Museum Problem.

The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) preserves the rich history of grassroots movements in New York City’s East Village and showcases the unique public spaces for which the neighborhood is renowned. It is located in the storefront of a historic building in the East Village, C-Squat. Over the last forty years, East Village community members and local organizations have come together to transform abandoned buildings and vacant lots into vibrant living spaces and thriving community gardens. Today, these urban sustainable practices, inspired by the work of the East Village community, can be observed worldwide.

The museum will also offer three daily tours, which will lead participants around the East Village’s most legendary community gardens, squats and sites of social change, and explain their compelling and rich histories.

Rad Museums Monday.

Federal contract employees at some of the nation’s best-known landmarks walked off their jobs Tuesday during a day of protests over low wages and lack of benefits.

The day-long strike was organized by a group called Good Jobs Nation on behalf of the workers who serve the food and run the cash registers at museums and offices in the heart of the federal city. Some workers said they were being paid less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25, and some said they were working in a government building despite being in the country illegally.

Protesters blocked traffic at Pennsylvania Avenue, prayed for inspiration at a civil rights exhibit at the National Museum of American History, papered the National Air and Space Museum with leaflets shaped like tiny airplanes, and rallied at noontime at Union Station. There were two arrests at the Air and Space Museum, organizers said.

from Good Jobs Nation: We are workers who do important jobs for our nation. We pick and process food for school children, greet visitors at our National Parks, clean and safeguard government buildings, sew the uniforms for our troops, haul cargo to military bases, and even answer calls when people have questions about government benefits, like Social Security.

We are the workers who are employed by private companies through federal contracts, concessions and leases. Yet, while our employers reap billions of dollars in profits from taxpayers every year, we are paid such low wages that we are unable to afford basic needs such as food, clothing, and even rent.

We are uniting to call on the federal government to stop being America’s leading poverty job creator by paying us living wages and benefits.

thegradschoollife:

An interactive exhibit exploring the role of museums, curators, and the general public in validating what is and what is not design, Museum as Plinth: Take One/Leave One stages a  “take and leave” shelf of objects in the MAD lobby. Over the course of a weekend, museum visitors are invited to take an object and replace it with one of their own— simple ephemera from their pockets or a special piece that they brought with them. Each object on the shelf is given a sticker “From the Collection of the MAD Museum” and, in effect, admitted to the museum’s collection. The concepts of exchange, value, and status come into play. Crafting an evolving collection, to be documented in an online catalogue and thematic stories published on the day’s blog and social media outlets, Museum as Plinth: Take One/Leave One continues the debate of hierarchies and value within the museum context. 

Share that authority!

Yeah! I am pretty into this.

Even though I had to look up the word “plinth.”