Museumology

As most of the art we see these days is in museums, I hope this post about museums doesn't veer too far off the topic of art history.

Back on November 20, 2008, Edward Rothstein's review of the newly renovated National Museum of American History appeared in the New York Times. One part of his critique particularly stuck in my craw,

. . . [T]he installation of 400 objects from the museum’s collection mounted in 275 feet of display cases in the new spaces [relies more on sensation than explanation and exploration]. It is an array of curiosity cabinets loosely organized by subject, with items like an 1870s surgical set, a Kodak Brownie camera, and a set of Vietnamese manicurist’s tools. The objects fascinate, but the miscellany is so deliberate, it is as if variety itself were the subject.

To the extent that Rothstein complains about the lack of information provided with objects in museums, I heartily agree. The dearth of signage trend has been noted in the National Museum of the American Indian's sculptural collage of artifacts without any notation of their origin as well as the Georgia Aquarium's over reliance on volunteer docents in lieu of any signage at all - a post-literate museum. However, I find any complaint about the diverse array of seemingly unrelated objects reveals more about the reviewer's ignorance of the history of museums than any failing on the part of the National Museum of American History. The National Museum of American History's presentation of an eclectic collection of esoterica harks back to the precursor to the museum, the wunderkammer.

Moreover, the Smithsonian Institution can be considered a Wunderkammer, the NMAH being one part of a larger, even more diverse, and in Rothstein's view incoherent, whole consisting of over 136 million objects.

Meanwhile, All Things Considered has a series about museums. First, a piece on the history of museums. The second installment focuses on the director of the Virginia Museum of Art.

Watts Towers & Pique Assiette

Friday my friend April and I went on a field trip to the Watts Towers created by Italian immigrant Sabato "Simon" Rodia. Rodia was a tile layer by trade. He used the same technique on his towers as Antoni Gaudi used in Park Güell in Barcelona: Pique Assiette which is the application of decorations by embedding carefully chosen shards and objects into drying mortar during the building process. You can also see examples of this technique on the exterior of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.


Unfortunately, the towers are currently under renovation so we couldn't go through the sculptures, but we got a pretty good view walking around the exterior.

The director of the Watts Towers Arts Center was incredibly enthusiastic and friendly and in all ways awesome. She was genuinely sad that we came at a time that their gallery was between exhibits, so she more than made up for it by introducing us to one of the artists, Augustine Aguirre, who was dropping off or picking up a box full of wire sculptures that looked like butterflies. We missed some show!




April noticed these sunglasses hanging between the scaffolding and one of the three towers. Could it be a member of the restoration team added his own piece of ephemera to the sculpture?


Hearts are a prevalent motif in the sunken relief as well as in the free-standing sculpture. Rodia immigrated to Pennsylvania with his brother who died in a mining accident shortly thereafter. Later he married and had three children, but the marriage ended badly and Rodia never spoke to his ex-wife again. Perhaps this recurrence of love lost explains the frequency of the figure of hearts in his work. Now, for the Heart of Watts Project, R. Judson Powell creates unique, handcrafted glass mosaic hearts, inspired by the Watts Towers and the heart motif that is scattered throughout them.

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Nefertiti's Face Lift

My partner in A(rg)H discovered this excellent article over at AOL News (who knew that was a source for this sort of thing?) regarding the discovery that a bust of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti was altered between its first and final draft. The article includes a quite thorough gallery of images.

Color Theory Update

I recently updated my Color Theory Index to include another artist focusing on color theory.

Via Dear Ada I found artist Sarah Charlesworth's Concrete Color series, a beautiful set of photographs with color theory as their subject matter. Googling the title of each piece could provide a seminar's worth of color theory. For example, Googling "Ostwald Triangle" led me to ColorSystem.com's amazing page about German chemist and color theorist Wilhelm Ostwald.