During my first shift as a Gallery Assistant at the Pulitzer, I rotated into the Entrance Gallery and was confronted by Garbage Wall.

After spending the last month and a half collecting this garbage from around St. Louis, I stood there and realized how little time I had spent with the finished piece.

My eyes scanned over the objects in the wall, and I recognized all of them! At the sight of each piece of garbage, I was taken back to a day in the collection process. I spotted the section of a brick wall that students at Wash U found during our neighborhood clean-up, caution tape that was left in a donation box in the art room at Metro High School, and shoes collected from a local thrift store’s dumpster. I remembered touching each object (with gloves of course) as I moved it from a school, curb, or dumpster, into my truck bed, and finally into the workshop where Garbage Wall was constructed. I felt lucky to have had this experience that connected me to the piece in a very unique and exciting way.

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Nicole Stevens, Gallery Assistant, talks about Gordon Matta-Clark’s Splitting.

Wednesday afternoon, I borrowed Gallery Assistant Nicole Stevens, last on our blog with Cephalus and Procris, to continue “From the Galleries” with Urban Alchemy. In the video above, Nicole talks about Splitting on the Mezzanine while referencing two documentary photographs of the monumental piece. (Do the images seem familiar to you?) In the Pulitzer’s Cube Gallery, you’ll find Splitting: Four Corners and a print, Splitting, which artfully reveals the interior of half the house that Matta-Clark bisected and that Four Corners was taken from.

Eddie Silva is Publications Manager at Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and blogger extraordinaire for the SLSO Blog.

Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra quintet rehearses Tuesday afternoon.

On Monday, David Robertson was in town for the SLSO’s annual board meeting and to tape an interview for his selection as the St. Louis Arts Awards honoree for “Excellence in the Arts” from the Arts & Education Council. Shortly after the interview was over, David and Eric Gaston (of the artistic dept., who, among other things, produces the Pulitzer Series) and I were chatting backstage, when David heard the sounds of Ligeti’s Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet being rehearsed in the Green Room. His eyes grew wide with excitement, and he said something about the overtones in the piece in a kind of hushed, gleeful whisper.

So with that as background, I ventured over to the Pulitzer Tuesday in the early afternoon to witness the rehearsal for György Ligeti’s Ten Pieces as well as György Kurtág’s Wind Quintet, as guest blogger for the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. Thanks for the invite, Amy!

In the constant drizzle I made my way to the back door of the exquisite Pulitzer building. The quintet—Jen Nitchman, flute/alto flute/piccolo; Phil Ross, oboe/oboe d’amore/English horn; Nicolas Del Grazia, clarinet (and Jen’s husband); Roger Kaza, horn; Andy Gott, bassoon—were almost all in place at the base of the grand staircase under the Ellsworth Kelly. All but Andy, who had forgotten his music. Which made Jen think of a new Beckett play: Waiting for Gott. “Nothing to be done.” Read the rest of this entry »

Courtney holds up lost Reebok sneaker.

A single shoe. I picture either a perfectly content one legged man or a rather upset runner contemplating trashing his solo sneaker. Either way, lefty remains.

Sometimes strange things get left at the front desk of the Pulitzer. Cups of coffee, half eaten apples, earrings; little pieces of life we shed from time to time. The shoe first appeared after a symposium several months ago. The shoe was brought in by the driver who transported the participants to and from the hotel, so I assumed that we would hear again from one of the scholars eventually. Read the rest of this entry »

Greetings from Cambridge! This roving social worker (well, roving for one weekend!) just finished day 1 of a Harvard University-sponsored “conference” (more on that later) on art museums and medical education–a day filled with shared excitement, enthusiasm, and exploration. I say “conference”, because it’s really meant to be a conversation between disciplines rather than a traditional museum symposium or conference. At any rate, the day began with a series of museum explorations throughout the Sackler galleries. These experiences included writing and sketching, discussions about grief and loss (thanks, Ray, for the great story about the Buddha and a quest for a mustard seed!), and the creation of metaphors in exploring contemporary art, my favorite of which consisted of comparing a lead sculpture by Richard Serra to either two medical patients with similar scars but very different histories or relating the relationship of the sculpture to the wall that supported it to the patient and his/her support system. Just a taste of the kind of cross-disciplinary talk going on here this weekend.

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Besides the generous publicity from media outlets, the blogosphere really helped broadcast Urban Alchemy’s opening and often gave insight into the exhibition and Matta-Clark’s work. Here are several blogs linked to relevant posts: Read the rest of this entry »

As I’m sure all of you already know (because you follow our blog, facebook and twitter accounts faithfully) our Urban Alchemy / Gordon Matta-Clark exhibition opening took place last Friday from 5pm to 9pm. Admittedly, scheduling a 4 hour opening did seem like a long amount of time and we therefore planned to evaluate the visitor attendance flow every hour to figure out if, for future openings, we should open later or close earlier. Much to our excitement, we found that our 900 visitors came in a steady stream – showing up on their way home from work or arriving after a dinner on the town for a glass of wine on our mezzanine. It certainly didn’t hurt the event when the skies cleared just hours before we were slated to open, giving our guests an amazing view of a setting sun against a St. Louis skyline.

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As you can see in our recent upload of Flickr photos, a throng of art viewers circulated the galleries last Friday for the reception of Urban Alchemy. Equipped with the Flip camera and a tripod, I petitioned a few attendees to share their thoughts on this new exhibition.

Pulitzer visitors talk about Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark. Read the rest of this entry »