At this time of year, it’s easy to wax poetic about reconnecting with old friends and family and the joys of the season, but hopefully we can avoid falling into over-sentimentality while still recognizing how important it is to take time to see old friends again and maintain relationships that have made an indelible impact on one’s life. It is in this spirit that we joyously reunited with the actors who participated in Staging Old Masters to see how everyone is faring and to make sure that the bonds of a company that are built through rehearsal and performance aren’t lost in the midst of the trappings of daily living. We were fortunate to be joined by a little more than half of our company last Tuesday evening, and I’m happy to share that all of those in attendance seemed happy, healthy, and doing very well.

One of them, Naheem Houston, is diligently pursuing his dreams of helping youth avoid the path he once followed while finishing up coursework at Florissant Valley Community College. The following are words from Naheem.

Naheem Houston describes what he likes and what he doesn’t really like about Urban Alchemy.

Naheem Houston:

I was looking forward to last Tuesday night since the Pulitzer sent me the invitation. I love and appreciate everybody that had anything to do with the success of the Staging Old Masters ensemble. The experience was truly a blessing that I will forever cherish, and the food was always a plus. I enjoyed meeting up with old friends and conversating about how life has been since we went our separate ways. I wish all the actors and staff could have made it out, just so I could see the look on everyone’s face in unity. We were the first in the pilot program, so we made history.

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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The last days of an exhibition are always bittersweet, and Old Masters is no different. The memories of the light playing with my perception of the works and the voices of the many who have presented, acted, and read in the exhibition still linger. It’s easy to take an exhibition for granted, especially one that’s been here for a longer period, but when it’s gone, I know I’ll miss the faces, the forms, the landscapes, and all of the stories, including the ones depicted and the ones that were created in the galleries.

This in no way diminishes my excitement about our upcoming exhibition, Urban Alchemy / Gordon Matta-Clark, and the promise of the variety of interactions and opportunities the exhibition inspires. The work for Matta-Clark has already begun, as you’ve been reading about in this blog recently, but now you have a chance to come learn more about our upcoming exhibition, play with building a garbage wall yourself, and see the potential in trash by turning discarded newspaper into fun and functional items.

We will be hosting a table at the Earthways Green Homes Festival in Grand Center this Saturday, September 26. Our table will be open from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (the festival continues through 6:00 p.m.), and we are very excited to share with you information about Gordon Matta-Clark and our plans for the exhibition, including the Garbage Wall. So please come by and see us, say hello, and bring home a handmade kite, paper, or a seed planter as a souvenir and a reminder to come back and see us beginning October 30!

I apologize for the long hiatus from posting–it’s been a busy spring, and I can hardly tell you where the summer days have gone. Most recently, I spent the quickly-passing days in happy and engaged thought, as St. Louis just finished hosting the 22^nd Annual Visitor Studies Association Conference. The city even placed mini-people-sized-arches all around town to welcome the researchers, evaluators, museum and other non-profit professionals, as well a federal employees. What can I say? Data just speaks to some cities!

Wait, you mean those weren’t for our conference? You mean to say you haven’t heard about visitor studies?

Well, no better time than the present to learn about this growing community. The theme of this year’s conference, For What It’s Worth: Wrestling with Relevance, Public Value, and Impact, highlights the very reason why the field is so important, not just to the institutions and organizations represented there, but to anyone who has ever visited a national park, zoo, aquarium, or museum of any kind. In the current economic climate, all of these institutions are fighting for their existences and attempting to answer the question “what is our public value?” Better yet, what is public value? And, if you indulge the dedicated visitor studies conference participant, what is public and what is value? This isn’t just some exercise in narcissistic navel-gazing. A growing number of organizations are incorporating into their programming, exhibitions, and mission statements–into the very fabric of their organizational beings–the commitment and obligation to fulfilling some notion of public relevance. The Pulitzer is in good company in this respect. In order to do so, those questions that seek to define what value is and who constitutes our public are essential starting inquiries that can lead us to building meaningful relationships with our communities and neighborhoods and securing these places of informal learning and voluntary experience in the cultural fabric of modern-day human existence.

As we continue to explore these questions of meaning, dialogue with you, our audience, is of paramount importance. And, the information (or data) we gather together is also important and worth being valued and critically assessed by all of us. In future blogs, I’ll explore specific topics in visitor studies-the strategic triangle used as a framework for public value creation, participatory methods of evaluation, and other fun details related to research and evaluation in the field. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas, as we work together to contribute to a data set that exists in fragmented form but holds immense power once aggregated.

It’s hard to believe, but a full year has passed since the Pulitzer and the Brown School of Social Work embarked upon this partnership through the establishment of my position. What a year it has been! I’ve had many people tell me that it usually takes a full year or so to learn any position, and in the case defining and filling a newly created position, I’d say it will take well over a year. What have we accomplished in this past year? I’d say that the Pulitzer has made great gains in building  relationships with its fellow institutions in the St. Louis area, and that includes institutions like schools, churches, and other arts institutions. Of course, the gains are the result of the seemingly tireless efforts and limitless talents of my fellow colleagues at the Pulitzer, and we are still assessing the full impact of the light that spilled out of our building and filled the Grand Center neighborhood for a brief but bright six weeks. (Is it too geeky to be excited about all of the data we’ve collected?! On that subject, thanks to all of you who endured our questioning and observations-your feedback truly will make an impact on what we do and how we do it.) So, the year flew by, and in this period of reflection, I am simultaneously excited and daunted by what the future holds. As we’ve opened the door to engaging the community, that door remains open, meaning that the relationships we started over the past year will continue to be nurtured through (and I hear a sigh of relief from the schools!) hopefully meaningful but lighter projects (no pun intended!). We have projects brewing that truly are exciting and, I think, innovative- the details of which will be shared here at this blog over the next couple of months. And, of course, the evaluation plan will continue, so come by and take a survey at our new kiosk- again, this is one feature of a comprehensive exploration of how we all develop a personal relationship with art.Finally, we also look forward to building the platform for discourse on the intersection between art and social work or art and community engagement. In my mind, this platform would not only include a catalogue of arts community engagement efforts from around the world, but it will also include an area where all of us who work and/or are interested in this area can share information, advice, and potentially build new collaborations across the digital realm. What would you like to see? What would make your research/implementation/evaluation of programs easier? How do you think we can build a stronger network between art, social work, and community engagement efforts, including education, outreach, and of course, all of the arts? I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this and all of our community engagement work.

So, why would the Pulitzer be interested in philosophy, neuroscience, or cognitive psychology? Here at the Pulitzer, one of our main missions is to nurture that personal experience with art, a mission we fulfill through our architecture, supporting literature, and/or programming. As we venture into exploring the social relevance of art through integrating social work into our Pulitzer-world, the desire to learn more about what factors influence an individual’s perception of art has become even greater. We hope that you’ll join us in this new exploration.

So, it’s been awhile since my last blog, and since I feel the need to excuse the long lapse between postings, I’ll credit two amazing projects we’ve been working on for the reason behind the lull in communication. I’ll also credit those projects to why this first posting at the beginning of the week is short and sweet, so you can expect to read more detail about both of these projects later this week.The first of these projects, the Community Light Project, is culminating this week with lights and drumming filling the Grand Center neighborhood. You’ve heard us talk about the project, and you’ve hopefully visited the pages devoted to the project, so I won’t go into detail here. I will, however, cordially invite you to join us for the celebration of all the hard work that went into five more art installations, created in response to the Light Project, and into creating, composing, and performing percussion pieces, using drums that light up when struck.

Join us this Friday, October 3rd, from 6-9 p.m. here at the Pulitzer as we celebrate the Community Light Project with lights and drums! There will be trolley tours of the light installations at the schools and the Grand Public Arts Plaza and performances by the students involved in the Community Light Project on the aforementioned drums (6:30 and 8:30). And you’ll get to participate in the performance by making your own instrument and playing along with the 8:30 performance. There are too many people to thank to list them here, but check out my post later this week to learn more about the community partners involved.

After the din and glimmer of the drums and installations fades into Saturday, you can take a more cerebral journey with us through Art and Perception: the Flavin Conversation, and interdisciplinary discussion about how art is perceived by the viewer, featuring researchers in art history, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and art and design. This is the first of what we hope will be a series of conversations, as we explore how viewers perceptions of art change over time, various conditions, and various exhibitions. Art and Perception: the Flavin Conversation takes place in our galleries on Saturday, October 4, from 5:30-7:30 p.m., with a brief break at 6:30 to explore the exhibition at dusk.

What better way to bid the Flavin exhibition farewell then by celebrating the impact this light artist has had on current artists (via the Light Project), the neighborhood (the Community Light Project), and on art enthusiasts and viewers (Art and Perception: the Flavin Conversation)! I hope you can join us for all of these events as you build your own personal experience with Dan Flavin: Constructed Light, The Light Project, and The Community Light Project.

It’s Lisa again – with a continuation of the discussion started in my previous blog on community engagement around the arts. Please keep in mind that my forays into relational aesthetics are only just beginning, and I welcome the comments of those much better read in this particular academic area.

Point II: “What criteria should we use to evaluate socially engaged art?” (taken from an interview with Claire Bishop from July 2006).

My last post was more concerned with evaluating the impact of community engagement programs in terms of social change, e.g. civic engagement. This post is inspired by the work of Claire Bishop, an Art History lecturer at the University of Warwick. Bishop argues that socially engaged art has been evaluated more for its ethical merit rather than aesthetic, with an overwhelming focus on process rather than on product. According to Bishop, “There can be no failed, unsuccessful, unresolved, or boring works of collaborative art because all are equally essential to the task of strengthening the social bond. While I am broadly sympathetic to that ambition, I would argue that it is also crucial to discuss, analyze, and compare such work critically as art.”

I reiterate that I am just now beginning to explore Dr. Bishop’s writings and the field of relational aesthetics overall, but when I ran across this quotation, I couldn’t resist bringing it up for discussion here. I’ll be writing again soon on how this discussion factors into our upcoming activities this summer at the Pulitzer.

I’m currently in a self-diagnosed professional existential crisis, which is not surprising given the phase of program we’re currently in…sort of like being on a plane in-line to take off after waiting on the tarmac for hours. In the back of my mind, I know that the hands-on work will begin in earnest, but in the meantime, that means I have too much time to think and continue to plan for the next exhibition. A wise man once told me, sometimes, the best thing you can do is sit back and wait, and this is definitely one of those times.So, back to the too much time thinking and the professional existential crisis…I find myself reflecting on the past six months and am realizing that I’m feeling somewhat removed from what originally brought me to this unique position. In a sense, I feel as if I’ve lost the social work side of the community engagement, so in the next few blogs, I plan to address this point by point in hopes that you might have thoughts, advice, and reflections that will ultimately help me find my way back to my core mission.

Point One: Evaluation.  Are we making an impact with what we do, and how do we measure that impact? One of the primary reasons for the merging of the applied social sciences and the arts is to further develop and refine the use of evaluation in community programs implemented by cultural institutions. There are a few sources out there that provide a framework for the discussion, one of which being Gifts of the Muse, a report released by the Rand Corporation in 2004 that proposes approaching the discussion about the benefits of the arts from a different perspective. The same tools, methods, and challenges are faced by social service providers, as they seek to justify the relevance and effectiveness of their work. While there are easily quantifiable measures of success, the qualitative effects of programs are more difficult to firmly grasp. Add to that the difficulty of proving causality, bias, and other perils of human subjects-based research, it becomes all too easy to lose yourself in a land of meaningless data collected through ineffective measures. I’m sure this won’t be the last time I blog about this, and the issues of effective evaluation are weighing heavily upon my mind at the moment. Do you have any ideas on what a good measure of impact of the arts might look like? If so, I’d love to hear them. Then we can get down to a discussion about methodology, instrumentation, and implementation.

Well, normally I would not be one to post my thoughts for the world to see—I find that they are much more comfortable nestled in my own head; however, since the lovely Rachel has requested a blog entry, how could I refuse? Think of it as a belated birthday gift, Rachel! My debut in the blogosphere comes from my new job as Manager of Community Engagement, a collaborative position between the Pulitzer and my dear alma mater, the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. Now, being a social worker in the high contemporary art world might seem, at first, like being a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Samuel Clemens references aside, the fit is actually quite natural.

My position is predicated upon the belief that high art has social relevance, and through experience and evaluation, it will be possible to begin describing this social relevance in both qualitative and quantitative terms. In practical terms, it means that the Pulitzer will now be engaging the community in innovative and substantive ways in hopes that our community will be strengthened by our efforts.

You might be asking how we are defining community. I see community as all the people, neighborhoods, and institutions (private and public) that surround us. We have started working with the community around Grand Center, our immediate neighbors, as it were, but our plans are to expand far beyond these artificial boundaries. We’re not confining our efforts to the community defined by geographic proximity—I believe that community has been redefined in the digital age, and in recognition of that, we will be reaching out to you—fellow bloggers, programmers, system administrators, casual net surfers and web addicts alike. We need your input to build our network with you, so please share your thoughts. Are you interested in a Second Life counterpart, like the much-lauded Dresden Museum, or would you rather like the opportunity to curate your own exhibit within a blank digital Tadao Ando-designed canvas or help us develop folksonomy for our exhibited works? Let us know!

I promise to keep you abreast of our community engagement efforts, if you promise to give me your feedback—constructive or otherwise. I look forward to our conversations! In the meantime, happy surfing (if you’re interested, check out this New York Times article about the evolutionary purpose of art and culture) and best wishes for a happy 2008!