by Courtney Henson, Visitor Services Manager

St. Louis Art Museum docents are amazing.  For two full years the dedicated group has been planning and coordinating a huge effort: Hosting the 2011 National Docent Symposium. Over the past three days, docents from national museums have been in St. Louis and taking notes on the volunteer programs at multiple institutions here. There were guest speakers who rallied the group and breakout sessions that delved into wide ranging topics on how to assist your institution with the visitor viewing experience. “Docent”, “volunteer”, “gallery educator”. These are just a few of the names given at various institutions to the people who volunteer their time to help guests experience art. The Pulitzer had the great honor to co-host a dinner with CAM for about 100 docents and to run a workshop highlighting our Exploring Art program. 

I learned that the bulk of the docents from all over the United States and Canada had backgrounds as educators. They were not always art teachers and certainly not even always a traditional teacher, but their passion for education led them to pursue docenting. It became very clear that the job of a docent has changed over the past ten years, but each docent’s personal desire to encourage learning has evolved his/her process for interaction in the galleries. There seems to be a direct move away from didactic tours that are directly scripted and instead to engage the guests in conversations about the work. This is the approach taken at the Pulitzer. 

For our current exhibition we are trying something a little different. We are bringing together Buddhist practitioners and our PFA docents on the Mezzanine on the third and fourth Saturday’s of the month for a couple of hours in the afternoon. In Exploring Buddhism and Art , there are two minds for our guests to pick, one with expertise on the culture of Buddhism and one with expertise on the art and architecture of the Pulitzer. 

In 2013, the National Docent Symposium will be held in California, and I personally look forward to investigating how that city and the gathered docents have evolved their styles at that time. It was a truly rewarding experience to explain the Pulitzer’s methods as well as share ideas from around the country

by Courtney Henson, Visitor Services Manager

Coordinating the Frame of Reference talks has become a way to meet new and interesting people.  As a staff, we brainstorm a lengthy list of names of individuals who we think would have a diverse set of perspectives on the works in our current exhibition.  For Reflections of the Buddha, the list includes various sects of Buddhist practitioners, artists, philosophers, yoga instructors, and art historians just to name a few.  The experience of viewing Buddhist works at the Pulitzer will have different meanings for different people.  The Frame of Reference talks share in 15-minute increments one perspective. Typically we have a minimum of four speakers and move from each work with the speakers and any guests interested in hearing.  Sometimes the talks share ideas and sometimes they do not, but these short talks are a great way to get new insights on the work.  I look forward to hearing the talks this weekend and being enlightened through a whole new set of eyes.  Works discussed this Saturday, beginning at 2 p.m., include “The  Universal Gateway of Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara,” Chapter Twenty Five of the Lotus Sūtra (Miaofa lianhua jing Guanshiyin pusa pumenpin), with an Appended Heart Sūtra (Xin jing), Standing Buddha Śākyamuni (Shijiamouni), Standing Prince Shōtoku at Age Two (Shōtoku Taishi Nisaizō) and The Monk Ananda (Anantuo). 

See the schedule of speakers here.

Well it is that time again; one exhibition comes to a close and I get a moment to convert my knowledge of dream-related information into background on Buddha. Much like taking a new art history class, each semester PFA docents, gallery assistants and I learn new information to aid our guests’ experience in the galleries at the Pulitzer.  None of the gallery assistants or docents will be experts, but we aim to find ways to engage our visitors as they look  and think about the Buddhist works coming to Reflections of the Buddha.

The galleries are currently closed for installation, but the minds of the Pulitzer docents and gallery staffs are being opened.  Sydney Norton, Curatorial Assistant, is leading a four-part series of PowerPoint presentations introduce us to the works in Reflections of the Buddha.  We have come to two sessions so far, and while it seems like an immense amount of information (my note-writing hand feels like it used to when ending a class with my art history professors), we are slowly absorbing the bulk of it.  This exhibition will contain amazing objects. 

For instance, my interest has been piqued by“The Universal Gateway of Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara,” Chapter Twenty Five of the Lotus Sūtra (Miaofa lianhua jing Guanshiyin pusa pumenpin), with an Appended Heart Sūtra (Xin jing).  This piece was made through a unique process and really intrigued me for this reason. The piece is a very lengthy scroll that will be opened to different sections throughout the duration of our exhibition.  It is indigo dyed paper and it has been burnished with small particles of gold in order to depict its drawings and stories.  The process of indigo dying can be a particularly time intensive one.  Each time the paper scroll is dipped into the vat it gains a slightly darker shade of blue.  This particular scroll is almost navy from the images I have seen which means  it has been through the dye vat many times.  I can’t wait to look at this piece up close, the piece being displayed under glass should allow this, and get a sense of the artists who created it.

There are a lot of stories and historical perspectives being shared with our gallery staff that I will look forward to sharing with our guests once we open in September.

In this video, Lisa Harper Chang, Community Projects Director, talks about her personal connection to Do Ho Suh’s Staircase. She was a speaker for Frame of Reference in March. The next Frame of Reference is this Saturday, April 2 at 1pm. For a list of speakers, visit our main website.

Frame of Reference was developed in the context of Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta Clark, when we invited non-art specialists (e.g. architects, social workers, patissiers) to talk about individual works in the context of personal experience.  The idea was born out of our docent program Exploring Art.  One pitfall of Exploring Art is that it is a lengthy time commitment for some guests, so we wanted to find a way to bring the diversity of our docents to the forefront in a bite-sized portion. 

We are continuing this program in conjunction with Dreamscapes, every first Saturday of the Month.  In March, talks were given by a curator from a lending institution and focused on the historical relevance of Max Beckmann’s work.  After his 15 minute talk, Lisa Harper Chang, Community Projects Director at the Pulitzer spoke about her personal connections to Do Ho Suh’s Staircase-Pulitzer Version.  In each talk, guests were able to understand the speaker’s interest in the work and possibly relate to the art in a different way than they might have already seen the work.

In future presentations, there will be multiple guests speaking on the same work.  In this way, in 15 minutes you can have a completely different impression of a work of art.  We invite you to attend and see how artworks’ meanings change through the lens of others.

This Saturday, at 1pm, Emily Rauh Pulitzer will speak in the galleries about Tadao Ando’s architecture and her dream of the Pulitzer building. Courtney Henson, Visitor Services Manager, describes the Exploring Art program:

“As you go through, the spaces will change in size and sometimes in shape and the light will change. As you go through the building, the senses will change, the mood will change, the fiction will change. If they are subtle enough then you will think of it as a fiction or a story, you will just live it as reality.” –Tadao Ando

Ando’s description is one that suits the concepts in Dreamscapes. Senior curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra has chosen works based on the false realities that we are nightly confronted with in our own dreams. Each object chosen for the current exhibition at the Pulitzer offers an opportunity for discussion; sometimes personal but always within the strange real space of Ando’s architecture.

In February and March, two guests will speak about the architecture at the Pulitzer. This Saturday, February 19, Emily Rauh Pulitzer will speak at 1pm regarding the process of building the Pulitzer. This discussion may include some of the hopes and dreams and the sometimes nightmares of building an Ando sanctuary. Saturday, March 19, Bill Wischmeyer, Architect of Record for the Pulitzer building, will speak at 1pm on his experience with the building. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Saturday’s “knit-in” with stylus was a success at bringing together multiple groups of knitters solely for the purpose of enjoying their craft amidst the soundings of stylus. Each conversation spun its way from one group to another while snippets of the concordance specifically devoted to the event were read over the loud speaker. “Word,” “of,” “mouth” spoken from the speaker drifted through conversations about the shooting in Tuscon, AZ that day. The trickling of speech from each guest mingled with the ever polite clinking of needles while stylus sang from its human voice, or one of many other worldly sounds.

Some knitters finished their projects in the three hours while others only merely tapped the surface of their lengthy projects. All in all there was camaraderie present that one only sees every great once in a while. Thank you to all who attended.  We hope you will knit with us again on January 22 for the stylus Finale–A Sounding.  Ann Hamilton will be in the galleries all day and would love to thank those who have participated in activating stylus.

For more photos from this event, visit our Flickr slideshow.

Ann Hamilton, a round, 1993

Within the exhibition of stylus, there are multi-sensory experiences that the audience is encouraged to interact and engage with. Ann’s artwork has often dealt with text and our human experience with its exchange, verbal, gestural and poetic. During the exhibition at the Pulitzer, various groups have been invited to come into the space and activate stylus with their voice, poetic movement or instrumental accompaniment. With “stylus” as its title, it seems appropriate to ask a community of knitters to come to the exhibition space and activate their art and sound. At early stages of installation, Ann was interested in experimenting with what kind of sound this might generate within the space as well as encourage this visual connection between the physical act of knitting and the title of the exhibition.

Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a symposium titled, “Breaking the Rules of Engagement: New Perspectives on Thinking about Art,” at the Denver Art Museum, or DAM, as it is so lovingly called. The weekend included art, culture and new ideas about museum goers and supporters. I explored the museum and city, but  I was there particularly to meet with other museum professionals and discuss the future of docent programs.

The symposium centered on new ideas in docent presentations. Three interesting speakers at the conference were James Chung, Michael Cassin and Shelly Casto. They talked about tapping into proven trends and integrating new and creative ways to actively engage a visitor’s quest for the visual. Many discussed that the old ideas about tours were not the way to entice audiences. Instead, engaging in interesting conversations surrounding the work of art is the preferable method. 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 »

In June, I nominated Kay Renner for Hospitality Hero. Hospitality Hero is an award for dedicated service “above and beyond” the average daily service and is presented by CVC (Convention and Visitors Commission) every year. Lisa Harper Chang and I feel Renner deserves this award due to her ability to help, always with a smile, and a keen ability to make all feel welcome at the Pulitzer. Here is my interview with Kay via gchat, done at the Pulitzer front desk, about the experience of winning:

me: Ok here we go
Kay: bring it
me: How does it feel to be a Hospitality Hero?

Kay: I think it’s an interesting title, but it feels good to know people care about kind interactions among the community. To be a part of the staff at the PFA and to be recognized for trying to do the best I can here feels great. I think we have many Hospitality Heroes here in our space. Read the rest of this entry »