Beltane                                              Garlic Moon

Two tours, very different.  Older women from South Dakota on a culture junket having something to do with a bank where some of them used to work.  Then six kids from a Lino Lakes Y art camp.

The South Dakota group wanted big names of European art.  Say what?  I went with Monet, Picasso, Kandinsky, Van Gogh, Gerome, Chardin, Canaletto and Poussin.

The camp wanted an introduction to the museum.  We started with the naked Olympian, Doryphoros, pondered Lady Teshet and her journey to the afterlife, saw photographs of Minnesota sports. “McHale!  He’s my neighbor.  Oh, he looks funny.”  A photograph of Kevin McHale playing for the Gophers.  The Tatra got the usual oohs from the boys and we talked about design.  Then over to the Armiajani as my favorite piece in the museum. It always get thinking from adolescents.  Looked at the Murakami and Frank and ended with the Borghese Gladiator.

Lottsa rain.

Beltane                                                 Garlic Moon

Opening the doors of perception.  Thomas Huxley, I believe, on mescaline.  Now, I’ve done my share of mescaline, but there are other ways to fling open the doors.  I did one this morning.

The MIA does tours for the blind called touch tours.  Training was this morning and I attended.  That means I put on those vaguely bluish/purplish nitrile gloves (safer for the art than the old cotton gloves, I’m told.) and got to run my hands all over Theseus and the Centaur by Barye.  What a rush.

Whenever kids come to the museum, the first thing we tell them is:  “The one  foot rule.  Look with your eyes, not with your hands.”  For one inclined to transgress to begin with, this license to touch was wonderful.

I felt Theseus muscled legs, the Centaurs upper body curved back and his head held down by Theseus’ hand on his throat.  I felt the hooves of the Centaur digging in, stabilizing him during this fight.  The weapon that Theseus holds, ready to split the Centaur’s skull has a tension in it as it expresses an arc toward the Centaur’s head.

It was a sensual delight to touch this bronze statue and I loved it.

We also used tactile boards, basically simplifications of paintings using raised marks on a white board that depict the essential elements of the work.  The contact between the blind person and the art then becomes an exchange between the raised elements–in this case, the sun, the mountains, the olive trees and their shadows–in Vincent Van Gogh’s, Olive Grove and the docent’s description of the painting as a supplement.

Then, last, we began to learn the art of verbal description.  In this case there is no prop, no statue, rather a work that the docent describes in as much detail as possible.  This requires a vocabulary of rich imagery and particular clarity.

The doors of perception opened for me when I put on those gloves and touched, with my eyes closed, Barye’s statue and as I listened, eyes closed to the interaction between the tactile board and the painting itself.

I got something, something unique and special, but it was very different from the experience I have visually.  Difficult to describe, but very different.  More a mental mapping of volume, space, a mind’s jigsaw puzzle to fit the information from statute or tactile board with the descriptions and help of the docent.  A new way of interacting with the art.

Beltane                                                                              Beltane Moon

Tour at 10:00 AM.  Sophomore honor students from Hastings, Minnesota.  We looked at sculpture by MCAD trained sculptor, John Flannagan.  A late Monet painted in his Japanese garden after his eyesight had begun to fail.  A late Matisse, Pensees, a pretty picture, not important in his oeuvre, but beautiful on its own.  We dissected Picasso’s Woman With Armchair, then looked at the painted puzzle by Magritte, investigated Henry Moore’s Warrior With Shield and talked about photorealism with Frank.

This was a smart, thoughtful group of teenagers.  They had fun, had ideas, were familiar with art.

At noon I had a group of 3rd graders from Fairmont Elementary.  The first three objects to which I took them, “We’ve already seen this.”  Hmmm.  This was an odd situation since the same group of kids had the same docents with the same tour theme.  So.

I noticed they had a laminated card with particular paintings they needed to check off.  “May I see that?”  We then went on a treasure hunt to find the remaining paintings or objects they hadn’t seen.  We had a good time, ending at the Wu Family Reception Hall.  Which, of course, they had already seen.  Sigh.

After that a fun continuing education with improv performers on temporary staff with the MIA.  They’re bringing improv techniques to many different aspects of the museum.  It was fun and reminded me that once I had been an actor.  And not a bad one.

Beltane                                                                 Beltane Moon

Bees in the am.  Art in the pm.  Part of a small group of docents:  Allison, Jane, Wendy, Ginny, Carreen and myself (all class of 2005) who visited with David Little for an hour or so about the Sports Show.

This particular group is not shy in presenting their perspectives, so it was a lively time.  Carreen observed that many, most, take photographs for granted, as images that come into being perhaps with no intervening action, like parthenogenesis.  It’s important, then, that their be guides, docents, to help tease out the work of photography, to appreciate the choices made and the quality of the image achieved.

Allison brought us all together and offered stories of her tours like the guy who pointed out his company’s box seats visible on the first ever cover of Sports Illustrated.  Jane remembered a woman at the YA Tittle photograph who said, “Oh.  Big John! I delivered mail to him for ten years.”

Ginny talked about the OJ piece, how much she enjoyed showing it and the controversy it engendered.  I’m not remembering right now what Wendy said, but it will reappear at some point.

That this is an MIA mounted exhibition is important to the museum’s overall visibility, especially among other museums.  It’s content and it’s catalog should keep it in the public eye a long while, perhaps even increasing its visibility as time goes on.

The p.r., which included Time Magazine with single issue sales around 28000000 and TV exposure on all broadcast channels here and even more uniquely on their sports shows, also broadened the reach of the museum as a cultural institution in the nation.

Having a sit down with a curator after a show has never happened in my time at the museum and I feel confident it never happened before my time either.  Allison just asked.  It was a privilege to peak behind the scenes of curatorial thinking about an exhibition.  And fun, too.

Spring                                                            Beltane Moon

An odd afternoon.  Drove into Minneapolis, walked a good ways through a skyway connecting the Leamington ramp to the Minneapolis Convention Center, a lonely walk on a Sunday, got my assignment for the American Association of Museums, walked back up 2nd Avenue to the Crown Plaza Hotel and sat for four hours greeting people attending the the AAM conference.

Not many requests for help, but a few.  Mostly solved with, “Yes, it leaves every 15 minutes right there.”  or “Go out the door, turn right and keep going.”

The day was raw, a Minnesota spring day, chilly for those folks from southern climes.  And cloudy.

The conference program bruits the statistic about number of theatre seats and New York City.  And our world class museums.  Didn’t say anything about the Minnesota Orchestra or the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra though I would have.

Back home, wondering why I’d agreed to do this bit.  I get a free day attendance at the conference and I may go.  Sounds like the exhibition hall might be worth seeing.  And the bookstore of course.

Recalled my conference going days.  Hotel rooms, meetings with round tables and chairs with cloth and shaped aluminum, rushed gatherings in the  hall, plotting, making our move.  Conference behavior, where the momentary becomes urgent and the world away dissolves in the fantasy realm of significance among like minded folks.

Later they will get on planes and wonder what happened in Minneapolis.  That was 2012.  Right?