The process of redesigning the Pulitzer’s Exploring Art program has been long and circuitous.  We have agreed at last on the intended audience and overall purpose for the program: to draw in first time visitors and individuals who do not normally have any interest in or feel uncomfortable in art museums. We have structured the program content so as to put visitors at ease and increase their comfort level within the walls of the Pulitzer and with the art itself. We have trained our docents in Visual Thinking Strategies and facilitating group dialogue. And now, as we schedule our first group of visitors, our discussions have centered on how to best evaluate Exploring Art.

In theory, to effectively evaluate this pilot program we should take extensive measurements regarding our participants’ experience. Administering surveys pre-visit, immediately post-visit, and two weeks after the visit would allow us to establish a base line and track changes over time. The breadth and depth of such data collection would give us a richer picture of Exploring Art’s impact.  However, with each level of increasing evaluative rigor we also increase the invasiveness of our questioning. Requesting participants to complete a 20-item survey and then consent to supplying personal contact information is hardly a lighthearted trip to the museum.

Of course, some visitors may truly appreciate being able to share their opinions; some may really value taking part in the program piloting. Still, in many ways our goal of making first time visitors feel comfortable is at odds with our goal of in depth evaluation. Which leaves us with the question — How do we balance this tension between wanting quality data that can inform future programs and wanting to create a welcoming atmosphere for potentially nervous or disinterested visitors?

Every Thursday, 7-8pm, Ann Haubrich and Jane Ellen Ibur give KDHX 88.1FM listeners Literature for the Halibut, an hour of readings, interviews, and discussions on Literature. Last week they read newly-published poems of St. Louis-born poet Frederick Seidel, but this week they’re rewinding a couple millennia for–you guessed it–Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Special guests tonight include our very own Senior Curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra and Kress Interpretive Fellow Hannah Fullgraf as well as St. Louis Poetry Center Consultant Lorin Cuoco. They, along with Haubrich and Ellen Ibur, will read sections of the Classic and talk about next weekend’s A Marathon Metamorphoses. 

Ann Haubrich will be reading at the marathon, so you might think of the show as an auditory preview. If you haven’t checked out the A Marathon Metamorphoses blog lately, read today’s slant on Ovid from St. Louis Magazine’s Culture Editor Stefene Russell, who will also be reading next weekend and has helped host Literature for the Halibut in the past.

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.

Tour (noun): a long journey including the visiting of a number of places in sequence, esp. with an organized group led by a guide.

At the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, we don’t give tours, and this isn’t meant as a way to leave our viewers in the cold, instead it is to allow them the freedom to experience an exhibition on their own time. Now granted, there is a sort of sequence that the space of our building allows, but it is up to a visitor how long they will spend in front of a work of art. Do they wish to see what happens to the shade of blue on Mary Magdalene as a cloud passes across the sun? Or rather has the song they are singing in their head caused them to stop and look at Saint Jerome just a bit longer to ponder his more contemporary meanings. Or forget the artwork. Does the 3^rd hole from the northwest corner of Ando’s concrete match that of the 15^th hole on the north side of the building? (Some architects can tell you.) As gallery staff, we don’t have those answers for each viewer, the truth is that each viewer, whether in a group or solo has some personal interest that has brought them to our space. Since the Pulitzer is meant to be a laboratory and a sanctuary, it is our hope to allow each space to flesh that out for each visitor.

We have a bulk Read the rest of this entry »

Last Wednesday afternoon, Gallery Assistant Jason Holler spoke with a visitor who had a fantastical memory to share on one of the masterpieces in the Old Masters exhibition. He asked her to write it down, and this is what the note reads:

“In the 1950s, my mother’s living room was sort of Danish Modern except for a large reproduction of Tiepolo’s The Crucifixion over the television. As a 3-year-old, the picture frightened me enough that if the room was dark, I wouldn’t enter unless I had a flashlight. I would shine the flashlight directly on the picture to make sure none of the figures had climbed down off their crosses or moved. I can vividly recall shining that flashlight on that picture numerous times, but I don’t know what became of it. We moved when I was four years old and the picture did NOT go with us.”

One thing I enjoy about this little story is it illustrates how much drama the brain can extract from just oil on canvas. No surround sound or eye-popping special effects, and still figures descending from a picture is surely as riveting as any half-hour of Up in 3D. (And can we imagine how that ghastly execution scene looked to the less culturally-stewed 3-year-old?)

Like reading a book as opposed to watching a movie, a painting leaves room for the imagination to create sounds, smells, textures. (The clopping horse, the flying dust, the wailing women-I feel chaos in The Crucifixion.) We learn about ourselves in this process of viewing. We’re active creators, and although the painter, like Paolo Domenico Finoglia with his Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, may guide our gaze through the use of shadows and shapes, the mental reel while looking at a painting is different for each person, and the uncharted territory is exciting.

A side note: When I googled “The Crucifixion reproduction,” thinking about why people buy reproductions, a link to Dali’s The Crucifixion popped up, and I recognized it as a framed poster, which I had observed in bewilderment as a 4-year-old in my Cajun mamaw’s living room.

The Staging Old Masters weekend performances are over at the Pulitzer, and I’m feeling more rested without the hectic work week it involved. Yet, somehow I felt healthier from the energy that came with each of those shows. 

As Visitor Services Manager, I had many roles before, during, and after each performance, but my favorite one was holding the doors open at the beginning of each performance. It was at this moment I could smile and participate with my loudest “boya, boya, yo!”–joining in the procession of actors’ chant and smiling with each performer as they entered the door. 

My least favorite part of Staging Old Masters was Read the rest of this entry »

For the last month, at varying days and times, there’s been some man raised via lift or scaffolding to the Pulitzer’s outside walls, putting something all over the cement. Don’t worry-I know these men to be part of the facilities crew and have thought nothing of it. I simply say, “Hi!” and walk in the building.

Generally, when I see things, such as Facilities Manager Steve Morby carrying a big bucket of something through the hallway, or Assistant Facilities Manager Shane Simmons sloshing through the Water Court in galoshes, or a pair of pink, man-size latex gloves (which must be theirs, right?) near my desk, I don’t ask questions. If I did, I’d be asking for shop class every day, since these guys have a big job every day.

“Can you tell me about how you’re cleaning the Water Court?” I asked Steve today.

Read the rest of this entry »

Amy: Hannah, you’re the recipient of a Kress Interpretive Fellowship at Art Museums, a jointly shared appointment between the Pulitzer and the Saint Louis Art Museum. What exactly does this fellowship involve–who are you working for, and what are your specific duties?

Hannah: The Kress Interpretive Fellowship is for the training of a young museum professional as a museum curator or educator of European Art. The fellowship is for one year, and as you mentioned, it’s a shared appointment between the Pulitzer and SLAM, so I’ll be working at the Pulitzer from May to November before heading to SLAM.

At the Pulitzer, I’m working closely with Director Matthias Waschek, Community Engagement Manager Lisa Harper Chang, and Visitor Services Manager Courtney Henson, to implement “Exploring Art” for the Old Masters exhibition. I will not only provide the art historical context for each work, but I’m also working to create a meaningful dialogue in which participants learn through their visual experiences as a group and also alone.

Read the rest of this entry »

“It appears that cultural organizations, in comparison with other agencies, might be uniquely positioned to act as catalysts for community involvement and as agents for capacity building. Cultural initiatives are inclusive, and have an unsurpassed capacity to open dialogue between people and engage their enthusiasm and commitment to a shared redevelopment process.” -Richard Sandell

On my second day as a Brown School social work practicum student at the Pulitzer, I found myself in the art room at Cole Elementary working with fourth- and fifth-graders to create a light installation piece. This was a decidedly atypical social work task, but I was excited to learn things that I couldn’t necessarily glean from textbooks.

The Cole students were instructed to pour paint in glass ornament balls and swirl the paint around to create marbled patterns. The ornaments were to fill a 6-foot tall clear tube to be displayed in Grand Center. We quickly realized that we’d have to ban the glitter and strongly encourage the “less is more” approach to painting so that the balls would dry in time. Read the rest of this entry »

Seven months after the close of The Light Project, the solar energy system used for Spencer Finch’s installation Sunset (St. Louis, July 31, 2008) is on view once again! This time, the system is on loan to the Missouri Botanical Garden (MOBOT), powering an interactive exhibit in EarthWays: Living the Green Life. The eight solar panels are mounted on the roof of the Brookings Interpretive Center, adjacent to MOBOT’s famous Climatron:

The rest of the system–including batteries, inverter, and charge controller–is on view within the Brookings building.

The system is fully installed and functioning at the Garden (in fact, it’s running the nearby vending machines as well as a misting fan). It serves as a concrete example of how solar power can be used as an alternative energy source. All in all, the MOBOT exhibition is designed to help visitors learn about the various green products, ideas, and technology that will help protect the Earth’s future.

This show is just one of the many activities organized to celebrate MOBOT’s 150^th anniversary. Further information on related exhibitions, lectures, concerts, and events can be found on their website. Also, be sure to check out yesterday’s Post-Dispatch article highlighting the Garden’s 150 year history.

COMING LATER THIS WEEK: COULD YOU BE THE NEXT OWNER OF THIS SOLAR SYSTEM???