Roger Brown Study Collection

In truth, I'd never heard of the Roger Brown Study Collection until I started the museum studies program. I'd walked by the nondescript building before, even stopping to pose outside of it this summer not knowing that an eclectic collection of art, tchotchkes, and familial memorabilia were hidden within the brick structure.

Oh you know, just hanging out next to a secret museum

Having visited the museum on Tuesday, my mind keeps wandering back to the collection as well as the intention of the space itself. Roger Brown collected and displayed objects, ones that carried an aura that surpassed the convention of the hierarchical nature of the art world. Handmade Girl Scout projects are displayed on an equal plane next to Ray Yoshida, Richard Hull, and family keepsakes. Lumpy ceramic pots by sculptural novices are given the same spotlight as handcrafted Alabama baskets and a large collection of arts & crafts architectural models of churches.

Erasing the hierarchy of the art museum, the aura of the objects carry the weight of importance.

Like any museum, there were rules. Don't sit on the furniture and don't touch the objects. But if you wanted to take a peek inside of his medicine cabinet or a closer look at his genealogy case, just ask a glove-wearing museum worker and they'd be happy to open things up for you. Walk out to the garage, and take a seat in his Mustang, they don't mind. Because the house museum is still a home. It breathes and creaks as any other home does, despite that fact that it's not inhabited in the typical way a house is lived in.

Nothing is off limits. And for good reason! Notice the little illustration on the second shelf next to the magnifying glass?

While it might strike a museumgoer as being a bit odd, this different approach to museum practice is at the core of Roger Brown's intention for the space. Inspired by the Artist's Museum he'd seen on a road trip in South Dakota in 1972, Brown wanted to create a space for his collection  grounding the Chicago Artist's Museum in his home and studio at 1926 N. Halsted. He curated the space creating unexpected dialogues between objects. Moments in his home/museum are evocative of the work he created, prone to whimsy, color, pattern, and a mish mosh of inspiration. 

In addition to the Roger Brown Study Collection being the site of an eclectic gatherings of objects, it's also a space for artistic practice and educational inquiry. Having donated the home to the School of the Art Institute in the late 1990's, the school has utilized the space in a variety of ways. Staging performance art inspired by the home, doing architectural historic preservation on various aspects of the building's structure, and recontextualizing pieces of the collection into meaningful ongoing exhibition practices are just a fraction of the ways the space continues to inspire engaging work across media and explorative practices.

Though Roger Brown passed away in 1997, his artful spirit and prolific mind continue to live on, through the life brought into the house on visits and in the artistic practices he continues to inspire and engage.

Universal Declaration of Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in the Creative Impulse: My Barbarian at Gallery 400

Motherhood and the anxieties associated with it are the core themes of Universal Declaration of Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in the Creative Impulse at Gallery 400. The exhibition highlights the work of My Barbarian, a collective comprised of Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alex Segade. The works in the show were accompanied by two live performances of an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s 1932 play, The Mother, in which a radicalized depiction of motherhood is explored.

From the moment I entered the industrial space of Gallery 400, I was confronted by the sharp triangular stage – a wooden construction jutting a sharp pointed angle directly at the entrance. This introduction to the show is arresting, the downward pointing triangular shape of the stage recalling the symbol of femininity and womanhood. This object is central to a show intent on understanding motherhood and redefining gender roles in the modern era.

Though the exhibition doesn’t have many works in it, it feels complete. Flanking the stage are works that directly relate to the performance. On the left are drawings made of oil stick on brown paper crudely depicting masks, set designs, and violent statements like “YOUR SON HAS BEEN SHOT.” Each drawing is clearly handmade. There is nothing mechanical about the art, though some of the drawings depict factories and laborers – giving humanity to the labor movement, a theme that is later called out in the performance of The Mother.

The opposing wall holds thirteen papier mâché masks used in My Barbarian’s performances. The masks are sculptural, evoking classical Greek theatre, each depicting a character performed by members of My Barbarian. Upon closer viewing, the papers used to plaster the masks are reproductions of 1930’s Russian newspapers, a reference to the era in which Brecht composed The Mother, a play framed by the Bolshevik Revolution.

In two smaller galleries are video installations, one of which plays My Barbarian’s performance of The Mother in a continuous loop. This video acts as a proxy for the actors throughout the show’s run, although two performances occurred mid-September. The performances rounded out the exhibition in its ability to activate the objects in the space and personified the themes of motherhood, revolution, labor, and artistic practice that each iteration of My Barbarian’s work explores.

The Mother takes place in 1917 Russia, and portrays a mother, Mrs. Vlassova, in relationship to her rebel son Pavel. The action of the play occurs on the triangular stage and the masks become physical aids in storytelling. Gaines, Gordon, and Segado wear neutral off-white work clothes including coveralls, caps, and work boots. Though they appear to match, each of their costumes is distinct - their individuality is highlighted. The story takes place in a series of locations including the kitchen of Mrs. Vlassova, the factory where Pavel works, a prison, a teacher’s home, and sites of protest outside of the factory. The drawings are activated during the performance, projected onto the wall behind the stage to set the scene for each location.

 

The performance was punctuated by songs from the original play set to musical arrangements by Gaines. Employing theatrical tactics, My Barbarian exploits musical styles, dance, and inflections in the actors’ voices and bodies to tell the story of Mrs. Vlassova’s place in the revolution. Tied solely to the domestic space of her home, she is introduced to the revolution through her son Pavel who works in a factory. Pavel’s desire to fight for better wages involves his mother giving both her emotional and physical support. She aids the revolution through her words and her actions, eventually leaving her home to complete covert operations for the revolutionary effort, visit her son in prison, and even join in the violent protest marches.

The success of the performance lies in the liberties My Barbarian took with their interpretation of the original. The performers play multiple characters in the story. Each takes a turn at playing the mother. Even the audience has a chance to perform the mother through call and response at the end of the performance. In this way My Barbarian suggests that all people have a “maternal instinct” and the place a mother may have in stirring revolution. Revolutions don’t emerge from thin air – they are birthed, weaned, and grown. Through neutralizing costumes, the use of masks, and simplistic use of set design, My Barbarian is able to tell the story of revolution while simultaneously remarking upon the importance of the mother in nurturing social justice.

A Room With a View: Peering Into the Universe of Henry Darger

Taking a note of inspiration from Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence and subsequent written work The Small Museum published in the New York Times magazine earlier this year, I visited the Henry Darger Room Collection at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago. Below is the piece that I composed in response to the experience.

The red brick exterior of Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art is unassuming – but contained within its walls is a peek into the universe of the artist Henry Darger. Stepping into the front of the museum is like stepping into someone’s home, there were no ticket-taking kiosks or guards. This welcome is a fitting introduction for a museum that holds the only evocation of Darger’s home, a one-room apartment of creative intrigue.

As I made my way to The Henry Darger Room Collection, I acclimated myself to the style and aesthetic of outsider art. On view were naïve paintings of celebrities like Elvis, Steve Buschemi, and James Van Der Beek – which showed how spectacular the art of an untrained hand could be. Subject matter and artistic materials varied, but it was clear that the work in this museum celebrates the creative potential all people possess. Toward the back corner of the rear gallery laid Darger’s Room. Entering the room is an experiential feast for the eyes. Though the space was cluttered, it felt sacred – a sanctuary tucked away from the hustle of the city streets.

 
There were piles of National Geographic magazines and stacks of mismatched boxes each hand labeled to reveal the contents within. To my right was a tattered wicker laundry basket full to the brim with rolled balls of twine. Magazine cutouts, religious ephemera, images of little girls, and photographs of plumes of smoke were framed and hung in a rhythmic pattern on the chocolate brown walls. I felt inspired while immersed in this space, the walls a collage of imagery and a large assortment of art supplies well within my grasp.

The ground that wasn’t covered in art supplies revealed hardwood floors. There was a wrought iron fireplace and oak mantel peppered with religious figurines and flanked by framed drawings of the Vivian Girls – images Darger used as source material throughout his sixty-year career. To my left was a table covered in coloring books, crayons, tubes of acrylic paint, and neat piles of magazines and newspaper tied with twine.

But what grabbed me was the desk where he worked. Beneath a dimly lit chandelier sat a circular wooden table. It was covered with faded magazines, repurposed cigar boxes filled with crayons, acrylics, and watercolors, and a single cartoon of a little girl. Above the table hung an array of framed images, my favorite written in Darger’s familiar scrawl NO SMOKING UNDER NO CONDITIONS??! – a humorous message made for and seen only by Darger. It was at this desk that he put pen to paper, painstakingly transferring images of little girls and men on horseback into his fanciful landscapes of a fantasy world that made sense to him alone. The chair mirrored the desk in its clutter, there was nowhere to sit, there was nowhere to rest.

It wasn’t until I read the single didactic panel that it hit me – there wasn’t a bed in the room. Darger’s work, a combination of drawings and writings some of which were twelve feet in length, were so large he couldn’t fully open them in his one room apartment. So devoted to his work, he ultimately chose to store his art supplies on his bed sleeping at the table and chair in which he worked, hence the omission of a bed in this display.

The limited didactic material in the room led me to examine in detail the desk, the framed images, and the various containers. I mentally reached out to open the boxes and thumbed through stacks of magazines. I imagined what it would be like to live in solitude existing in a creative fortress carefully built for one. For what was left untold by the curators was also left untold by Darger himself. What little is known of him has left space for questions and mystery. By experiencing Darger through his collection, we can only begin to form a picture of him using one of his greatest tools: the imagination.

Rapid Response Collecting: A Practice in Wall Texts for Contemporary Collecting

Rapid Response Collecting in an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum that is pioneering a critique of contemporary culture through the act of carefully collected and curated objects. In examining objects that have been selected to represent contemporary culture, the curators of the V&A are turning the focus from objects of the past (typically associated with museum display practice), in favor of turning an eye toward objects of the present. In singling out a contemporary artifact for the permanent collection, the curators are keeping objects that may potentially capture this moment in time for future generations to observe and form an understanding of what will become the impending past.

Some of the objects currently on display at the V&A include:

• A 3D Printed Handgun
• A pair of Primark cargo trousers, made in Bangladesh
• A set of Katy Perry false eyelashes
• Christian Louboutin shoes in five shades of "nude"

In response to Rapid Response Collecting, my Writing for Exhibitions course had each of us select three objects that represent the here and now of contemporary culture. Accompanying the pieces of our selection are succinctly written wall texts to aid in framing the objects on display.

9/11 Memorial Museum Commemorative Cheese Platter

2014

This controversial cheese platter in the shape of the United States marks the three locations where the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred. When the 9/11 Memorial Museum opened its doors on May 21, 2014, the tray wasn’t part of an exhibit—it was sold through the gift shop. There was an immediate public outcry over the object’s questionable taste, and the platter was quickly removed from the shelves. The 9/11 platter raises questions about the types of retail items museum stores choose to sell: is there a line between commemorative object and kitschy souvenir?

Stock photo from the launching of HealthCare.gov

2013

On October 1, 2013 the Affordable Care Act launched the HealthCare.gov website. The problem was the website didn’t work. Users were greeted by the smile of a mysterious woman—a stock photo image that soon became an icon of the website’s unsuccessful launch. In the days that followed HealthCare.gov’s debut, millions of people tried and failed to purchase healthcare. The anonymous woman’s smiling face served as an ironic counterpart to the public’s frustration with a broken, ineffectual website. At the same time, this now-iconic image also symbolizes the start of health insurance reform in this country.

Unworn Hazmat Suit (2014 Ebola Outbreak)

2014

“The personal protective equipment we wore in the Ebola Treatment Unit becomes excruciatingly hot, with temperatures inside the suit reaching up to 115 degrees. It cannot be worn for more than an hour and a half.” – Dr. Kent Brantly

While working in West Africa Dr. Kent Brantly treated patients with the Ebola virus and, after contracting the disease, became a patient himself. After testing positive for Ebola Brantly returned to the US for treatment. His treatment led to  worldwide media coverage of the virus, a response to him being white and American with a disease afflicting predominantly West Africans.

As of September 2014, an estimated 2,630 people have died from what is now known to be the worst Ebola virus breakout in history. Doctors are fighting tirelessly to contain the disease, but it shows no signs of slowing.




To see the rest of the entries written by members of the Museum and Exhibitions Studies Program at UIC, please check out our Tumblr. 

Isa Genzken Retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

My little feet on a floor installation outside of the exhibition

Last night I visited the Isa Genzken Retrospective which recently opened at the MCA Chicago. It was free night, the show was so new I could still smell the paint and plaster, a smell I fondly reminisce about and miss frequently since my departure from the Art Institute. I walked into the show knowing nothing about Genzken, and impulse joined a group tour with a docent. We were greeted by her most recent works, a grouping of mannequins dressed in a variety of outfits to create an "environment" near the entrance of the exhibition space. But upon entering the show-proper, we stepped back in time, confronted with Genzken's early works - minimal, abstract geometries, a single readymade, photography, and video installation.

This self portrait contains two photos of Leonardo DiCaprio
as well as a photo of Andy Warhol. I approve.

Even early on, Genzken was working in a diverse manner. The curators and art historians describe Genzken as "post-medium" in that she works outside of the constraints of a single medium, opting in favor of sculpture, assemblage, film, photography, collage, and painting. But what I took away from the exhibition was that outside of being post-medium, Genzken is an an artist with two distinctive movements, pre-9/11 and post-9/11. The early works are clearly influenced by the minimalists who predate her, and her desire to breakout of that preexisting artistic practice. She experiments with form, color, and abstraction, always with a punchiness and sense of humor to her manner of work. She moves from clean mathematically precise woodwork, to bare bones concrete sculptures that feel both jiltingly cool and oddly disarming. Her work draws the viewer in, through familiar materials, eye-level installations, the use of windows, and quirky feelers that break the "fourth wall" bringing the viewer into the space of the work.

Pages from her New York scrapbook, images of her being a laid back, goofy, woman who loves New York.

As she moves through the 1990's, Genzken changes locale, falling in love with New York City. Her love for the city makes itself apparent in her architectural sculptures which seem to capture the color, fast-paced, exotic, thrilling danger of living in the city. Many of the works from this period are assemblages full of color and humor, not as painstakingly focused on clean mathematical construction, but rather on capturing the feeling of being in the city.

Post-9/11 work

But then the horrific events of 9/11 occurred and we see a shift in Genzken's work. The city she loved and called home was under attack, and in response, Genzken's works evokes a darker more violent persona. Splashes of red pop from grays and silver, recalling the layer of ash that rained down on the Financial District when the Twin Towers collapsed. The carnage and destruction was ever present in the mind of the New Yorker, and so it was ever present in Genzken's work. Anxiety, violence, destruction, and war all make themselves apparent in her post-9/11 work. The isolation of being a person in this dark new world is a theme that repeats itself through the final rooms of the exhibition, leaving the viewer with a haunting self-awareness that is so different from the color and whimsy we are greeted with upon entering the exhibition.

NASA astronauts survey the remains of abandoned
suitcases in this jilting environmental installation.

It is difficult not to walk out of this exhibition with 9/11 on the brain. With the opening of the 9/11 Memorial Museum at Ground Zero this past week, I've found myself engrossed in the various press, critiquing the opening of a museum upon an active burial site. Criticisms of the steep admission price ($24), or of the museum having a gift shop in which one can purchase 9/11 museum "souvenirs" amid a city of people who are still very carefully picking up the pieces from a tragic, confusing, destructive day. Genzken's response to 9/11 still feels fresh and raw, but she finds moments of color and lightness through the tragedy as she sorts through her own experiences from that day, and the days that followed. Her work, in that is it post-9/11 work created by a non-American lends a new approach and different view of a day in history that will forever stain our memories. 9/11 belongs to the world, our world, and she won't let us forget it.

Warhol at the Frist

Back in August I made a weekend getaway to visit a girlfriend outside of Nashville, Tennessee. After an early morning flight, we stopped for pancakes and coffee, before swinging by the Frist for their exhibition Warhol Live: Music & Dance In Andy Warhol's Work.

I really enjoyed this show because it was completely accessible. You need not know a thing about Warhol, Pop Art, or music and dance to be able to move fluidly and confidently through the galleries. The show was approachable and open - with gallery spaces bleeding into one another through the use of music playing intermittently. Films were projected on walls, couches appear for lounging, a silver clouds room was created to stage a screening of a Merce Cunningham performance, and a space was designated to recreate an Exploding Plastic Inevitable show (ie Factory era early Velvet Underground performances).

I had a lot of fun, and was happy to have a chance to play in the Silver Clouds and excited to view a clip from Horse (1965), a film I went to the Warhol Museum to view for my thesis. I even managed to sneak a picture with the clouds!!