Director Matthias Waschek explains why the Pulitzer doesn’t label the artwork in its galleries.

The Pulitzer’s assistant registrar stands in the center of Richard Serra’s Joe.

Even with Urban Alchemy gaining momentum as we prepare for spring’s programming, Serra’s Joe is never far from the spotlight on Washington Blvd. Particularly after a marked weather change, as in today’s snow blanket, someone is likely to say, “Joe looks beautiful; someone should take photos.” So Elise and I trekked into the courtyard this afternoon, looking for ways to digitally translate beauty.

For more of the encore presentation of  “Snowy Joe,“ and for images of Joe’s 2001 installation, visit our Flickr collection “The Building and Beyond.”

Andrew Raimist, an architect, talks about Bingo for Frame of Reference. To watch video of part of his talk, and to read his thoughts on the Pulitzer and Gordon Matta-Clark, visit Architectural Ruminations.

On the first Saturdays of every month, the Pulitzer hosts Frame of Reference, discussions lead by special guests about specific artworks on display. It’s a wonderful opportunity to gain insight on the art and artist, as well as the chance to ask questions and engage in invigorating conversations.

A couple Saturdays ago, I listened to our Senior Curator, Francesca Herndon-Consagra talk in the Cube Gallery about the Matta-Clark piece Four Corners. About ten other people were  in the room, walking in and around the objects as we discussed and learned what these four corners of a now demolished house meant as a physical document and how we can mentally interpret this work in the present day.

Frame of Reference Saturdays are a great way to further explore the Pulitzer space and visual art.  It welcomes anyone and everyone to participate in a fun and interesting discussions about art, without making you feel like your in a class lecture. It’s great to see familiar faces in the art community and to share a viewing experience with a group of people.

The Pulitzer’s facilities management gives insight into our Tadao Ando building in the video series The Ando Building. In this video, Facilities Manager Steve Morby answers the question: Where does the water from the reflecting pool go?

What questions do you have about the Pulitzer’s building?

Director of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, Matthias Waschek, introduces Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark and describes how the exhibition fits with the Pulitzer and St. Louis.

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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Art handlers move a re-creation of Gordon Matta-Clark’s Garbage Wall from a construction space into the Pulitzer galleries, before adding the final touches of trash to its exterior.

Finally, here’s a glimpse at the Garbage Wall we’ve been blogging about for several weeks. Look closely at the video of it being moved into the building, and perhaps you’ll see a sneaker you threw out during bulk trash week.

Visit Transformation’s landing page for a video of the initial assembling of the Wall, which features Jane Crawford talking about its history.

Art handlers install Gordon Matta-Clark’s Wallspaper.

With titles such as “Pier In/Out” and “Reality Properties: Fake Estates,” Matta-Clark is known for his fondness for word play. “Wallspaper” is another example. Wallspaper consists of photographs of the interior walls of dilapidated buildings, which have been reproduced as colored prints and stapled to a wall, playing with the idea of wall paper.

Art handlers install Gordon Matta-Clark’s Bingo for Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark.

Above is a preview to one of Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark’s star pieces, Bingo. In 1974, Matta-Clark severed these hunks of facade from a condemned house along the Love Canal, a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, NY, which became environmentally infamous for 21,000 tons of toxic waste that was buried beneath it by a chemical company. Matta-Clark moved the facade to Artpark, an important space for the Land Art movement and the site of a previous industrial waste dump.

You can view Matta-Clark’s documentary video of Bingo on UbuWeb Film.

You can view Bingo in person this Friday for our exhibition’s opening reception, 5-9pm.

Yesterday, before the Pulitzer opened for regular hours, Washington University’s Portfolio Plus program came from CAMSTL through the courtyard to study Ideal (Dis-) Placements. Led by local artists and art instructors, Belinda Lee and BJ Vogt, this visit was part of the summer workshop’s aims at introducing high schoolers to art galleries, to familiarize them with the art world and prompt in-class assignments.  

Running since 2004, Portfolio Plus is geared at preparing teenagers, local and nation-wide, for art school by enhancing their portfolios and earning them 6 college credits. In the mornings, the students study Drawing and 2D/3D, and in the afternoons, they’re offered a variety of electives. Lee pointed out that many of the graduates go on to Wash U’s art college. (Why aren’t more universities offering this sort of thing?)

For their field trip yesterday, Vogt asked the teens to think about how the works in both the Contemporary and the Pulitzer were installed and how they relate to each building’s design. One student Hallie told me how she enjoyed the way the light looked in the Pulitzer’s galleries and said, ”I like how the setting is modernized but has these Old Master paintings–how they should seem out of place, but they don’t.” 

Lee asked the students to consider the difference in imagery between the Old Masters and CAMSTL’s current exhibition of Chantal Akerman and Carey Young. She particularly wanted them to observe the difference between the idealization in Old Masters as opposed to the “hyperrealism” in Chantal Akerman’s films–how convenient to have different but both excellent exhibitions next-door to highlight complementing ideas. 

Having been a gallery assistant at the Pulitzer, I can’t recall how many people I’ve seen glide their palms over the Pulitzer’s walls with a look of admiration. Yes, these walls are smooth, but knowing nothing about concrete, I’ve never been nearly as awed as some visiting architects. Still, the more I learn about the building, the more I appreciate the brainwork and assiduousness behind the “Ando concrete.”

Early last Friday, Facilities Manager Steve Morby explained to me what makes the concrete here special. He became acquainted with it when he worked on Ando’s first project in the United States, the Eychaner Residence in Chicago, completed in 1998. Steve had been working with concrete for 25 years, but in his paper “Constructing Concrete as an Art Form,” he explained that he had “never seen such exacting details, and the expectations of such high levels of wall quality were amazing.”

Although Ando is not the first to use exposed concrete in the way he does, as architect Thomas Daniell pointed out in 2007, the process for making an Ando wall is still unusual, and because Ando uses it consistently to affect a building’s overall environment, it has become his trademark. In the following video, Steve describes the procedures for making concrete and how his construction team altered them to create the Ando quality.