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Below is a blog entry about a new study commissioned by the James Irvine Foundation that shows that museum visitors have a strong desire to engage in interactive activity. The old model of wandering the halls passively looking at objects doesn't work for people who are addicted to touch screens, tweeting and all forms of spontenous social media.
Here is the link to the fascinating blog. The report by the James Irvine Foundation charts three levels of desired interaction: In 'crowd sourcing,' museums provide some essential input or selection for the creative process (photos, paintings, voting, and so on). In 'co-creation,' participants contribute in a meaningful way toward an artistic effort by a professional artist or team (participatory theater, storytelling, and such). In 'audience-as-artist,' participants actually create and direct the outcome themselves. Our new Creativity Center will be an opportunity for the Bass Museum to experiment with creating those new active experiences. This space, which used to be the museum's gift shop, will be officially inaugurated in January of 2012, Here the museum's education department will have the opportunity to create wonderful hands-on activities, such as inviting visitors to to explore our permanent collection online and create their own collection or a virtual exhibit. This space already hosts the weekly Adult Art Club, which includes hands-on art classes taught by local artists, as well as workshops for school teachers and families who want to make art with their kids. In the future, any visitor to the Bass Museum of Art will be able to walk into theCreativity Center at any time of the day and choose from a variety of project kits. Adults and kids will be invited to sit down and paint, draw or construct things that are inspired by our art collection and rotating exhibits. The source of the text below is: "Arts organizations and arts funders have long been discussing the rise of a more 'participatory' interest among arts audiences. Beyond 'butts in seats,' this emerging interest suggests that audiences increasingly engage in expressive activity throughout their lives (online, at home, among friends), and they value a similar engagement in other cultural consumption. The James Irvine Foundation has just released a new report that seeks to define and document this part of the arts universe. Getting In On the Act: How Arts Groups are Creating Opportunities for Active Participation is essentially a field guide to participatory arts practices -- offering definitions to help you recognize the genus, and then specific examples to identify the species. It's a very handy guide for those who know they want to increase or enhance the participatory elements of their creative work, but need clarity and strategy (and examples) to do so. The underlying model suggests that people can engage with artistic activity in many different ways. One way of slicing those experiences is by the relative control arts participants have over the art or the experience itself. Beyond the more traditional 'receptive' roles of Western cultural experience (spectating quietly, or spectating alongside some enhancement effort like a talkback or prep session), the report offers three levels of participatory practice, defined by how much the participants influence the outcome of the work.
In 'crowd sourcing,' participants provide some essential input or selection for the creative process (photos, paintings, voting, and so on). In 'co-creation,' participants contribute in a meaningful way toward an artistic effort by a professional artist or team (participatory theater, storytelling, and such). In 'audience-as-artist,' participants actually create and direct the outcome themselves. The report is careful to state that participatory practice isn't the 'new normal,' and that even traditional forms of audience participation have active components. But for artists, arts organizations, and cultural communities seeking new ways to connect their friends and neighbors to creative endeavor, this report offers a useful map." |
http://www.modernluxury.com/miami/events/andy-warhols-apple-the-bass-museum-o...
The Bass Museum of Art, one of Miami Beach’s key cultural landmarks, pays homage to Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO of Apple, Inc., by prominently displaying Apple, a 38 X 38 inch silkscreen piece created by pop artist Andy Warhol. In light of Jobs’ recent death, the museum decided to honor the American inventor by sharing one of its contemporary works with its visitors. Warhol’sApple is part of the artist’s famous 1985 Ads Portfolio which also includes works featuring brands such as Paramount, Chanel and Volkswagen. George Lindemann Jr., President of the Board of Directors of the Bass Museum of Art, is a fan of both men. "Apple represents the work of two creative geniuses who are no longer physically with us, yet remain very present," adds Lindemann. Andy Warhol’s Apple is a piece of artwork from the permanent collection of the Bass Museum of Art and will be on view inside the museum’s new Chad Oppenheim designed lobby through Saturday, November 5, 2011. For more information, please visitwww.bassmuseum.org
IDEA@thebass Stands for Identify, Discuss, Envision, Assess. IDEA@thebass uses art to stimulate the critical thinking skills of children between the ages of 3 and 10. This program is based on a method of problem-solving that has been created by the Bass Museum of Art in conjunction with Stanford University’s acclaimed Hasso Platner Institute of Design.
How do IDEA@thebass lessons work? The instructor shows students a picture of a work of art. The class then follows this four-step process:
- Identify – Children describe what they see in the picture and respond to a “need” or challenge posed by the teacher.
- Discuss – Students brainstorm and come up with ideas to solve the challenge.
- Envision – Working alone or in teams, students create a “prototype” or model using pencils and paper, or all sorts of inexpensive found material.
- Assess – Students explain their work to their classmates, who will ask questions and make suggestions.
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Recently, the Bass Museum of Art hosted a discussion about artistic collaboration by Ghada Amer and Reza Farhkoneh, who have been friends since their days at art school in France in the 1980s. One day in 1999, while Reza was hanging out in Ghada’s studio, he decided to add some color to one her paintings while she was out. “Why did you do this to my work?” asked the shocked Ghada. “I just wanted to make it better,” Reza replied. Even if Ghada did not agree that Reza’s alteration of her painting was necessarily an improvement, she was intrigued by the idea of dealing with his unexpected intervention. At this time a bout of severe depression had caused Reza to abandon painting. Ghada nurtured Reza’s return to creative activity by inviting him to continue to apply background colors to her canvases. As their practice developed, Reza began to explore his own mark making, "During depression I could not do anything. ” Reza explained, “ So when we began, for me it was just action. I was not even thinking. Ghada took the whole responsibility. She gave me a comfortable margin to work within."
Ghada gained as much as Reza in this process, because she saw this exchange as an opportunity to step outside of herself. For both artists, the excitement lay in the decision to let go of their egos, which allowed them to see their actions as a creative dialogue, not an attempt by one artist to dominate the other. For each painting that they felt was finished, Reza and Ghada tossed a coin to decide which of them would sign the work first. This enterprise was a risky career move for both artists, because critics and buyers prefer to assess works of art as the unambiguous product of one creative mind.
There is a lesson for all of us in this remarkable story of salvation via collaboration. The ability to work not just as an individual, but as part of a team that shares, compares and develops ideas, is one of the essentials skills needed to succeed in the 21st century workplace.
The mission of the IDEA@thebass program of art education is to train teachers to develop collaborative projects in their classrooms. Students will benefit from seeing the techniques, strategies, and approaches that others use in the creative process. Children can absorb the enthusiasm and joy many creative people exude as they go about the business of making something new. Finding practical ways to encourage creative performance in groups of students is essential because teachers cannot always work with students one-on-one. Because life often involves working with others, it is important to give children the chance to work collaboratively and to make the process of collaboration more creative. |
For the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallahassee, Fla., it has been a fund-raising opportunity.
The museum was in the middle of a do-or-die campaign to raise $500,000 in July when Pamela Marsh, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Florida, ordered the Brogan to hold onto a 16th-century painting on loan from an Italian gallery because it might have been stolen from a Jewish family during World War II.
Recognizing a chance to raise its profile and attract donors, the Florida museum trumpeted the news on its Web site with the headline “The Brogan Museum at the Center of International Intrigue.”
The rest of the works from a 50-piece exhibition of Baroque painting in Lombardy went back in September to the museum that lent them, the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, while the work in dispute, Girolamo Romano’s “Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rogue,” from 1538, remains on the Brogan’s third floor until its ownership is settled.
“The Barbie’s Dream World for me would have been that the case unfolded while I had the whole exhibition on the third floor,” said Chucha Barber, the Brogan’s chief executive. Still, she said she hoped the flush of publicity might attract desperately needed donors.
“I only have to strike a chord in one person,” she said.
Italian officials in Rome are now negotiating with the family of Giuseppe Gentili, which says the collaborationist Vichy government in France seized the painting and sold it at auction in 1941. The Baroque exhibition, which closed last month, was the first time the Milan gallery, which is run by the Italian government, had agreed to lend an entire collection to an American institution.
Ms. Barber said she was told not to return the painting until the dispute was resolved. A spokeswoman for Ms. Marsh said the United States Attorney’s Office could not comment on an investigation.
“There were three possibilities,” Ms. Barber explained. The United States attorney could have taken custody of the painting and put it in storage; the United States customs service could have seized it as stolen property; or the Brogan itself could have renegotiated its contract with the Pinacoteca to continue to display the painting, which is ultimately what occurred.
Actually, there was a fourth possibility of which the Brogan officials were unaware: asking the State Department to declare the museum immune from any seizure order. The existence of this escape hatch has served to defuse fears among American museum curators that works they have borrowed could be seized, legal experts say.
Given how unusual this sort of situation is, the museum’s ignorance of this option is understandable, said Jennifer Anglim Kreder, co-chairwoman of the American Society of International Law’s Interest Group on Cultural Heritage and the Arts. She said she was aware of only one other instance in which a United States attorney tried to seize an artwork involved in a Holocaust-related dispute that was on loan to an American museum.
In that episode, the United States attorney in New York seized “A Portrait of Wally,” by Egon Schiele, which had been lent to the Museum of Modern Art by an Austrian museum. The case was finally settled in 2010 after more than a decade of legal wrangling, with the Austrian institution, the Leopold Museum in Vienna, keeping the painting and agreeing to pay the original owner’s family $19 million.
“I was a very naïve museum director,” Ms. Barber acknowledged. “But our naïveté probably worked to our advantage in that the painting is still here and that people will come see it. And it certainly worked to the family’s advantage.”
Nearly 23,000 visitors made their way through the Brogan for the Baroque exhibition during its run. Ms. Barber said that even before the recession, the museum had been in financial difficulty. “We’ve just cut and cut and cut,” she said, noting that without additional donations, the museum is in danger of closing.
The Romano painting, which opened both the show and the accompanying catalog, was insured for about $2.3 million, Ms. Barber said.
The dispute has chilled the Brogan’s relations with the Pinacoteca. “They’re only mad at us because we talked to the press,” Ms. Barber said. “The reality is that they would have preferred that we never say anything to anybody.”
In an e-mail, Sandrina Bandera, the director of the Pinacoteca, declined to comment, referring questions to the Italian Culture Ministry.
A spokesman for the ministry said only that officials there and at the Italian Attorney General’s Office were in contact with officials in Florida and with the American Embassy in Rome “to determine a solution that will be mutually satisfactory to both sides.” The Pinacoteca acquired the painting in 1998.
Ms. Barber said that after hearing from the United States attorney, she spoke with Lionel Salem, who lives in London and is one of Giuseppe Gentili’s grandchildren. He has doggedly tried to recover the family’s property since Mr. Gentili died and his children fled Paris to escape the Nazis. After extended legal battles, Mr. Salem has managed to reclaim five paintings from the Louvre, as well as money that Mr. Gentili deposited in a Swiss bank during the war.
Ms. Barber said that Mr. Salem had told her that he had contacted the Pinacoteca about “Christ Carrying the Cross” roughly 10 years ago, but never received a reply.
Mr. Salem said he was declining press interviews during the negotiations.
Ms. Barber noted that the Italian government had used legal tactics and public pressure to get American institutions like the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles to return stolen antiquities, adding, “It’s kind of interesting how the Karmic wheel turns.”
Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting from Rome.
via nytimes.com
