We boldly go where no teens have gone before!

This week the WAMTAC visited object storage with the amazing Mike McKee! Mike is an art handler at the Walters and on any given day he can be found with cotton gloves, a cart, and a priceless piece of history. Moving the art from storage or to the conservation lab, packing pieces for travel, or fitting cases for an exhibition are just a few tasks that he and his posse of art handlers undertake on a daily basis.

For security and safety reasons (the safety of the art, that is) we couldn’t take any photos inside of the actual storage area, but here we are crowing into the hallway and waiting with bated breath for Mike to take us to where the paintings, drawings, objects, and artifacts that aren’t on view are safely secured.

The storage area is just one of several locations inside the museum where works of art within the collection are stored for safe keeping.  The area we visited is referred to as the “Long Museum” and it must be kept at a cool 70 degrees and 50% humidity.  Once inside, we had a chance to see the drawers and flat files containing delicate scroll paintings, ancient papyrus, and sketches by the likes of Barye stacked from floor to ceiling. Peering down the hall we saw rows and rows of shelves with fragile Asian enamels and carved portraits from ancient Yemen. At the end of a long corridor next to a large ancient amphora a bust of  Benjamin Franklin smiled back at us.

Each work of art within the collection has its own unique accession number that helps the registrar and staff catalog and track the piece. In the digital record system those accession numbers function like the Dewey Decimal System and correspond to the condition report, acquisition records, and exhibition information for each piece.  Out in the galleries, an object’s accession number can be found at the end of the label and you can search the on-line catalog of the museum collection by accession number.

Mike showed us the large rolling “screens” covered with canvases and panel paintings in gilded frames. The Renaissance, Baroque, 19th-Century, decades of art history traversed by curators, historians, scholars , and conservators inches from our fingertips.  Madeleine raised the question, “Who decides what goes out into the gallery and what stays hidden in storage?”

Mike explained that conservators and curators often make the decisions regarding the works of art displayed on the museum floor and Madeleine regarded that some of the objects in front of us now may never be seen by the public.  We imagined a shopping mall sized “reject museum” full of the artworks overflowing from object storage in museums around the world.

At the National Gallery, curators have chosen the works of art to secure in a “black box” in case of an emergency or disaster. Strict criteria are used to decide which works of art will “re-populate” art history in the event of an “Artistic Armageddon”. The Walters may not have an “emergency stash” that we know of yet, but if we stay on Mike’s good side, who knows what else we can convince him to share?

Mike also added that conservation concerns and restrictions, the same that inform pieces chosen for special exhibitions or loans, also can dictate the time a work of art can spend out on view.  Light, heat, humidity, and exposure are important considerations that the curators and other museum staff must remember when mounting an exhibit for display. Exhibition teams of staff from throughout the museum come together years in advance to begin planning and funding an exhibition and the process for a large show can take over four years from start to finish, often longer!

Mike pointed out a few of his favorite “hidden treasures”, including an Art Deco era wooden cabinet and a mirror with a sculpted frame of wooden angels with feathery wings.  Although he has been working with the collection for years, he always manages to find something new and exciting hidden in the recesses of the “Long Museum”.

“The other day at the very back corner of the very farthest screen I found this great little painting,” he tells us.

After starring with gaping mouths and unblinking eyes for about an hour, we filed out of the Long Museum in awe of the millennia of quietly hiding works of art waiting for their turn to be re-discovered.

“An Accident” in the Galleries the Other Day!

The other day we went in to the galleries where we discovered An Accident, painted by 19th-Century French artist Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret in 1879. After some serious looking and discussion (along with some paper swapping!) we created the following poems based on our observations.

He fell and did he get hurt?
He broke his hand. Curious.
He fell and broke his hand. Indifferent.
And curious he fell and broke his
His hand. Did he get hurt?
Anonymous

I am curious
as to who the old man is?
He is caked in black, brown,
and blue.
Do you not see the worry
on his face?
Or is it just marred with the woes of country life?
Black, brown and blue.
Black, brown and blue.
Caroline

Pain…an emotion I feel that shows I’m sane…
Grief…once passed I feel such relief…
Quiet…as you are now reading my poem…
Exhaustion…how I feel from writing this poem just quite right.
DeMarcus

God laughs and giggles @ the agonies of his pets
As the wildest of his children weep with massive regret
Fighting and destruction were the lust of the night
While the Lord had a devious plan to dismantle that fight
Our Saviour showed his wrath to wring blood
Cascade tears
Impulse fear
Ignite worry
To prove his power and make his little ones scurry
Asia

grey light shining on worried faces
curiosity peaks and life turns peach
before slashing into pain
blood red like guilt
mirrored in our eyes
Noni

Oh what pride the boy has as he
wandered outside, not seeing the world
as a crisp black and grey turned
his imagination to think everything was OK,
shortly only to find the devil made plans
to Fright. What once was a colorful room, turned
everything white. The room left asking
nothing but what happened. Close your door
when evil comes tapping.
Joshua

There was a curious
cat named Prince!
One day he didn’t find his
owner, as he is curious he
looked for him everywhere
He looked at the blue sky, sitting on its
black and brown branch, with his gold
eyes praying to find him…
Khamish

Who attacked the boy?
The sad, grey dog attacked him.
He is white from shock.
Steven

poor Blake, stained red
from an honest mistake
sympathy, relief, “at least he’s not dead”
they say for his sake
he isn’t fooled by these words he is fed
he knows he’d be better off dead
Anonymous

Oh my God painful
my focus is on this boy
so what happened here?

Wow, look at the bowl
that is a painfully large
amount of blood there.

ow ow ow ow ow
ow ow ow ow ow ow ow
ow ow oh that hurt
Sofia

Teen Homeschool Drawing Workshop

Last week students came to our teen homeschool drawing workshop  and were working on using light and shadow to show form. Check out their drawings from the gallery and our studio! When was the last time you sketched in a museum or gallery?

Sofia Says Video

I’m Sofia. I was prompted to create a video about a piece of art and how it relates to me. I hope you enjoy this!

Last night we had the strangest dreams….

Last night I had this crazy dream that I was a fortune teller with a dragon crystal ball.  People would come to me from all over, some were children, some adults, but all asking the same thing, “What does my fortune hold?”  I look back at them through the glass, waiting for them to pay, to give me the coin.  Then they all do.  So I rub the crystal ball an emit their fortune.  Some times they smile, sometimes a frown, some give no reaction at all.  But there is one thing they all always say, “What a strange machine.”  Dragon Supporting a Crystal Ball

Last night I had the strangest dream. I awoke to the sound of a ringing bell, but in a room so much unlike my own.  The floor below me was cold and smooth.  From wall to ceiling, the entire room sparkled, a tiny box of glittering gold.  I opened the door into another room just as sparking and cold as the last.  Door after door I ran through what felt like hundreds of tiny gold rooms, luminescent hallways, narrow and dark.  I must have climbed five flights of stairs, but every room was the same, shiny, lonely, and cold. “Hello!” I screamed, in the hopes that someone would hear, but no one was there. Only the echoed song of my scream and the distant chime of a gilded bell, blown by the touch of a north wind.  Okimono of a Pagoda

Last night I had the strangest dream.  I was in a world of endless pillars.  The same grey dashes shooting at the sky.  The structure above was as mundane as any other building, but it was raised 30 feet by hundreds of grey stilts.  I was running between the stilts searching for a way out.  The red and white checkered tile drifted beneath my feet and suddenly I came to a fountain where a young woman was bathing as an old man leered.  David and Bathsheba

Last night I had the strangest dream.  The room was dark, more than dark-the darkness was oppressive.  Weighing down on my body, filling my lungs up like warm liquid.  The humidity made my body burn, but not sweat.  There was no relief.  Thick wool blankets enveloped me like the encasement of a mummy.  Sharp whispers reached my ears, all of a sudden the darkness was replaced by light, white and blinding.  Cold metal was pressed to my warm neck offering relief.  It pressed deep, sliding across with ease.  Wet, red blood poured down my sweatless arms.  A moment of sheer terror shot through my body and I reached out to the humid darkness, only to be calmed by the tight icy grasp of a stranger. Judith and Holifernes

Last night I had the strangest dream that  I was wandering through the desert.  I was contemplating the shortness of our lives.  What is my purpose as a mere human on this earth? Here I stand, holding a skull, feeling it with my hands, the curvature of the structure, the symmetry. This a mere relic of the past, now organic dust, was once the treasure trove of human thought.  What makes me, an insignificant figure of flesh and bone, living?  What makes me a man?  Am I one with the skull?  What is to become of me? Am I one day going to be a mere relic of another time?  Here I stand, I can do nothing more, God help me!  I remember his fulfilling spirit, of what makes me complete. I, a mystic, understand that one cannot live on bread alone, but the eternal bread, the dread of life.  I stand here holding this gift from heaven. My spirit and food which God has sent to me. I smell what almost smells like incense ethereal sky.  My God provides for me and I am grateful. Saint Paul the Hermit

Last night I had the strangest dream, or rather a nightmare.  The world was colored by moonlight alone and the setting was a grave-like shrine.  Four monsters formed a square arena around the area.  A melancholy lion, a statuesque bull, the three-headed dog Cerberus, and a monstrous hydra.  They framed a lonely battle scene where two men wearing little clothes wrestled each other, the only pale light in the scene reflecting off their skin.  An old hag watched from the nearby shadows cast off the grave-shrine.  The look on her face showed anguish.  Whomever was losing was important to her.  The fight ended when one of the men, dressed in a silver lion’s pelt, threw the other man against a rock.  The banshee let out a shriek of hatred, pain, horror, and malice before disappearing in a puff of smoke.  Heracles, the triumphant man, slowly straightened himself out, the last pale light in a world of shadows.  The light from the other man all but died, and the shadows began to creep in closer to Heracles.  In shock, he tried to leap from his pool of light, but the ever-growing darkness burned and kept him trapped in that spot forever. Medallion with Hercules

Last night I had the strangest dream where I was the famous Shakespeare character, Macbeth.  I saw the three witches huddled close together and apparitions of babies in the sky.  Below them, the image of myself and Lady Macbeth.  The witches spoke to me, the first witch telling me of my fate on earth, the second witch stared up at the heavens in awe and the third beckoned me with her twisted and bony claw.  The Penitent Magdalene

Last night I had the strangest dream that I found a pale naked infant sleeping on my kitchen table.  Not far from the child I saw a young woman and an old man sitting on the floor and reading to the child.  The room was dark and very cold.  When I asked the woman if the baby was hers she didn’t say a word.  She continued to look at her book and smiled. The Infant Christ Sleeping

Last night I had the strangest dream that I had seen a dead ferret locked in a glass box as I walked through the Walters Art Museum.  It scared me so badly that I jumped.  It looked so fake with its fur and feet and on its head was something gold and shiny.  The gold mask covering the face made me think that the animal was disfigured.  It lay there like it was just struck by a car and its face might be flattened or smashed.  NO, NO, NO! I wouldn’t want to walk past that thing ever again! It may jump out of that glass box and chase me through the museum. It may want to eat me up! Marten’s Head

The Warhol

 

 

Entrance to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

 

     Last month, during a college tour of the city of Pittsburgh, I had the opportunity to visit the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA - a testament to this renowned artist in his very own hometown. All I really knew about Warhol was that he’s a pop art icon, a legend. “Warhol” instantly evokes images of a Campbell’s Soup Can or a neon Marilyn Monroe in your mind’s eye. The Andy Warhol Museum was certainly the place to learn more about the man behind these iconic images.  

 The experience:

     A larger than life Andy Warhol greets you at the entrance of the museum – a stunning yellow and black silkscreen self portrait, hair askew. The traditional and recognizable style is indicative of the many more famous works inside, but also contrasts with the array of Warhol’s work that I hadn’t know of. We were advised by staff to first explore the intro gallery – essentially a walk-through timeline of Andy’s life – and then to proceed to the 7^th floor, and work our way down. Of the many spaces and themes to explore, three spaces in particular stood out in my mind: a dark room full of small TV monitors, mounted to appear suspended in the space, a room of projected videos played simultaneously on several large screens, and lastly, a small space where Andy’s clouds were floating freely.  

      The first two spaces, ironically, pertain to video – a medium that is not easily displayed in the “static” manner that is typical in a museum setting. Both spaces created physical interaction between the viewer and the monitors or screens in space. As the viewer, it’s up to you to navigate through the space, where to direct your attention, and what to take out of the experience overall. Personally, I didn’t have any rhyme or reason to approach these galleries – I took a moment to survey the room, and led myself be drawn to the clips that interested me most. From both of these exhibits, we are able to taste Warhol’s passion for television and the concept of capturing life in real time. These snippets of life made “art” are perhaps examples of one of the most notable effects of Warhol’s work – his ability to recreate the mundane.  

     The third space that stood out in my mind also engaged the viewer in an interesting way – the room of Andy’s clouds. These silver pillow-like “clouds” float as if the air is heavy and the seconds are ticking by in slow motion – a visual experiences that is definitely untraditional, and quite honestly, difficult to put into words. For that reason, see it for yourself here!

http://youtu.be/SCWrc9ZUTC8

     Overall, my experience at the Warhol museum definitely redefined my perception of museums! I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the dynamic nature of video with the traditionally static displays in museums, and the way in which the museum captured the quirky spirit of Andy Warhol.

 

- Danielle

Relics and Reliquaries, New and Old

How do you remember or honor someone or something? Maybe you have that one special box full of ticket stubs and fortunes, or an urn of a loved one’s ashes sitting on the mantle. To Christian worshipers and pilgrims, the reliquaries or vessels that hold sacred contents were of utmost importance – almost as important as the sacred contents themselves and the saints and idols that they represent. Although modern practices may differ from those of Medieval Christians, the core of devotion and remembrance are the same. Two new exhibitions currently on view at the Walters explore these themes by means of reliquaries – both historic and contemporary.

A couple of weeks ago, WAMTAC had the opportunity to experience “Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe” for the first time (on view through May 15^th). This exhibition explores Medieval Christians’ veneration of saints through reliquaries – ornate gold and jewel-encrusted vessels constructed beautifully enough to rightfully signify the status of the sacred items they contain.

To avoid that unfulfilling initial walk-though, overwhelmed by presence of the remarkable artifacts around us, we first walked through to hear the basic information, and then explored individually the second time through with questions in hand to discuss afterwards. As I walked through, I picked up on the rich royal blue and burgundy on the walls, the many shapes and forms that reliquaries take on, and the interactive aspects of the experience that allow visitors to become a part of the exhibit. I couldn’t help but consider faith, and the psychology of religion. Faith is an undeniable, underlying motif represented in every single piece – the common factor that brought people and these objects together. How could a tangible thing be so in tune with the divine? How did the ownership of such reliquaries hold so much political power and influence as well?

We discussed these impressions and thoughts as well as our personal stand-outs, which included a relic containing the tooth of Mary Magdalene, a golden arm designed hold a saint’s arm bone, and an intricate mosaic cabinet containing dozens of small containers. We discussed whether a vessel is as important as a relic inside, as well as reliquaries and relics in our own lives – baby teeth, crafts from second grade, various collections, and more. With our group, the weirder the better!

The relevance we were able to find in our own lives is the perfect segue to the second exhibition I mentioned: “Relics and Reliquaries Reconsidered”, on view at the Walters through May 22^nd. At WAMTAC’s meeting this past week, we had the opportunity to explore this exhibit as well, looking to our impressions of “Treasures of Heaven” to draw comparisons. The show consists of the works of eleven emerging MICA artists enrolled in the interdisciplinary sculpture course Relics, Reliquaries and Enshrined Materials – pieces created in response to the historic reliquary tradition, and a reliquary as not only a concrete object, but a representation of a greater power.

Thoughts to share? How do you think our experiences in these exhibitions compared? Are reliquaries as sacred as their contents? Is a “reliquary” of sorts an important part of your life?

I encourage you to learn more about “Relics and Reliquaries Reconsidered” and “Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe” at http://thewalters.org/exhibitions/current.aspx.

-  Danielle