On Museum Tours
By a new Contemporary intern, Megan

After visiting the Contemporary, I usually leave with many new thoughts swirling around in my head. For me, experiencing art is like opening the door to a room full of new thoughts and ideas. Each artist has a different way of thinking about art, emotion, gender, politics, religion, and even life itself. These ideas, when expressed in many different forms of art, have the capability to stir my imagination, to make me think about things differently. One thing I had never really thought about, though, was the process of giving a tour at the Contemporary. I recently followed a museum employee as she led a small group of high school art students on a tour of the works of Chantal Akerman and Carey Young. While watching her speak, I realized the hard work and passion that goes into leading each tour.

Contemporary tour guides act as instigators of ideas. They know each exhibition thoroughly, they understand some of the artists’ motives, and they have their own interesting ideas about each work. However, guides are not there to push their ideas; instead, they prompt visitors to think of their own. They explain, make comments, ask questions, and encourage each visitor to actually think about what they’re viewing.

The current Contemporary exhibitions aren’t of the “normal” types of art, works that can be seen or touched. Chantal Akerman’s show, Moving Through Time and Space, is a video installation in which visitors walk through galleries of movies and sounds. And in Carey Young’s exhibition, Speech Acts, visitors personally interact with call center agents through a telephone connection. At first, I didn’t know how to react to these unusual forms of art. But that’s where the tour guide came into play. She explained some of the artists’ ideas, introduced a few of her own, and then asked me to think about how I felt about the works. She pointed me in the right direction, then nudged me down the path of my own realization.

Art isn’t only something that can be seen, touched, or heard. Art is also created IN you, when you actively view it, and when it initiates the production of your own ideas. Viewers don’t have to accept everything they see or hear as the complete truth. Instead, they can form their own opinions; and the ability to do so is what makes each person, and his or her reaction, a work of art.

The tour guides at the Contemporary have introduced me to many new forms of artwork and prompted me to come up with my own ideas about everything with which I come into contact, whether or not it is normally considered “art.” And do you want to know one of my new ideas? Perhaps giving tours is an art form in itself.

 Last week I let you know about a collaboration the museum did with local high school, Metro Academic and Classical High School. On Tuesday, May 19 this collaborative project was dedicated at the school. Students were able to hear a little bit of background on how the project came to be and the work that went behind it. The sculpture “Untitled” Gathering Place is a wonderful addition to the schools grounds, and from the excitement that I witnessed from the students during the dedication, it will serve its purpose well. Click here to read more on the project and see the images from the dedication below.
    

Now with the Opening Night of Chantal Akerman: Moving Through Time and Space and Carey Young: Speech Acts behind us, it is about time for more insight on the works. If you haven’t already visited the exhibition pages on our website, I recommend taking a look at them first. The pages will provide an initial briefing on the artists and what they are doing at the Contemporary, and will share pre-installation images. Then, navigate to a past blog post that provides links to articles about the artists and their art work. Finally, take a look (or even just listen) to the video podcasts on each of the artists. (Once on the Contemporary’s podcast page, click on the way you would like to view them, URL, download on itunes or RSS). They will give you more in-depth information on the ideas behind the work as well as themes to think about. If you leave your thoughts and ideas as comments here, we’ll address them in a future post. And to get a little idea of what the installation looks like at the museum, take a look at some of the images from Opening Night, and then come back to see more installation images in the coming weeks. 

Currently, in The Front Room, the Contemporary is showing works by three women artists, Olga Chernysheva, R.H. Quaytman, and Josephine Pryde and in the Main Galleries, showing work by Chantal Akerman and Carey Young, also both women artists. So from now until May, 31 you can take a stroll through the museum and see the work of five contemporary, women artists…that is pretty great. Here is a video tour of the work in The Front Room:

During an exhibition season the Contemporary typically holds at least two public lectures or discussions on contemporary art topics and the exhibiting artists. Just recently, we hosted Terrie Sultan, who is the Director of the Parrish Art Museum and the organizing curator of the Chantal Akerman exhibition, and artist Carrie Young, to talk about the work that just opened. On Wednesday, May 20, Maria Lind, Director of the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies, will talk about the work of the show. Here is a link to an essay Lind wrote about Carey Young.

It is interesting to be able to get so many views of the work. You can attend these lectures, you can read about the shows in the gallery guides and on our website, and you can also hear a curator talk about the shows on tours or a video podcast. It isn’t hard to get many opinions and to hear many ideas on the work we show here…the harder part is pulling that information together to form your own ideas and understandings.

For two years the Contemporary and Metro Academic Classical High School collaborated on a project through the Contemporary’s education program ArtReach. Now, this student-created sculpture is complete and ready to present to the public! The sculpture is called “Untitled” Gathering Place and will reside at the high school as a place for students to meet and mingle. It was partially inspired by Maya Lin’s sculpture, Peace Chapel at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA, as students became inspired by her work after studying it during her exhibition Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes at the Contemporary in 2007. These students worked incredibly hard to complete the planning, designing, and building and they also learned lesson about process and communication as they worked with each other, as well as with adults in their community. The public dedication of is on Tuesday, May 19 on the ground of their school. Everyone involved in this project should feel very proud!

Opening Night of Chantal Akerman: Moving Through Time and Space and Carey Young: Speech Acts in the Main Galleries and of three artists in The Front Room was Friday evening. Everyone I talked to that night and everyone I have been corresponding with through emails about the shows seem to want to know more about the artists, and the “why” behind their work. I will see if I can be a good resource for that that on this blog throughout the time the shows are on view. Let’s start with a review by an critic in St. Louis that got picked up by the California Chronicle. Here is the introduction of the review:

There is a lot of history in the work of filmmaker Chantal Akerman. It’s right there in the title of this exhibition featuring five of her documentary works made since 1995: “Moving through time and space.” Isn’t that a way to define history?

Click here to read the full article.

The night of the Opening there were lines of people waiting for the chance to get to experience the work of Carey Young. Her exhibition is in a space we often do not use to show work; it is outside of our gallery space, in what is normally our education resource center and conference room. Click here to read more about what it is she is doing here, and here to see an article in Artforum. Keep checking back for more insight.

 A few staff members took walk through our galleries yesterday to take a look at the shows opening tonight. It is amazing how different our space looks. The wall of windows is now completely blocked off like they never existed, the lights are dim, there are new walls and hallways, and one gallery even has carpet. During our walk-through our Assistant Curator gave us a bit of insight on the shows and the artists. Hearing her talk for that brief time-making connections and filling us in on behind-the-scenes information-made me more and more intrigued. There are many topics and ideas to go along with these shows and it seems they will bring up much discussion. Take a look at a few images (yes…BEFORE the shows open)!

We are still in install mode, and on our way to being ready for Opening Night (which is in two days)! But, before we venture into the discussions of the new exhibitions, there is one more review of the Gedi Sibony show to share with you. First you saw one from ArtReview, then from a visitor who only could view the show virtually. Now read this one from a visitor who witnessed the show on one of the last days it was on view in the Contemporary.

My Arms are Tied Behind My Other Arms
The first piece I saw as I walked into Gedi Sibony’s exhibition, My Arms Are Tied Behind My Other Arms, was a yellow metal picture frame entitled Can It Can’t It. I was forced to respond, “I don’t know. I think I’m lost.”  Gedi Sibony’s works, created from found materials in a neutral color scheme of bare wood, nude carpet, and clear plastic, left me conflicted as I walked through the space. It was difficult, at first, to get beyond the boldly unchanged materials, but at the same time, I was drawn to the neat monoliths and anthropomorphic door frames. Part of me wanted to appreciate the clean lines and inventive familiarity of his work, as in The Tooth Finder. At the same time, there were pieces of carpet engaged in a very public kiss in the middle of the room (XXXX).

I have to believe that this dual response is Sibony’s intention. There is an optimism and lightheartedness to the space that encourages viewing the work with good humor. His work is representative of a generation with renewed vigor for conservation and nostalgia for reality. My Arms are Tied Behind My Other Arms is about as real as you can get, to the extent that, at times, the gallery seemed to be under construction, with whitewashed panels leaning against the walls (Duck Dive). The choice to re-use construction materials without much alteration extends the exhibition space into the outside world, either making it current and relatable, or confusing the hell out of visitors. 

Still, by the end of my visit, I was fully on board with Sibony’s work. I unabashedly buy into his simple materials and shapes. It is refreshing to view an artist who is both playful and idealistic, who can both recycle planks into an intricately beautiful still life (Probably Eight or Half of Each) and make scraps of carpet kiss.

The last review was by ArtReview, this one is by a visitor. This is not your typical museum visitor, as she has never once set foot inside the Contemporary. She instead, viewed the exhibition virtually by looking through the museum’s website pages, watching videos, and reading blog posts. Here is what she had to say:
My Arms Are Tied Behind… My Computer

For those of you who had the opportunity to see Gedi Sibony’s exhibition My Arms Are Tied Behind My Other Arms, consider yourselves lucky. I, unfortunately, was unable to visit the Contemporary during the exhibition; however, I was inspired by Sibony’s work after simply viewing the links on this blog.

While unable to fully appreciate the way Sibony uses space, angles, light and shadow, I was struck by the concept of the work. This exhibition was created from useless, discarded waste. Things that were originally thrown out as trash were reinvented and reshaped into something so much more. Sibony did not “create” art, but rather, he maximized things that were already there.

Another thing I loved about this exhibition was the idea that you don’t have to do something for it to become done. By not doing it, you end up doing it. This reminded me of a project I was assigned in eighth-grade art class. I was painting a landscape, and I wanted it to be perfect. I painstakingly dabbed for just the right amount of paint, playing with colors and brushes and blending techniques until I finished the work. Then I stepped back and saw, not my finished painting, but the scrap of paper I had used to swipe off my brushes. I saw beauty in the mess of colors carelessly blotted on an unremarkable background. It was that scrap, not my actual painting, that I hung on my wall at home. And that’s what I think is illustrated in Sibony’s exhibition: The art finds the artist. You just have to be ready to see it.