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.