As Helene wrote yesterday, this week begins the installation for our next exhibition, Ideal (Dis-) Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer. Our galleries will be closed until the opening reception on Friday, October 24th, but we’ll be keeping you informed with our “installation homepage” (I just made that name up) in the meantime. Covering our regular homepage for these three weeks, this page will include install updates, interviews with the curators involved, videos, background research, and more. So keep checking back for new info.

In addition, I will be guest blogging over the next two weeks for Art:21! I’m very excited about this opportunity – they have a fantastic website and the blog embodies their mission to increase knowledge and foster discussion on contemporary art. I have all sorts of blog ideas (almost too many) so I’ll mostly be focusing my posting energies over there.  But this blog won’t go forgotten, I’m asking some of the staff here to post about what they’re working on as we prep for the next exhibition.

Jason Peters has been here all week, working on the installation of his artwork in the grassy lot across the street from the Pulitzer. He brought me some photos that he and his crew have taken throughout the week:

Here’s a view from inside the scaffolding:

The artist:

The crew:

Prepping buckets in the workshop:

Jason has promised a blog post in the near future about this process and the buckets’ past life. He also discusses them a bit with Matt Strauss (who curated this artwork) in their interview on the Light Project web catalogue here.

Yesterday, they started putting up the first string of buckets. We got a video of the action, but it’s being problematic right now. I’ll add it in when it stops giving me lip.

More details (and the latest updates) for Jason’s work continue to be documented here.

Another element in the Light Project will be cell phone tours, with recordings made by each artist, discussing their installations. This afternoon, Matthias, Elise and I walked around each installation site to scope out where we wanted to put the signage for each work – somewhere that doesn’t visually interrupt the piece, but also is easily viewable to passers-by. We’re talking about making the signs with photo-luminescent panels, which will absorb sunlight throughout the day and glow at night. Here’s where we’re thinking of putting the sign for the burned church installation – the wooden door will be replaced by the time the opening rolls around. We’re thinking we’ll attach the sign somewhere around this spot – it’s right in front of the church, and right along Spring Avenue.

While we were over there, we looked up into the scaffolding and saw this! The first of the lamps:

As the opening date for our Light Project grows nearer, excitement continues to build among the staff and other participants. In fact, there seem to be a rather large number of participants as we’ve not been shy in recruiting help for this effort from many community organizations. It’s really amazing to witness how all the loose ends continue to be woven together for the creation of each of the outdoor installations. All to culminate on September 4th with a grand opening celebration.

The collecting of lamps, donated for Rainer Kehres’ and Sebastian Hungerer’s work has been especially fun. People who have a lamp to give, stop at the Pulitzer during public hours and tell the stories of how they got this lamp and why they are now donating it. When their lamp becomes a part of the new roof line for the Spring Avenue Church, the stories connect and expose the diverse human experiences of this particular part of the world.

From my position, the other artworks are now down to the physical issues of installation. The difficulties of such undertakings become predominate in the conversations of staff members as the clock ticks away. When hurdles are successfully surmounted, cheers followed by exuberant applause carry through the office. Victory lunches sometimes follow the breaking of a particularly stressful roadblock. The sheer magnitude of this effort begins to hit home as I’m finally getting my head around just how much these pieces will affect this neighborhood. Not only the lights changing the nighttime sky, but how the experience of making this happen has changed the way we will all feel when we view them……..together.

As you know, we recently changed the color of a number of Flavin lamps in our galleries, thereby creating “Phase 2″ of Dan Flavin: Constructed Light. You may have noticed, however, that several of the works remained the same color, including the piece installed in our first floor corridor. This work is an impressive, staggering display of overwhelmingly green light (96 two-foot green lamps tend to dominate a space!).

Despite the fact that the color of these lamps hasn’t changed, the lamps themselves are soon to be replaced – with brand new versions of their former selves (still green!). We noted that over time, some of the lamps in this work were beginning to blacken on the ends. On certain lamps, dark spots (almost like thumbprints) began to form, and a few lamps quit working altogether. The manager of the Flavin Studio indicated that this is a phenomenon that sometimes happens with Flavin’s work, especially when you get a whole bunch of tubes together in a tight space. The massing of fluorescent light can create strange effects on the lamps themselves – in this case streaking, darkening, and black spots.

As a result, we have decided to do a mass replacement of all of the lamps in this work. New two-foot green lamps will soon be installed (look for them within the next week). We’ve been told that since this blackening phenomenon happened once, it might eventually happen with the new lamps as well. However, we are expecting that this mid-exhibition replacement will give the piece a rejuvenated look, one that will hopefully last through the extent of the show.

Before today when we walked down the green hallway, there was a yellow vertical piece at the end  situated on the corner of the wall in the Entrance Gallery.

This morning, we were met with a new color at the end of the hallway:

You’ll have to come by tomorrow night to see what else has changed…

So right now, we’re in the midst of re-installing certain works in our exhibition for phase 2 of Dan Flavin: Constructed Light.  It’ll open this Friday, during the Grand Center Gallery Walk.  The installation is on hold today because our galleries are open to the public (30 minutes left to see the phase 1 artworks!), but will resume again tomorrow.  I’ll try to sneak some photos of the process.  We’re also working on scheduling the photography for phase 2 to put in both our print and web catalogues, along with a description about the change and the precedent set by Dan Flavin for doing this.  I’ll be posting those as I get them.  Stay tuned.

The Pulitzer’s current exhibition has an interesting twist: it is two exhibitions in one. The registrars’ department is now preparing for the installation of phase two of Dan Flavin: Constructed Light to be completed by May 16, 2008.Part of the installation process is as simple as changing lamp colors in several of the Flavins. It is more complicated in the lower level hallway where the objects’ fixtures will be reconfigured and the lamp colors will be changed. In all cases, the resulting objects are different works of art, creating different effects within the building’s spaces.

We will be making these changes over a few days the week of May 12. On Wednesday, May 14, the Pulitzer is open as usual and phase one of the exhibition will still be on view except in the lower level hallway. We will still be installing in that hallway so that all will be ready for the phase two “opening” at the Grand Center Arts Walk at 5 p.m. on Friday, May 16.

Now on our homepage is Video 3 in the Exhibition Install Series.  This showcases the actual installation of Flavin’s artworks within the Pulitzer building.  We were lucky to have a chance to speak with Steve Morse, who is the Exhibition Coordinator and Conservator of the Flavin Studio.   Watch the video (and get a sneak peek of the exhibition) here.

Unrelated: but I just really liked what Tyler Green had to say in this post here and then this post here.

Installation video number 2 is now on our homepage.  It shows the next phase of the installation process – the removal of art work from the previous exhibition.  This time, we removed two VERY complicated art works that have been view here for 5 years – Richard Serra’s Stand Point and Joplin.  The process that goes into moving these massive works is amazing.  It’s a must-see.  Expect a longer companion piece to this video in the coming weeks.