp made of discarded umbrellas loomed over us, engulfing the whole hof in cheap, translucent color and swaths of frayed paisley.

As Berlin’s erstwhile lover, the Sun, streamed through the fabric, the space flooded with light, a whimsical vision only slightly unhinged by party leftovers from one of the many events and screenings held in tandem with Head Shop/Lost Horizon.

While talking to Miller about consumerism and carelessness, he informed me that all the umbrellas had been gathered after a particularly rainy day in New York City by artist Justin Yockel, serving as spineless evidence of our slapdash culture. Like most of the work in Head Shop/Lost Horizon, Yockel deftly tongues around preachy or flippant tones in favor of more complicated language; a pretty impressive feat considering the topics of discussion include Facism, meth-making and Abu Ghraib.

According to Miller, Lost Horizon and Head Shop represent two different responses to a shrinking natural environment and an increasingly pervasive Beck-ish culture of fear. The difference in tenor between the rooms is immediately apparent. In Head-Shop, Miller sweetly eulogizes the head shops of the 60’s with a hyperactive installation of rambunctious political works, while Lost Horizon offers a quieter “frozen” view of loss.

In the latter, more subdued offering, visitors can make out the subtle mechanized groans of the doomed BP oil rig, a field recording Glynnis McDaris made shortly before the disaster. In contrast, the less sonorous but infinitely funnier Genesis P.Orridge dominates Head Shop, barking orders from a bunker cum basement while dressed as “Eva Adolf Braun Hitler.”  While watching P.Orridge’s vaudevillian turn as a multi-gendered dictator, Miller praised the artists’ enduring “freakiness” and continued commitment to counterculture.

Speaking tenderly about the history of head shops in Detroit and his initiation into hippiedom, Miller claims that the stores sold more than just bobble-headed skeleton vaporizers, but rather traded in ideas and ideals unlikely to be found in the mainstream world, offering young deviants like himself an alternative creative business model and a safe space to be critical of corporate strategies.

He aptly likens the works in his own Head Shop to the relatively innocent consciousness-expanding drugs of the 60’s, while he claims that the pieces in Lost Horizon represent newer, more menacing concoctions like meth, crack, and heroin.
Some of the videos in Head Shop definitely read as “stoner art,” bearing the pulsating repetitive hallmarks of pyschedelia, including a love of fractals and dancing andro-tot Justin Bieber. One of the more mesmerizing is Justin Lowe’s video, which follows the lithe, noble movements of a killer whale as it sails through the water.

As an invocation of its namesake, it’s no surprise that Head Shop resembles a comic come to life, with store bought tchotchkes, newspaper-covered pedestals, and manic visuals. Two very graphic wallpaper installations encircle shiny collages by Assume Vivid Astro Focus and bubbly, penciled farm animals by Dan Acton.  Mary Nicholson’s luscious drawings based on stills from French New Wave cinema exude the casual mischief and jarring sensuality of a Godard close-up.

Noah Lyon (A.K.A. “Retard Riot“) creates a wallpaper design featuring another Führer-hybrid, this time as America’s favorite Burgermeister.  Michael Magnan provides a detailed map for manufacturing meth and Lisa Kirk deconstructs the visual trappings of terror with a knitted ski-mask as a part of her project “Revolutionary Knitting Circle.” Equally tongue-in-cheek is Wayne Coe’s Human Pyramid Model, which consists of fully functional design plans for how to realize the infamous Abu Ghraib flesh tower as a plastic toy.

Where Head Shop playfully re-purposes our past, Lost Horizon alludes to a bleaker future. In the center of the room sits a cast resin rock, a sleek token of artist Peter Eide’s trip up a mountain. Like many of the other pieces on display, it feels like a mock artifact plucked from an ebbing landscape. Martin Gruendel offers shaped blue panels resembling shards of sky or “shattered perspective lines,” according to Miller. Equally haunting in their delicacy are Frank Webster’s watercolors of trees and other forested non-sites which, along with Colby Bird’s sagging faux-natural backdrop, resound with stillness. But perhaps most disarming is Jonah Groeneboer’s piece, which quietly hugs the corner and suggests a kind of topography that is both glassy and engineered.

Miller’s marked affection for, and extensive knowledge of all the works included, complements his curatorial philosophy that “if an artist does one good thing, that’s enough.” And like the overzealous keeper of a Wunderkammer, Miller values object over name, allowing works to commingle despite widely varying web presences and Artfacts rankings. Miller, a New York-based curator, editor, and independent publisher, will work with Exile again in the fall to present a large scale exhibition of lesser-known works by photographer/filmmaker Bob Mizer, founder of the Athletic Model Guild.

Have you been to the Smithsonian Institution lately? If you are reading The Bigger Picture, then the answer is yes.

Not only do the nineteen museums, nine research centers, and zoo make up the physical Smithsonian Institution, but hundreds of public websites and social media sites (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.) are the Smithsonian, too. While there were 30 million physical visits in 2009 to the Smithsonian’s facilities, there were also 115 million unique visits to our various websites, which allow the Smithsonian to connect with folks all over the world who are unable to visit in person.

The SI Archives is responsible for preserving many of these websites, since they contain valuable information that document the history of the Institution. Some Smithsonian websites and social media sites—blogs like this one, for example—contain content not duplicated anywhere else. Preservation work involves getting a copy of the site and trying to ensure it will be viewable years from now (archived sites are not available online from us, at this time).

We have been capturing Smithsonian websites (copies of the content/files) since the late 1990s through various methods. We are now using an open-source tool, available to all, called Heritrix to conduct our captures, otherwise known as crawls. A crawler visits a web page/s and retrieves the associated content. Various parameters can be set within the software to ensure that only specific items/links are captured. The results are saved in a file format called WARC (WebARChive), which is known as an archival container. (The WARC format became an international standard in 2009.) The crawls we are conducting give us a snapshot of what a particular Smithsonian website looked like at a specific point in time. It is not feasible for us to capture every update to a website, nor is it necessary.

Heritrix is the same crawler used by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit founded in 1996 with the goal of creating a global digital library of books, movies, music, and websites. If you have ever tried to find a website from years ago, you may have used the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (Enter a url to see a website from various dates from the past. For example, see the Smithsonian homepage from 2000). Other organizations, archives, and universities also have their own web archive collections. The Library of Congress’ web archive Minerva features certain topics such as 9/11, U.S. elections, and international conflicts.

While our web archiving is limited to our own Smithsonian sites, we also are interested in capturing some of the content that has exploded with various social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, including this one. The Library of Congress and Twitter announced earlier this year that Twitter would donate all public tweets to the Library of Congress. Nevertheless, we still need our own archive of content and believe it is important to document that the Smithsonian was using these various social media sites.

As with all digital content, there are challenges in capturing material:

• Web pages are constantly changing with content updates and deletions.
• The web archiving tools are not perfect and can be quite technical. Capturing video or other rich media (flashing logos, audio, etc.) does not always work. This means crawls of websites can be incomplete.
• New social media tools are being launched rapidly. We need to stay aware of the latest and greatest Web 2.0 tools and other technologies Smithsonian employees use.

The Smithsonian’s presence on the Web has come a long way from its main homepage launch in 1995.

Marc Pachter*, who was Smithsonian counselor for electronic communications at the time, wrote about the launch of the Smithsonian homepage in Cultural Resource Management magazine in 1995. He wrote, “No one yet understands the full potential of this medium. Within our first 13 weeks we registered over 4 million ‘hits’ on the homepage …”

Yet, he aptly added that Smithsonian audiences want to see more of what we have and to interact with us more. This certainly has proven true.

*Pachter was the National Portrait Gallery’s Director from 2000-2007, and worked at the Smithsonian for 33 years.

One of our specimens has just arrived back from a trip to St. Petersburg in Russia!

This spectacular fossil shows two large cockroaches preserved in copal (an immature form of amber). It is originally from Colombia and is around 2 million years old.

Dmitri Logunov (our Curator of Entomology) offered to take it to one of his colleagues (Dr. Leonid Anisyutkin) at The Russisn Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg so that the cockroaches could be identified.

Dr. Anisyutkin, is a renowned expert on cockroaches and was able to identify them as Euphyllodromia cf. angustata. Unfortunately it isn’t a new species, but he is still going to publish his results. He could also tell the cockroaches were female, which is nice to know!

We hope to get this specimen out in one of our public programmes in the near future. I’ll let you know.

  What will your last meal be? The first time I was asked that question, I nearly choked on my fresh Californian sushi in Venice Beach, ironically in California. It was a bizarre question, I thought. On the other side of the world where I lived, it is almost referred to as ...

When you think about Singapore's glorious sporting past, you might be inclined to think of soccer and the fever pitch when Singapore took part in the Malaysia cup. But did you know that during the 1970s and 1980s, Singapore was also a major player in another sport - Squash? Squash is ...

When Nations Remember: An International Conference on Memory This inaugural two-day conference by the Singapore Memory Project is designed for the sharing and discussion of memory-building initiatives from international and community perspectives. Conference highlights Learn from renowned international speakers their best practices in the preservation of national memories and memory-building initiatives. Get insights from a ...

When asked about tourism icons of Singapore during the 1970s and 1980s, Peter offered two: the Singapore Girl, and the Trishaw. Today, one is still flying high while the other has become increasingly rare in our streets. [caption id="attachment_11519" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="cc image by xcode"][/caption] Peter writes about the decline of the ...

yg shares a humourous story about taking the driving test in the 1960s and about push-car scenarios. [caption id="attachment_11516" align="aligncenter" width="298" caption="cc image by lowrez"][/caption] What's a push-car scenario? yg explains: in those days, the driving test was also made up of two components - the theory and the practical parts. this funny ...

International ‘Ask a Curator Day’ was yesterday, and we were delighted with the response from interested Tweeters all over the world.

From the Ask A Curator website:

‘Ask a Curator Day’ on September 1st 2010 will open the door to experts with a unique worldwide question and answer session which will let interested members of the public put questions to museum and gallery curators.

All the Q&A action took place on Twitter, where questions were fired from curious individuals from all corners of the globe.

Here’s a sample of some of the curly questions posed to us:

It was an interesting challenge for our curators to keep their answers under the 140-character limit for Twitter, and it was fun to see how other museums tackled the activity.

We were excited to be in such company as TATE, British Museum, Guggenheim Museum and The Smithsonian.

To join us on Twitter, and to see how our curators managed to answer these tricky questions, visit twitter.com/ANMMuseum.

We recently bid adieu to our Museum-based team of AmeriCorps members as they completed their year of service. Since last August, these 13 energetic individuals engaged children in building fountains in Water Ways, greeted toddlers in Littlewoods, and were spotted sporting capes and serving “porridge” in Coming to Rhode Island. They planned and facilitated playful programs like “Boo Bash” and “Seussational!” Their handiwork showed up in artful displays like Forest Stories in the atrium walkway and the new 9 to 5 marionette exhibit.

But this only scratches the surface – AmeriCorps members were instrumental in ensuring that the Museum served children most in need with enriching, engaging and fun learning experiences for the thirteenth year. This year’s team brought lively, hands-on science and nature activities to over 1,200 preschool children in Providence-area Head Start centers and transformed Pawtucket school classrooms into hives of after-school investigation for more than 250 kids.

They welcomed a dozen inner-city community centers and over 300 of their children to Museum Learning Clubs to play, conduct experiments and explore in the exhibits.

And they kept the Museum continually staffed with well-trained, enthusiastic volunteers. In total, the AmeriCorps team served a remarkable 22,900 hours during the 2009-10 service year.

Museum staff, friends, family and community partners gathered for a moving ceremony to celebrate the year of transformative service performed by these incredible AmeriCorps members. Upon their graduation, our sincere thanks and admiration to Annie, Cat, Erin, Gina, Jenny, Jessica, Julianne, Kate, Kelly, Kerrie, Max, Turenne and Zack.

The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) has launched a website that explains how to submit comments to the State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC).

I have elsewhere provided links to the request by the Greek Government for import restrictions.

Do you need to learn more to make an informed submission to CPAC? First, read an earlier overview of stories relating to Greece (June 2009).

Here is a selection of some of the posts that are relevant to Greece:


Attica

• Funerary stela
• Marble lekythos

• Kouroi: update
• Corinthian pottery

• Antiquities seized
• Bronze krater returned
• Gold funerary wreath

Cycladic

• Keros haul material at auction

Crete

• Minoan larnax in New York
• Minoan larnax in Houston
• Minoan larnax in Atlanta
• Statue from Gortyn

Byzantine material

• Byzantine material returned to Greece
• Theft from Byzantine church at Olympia

• Denarius
• Octodrachm seized in Switzerland
• Coins seized in Macedonia

Other material

• The Atlanta pithos
• Gold wreath in London auction
• Antiquities seized in Northern Greece
• Antiquities returned from Belgium, Germany and the UK
• Antiquities returned from Budapest
• Shelby White returns antiquities to Greece
• The Preveza athlete
• Radical collectors and the Aidonia Treasure
• Material returned to Greece from the J. Paul Getty Museum
• Greece and Italy: joint agreement

The Schinoussa archive

• Work by Christos Tsirogiannis

Image
Messene © David Gill

Our friends at Lickety Split have put together a great themed menu (see below) for the Reggae Soul Dance Party on Saturday, September 4. Plan on coming early to wander through the galleries (open until 8 PM) and grab a bite to eat before the show from LS.

Lickety Split Reggae Soul Dance Party Menu:

Jamaican Plate: Jerk Chicken Kabobs with Grilled Pineapple:

Chicken and Pineapple Kabob, Peas, Rice, and Howlin’ Hot Papaya Cole Slaw.

Vegetable Curry:

Vegetable Curry, Peas, Rice, and Howlin’ Hot Papaya Cole Slaw

Jamaican Wrap:

Jerk Chicken in a Flour Wrap, Lettuce, Peppers, Onions, and a Cilantro Cream Sauce

Served with Sweet Potato Chips

Grilled Chicken Quesadilla

Howlin’ Hot Chicken Papaya Coleslaw

Another edition of The Grange Prize web series is upon us! Watch Canadian artist Morya Davey discuss how an early encounter with a pair of artists impacted her, and why she chose to work in photography.

Stay tuned to the blog for an introduction to Josh Brand, the other American shortlisted for the prize, coming soon! And we’ll have more from each of the four shortlisted artists as we approach the big day: Wednesday, September 22, the date that The Grange Prize Exhibition 2010 opens at the AGO, and voting begins! Plus, the AGO will be hosting a free talk that day with all four artists in-person! Save the date!

In certain circumstances, a body can skeletonize in ten to fourteen days.

There is a magnet on my fridge that my girlfriend bought me. It says, “I like poetry, long walks on the beach and poking dead things with a stick." It’s so funny to me because it’s true! Many beach walks with my grandfather growing up involved poking dead crabs, jellyfish, and a random seagull or two and when he wasn’t looking putting them in my orange bucket. I also learned and practiced massage from an early age on. Working on muscles and pressure points intrigued me about the inner workings of the human body. I loved the cadaver show that came to San Francisco a few years back because I could visually see what my hands had felt over countless years doing massage.

A few years ago, I read "Stiff" by Mary Roach. I went to my family and told them when I die they were under strict instruction to donate my body to science. Like the cadavers in Mary Roach’s book, I want my earthly remains to be busy and useful post humus albeit in plastic surgery, teaching anatomy or being a crash test dummy. My family just rolled their eyes, shook their heads and muttered, "Only Cat."

Another great book about dead people recently crossed my path and I am reading it now. "Dead Men Do Tell Tales" by William R. Maples, Ph.D. is the assigned book for the next Down to a Science Book Club get together on Monday, September 13 at Books Inc. I am having a wonderful time reading this book as it a chronicles a brilliant career of a forensic anthropologist in Florida. In starting this book, I thought I knew a lot about forensics but many times I have caught myself very surprised to learn something new about the field and its make-up. Below are a few tidbits from the book that piqued my interest:

- Body decomposition is subjective. A body that is wrapped or in a container will decompose differently that one left out in the air. Temperature, climate, season, how deep a body is buried all affects the rate of decomposition. One instance is given in the book of a grave containing three bodies that had different rates of decomposition because each body was at a different depth - even though they were buried at the same time.

- In certain circumstances, a body can skeletonize in ten to fourteen days.

- Caught and gutted tiger sharks have yielded the highest number of human remains found. However, the corrosive juice in the stomach of a tiger shark can dissolve bone beyond recognition in a short window of time.

- Forensic anthropologists are not medical doctors although they do hold doctorates. Their specialty is the study of the human skeleton and often can find details on human remains that a coroner or medical examiner will overlook.

- “The vibrating Stryker saw used in autopsies [is] a tool whole circular blade does not spin, but instead oscillates back and forth at high speed so that is will not cut skin, but only bone.” (Maples, pg 40).

I am only a quarter of the way through the book; this book is not for those with weak stomachs as the stories are macabre and graphic. However, I am learning so much about this field and finding a new found respect for those that practice it. I am greatly looking forward to finishing the book and engaging in a very lively conversation about its grisly contents at the next book club meeting.

Tags: forensics

Hello everyone!
I hope that you all got back to work after a long and peaceful holiday. I´m starting my blogging this autumn with a report written by Swedish pedagogue and author Pia Cederholm, originally published on Exhibition Aesthetical Forum, a Swedish website consigned to articles on the exhibition media.

Her report is about a lecture at École du Louvre in Paris given by Colette Dufresne-Tassé this spring.

Colette Dufresne-Tassé is a Canadian professor and resigning chairman of the international ICOM committe CECA. She heads a research team at the University in Montréal which with different methods are trying to find out what happens in the meeting between the visitor and the exhibition. The purpose being to use the results of their research to develop the exhibition media.In her lecture Mrs Dufresne-Tassé gave a lot of advice. From these Pia Cederholm has put together "10 commandments for a successful exhibition". Unfortunately her blog is in Swedish so I have translated her report and also shortened it a bit.

1. Thou shall only have one message.
Coherence is the lead word. Choose a theme and stick to it no matter how tempting it is to add less relevant side tracks.

2. Thou shall find your angel between the familiar and the new.
You do this by adressing both the visitor´s prior knowledge and their curiosity at the same time.

3. Thou shall create opportunities for meaningful experiences.
Have the visitor´s perspective for your eyes so that your lust to experiment with exhibition design or researching a complex area doesn´t make the final result incomprehensible to amateurs.

4. Thou shall do everything in your power in order to make it easy for the visitor to learn.
This is done by approaching the exhibition like a puzzle: Start with the frame and the corner pieces. Use artefacts to help the visitor to fill in the missing pieces, to draw their own conclusions. Remind yourself that the visitors aren´t there to read, that can be done in a book.

5. Thou shall create environments that captures the interest of the visitor.
The scenography, or in french "la muséographie", determines how the visitor will understand the artefacts. This is why you have to think through how settings and cabinets correspond and that in three different layers: practically, aesthetically and semantically.

6. Thou shall not begrudge the visitor to be physically active.
Place and present the artefacts in order for the visitor to be lured into freeing their fantasy to reach further in their meaning making.

7. Thou shall not demand the visitor to be physically active.
The intellectual effort is enough. If the exhibition requires the visitor to climb around pulling ropes in order to get to knowledge they will give up.

8.Thou shall lead the visitor´s thoughts towards the object.
When you have made the visitor to stop, seriously widening her or his senses, observing, reading and reflecting, you must see to that there is more to find out. This way the visitor gets paid for the effort and won´t float away in other thoughts.

9. Thou shall understand the difference betwen permanent and temporary exhibitions.
Then you can make use of their different prerequisites. The temporary exhibition attracts the audience by it´s uniqueness, a "on-time-only" opportunity and a whole context to dive into. The permanent exhibition attracts with order and being systematically arranged.

10. Thou shall not be boring.
To visit a museum shall be an experience beyond the ordinary. Therefor you have to pull the visitor out of her or his normal reality. Open the gate to an unknown world which is unknown and different.

What do you think? Please comment!

Greetings
Göran

The "10 commandments for a succesful exhibition" was translated by Göran Björnberg from Pia Cederholm´s original text which can be found here http://www.ueforum.se/

This month on the 1stfans Twitter Art Feed artist, we’re thrilled to have the opportunity to feature one of our very own 1stfans: the anonymous, yet notorious, Twitter personality known as @MuseumNerd. If you’re one of the over 24,000 followers of this feed, you’ve probably already experienced MuseumNerd’s insightful commentary and contagious love of all things related to art, art history, and museums.

Whether it’s through tweets, photographs, or ruminations that sometime exceed 140 characters, this character is intriguing not only because of the seemingly omnipresent reports on art and museum happenings around the world (though primarily focused on New York), but also because it reflects a highly personal, and unadulterated, take on everyday experiences with works of art. For the Twitter Art Feed this month, MuseumNerd launched a community project that is an ode to-what else?-museums that will unfold throughout the month for our followers. I’ll let MuseumNerd explain further:

“This month, I’m extremely excited to be Brooklyn Museum’s 1stfans digital artist in residence. Initially I conceived of this project as a collective “love letter” to “museums.” I posted a message on twitter asking if anyone who “loved museums and could lick a stamp” wanted to be involved in an art project and used the hashtag #MuseumArt. Since the 1stfans artists are kept under wraps until their project launches, I wasn’t able to explain exactly what #MuseumArt involved, but people were excited nonetheless. I asked them to send me postcards showing museums and to write what they loved about the museum on the back.

Since @MuseumNerd is a secret identity, I enlisted the help of museum world friends who tweet for their museums. They received the postcards on my behalf and I went on several #SecretMission operations to meet them and attain the postcards. On one #SecretMission I visited four museums in four NYC boroughs to pick up postcards. In part I wanted to give recognition to the real people behind museum twitter feeds and remind folks that museums are not monolithic unapproachable institutions.

This project falls into critic Ben Davis’s “Greimasian Semiotic Square” as a “social art collaboration,” and was partly inspired by artist An Xiao’s explorations of the relationship between digital and analogue communication, especially in her 1stfans twitter art feed. What started as a brief digital message evoked dozens of analogue communications (postcards) which will now be posted again as digital scans, but with my own creative intervention. These will be in the form of simple word bubbles which reflect my obsession with words and words in art (e.g. Ed Ruscha). This is part of a body of work that celebrates “museums” themselves as the wonderful inspiring places they’ve been for all the participants in #MuseumArt and millions of others.”

Jobi: Last Monday we started to install the artifacts in A Blessing to One Another. Usually when it comes to handling artifacts (or teaching interns how to do so), I pretend that I am holding the Queen of England’s Crown in front of her. I put on white cotton gloves, make sure the path is clear, support the object from below and the side, walk slowly, and transfer it carefully to the case.

The first artifact we installed in this exhibition is kind of like the crown for this exhibition: the cane that Pope John Paul II used when he went to Israel in 2000.


Jennifer: It looks plain, but you know who used it. And you can definitely tell that it was used – it has scuff marks! Which I just think is so cool. I don’t know why! (Excited giggles everywhere.)

Jobi: I felt like I was really presenting an important piece of history when I installed it.

Jennifer: Handling Pope John Paul II’s zucchetto was kind of the highlight of my week! I got to condition report – and install-- the white skullcap (beanie) that he wore. I also condition reported the biretta – the fancy red hat he wore as Cardinal.

Jobi: But your father doesn’t think it counts as touching it because you were wearing gloves!


Jennifer: It still counts! Much cooler than having a picture in The Catholic Review.

Jobi: I don’t know. I was pretty excited when I got the facebook message from Brittney Baltimore (BHU intern, 2010): "Got my Catholic Review in the mail today and opened right to your center fold!" Karen and I are putting the case over the Papal Coat of Arms. That was another really cool artifact to handle.

Jennifer: Yes, it is cool, but I like working with clothes. It’s like the cane, too. Its something that is used and touched all the time. Alone that’s cool, but when you know the person, and they are kind of important in your life, and it was Pope John Paul II who wore it or used it has a meaning that sticks with you.

In case you’ve recently returned from summer vacation or have simply been away from the Art21 blog in July and August due to the fact that, like me, you promised to open books more often and the laptop a lot less, I put together a collection of posts from the past two months, in addition to the Teaching with Contemporary Art weekly column that may be of special interest to educators (and not just art educators). Read on! If it sounds juicy, click the link to go directly to the post…

In Seeing and Time: Video Art as Experience, Stephanie Vegh explores ways we see and experience time-based works of art. She also introduces us to artists who engage the viewer in very different ways, and suggests a few that many of us may find new and exciting.

Nicole Caruth’s Gastro Vision: Feeding Suburbia shares details about Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estates, where the artist transforms front lawns into spaces for natural food production, or “edible landscapes.”

In Nettrice Gaskins’s The Paradoxical Art of “Inception”, the author explores how riddles, mysteries and puzzles inspire unique works of art, and Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” takes center stage.

Museum Nerd’s take on art appreciation is a lot of fun and offers suggestions for approaching work through our head, heart and gut. The Nerd even ends the post with some unique perspectives on artists that have appealed to each of the “metrics” used.

Meg Floryan’s recent interview with Nina Simon, author of The Participatory Museum, is a wonderful conversation about seeing and experiencing art in spaces that aren’t confined to white walls and temperature control.

Three particularly intriguing video exclusives this summer featured Mike Kelley, Mary Heilmann, and Doris Salcedo.

And finally, Ben Street’s latest Letter from London is a beauty (but aren’t they all?) as he rips into public art and simultaneously leaves the door open for what can be, at the very least, entertaining works of art for the Fourth Plinth commissions in Trafalgar Square.

As you can see, I tried to be good and do all my homework before we really got into the swing of the school year. Please check out some (or all) of the above posts and feel free to offer suggestions for using them in and out of the classroom.

Welcome back.

On September 9, in eight days, the first visitors to Birds in Art 2010 will step into the galleries. Deep breath!

I have worked at the Woodson for thirty-one years, so preparing for the opening of the exhibition is a labor of love. Don’t misunderstand. Sure, I will be extremely busy. But the plans, carefully honed over the past thirty-four years, along with a cooperative group of colleagues, make the demanding tasks fun.

The majority of my days are spent in the galleries installing the one hundred and eighteen paintings, sculptures, and graphics that comprise the exhibition. Andy and I will place and move some works a dozen times before finding just the right combination of artworks on each wall. To finish the effort, each is properly lit, identified with a label, and checked for dust and smudges on the glass.

Once the exhibition is complete, I direct my efforts to hospitality. We host more than eighty artists and spouses, hundreds of museum members and special guests for various events during the opening weekend. Coordinating the caterer, volunteers, and vendors is daunting. But without fail, food and drink will be plentiful and tasty.

Just as sure as Birds in Art opens the weekend following Labor Day each year, you can also set your watch that at 4:30 pm on Thursday, September 9, the exhibition will be ready, and the staff will eagerly greet artists and guests as they enter the Museum.

The following summary was written by the Congressional Research Service, a well-respected nonpartisan arm of the Library of Congress.1/19/2010--Passed House amended. Indian Arts and Crafts Amendments Act of 2010 - Amends the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 to expand the authority of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board to bring criminal and civil actions for offenses under such Act involving the

On Thursday August 26, 2010 eleven Ohio women were inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame. One of them was our very own Martha Potter Otto, seen here accepting her award from First Lady Frances Strickland.

The following is her acceptance speech for those who were unable to attend.

"Probably the most exciting aspect of my 40+ years in archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society is the nearly constant change. New discoveries, new theories, new technologies continually give us addition insights into the lives and accomplishments of people who lived here hundreds and even thousands of years ago, as well as new ways of communicating those discoveries to wider and wider audiences.

I have also been heartened by the growing number of women who are entering my profession and are establishing successful careers in universities, museums, and cultural resource management. The thought that my own career has possibly served as a role model for some of these women is both gratifying and humbling.

To my colleagues in the profession and at the Ohio Historical Society, thank you for your dedication and enthusiasm.

To my family, and especially to my husband, Frank, thank you for your love and support.

To the Governor’s Office for Women’s Initiatives and Outreach, thank you for this great honor."

The award ceremony can be seen in its entirety at http://www.ohiochannel.org/multimedia/media.cfm?file_id=126769

Everyone always talks about the learning value of failure. It's hard, it's painful, but you gain more than you lose--at least, that's how the story goes. In reality, we all spend most of our time trying to avoid failure, because the unpleasantness can have significant repercussions we may not want to trade for a shiny life lesson. Few people lose their savings, their job, or a relationship willingly.

And so I'd like to extoll a humble kind of failure: the small one that makes you laugh, learn, and move on to the next thing. Last week, I prototyped four exhibit ideas with the Experience Music Project in Seattle. Three were hits. One was a total dud. It was exhilarating at the end of the first day of testing to point to the poor performer, wag a finger, and dump it. We'd spent about 20 hours in development of each idea, and it felt just fine to trade that time for the things we learned in the process. Since it was just one of four prototypes, it didn't feel like our time was wasted; the failure helped us sort out what was working and what wasn't.

“Filling Oil Drums at Dingman’s Well,” Alberta. By Lane and Mitchell, 1914. The history and expansion of Canada is one that frequently intertwines with oil resources and their exploitation. This is...

(What's on the minds of the curators of the Americas Collections at the British Library)