THE MUSEUM JUNKIE

may 12th club whats up 22 dalerothenberg: made some prints on my...

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:14:33 -0400

may 12th club whats up 22 dalerothenberg: made some prints on my birthday today, the “small” ones are 20x24

Cass Gilbert, Finney Chapel, 1908. Oberlin College,...

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:10:00 -0400

Cass Gilbert, Finney Chapel, 1908. Oberlin College, Ohio.

[200th Museum Junkie Tumblr Post!]

frannyzoe: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:46:06 -0400

frannyzoe: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

"The exhibition is not a simple exploration of life and health; it also means to shock with its..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:43:56 -0400

““The exhibition is not a simple exploration of life and health; it also means to shock with its aestheticized grotesqueries.””

- Edward Rothstein, “Comfortable Out of Their Own Skin: Exhibition Review of ‘Body Worlds: Pulse’ at Discovery Times Square, The New York Times, May 9, 2013.

To read more about the spectacle and morbidity of this anatomy exhibition, click here.

For my HIST 469 peers: you might be interested to know that Discovery Times Square’s mission statement claims that the institution is “more than a museum”: “Discovery Times Square is the destination for discovery through unique and immersive exhibits in New York. Here, events epic and rare come to life by connecting you to the greatest human stories ever told. Intelligent, exciting, and moving - it’s the experience that counts.” With this sensational rhetoric in mind, could we identify this institution as a hybrid creature, perhaps the love child of a science museum and theme park?

Student Docents Guide Community Through Allen Memorial Art Museum

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:11:00 -0400

Written by Elizabeth Kuhr (OC ‘14)

In the Allen Memorial Art Museum’s (AMAM) Ellen Johnson contemporary gallery, student docent Julia Melfi gathers the Eastwood Elementary School’s first graders into a circle.

“Let’s give the art personal space, please don’t touch,” says Melfi, a sophomore art history and theater double major. The elementary schoolers immediately silence, and turn towards Jackie Winsor’s Four Corners. Using encouraging, open-ended questions such as “what is going on in this piece?” and “why does the art remind you of a big meatball monster?”, the students begin to excitedly inquire and interpret the 1500-pound wood and hemp sculpture with Melfi.

AMAM tours educate local kids by assisting them in exploring the museum, making the space accessible and comfortable to a younger generation. Although the primary children in these tours are from the Oberlin City School District — first graders through seniors in high school, who visit as regularly as every month — the AMAM also draws in classes from surround schools in the greater Lorain County.

The eclectic group of 30 or so Oberlin students who work as AMAM’s docents most frequently major in history, art history, theater and studio art, but a handful of neuroscience, chemistry and conservatory students have guided as well since the program began in 1990. With such an academically diverse bunch, the reasons to participate range from an interest in curating, a love for the AMAM and a desire to extend art history studies beyond the classroom. College senior, history major and studio art minor Sarah McLusky joined the program in an effort to “serve a wider community than just the college, and a community that might not have lots of other art museums to go to.”

To become a docent, current Curator of Education Jason Trimmer invites up to twenty students to apply to the Practicum in Museum Education each winter term. “It is an amazing way to bring people into the museum’s collection and break down that barrier,” said student docent and senior art history major Alex Kelly. The students meet with Trimmer in the museum every afternoon during January from one to five.

Based on a model he learned at the Art Institute of Chicago, Trimmer teaches the Oberlin students to use Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) when touring. Docents pose open-ended questions, emphasizing the visitor’s critical analysis of the art. “Our docents don’t lecture,” Trimmer explained, “they lead discussions and try to create an engaging environment on works of art.”

This strategy encourages the younger visitors to apply imagination and develop a critical perspective when interpreting art. The docents push the students to provide proof with every comment.

“They’ll say stuff that you hadn’t thought of, that’s completely legitimate and from a fresh and untainted perspective,” said college junior and art history major Meriel Stein. “They got there on their own. I think that’s a really empowering thing.”

As well as leading tours for local students, docents help organize other museum activities, such as weekly “Object Talks”, student-led mini lectures on an AMAM piece they studied during winter term. They also direct visitors touring the Weltzheimer/Johnson House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and assist with tours on First Thursdays, the first Thursday of every month when the AMAM is open until 8 p.m. and offers programs such as poetry readings or music throughout the evening.

The docent program provides students with skills that allow them entry into many other opportunities in the museum. Sophomore art history major Emma Kimmel, for example interns with Trimmer in the museum’s educational department. She helps with administrative business such as research projects and blogging, prepares kids activities for community days, and coordinating and running workshops under the museum’s partnership with Oberlin’s Firelands Association for the Visual Arts gallery (FAVA).

In addition, students’ work experiences with the AMAM’s docent program provide them with an advantage in the professional world. Trimmer explained that part of the winter term focuses on résumé and cover letter writing as well as discusses the various positions that exist in museums, to best prepare students for when they apply for jobs.

And the students appreciate the benefits of this training. “You have all this different experience with an actual institution and with a real collection,” said Kelly, “I think its one of the most useful things that the college does.” Recent alumni of the program have gone on to work in institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Dayton Art Institute, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

“More often than not, students [of this program] have been able to obtain post-graduate internships, fellowships, or entry level jobs in the museum field,” says Trimmer. “I always joke that they’re going to have to hire me when they’re director of the Met!”

To learn more about the student docent program, visit the AMAM website.

M.C. Escher meets M.C. Hammer. Courtesy of Family Guy’s...

Tue, 07 May 2013 16:43:49 -0400

M.C. Escher meets M.C. Hammer. Courtesy of Family Guy’s twisted animated world.

MEDIA BURN by ANT FARM (1975) Click for video “Original...

Tue, 07 May 2013 16:40:26 -0400

MEDIA BURN by ANT FARM (1975)

Click for video

“Original version of Ant Farm’s classic video art piece examining and satirizing the media, particularly the impact of television. On July 4, Independence Day, 1975, what a TV newscaster described as a “media circus” assembles at San Francisco’s Cow Palace Stadium. A pyramid of television sets are stacked, doused with kerosene, and set ablaze. Then a modified 1959 Cadillac El Dorado Biarritz, piloted by two drivers who are guided only by a video monitor between their bucket seats, smashes through the pyramid destroying the TV sets.

Preceding the event are clips from various TV news broadcasts that covered it (many of the TV reporters make the comment that they “didn’t get it”). The tape includes interviews with invited guests, a speech given by Doug Hall as President John F. Kennedy explaining the message of Media Burn, the dramatic unveiling of the Phantom Dream Car, several sequences of the car smashing through the TV sets, and its triumphant return from the end of the Cow Palace parking lot.”

“Astrological sign? Eye color?” *Checks my BAC with...

Fri, 03 May 2013 13:02:48 -0400

“Astrological sign? Eye color?” *Checks my BAC with a defunct breathalyzer*

C O O L I N G T H E B A B Y L O N M A T R I X by B B Y A M A (Lily Gottschalk, OC ‘13)

Photo feat. Zoe Darsee & Abby Ryder (OC ‘13)

I N F I N I T E H A L L W A Y A T L E A S T T H E D O O R S A R...

Fri, 03 May 2013 12:57:55 -0400

I N F I N I T E H A L L W A Y

A T L E A S T T H E D O O R S

A R E O P E N I N G

Misplaced Reliquary (2005) by Paul Catanese Commissioned in...

Fri, 03 May 2013 12:28:27 -0400

Misplaced Reliquary (2005)

by Paul Catanese

Commissioned in 2004 by Rhizome.org, Misplaced Reliquary is a handheld curiosity cabinet containing the holy relics collected by an eccentric curator. The relics are contained within a virtual repository taking the form of a gameboy advance ROM that can be “played” online and/or downloaded to any gameboy advance (with the correct transfer hardware).

Rani Molla (Oberlin College, Class of 2008) writes about the...

Thu, 02 May 2013 12:13:35 -0400

Rani Molla (Oberlin College, Class of 2008) writes about the about the Tate Modern’s #TateTour twitter tour of their Lichtenstein show - and starts with her memories of Art Rental.

Image: Lichtenstein, Boot on Hand, 1964. Art Rental Collection at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH.

To learn more about Art Rental at Oberlin ($5 per work/semester!), visit the AMAM website…

Or read Nicole Gutman’s (Oberlin College, Class of 2016) first-hand account of renting art: Oberlin Review

who-wore-it-better: Ai Weiwei Bicycles :: Gabriel Orozco Four...

Thu, 02 May 2013 10:02:45 -0400

who-wore-it-better:

Ai Weiwei Bicycles :: Gabriel Orozco Four Bicycles (There is Always One Direction)

First submission to Who Wore It Better, an ongoing visual research project presenting associations and common practices in contemporary art. The platform was created to promote formal and conceptual dialogue over originality.

Pinar Yolaçan, Like a...

Wed, 01 May 2013 14:52:50 -0400

Pinar Yolaçan, Like a Stone series.

http://pinaryolacan.tumblr.com/

“HENNESSY LIKES THIS SONG” by Jayson Scott Musson...

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:54:47 -0400

“HENNESSY LIKES THIS SONG” by Jayson Scott Musson a.k.a. Hennessy Youngman

30 Most Beautiful College Art Galleries

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:51:33 -0400

30 Most Beautiful College Art Galleries

BBYAMA Presents: COOLING THE BABYLON MATRIX...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 17:28:45 -0400

BBYAMA Presents:

COOLING THE BABYLON MATRIX // http://yemano.tumblr.com/

www.oberlin.edu/amam

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 17:26:23 -0400

www.oberlin.edu/amam

“Enact” performance tonight in Baron Gallery at 8pm....

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:31:46 -0400

“Enact” performance tonight in Baron Gallery at 8pm. Oberlin, OH.

“Machine Made America.” Special issue of The...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:40:06 -0400

“Machine Made America.” Special issue of The Architectural Review, May 1957.

Learning about sculpture with Mad Men’s Jon Hamm...

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:45:00 -0400

Learning about sculpture with Mad Men’s Jon Hamm and Sesame Street’s own Michelangelo, Elmo.