Museum Problem.

Low-wage workers picket outside federal buildings

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:12:00 -0400

Low-wage workers picket outside federal buildings:

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.

Museum as Plinth: Take One/Leave One | MAD Museum

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:55:43 -0400

Museum as Plinth: Take One/Leave One | MAD Museum:

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.”

Museum as Plinth: Take One/Leave One | MAD Museum

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:07:26 -0400

Museum as Plinth: Take One/Leave One | MAD Museum:

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.

waltersartmuseum: Our eagle-eyed conservators spotted an...

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:28:00 -0400

waltersartmuseum:

Our eagle-eyed conservators spotted an ancient Roman bust in the collection that looks very much like Zach Galifianakis.

ha ha NICE TRY Walters Art Museum, I know it can be hard to tell white dudes with beards apart but I am not so impressed by this attempt at art doppelganging.

Hundreds of bicyclists pour through national museum in Amsterdam again after 10-year detour

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:39:46 -0400

Hundreds of bicyclists pour through national museum in Amsterdam again after 10-year detour:

AMSTERDAM â Guards removed the final barriers blocking the way, and a cheer went up from the crowd. Moments later, a small army mounted on bicycles of all shapes and sizes eagerly stormed the path that leads straight through the heart of the Netherlandsâ newly renovated national museum.

Ok I lied just this last thing. MUSEUMZ tho

ok nerds done with bikes for now thx back to werk.

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:31:46 -0400

ok nerds done with bikes for now thx back to werk.

Orient Squad, c.1898 Don’t worry there are also dudes where...

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:28:00 -0400

Orient Squad, c.1898

Don’t worry there are also dudes where that came from.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/93508839/

switching GEARS on the old time bike ladiez. dress reform/bowler...

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:27:05 -0400

switching GEARS on the old time bike ladiez. dress reform/bowler hat.

SOMEBODY SEND ME A ARTICLE ON BICYCLES AND GENDER CONSTRUCTION, 1890-1910

Queen of the Wheel, c.1897 turn of the 20th century folks got...

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:22:22 -0400

Queen of the Wheel, c.1897

turn of the 20th century folks got some gender/bikes baggage to unpack

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a09972/

turnofthecentury: Anonymous, c.1910 Happy bike month, history...

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:44:00 -0400

turnofthecentury:

Anonymous, c.1910

Happy bike month, history nerds. Don’t forget your bike shorts.

metropolitanmuseumofbutts: Marble statue of a youthful...

Fri, 10 May 2013 08:20:00 -0400

metropolitanmuseumofbutts:

Marble statue of a youthful Hercules, Roman, Flavian period, A.D. 68-98

Lady on the right, why are you looking at your phone when you could be looking at that booty????

hyperallergic: Not Punk Enough for the Met I didn’t get...

Fri, 10 May 2013 07:51:08 -0400

hyperallergic:

Not Punk Enough for the Met

I didn’t get invited to The Met Ball this year. Good thing too, at $150,000 per table.
View Post

can’t. stop. reblogging.

Barnes Raises Ticket Prices So That People Will Stop Touching the Art

Thu, 09 May 2013 19:28:29 -0400

Barnes Raises Ticket Prices So That People Will Stop Touching the Art:

irration-ali-speaking:

museumproblem:

Now that it’s been settled in its new location for almost a year, the Barnes Foundation is getting comfortable and raising ticket prices — which wouldn’t really be newsworthy if it weren’t for the reason they’re providing for the change. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the museum is overcrowded and lots of visitors don’t know how to behave. Barnes President Derek Gillman offered these choice words:

“We’re seeing many more people not familiar … with what is proper behavior.” He added that the gallery wanted those additional visitors, but with new gallerygoers “we’re seeing more transgressions of people touching things and getting too close” to the art, he said.

Popularity’s a bitch, ain’t it?

The new ticket price for adults, up to $22 from $18, now includes the audio guide, which tells visitors not to touch or get too close to the art. Another Inquirer article reports that Gillman himself will be heard on the guide, “accompanied by chamber music,” saying: “Please don’t sit on any of the chairs in the room. That’s what the benches are for.” So in theory, most people will now get the audio guide and be lulled into obedience. In practice, it sort of looks the museum is raising prices to stave off the masses.

POLICE VISITOR BEHAVIOR WITH SOOTHING CHAMBER MUSIC AND PATRICIAN ACCENTS. ENLIGHTEN THE MASSES IN OBEDIENT WORSHIP AT THE ALTAR OF HIGH CULTURE AND FANCY CHAIRS.

Is this a museum, or a fucking finishing school? Barnes Foundation, you sure know how to make me want to touch all teh art.

While I think it’s kind of nuts to pay $22 for a ticket, I don’t think this is a matter of forcing people into “worshipping” the art. The chairs aren’t meant to be sat on, they’re part of the collection. Visitors must be pretty unobservant if they haven’t figured that out, seeing as there’s a LINE DRAWN ON THE FLOOR. And while some might think that’s some sort of bar keeping us from being close to the art, at least it’s not glass or a rope or something like that. You can still get pretty damn close. I feel very strongly about people respecting art for its handcraft and its age. This stuff is fragile. I don’t go touching someone’s oil painting that was made yesterday just like I don’t touch someone’s oil painting from 100 years ago because it’s common sense.

Not that I think raising ticket prices was the change needed, but the place certainly gets crowded, and during my time working there I saw plenty of people ignoring the museum security and whipping their bags/limbs around like they were at a fun house. It just seems to me like everyone always needs something to complain about, especially with the Barnes.

And lemme learn ya something: the Barnes Foundation IS A SCHOOL. LITERALLY. Albert Barnes’s collection was created as a mode of art education. Let’s read up before we launch attacks, please.

Cool, so I’ll cut the ALL CAPS shtick for a second. My complaint (and I do so love to find things to complain about, it’s basically my entire blog!) has less to do with the sincere impulse to protect works of art and more to do with how we talk to museum visitors. I think museums exist to serve our visiting communities, with collections as a secondary (though deeply connected) priority. I work with and respect a lot of people who disagree. But how would we speak differently to visitors about in-museum behaviors if we viewed them — and really internalized the view — as stakeholders rather than lucky intruders?

And why can’t museums be more like fun houses? Lotsa reasons, probably. But those behaviors that museum professionals often regard as “common sense” correspond to an artificial — if not entirely without value — set of rules about appreciating art or historical artifacts, We view these things from a distance, we expect quiet and guards and DO NOT TOUCH signs. Mainstream cultural institutions have historically enforced these behaviors as a means of privileging certain folks and elevating elite culture, while excluding or alienating others.

The Barnes’ language quoted above is familiar language of condescension and correction. It admonishes visitors — assuming that they are woefully unobservant or reckless — rather than examining what it is about the layout of the galleries, or the attitude of staff, or the nature of the institution — that causes so many people to behave so “wrongly.” Relatedly, hiking admission prices to $22 (admittedly pretty comparable to many big urban museums) bugs me in this context. It implies to me that there is a certain class of visitors who are the trouble-makers, and that by raising barriers to their entry, peace in the temple of high culture might be restored. On all these fronts, the message to folks who may not regularly visit museums or who can’t afford entry is that “this place — and important culture/history — do not belong to you.”

I love that you pushed back on this because it’s like my favorite tumblrversation topic. I rly rly want us young museum people to find ways to preserve art so we can all enjoy it, question its value and interpretation, be inspired, be puzzled, whine and criticize. But I want those ways not to assume our own institutional authority and visitor ignorance, despite daily frustrations.

Finally, I’m psyched that you worked at the Barnes. I did indeed know that it is a school, plus I just read a bunch more about it on Wikipedia! It is not, however, a finishing school. That was a just a dumb jab at my loathing of proper etiquette.

exploratorium: Happy Bike to Work Day, San Francisco Bay Area! ...

Thu, 09 May 2013 15:54:05 -0400

exploratorium:

Happy Bike to Work Day, San Francisco Bay Area!

How do you like our NEW bike? It’s a Camera Obscura Rickshaw Bicycle. With the help of a small pinhole, visitors take a ride in the back and see the world fly by, upside-down and projected on the walls inside the rickshaw.

Want to learn more about Bike to Work Day? Details from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition here: http://www.sfbike.org/?btwd

Photo by Gayle Laird
© Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu

ugh so coooool

Hyperallergic: God Save the Met and Their Fuckin’ Costume Institute

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:12:16 -0400

More from Hyperallergic on Punk: Chaos to Couture at the Met.

In all fairness, this exhibition seemed doomed from the moment the title was announced …It felt like another in a long, long line of major cultural institutions “legitimizing” a counter-cultural movement, except in this case they were about 40 years late.

And dat bathroom:

We’ll begin where they do, with a facsimile of CBGB’s bathroom. Need we go further? All right, we shall. “Awkward” hardly embodies the gravitas necessary to convey the puzzling placement of this vignette …The bathroom might as well have had working pipes (or at least a few glory holes) — then it would’ve served a function in the exhibition.

Zing! Museumification at its wackest.

generalmike: DC Anti-Art Division go art that van!

Tue, 07 May 2013 13:11:35 -0400

generalmike:

DC Anti-Art Division

go art that van!

hyperallergic: A WWD photo of the replica of the toilets at...

Mon, 06 May 2013 20:13:44 -0400

hyperallergic:

A WWD photo of the replica of the toilets at CBGB for the Metropolitan Museum’s Punk exhibition.

Hmmm … something doesn’t seem right. Wasn’t there more graffiti and broken (or missing) toilet seats half the time?

ok i’m about ready for museums to be over now.

"Isn’t this where the Guns & Roses Strike started?"

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:05:00 -0400

“Isn’t this where the Guns & Roses Strike started?”

- Visitors, I love you so so so so much.

Also: No, and I believe you mean the Bread & Roses Strike, madam.

(via museumproblem) I am going to miss getting those questions.

(via bibliophiliac88) I am going to miss YOU getting those questions. Also, bro, now that I got these bread and roses tattoos on my arms I seriously missed a “check out DEEZ GUNS and roses” opportunity :|

"Isn’t this where the Guns & Roses Strike started?"

Sat, 04 May 2013 12:16:00 -0400

“Isn’t this where the Guns & Roses Strike started?”

- Visitors, I love you so so so so much.

Also: No, and I believe you mean the Bread & Roses Strike, madam.

metropolitanmuseumofbutts: Beside the Sea, Auguste Rodin,...

Sat, 04 May 2013 11:46:02 -0400

metropolitanmuseumofbutts:

Beside the Sea, Auguste Rodin, French, 1840-1917

More like Buttside the Sea tho