Cabinets: wk 3

Jewish Museum
The plaque on the outside of the building notes that it was donated by the wife of Felix Warburg, a turn of the century banker, after his death, but unlike the frick, this is a museum, not a home. The imposing exterior gives way into an official entrance hall. Large bags must be checked and all guests must pass through a metal detector. A large information and ticketing desk, manned by three chatty women, stands before the hall to the galleries.

The first floor exhibit is delightfully accessible. Entitled “They Called Me Mayor July,” the collection includes over 80 paintings by Mayer Kirshenblatts. Each piece represents a memory of the artists childhood as a Jewish boy living in a small village in pre-war Poland.The exhibit explores the resilience of memory, narrative, visual, and cultural. The museum has placed descriptive captions to the right of at least one third of the collection of paintings, but the expositive voice is unidentified. They combine Kirshenblatt’s memories with factual information about the Jewish community in Poland. Storytelling, an important cultural tradition, merges with historical fact to create a hybrid (auto)biographical form. A small room with a table, chairs, and computers marks the end of the exhibit. The left wall is peppered with small pieces of paper upon which previous visitors have written and drawn memories. The table contains both exhibit guides and pieces of paper and pencils. Guests are encouraged to write down or draw their own memories and enter them to be displayed on the wall or museum website.

I get the impression that the museum has a very active community. The number of perspectives embedded in the exhibits is astounding. Orthodox, reform, zionist, conservative, liberal. The third floor of the museum attempts to express them all, their relationship to one another, and their importance in the construction of Jewish identity. The wording and arrangement within the permanent exhibits reflect the tension and struggle of satisfying the museum’s constituency. I leave the museum better informed, but as confused as ever.

As I entered the fourth floor and walked into the permanent exhibit, I encountered four large columns, literally pillars of Jewish identity, placed prominently at the entrance. They had an intentionally ancient quality to them, and served to up the drama of the exhibit. Within the room itself were backlit captions, darkened area lighting, and dramatically illuminated artifacts. The ceiling was constructed like a theatrical lighting grid, allowing curators to increase the unsettling effect of the space.

Asia Society
The museum faces very different challenges than the Jewish museum. Instead of attempting to represent all the facets of a single culture, the Asia Society represents many cultures and places. The entrance reveals beautiful, water-inspired architecture, including a curved information and arcing walls. I peeked in the gift shop and was completely overwhelmed. Objects of different types and nations of origin were mingled together. I found an area that I thought held the book collection, only to discover two others in other corners of the shop. There seemed to be no organizational method. I hoped the exhibition would be different.

I headed upstairs to the one open gallery for an exhibit on Pakistani art. The first thing I noticed was the enormous effort that the curators took to provide context for the show. An enormous, wall-sized timeline stood just before the entrance. It contained information related to both post-1940s Pakistani history and Pakistani art. Once inside the gallery, captions outlined the context of the piece in the artist’s work, Pakistani art trends, and Pakistani history. There was also a dial-in, cell phone-based audio tour that I tried a few times. In my opinion, the audio was a little bit longer than i wanted and too closely related to the text, but i appreciated that i could spontaneously opt for more information on a particular piece without having to have made the premeditated decision to get an audio guide.
The gallery was fairly small, quiet, and empty, so I was able to enjoy lingering in front of the work for quite some time. I thought the exhibit was wonderful, and truly felt like the curators had taken time to guide me through the works within.

Cabinets of Wonder: Week 2

Brooklyn Botanical Garden
First Impressions:
After purchasing tickets, visitors pick up brochure-style maps and enter through a nondescript green metal gate. It’s an hour before closing and the atmosphere at the entrance is subdued. The gardens are peaceful, green, and relaxing. I want to lie on the grass and fall asleep.

Social, Emotional, Informational:
Winding paths make the garden seem larger than it really is. Despite my map and the navigational signs, I’m left with the feeling that I could get lost. And that’s a good thing. The grounds offer a break from the right angles and broad sidewalks of the concrete jungle. People wander, sit, and lie on the grass to read. I’m enchanted by the quaintness of the Shakespeare Sonnet Garden and the simple beauty of the Japanese pond. The sight of a boy running his miniature toy motorcycle along the top of a fence evokes the excitement of being seven years old and having space to run around.

Call me nostalgic, but I love the dated look of the brown and white signs that identify each flower, plant, and tree. I’m in garden–I don’t want modern bright colors and fancy graphics. Small, low to the ground navigation signs mark the intersections of paths; like trail markings in the woods, they use only arrows and names to inform and direct visitors.

Centrl Park Zoo

First Impressions:

The zoo! I arrived just before the afternoon sea lion feeding, and immediately rushed toward the central exhibit. As the sea lions swam past, water sloshed over the sides of the tank making a satisfyingly messy, wet sound. Children and their parents eagerly awaited the show, pointing and laughing at the exquisitely nimble creatures. So much activity! So much joy! I stood on my tip toes for a better view. The show began.

Social, Emotional, Informational:
The central park zoo is exquisite. It’s tiny, but allows you to become lost. It caters to families and school children, but I felt perfectly at home.
I am usually meticulous about looking at signs and reading captions, but the zoo turned me into a eager animal hunter. (Embarrassingly, I called the sea lions seals for the first ten minutes I was there.) Like the hoards of fourth graders, I eagerly pressed myself up against the glass for a better view of a polar bear or red panda. There is something about the immediacy of the animals that makes it feel okay to ignore the text in favor of the creature. I may have learned nothing official about snow leopards — nothing about their habitats, eating habits, or endangered status — but I did see how long and silky and strong their tails are, how majestically their shoulders move as they across the landscape, how they can disappear from view with a single, powerful jump. I appreciated the captions and text provided, and occasionally read it when the animal on display was hidden from view, but the creatures themselves always took precedence over the reading material.

I was particularly taken with the rainforest exhibit. Tamed by a life of contact with humans, the birds in the tropical aviary calmly offered themselves up for view. There was a flurry of preening, pecking, and flapping. True or not, I was left with the impression that the birds behaved as though they would in the wild, and I, the unobtrusive observer, had an insiders view.

Watch out for droppings!

I was nearly beheaded by a Speckled Mousebird

Close enough to touch

Reviews:

Kid at the zoo:
I thought that snow leopards could only live in the snow, but today I learned that they can live in New York City! It was so fast and pretty, and it looked just like my cat Scout but 50 times bigger. My mom says thats because Scout and the snow leopard are related. They’re both felines. After the snow leopard we went to look at the puffins and penguins. They both live in the cold, but puffins live in the north pole and penguins live in the south pole. Puffins are smaller and puffy. There were some weird looking ones that had funny orange eyebrows and those are the ones that I liked the best. The glass was so cold!!! I blew on it and made it all foggy even though it was warm outside. Then we got ice cream and my mom said we had to leave.

A frustrated, fifty-something horticulturist reviews the Brooklyn Botanical: Plants, not Plaques. Tired of flashy signage and unreadable captions? Head to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden for a breath of fresh air. Unlike it’s larger counterpart in the Bronx, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden relies on plants, not flashy signage, to attract attention. Flora-loving visitors will note that restoration efforts have stayed true to the original 1910 exhibits, providing an excellent glimpse into early 20th century horticultural practice and display. Subdued labels provide precise information regarding genus and species, and occasional earthen-colored panels offer context and history. Plants, not plaques, are the true stars of the show.

Cabinets of Wonder: Week 1

THE FRICK COLLECTION

First Impressions:
Beautiful, but oppressive. The building is fenced; the space is hushed. The entrance is marked by a large outdoor sign indicating the hours and ticket prices. The visitor is directed by guards three times at the enterance: first to a ticket counter, then to the audio tour, and finally, to the first room of the collection. Like the Neue, the Frick was once a home and, despite its transformation into museum, continues to be treated by guests as such. It is immediately apparent that the space is not your own, that you will follow directions and behave appropriately.

Social, emotional, and informational:
The Frick is not a place to go with your chatty friends. The vast majority of guests wander around holding audio guides up to their ears, occasionally stopping to punch in a painting or sculpture number. The windows are heavily draped and most of the floors and walls are carpeted, dampening footsteps and lending an air of intimacy and mystique.

The museum is not quite house, not quite exhibition space. The effect is unsettling. There are dozens of cushioned chairs decoratively placed throughout its halls, but ropes prevent their use. Occasionally, the visitor happens upon a long-unused desk or side table, perhaps with a lamp or quill on top. Moving through the space recalls the feeling of looking a photograph of the deceased. The house may have been preserved, but it is far from alive.

The Frick’s disquieting effect plays to its advantage. Informationally, the scenery is as important as the paintings. The atmosphere captures a particular place and time. In any other space, the lack of provided contextual information (dates, titles, and the like) would be frustrating, but at the Frick, the limited labels add to the museum’s charm. But of course Mr. Frick didn’t display Goya’s birth and death dates!

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

First Impressions:
Large signs, food and art vendors, street performers, marble steps, loiterers. Everything on the walk up to the Met signals this is a *capital-I* institution. Once past the bag check, the scene is overwhelming. The large information desk in the center of the lobby is the first thing I see, and it takes me a while to decide which of the three clusters of ticket counters seems the least busy. I stand off to the side and try to get my bearings. Sensory overload! I’m getting over an illness, so I’m feeling weak as it is…

Social, emotional, and informational:
I decided to tackle one hall and opted for my childhood favorite, the Egyptian collection. The visit was exhausting. The Met does a fantastic job of offering different layers of engagement to visitors, ranging from large signs and walk-through ruins to tiny labels and exhaustive captions. The visitor can choose the level of detail appropriate to him or her. They employ a taxonomic curatorial method, grouping artifacts by type, period, place of origin, etc. There are over 35,000 artifacts in the collection, each contextualized, labeled, and displayed.

Most people meandered through the collection in flexible groups, by which I mean they frequently strayed apart and meandered back together. The larger artifacts became ad hoc meet-up points–everyone wants to look at the enormous sarcophagus, so everyone collects there before moving into the next room. The exhibition space itself inspires relative quiet on the part of the viewer. Something about the sand colored walls and the backlit ruins makes it seem as though you are wandering through a calm and somewhat sacred space. The ceilings are, for the most part, quite low. One doesn’t notice this, of course, until one enters the magnificent Sackler room, a sprawling, multi-story room dedicated to the reconstructed Temple of Dendur.

REVIEWS

Family (12 y/0, 14 y/0) at the MET (from Mother’s perspective): Where did Bobby run off to now? I’ll bet he’s by the mummy’s again. He always heads straight for the mummies. I wish he would slow down a bit and read these captions. I keep trying to get him to look at these models but he thinks they’re too much like dolls. He loves stories about Egyptian life, so you’d think he would want to see what day-to-day activities looked like.  “Susan! I’m going into the next room now! Come along when you’re done looking at that gold jewelry!” Susan loves the jewelry. She’s even learned all the different kinds of beads that the Egyptians used.  Hmm..now if only I knew which was the next room. Back to the map. Okay…now here’s the Middle Kingdom, there’s gallery 17…which means it should be to the right. Okay. “Susan, I’m going to this room to the right! If you see Bobby, tell him I’ll meet you two at the Sackler room. That one with the temple and the water…”

Student (17 y/o): Today for our assignment we had to focus on the Egyptian Hall at the Met. The teacher let us wander around by ourselves until 3, when we had to meet at the entrance. Our worksheet had a list of ten questions that we had to find the answers to. Some of them were easy (How did the Met aquire the Temple of Dendur? duh…it’s only written on the wall like 5 times), but some of them were waay too hard. The exhibit has these tiny rooms that they call galleries (more like closets!) where they squish together hundreds of artifacts from one or two excavation sites. Our teacher wanted us to identify the year of a stupid tiny scarab in gallery 18. It took me like 20 minutes to even find it! And then I couldn’t even find it’s label. I had to ask my friend, Matt, for his answer, and he only knew it because he asked Sandra. After that I had to rush through the rest of the exhibit to catch up. I barely finished by 3, and then I got lost looking for my way back to the entrance! Thank goodness for the guards that directed me back. Ms. Stamson would not have been happy.

Older Woman at the Frick: Perhaps my favorite aspect of the Frick is the staff.  They are impeccably trained, and impeccably dressed. Each stationed at his or her own spot, the guards watch over both the Collection and the museum itself. This very morning as I walked into the West Gallery, AcoustiGuide in hand, a foreign lady called out, quite loudly, to her friend. I quickly looked up to see what was wrong, as did many other guests, but it seemed as though the call was merely an inappropriately audible greeting. The two ladies continued to chat, and moved toward the table at the entrance of the room. This table, of course, is part of the collection, and not intended for use. These foreigners clearly did not understand that, however, and placed their pamphlets and bags on top of it as they continued to talk. Like an angel, a nearby guard quickly and silently moved toward them, motioning with an aggressive, blade-like hand that the table was off limits. They moved away, and calm was restored. Later on, I saw the same pair attempting to abscond with a $2 guide from the information booth. They grabbed the guide and began to walk away, but the desk attendant briskly cleared his throat, and motioned with the same blade-like hand signal toward the “Guides: $2″ sign. If there ever were a well-trained group of guards, then they certainly work at the Frick Collection. Silent, professional, and effective.