Bob McCabe, Morning Host for KWMU, reads during A Marathon Metamorphoses.

“…how does one communicate the experience of an ephemeral two day reading in our exhibition space?” our director, Matthias Waschek asked today in his very first blog post for the Pulitzer. He is, of course, reflecting on last year’s marathon reading of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which has so far been the only event of its kind in our building.

To capture the experience, a local videographer video taped the almost twenty hours of reading in the Lower Gallery. He then edited the footage down to eight minutes, which includes a shot of each of the seventy-four readers. You can now watch the video and read Matthias’ reflections on it on our A Marathon Metamorphoses blog.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Organizers, visitors and participants talk about Art/Food during the event.

All afternoon this past Saturday, a crowd milled about the Art/Food tent trying local concoctions, such as South County honey,  Vanilla Cream Ale, and s’mores from a sun oven. In the video below, Chef John Judy, from L’Ecole Culinaire, describes the Gordon Matta-Clark gumbo that was served. For a full recap of the event, watch the video above.

With the dismantling of the folding tables, came the conclusion of Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark. If you’re ever feeling nostalgic, you can always visit the Transformation site and the web catalogue, which document the exhibition and the ambitious programs associated with it. What was one of your favorite parts of Urban Alchemy?

As we evaluate the achievements of the past few months, we’re also revving up for Ann Hamilton’s stylus. The Pulitzer will be closed for installation until July 9, the exhibition’s opening reception. (To be continued…)

Chef John Judy shows L’Ecole Culinaire’s recreation of Gordon Matta-Clark’s gumbo, which they served at Art/Food.

Over the summer, StudioSTL’s director, Beth Ketcher, read for A Marathon Metamorphoses and wrote on the event’s corresponding blog what she felt the marathon was about. Her attitude reflected a principle StudioSTL and the Pulitzer share: the arts are for everyone.

The goal of December’s workshop was not for the participants to produce refined art reviews but to get them to think comfortably, descriptively, analytically, and creatively by jotting down verbal sketches of what they saw in the galleries. Given optional cues in a worksheet, the young authors were asked to investigate the space, write down what they thought, and read their writing to everyone as a conclusion to the session.

Below, one of StudioSTL’s mentors reflects on the workshop.

Paula Davis is an Engineering student at Washington University and a mentor for StudioSTL.

On the twelfth day of the twelfth month, a few young writers–high school students–and a number of volunteers from StudioSTL, sat holding gray pamphlets, on the gray concrete floor of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, in its gray concrete building, under St. Louis’ cold gray sky. It was quiet.

We were gathered to explore the world of art, the world of architecture: their intersections, their motivations, their repercussions, etc. More specifically, we gathered to explore the Pulitzer’s current exhibition, Urban Alchemy, and the Pulitzer itself–the building, the space, the light. After brief introductions and explanations, we did what we came to do: we explored.

With notebooks in hand, teens and adults alike slowly wandered through Tadao Ando’s carefully calculated space. We observed records of Matta-Clark’s work and his work itself. Photographs of walls with chunks removed–looking in, looking out. Pieces of walls, pieces of roofs, their layers and layers of shingles made visible by cross-sectional slicing. We looked at garbage made into a wall and pictures of subway cars covered in graffiti and line drawings of a house and its roof and its pieces. We pondered. We scribbled notes in our notebooks. We noticed there were no placards on the walls explaining the art. We asked questions. We looked closer (but never got closer than two feet). We stepped back and took in the larger picture. We sat and stood and leaned and squinted and smiled.

When we came together near the end of our time in the Pulitzer, we shared our thoughts and writings. The art made us think about more than just cutting up buildings with a chainsaw, more than squishing garbage together to make a wall. The space, the art, the light, the sounds, and our overall experience triggered much more. We wondered and wrote about what makes art art, what constitutes “modern” art, and the importance of the art’s arrangement. We were inspired to recall old memories, to wonder about the back stories of objects, to write poetry. One young writer was even inspired to design clothing based on what she had seen.

During our brief stay, we didn’t draw any conclusions. We didn’t score each piece of artwork. We didn’t give the exhibition a grade. But we were inspired by the art, by the space, by our peers. And we wrote. We created our own art. And we were satisfied–pleased.–Paula Davis

Pulitzer visitors talk about Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark.

Thank you for sharing, everyone.

We beseech you too, dear readers, to tell us what you think of Urban Alchemy, in the galleries and online, here in this very blog’s “comments” and on our Urban Alchemy Facebook group, and wherever else you want to talk about it. As they say, “We want to hear from you!”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Manager of Community Engagement Lisa Harper Chang describes ideas behind outreach programs for the past exhibition, Ideal (Dis-) Placements, and for the upcoming Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark.

Looking back on last Spring’s Let’s Look and Staging Old Masters, Lisa Harper Chang considers the transformative power of art and how it will again be harnessed for the highly anticipated Urban Alchemy. The Pulitzer has already begun partnering with schools and artists for this exhibition, which opens October 30, and is planning a series of panel discussions on themes in Matta-Clark’s art. You can learn more about these and other exciting new programs on our budding website Transformation.

Transformation, tangible and abstract, was the essence of much of Matta-Clark’s work. With Garbage Wall, he reaped castoffs of everyday life and made them functional, visually compelling, and community building. He fried Polaroid pictures in Photo-Fry, intersecting the transfiguration that occurs in cooking, in film development, and in artistic creation. For Food, an artist-run/owned restaurant, Matta-Clark and his SoHo peers turned dinner into performance and a common space for neighbors. Most notably, he asked spectators to reevaluate the way they view architectural spaces, by cutting parts of buildings away.

Matta-Clark’s activism through creative acts easily relates to the activities on Transformation. For the site’s “Your St. Louis,” St. Louisans will be asked to relay stories and offer photos of their urban landscape and to perhaps, by learning what others have to share, further understand and value their city. In “Local Artists,” read how Robert Longyear and Jenny Murphy use art as a way to foster community, empower youth, and prompt questions about the value of discarded objects. Hear from North St. Louis’ Holy Trinity students on how they see their community as opposed to how it’s defined by outsiders.

Matta-Clark strived for inclusivity in his work. Besides being a resource on how art can foster community, we hope St. Louis residents will feel free to contribute to Transformation, in online discourse and “Your St. Louis” projects.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the video above, Director Matthias Waschek describes how community engagement is incorporated into the Pulitzer’s primary identity as an arts institution. This is the first in what we plan to be a series of “From the Director” clips in which Matthias presents topics unique to the Pulitzer.

If you have a question, please feel free to leave it in a reply. We want to know what you want to know.

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.

This article from NPR discusses the shift from the web being page-based (and focused on displaying past information) to a constant stream of active information (a la Twitter) and what that says about our society today.  The Pulitzer has a Twitter page and participates in this “stream” – do you?  And do you think this type of constant information will eventually replace static information on the web?  Which also ties in with something else I heard on NPR this morning – will these musings online have any hope for longevity?  What will our version of Shakespeare’s sonnets be?

The other piece I just finished reading was by Kimberly from the Kemper.  She wrote about social media and art on the Saint Louis Art Map and discussed how what we do on the web as museums needs to relate back to our mission and audience.  It reminded me of the paper Nina Simon presented at Museums and the Web, which takes this idea one step further.  She discussed how our approach to an online presence – with it’s emphasis on accessibility and the interactions with Web 2.0 – and how we should bring these ideas back inside the galleries.  As she calls it, “going analog”.  It’s an interesting read -check it out here.

I’ve written before about how much I admire their approach to museum transparency, but this was my first opportunity to visit in person.  The new Davis Lab gave me ideas for the presentation of our own in-gallery kiosk and the surrounding 150 acres of gardens (with prompts to post your photos on Flickr – nice) was perfect after being cooped up inside hotel conference rooms for days. Their director, Max Anderson, gave an inspiring opening address to the conference, which set the tone for all the great ideas that were to follow. Watch his intro here (ah yes, Art Babble – another reason to love the IMA!).

To add to this always-growing list – here’s a blog post about the “Indy Culture Matters” rally they participated in yesterday and the associated website. Reminded me of Amy’s post a few months back on visiting Jefferson City  (and also here) and how important it is to keep the arts at the forefront and convey their importance to our community leaders.