An Interview with Courtney Henson, Visitor Services Manager (conducted via Gchat):

me: As the new Visitor Services Manager, what have you been working on in the last couple of weeks?

Courtney:  It has been a balancing act of scheduling-mostly getting all the Community Engagement groups scheduled within the other things, like symposia and St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert, etc. The month of March is pretty packed with things to do-at least for the gallery assistants. The general public will be interested in the upcoming April events.

me:  So you have to make sure the Pulitzer building isn’t overbooked?

Courtney:  That is a part of it. It’s important to make sure that even when we’re open for special programs that we maintain our mission of being both a laboratory and a sanctuary.

me:  How will the GAs’ (gallery assistants) workload be affected by the events in April?

Courtney:  The GAs will be working Wednesdays, Saturdays, and all Sundays.  Saturdays and Sundays will be open days for the performances of Staging Old Masters.

me:   What have the GAs been doing with the Community Engagement groups, like Staging Old Masters or the adults with Alzheimer’s?

Courtney:  The GAs have been maintaining the galleries during these group times. Also, from time to time they are asked to assist in interviewing, a new way that we’re evaluating the programs that take place in the building.

The gallery assistants helped interview the participants in Let’s Look.  These interviews are a way to track the ideas held by participants at the beginning of the program. And another interview will

Read the rest of this entry »

David Bonetti wrote a great review of our Flavin exhibition in yesterday’s Post-Dispatch.  Click here.

Also – our exhibition print booklets (which complements our website catalogue) were literally JUST delivered to our doorstep.  So be sure to visit Wednesday to pick up your very own copy, and let us know what you think.

As Camran mentioned in his last post (and one of the reasons why my posts have been fewer the last few weeks), we’re busy with the production of our print and online catalogues for Flavin. Right now we’re in the thick of the editing stages which means a lot of back and forth and a lot of eyes to make sure that everything is cited correctly and there are no typos. We’re aiming for the first half of April to have everything up and running.  In the meantime, Camran will be writing soon about some exciting source material he found at the Saint Louis Art Museum. This will be appearing on our web catalogue and will be available for the first time since 1973…

Have you had a chance to look more closely at our latest publication, Joe? If for some reason you do not have a hard copy at arm’s length, you can simply visit our website catalogue and flip through the pages online (just click on “The Book”). Published in conjunction with the Pulitzer exhibition, this book features 40 photographs taken by Hiroshi Sugimoto of Richard Serra’s sculpture Joe, as well as a prose-poem by novelist Jonathan Safran Foer (Foer is the much acclaimed author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close).

Now, what is a prose-poem? The term actually defines its own meaning: a poem without rhyme. Foer created a text in different strophes that neither illustrates nor comments on the photographs, but, in juxtaposition with the images, allows for the projection of different meanings onto the photographs and the story. Presented by one of the most distinguished designers in the business, Takaaki Matsumoto, the book is itself a work of art.

Just by looking at the finished product — whether it is the hard copy or online version — it is hard to tell exactly how much time and effort went into its creation, but here is a sampling:

• Time: 35 months (from June 2003 when Sugimoto took the photographs until May 2006 when the book was actually delivered)
• Working hours: if you count everybody involved, easily a couple of thousand hours
• Travel/transport: via plane (for Sugimoto to get to St. Louis; for our Chariman and Director to get to New York for planning meetings; for an accelerated delivery from Italy); via boat (the books were shipped from Genoa, Italy to New York); via truck (from Turin, Italy to the harbor of Genoa; from the harbor of New York to St. Louis); via manpower (I “got” to help carry the boxes to storage once they arrived at the Pulitzer. They are heavy.)
• Emails: about 1500
• Letters (including Federal Express shipments): countless
• Tranquilizers: nobody admitted to taking them

Joe is available for purchase for $80 (plus $15 for shipping and handling within the U.S.) Please contact Tim Reichman (treichman@pulitzerarts.org) if you are interested in obtaining a copy. This publication is ONLY available through the Pulitzer — hurry, they are going fast!! (Elise, Foundation Coordinator)

Not only is the blog back from our Holiday vacation, but I am also excited to announce that our exhibition brochures are now available at the front desk.

These brochures coincide with our newly launched online catalogue. Because we don’t have labels, they act as an orientation guide for visitors as they explore the exhibition. And you can take these brochures home. For free! Something new that’s been included for this exhibition is a foldout poster of poetry in the back. This was done in collaboration with the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, whom I’ll be writing about further in the upcoming weeks.

It’s important that the brochure includes images of the works as they are installed in our galleries, so brochures can’t be produced until after the opening. A design and layout has to be conceived, and the text goes through many (many) edits before we can even begin to think about printing it. This time, the brochures’ design was similar to that of the opening’s postcards, which I love. The gray textured paper with embossed circles mimics the Ando walls and makes you feel like you’re taking a little piece of the building home with you.