Merry Christmas!

Most museums inform in their websites or leaflets that tomorrow, 25th December they will be closed due to the Christmas festivities.  This blog will also be celebrating the holiday, but will be open again in the next days with very interesting informations.
Happy Holidays to all!

Exhibit: John Pawson Plain Space - Design Museum, London

A recommendation of a good exhibit to visit in the next holidays, for those of you in or planning to visit London.  At the Design Museum, John Pawson: Plain Space, opened in late September and runs until January 3oth.


There is a good deal of illustration and audiovisual materials and videos with interviews to the architect, where he explains his concepts and ideas about his work and including a tour to his exhibit with him as "the guide". 

The Design Museum presents a major exhibition of the work of John Pawson. Often described as a 'minimalist' he is known for a rigorous process of reduction, that creates designs of simplicity, grace and visual clarity. At the heart of the exhibition is a site-specific 1:1, full-sized installation designed by Pawson to offer a direct experience of his work - the first such installation at the museum.  Plain Space celebrates Pawson's career to date with models, film, photographs and architectural elements and includes some of his most important projects ..

The companion blog is a good source to understand better the work of this international architect.




More info:

Design Museum London , Plain Space Blog: Pawson Tour, John Pawson website

The Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin: a photo essay

A photo essay: impressions of the atrium-reception area of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, a museum designed by Mies Van der Rohe, views from the "Barcelona chair", designed by the same architect.

For more info: Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Exhibit on photography: A recommendation for the weekend

The exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London is an interesting revision of images produced by different means other than straight with the camera.  A reflection on what the image is or should be considered and the meaning for its aesthetic, social, artistic, abstract, etc. values.

Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography

Ai Wei Wei exhibit in Berlin

This is the an image from the entrance to the Alexander Ochs (Berlin) Ai Wei Wei exhibit. Seems this artist is making many headlines these days, not all for his provocative artworks, but also for his socio-political beligerance.

In any case the pieces in the show were interesting aesthetically, especially the one seign at the backgroun, Teahouse 2009, my favourite.

Links for more info:

Ai Wei Wei website
Alexander Ochs Gallery, Berlin

The Art institut of Chicago - new Modern Wing

Checking on books about new architecture in museums can be very illustrating but also time consuming because it is not always easy to find the images, whether moving or still, from the books in the museum's websites, that should offer the complete visuals of the buildings to on-line visitors.

A interesting case is the Art Institute of Chicago offer in its website a section with videos that show different spaces of the institution, plus a one special chapter dedicated to the new Modern Wing, new annex designed by reknown Italian architect Renzo Piano.
Link to the Visit / Videos pages

This page displays an important number of institutional videos, but the negative part though is that it is not possible to share them, except by linking to the page and give instructions to where to click and watch them.  Well, the new social media engagement, in this case, is helping to spreading the word because the same video from the website is accesible from the Art Institute's official channel on Youtube.

Watch it here:

Museums and websites in Köln, Germany

Museums in Köln with interesting exhibitions.  General website for museum information: Museenkoeln

Institutional websites:

Die Photographische Samlung/
Museum Ludwig
Die Artothek/
Archaeologische Zone
Das Wallraf Museum

Exhibition at the Mori Art Museum, Japan

The Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan, has captured my attention by the "flashing" website and the news of one exhibit to close very soon:

"Sensing Nature. Rethinking the Japanese perception of nature" by Yoshioka Tokujin, Shinoda Taro and Kuribayashi Takashi, three Japanese artists from different backgrounds that are offering their personal vision on the connection between man and nature.

The images are very impressive and worth the visit for their huge scale, technology used in building the works and the concept they are discussing.

For more information:

Mori Art Museum - exhibit "Sensing Nature"

video with interview and images from exhibit: 

and

Snow by Tokujin Yoshioka from mocoloco on Vimeo.

Some museums in Köln

The Museum Ludwig

Unfortunatelly,  I was not allowed to take photos inside the exhibit spaces

I tour the main entrance area 

browse the well provided gallery 

I had a snack at the cafeteria, with views over to the open garden-plaza

and visited the exhibition

The Wallraf das Museum

is another institution where, again, photography inside exhibitions galleries was not allowed

 but from the museum entrance you can see the fantastic archeological site nearby

 The Archäologische Zone is an "open-air-museum"

 with a huge exhibit plan that brings back history alive

and could be photographed from many sides.

Links for more information:

Museum Ludwig

Archäologische Zone

Wallraf das Museum

About the presence of museums and collections in the www

Inspired by the reading of the book "The Sari. Styles, patterns, History, Techniques" by Linda Lynton and photographs by Sanjay K. Singh Ed. Thames and Hudson I am taking some time to visit all the museums listed in the pages. 200-201, ordered by country.  I am visiting mostly the pages dedicated to textiles, costume and saris especially.  But it is also giving me the chance to check some museums that I have never considered before, but unfortunately some of them do not have their own website, though they manage to be publicized by local, national or tourism sites. That is the case of the Textile Museum of Jakarta.

Others may have a very simple presence in the web, such as the Silk Museum Yokohama Prefecture or the Calico Museum of Textiles and Sarabhai Foundation, with mere information on the building, collections, visiting, publishing but no images or information on the collections.  And yet, that causes me even more desire to visit it.

I will be running thru the list and posting.  But The general conclusion remains that for museums to be in the web is still a a matter of development and that reads not only for tourisn attraction, therefore incoming revenue, but also for researchers that could benefit from collections online, and increase the audience online, which very well could bring also incoming revenues.  Museum management do have a lot to say in this matter.

Links for more information:

Textile Museum of Jakarta
Linda Lynton and photographs by Sanjay K. Singh Ed. Thames and Hudson
Silk Museum Yokohama Prefecture
Calico Museum of Textiles and Sarabhai Foundation

Diana Vreeland, museums and more

I am reading the book D.V., by Diana Vreeland, NY, 1984. Despite the obvious interest the "personage"may have for the world of fashion, it is inevitable acknowledging the impressive work she did while she was the "special consultant" from 1972 till 1989 at the Metropolitan Costume Institute.

In page 39, Chapter Five, she talks about audio guides in museums: To me, the audio guides are important, because what's the point of going through the show unless you learn something? That was almost thirty yeas ago, how things have changed in the era of social media? How is the concept of education inserted into the museum's mission statements nowadays? How are education departments prepared for new audiences? how are university museums evaluated today?
This article from The New York Times Magazine. (For the Moment / The Costume Institute's Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton - December 12, 2007) refreshes the idea of her contribution to the museum world.

A little more on Vreeland, in this video we can hear her talking about her work at The Costume Institute and she insists on ".... education has a great deal to do with everything....."

Links for more information:
article: The New York Times Magazine

Exhibitions at Brooklyn Museum of Art (website), New York

Among the current exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum of Art these are some of the highlights:

American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection

To mark the new relationship between the Brooklyn Museum and the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum presents an exhibition of some of the most renowned objects from its costume collection.

Also a a great initiative of reviving the visible storage concept on view is the Luce Visible Storage Center for American Art:

The last phase in the creation of the Luce Center for American Art concludes with the opening of the 5,000 square-foot Visible Storage ▪ Study Center. The dense display of objects in the Visible Storage ▪ Study Center offers you an inside look at how museums work and provides a glimpse of the breadth and scope of the Brooklyn Museum's extensive American collections.  

The Visible Storage ▪ Study Center is a working Museum facility as much as other storerooms throughout the building that are not open to the public.

 As part of the new facilities the museum offers the study Center and research program that:

This program allows you to access information about the approximately 2,000 objects on view in the Luce Center's Visible Storage • Study Center and the adjacent American Identities galleries.

Links for more information:
Brooklyn Museum of Art
American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection, exhibit
Luce Visible Storage Center for American Art and Study Center and research program

Kyoto Costume Institute

This is not exactly a museum, but a research institution, but i think that ther work they do is same considerable worth a visist.

Kyoto Costume Institute and check the Luxury reconsidered exhibit's website as well as the Digital archives.

Links for more information:
Kyoto Costume Institute
Digital archives,
Luxury reconsidered exhibit's website

"Big Bamboo" by Starnstudio- exhibit at The MET, New York

Doug + Mike Starn on the Roof:  Big Bambú

"You Can't, You Don't, and You Won't Stop "

April 27, 2010–October 31, 2010 (weather permitting)

Exhibition that explores the nature of the sculpture built in large scale.  the duo artists Starn brothers have conceived:

The monumental bamboo structure, ultimately measuring 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 50 feet high, takes the form of a cresting wave that bridges realms of sculpture, architecture, and performance. Visitors witness the continuing creation and evolving incarnations of Big Bambú as it is constructed throughout the spring, summer, and fall by the artists and a team of rock climbers

image of starnstudio.com

Read More at The MET website, and 

watch a video at NYTimes' website Big Bamboo 

About the artists: starnstudio.com

"Glass house conversations" an article from Architizer

Architizer, online magazine and website social, presents an article about:

Glass House conversations

Today the Philip Johnson Glass House, a National Trust for Historic Preservation site, officially launches Glass House Conversations, a website designed in conjunction with the School of Visual Arts. (Log on this week and you’ll find Alice Rawsthorn, the design critic of the International Herald Tribune, leading a discussion about the future of design.)

Photo from Architizer website

........

The series carried into 2009 when Dunn began to wonder if these kinds of conversations could translate into a digital medium and thereby involve a broader (and younger) set of participants. She began talking to Liz Danzico, the chair of the new Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts, and with program mentor Jason Santa Maria, they developed a graduate student course called “Continuing the Conversation.” Six students (Clint Beharry, Derek Chan, Kristin Graefe, Katie Koch, Russell Maschmeyer, and Eric St. Onge) were charged with creating an online presence that captured the spirit of the Glass House Conversation series.

Nine months later, the result is Glass House Conversations, a site whose simple, welcoming design encourages virtual conversation and features unpublished archival material from the 2008-2009 series.

" Masters of Black in fashion and costume", at MoMu, Antwerp

The MoMu (Mode Museum Provincie Antwerp) is offering from last March and during this summer an exhibtion about "black and wearing that color" from various perspectives. The show is called BLACK: Masters of Black in Fashion and Costume,” on view through August 8th and the visitor's leaflet.

photo from MoMu website

The exhibit examines the always interesting and shifting idea of “the new black.” Illustrates the historic phases of the colour black, with examples from painting, historic costume and contemporary fashion. It also looks more deeply into the textures and the potentials of black in diverse materials, including fur, leather and lace. In addition, the exhibition includes masterpieces by contemporary designers who, like the city of Antwerp, have a special connection to black.

Sounding very attractive by title, the content of the show ends being a little short in pieces. The display is divided by sections, up to 22, each one with a title that aims to explain the different concepts treated in the exhibit.  At the entrance of the exhibit the visitor receives a leaflet with abstracts (explanantions) and list of pieces, names of coutire houses and designers presented and labels for other objects.

Plan of the exhibit

The scenography honoring the title of the show is most powerful and the darkness embraces the ambience and the pieces shown, clothes and costumes, ornamental objects, paintings, illustrations, etc.  The dark atmosphere created by the almost absence of light is interrupted by spolights that focus each of the pieces, most of them standing on huge irregular black tables, offering the notion of islands in the middle of a "black sea", a very dramatic effect.  Temporary walls, also painted in black, divide some of the sections and also serve as surface where to hang paintings or display other objects, that are the artistic or historic reference to the concept presented.

The exhibit covers some some milestinos in history of fashion, such as a replica of the Chanel's "Ford T dress", the celebrated prototype of the "petite robe noir", the elegant and always in fashion black dress.

Among the designers presented are some of the famous Antwerp Six from Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Fashion Department) plus renowned international and couture houses, such as Givenchy, Chanel, Viktor & Rolf, Alexander McQueen, Yves Saint-LaurentJunya Watanabe, Comme des Garçons, Gareth Pough, etc.

Pieces are from the MoMu's own collection, loans from other museums, private collectors or the couture houses presented.
Views of the exhibition:

Dramatic entrance to the exhibition

This would be the final section as the closing of the exhibition.

Exhibition design: working meeting in the exhibit rooms (Antwerp, BE)

I visited yesterday the MoMu (Mode Museum in Antwerp) to write about the exhibition BLACK. Masters of Black in Fashion & Costume.

When I was doing all the tour, taking photos and notes for my blog´s review, I noticed that there was going on an interesting situation in the rooms.  A small group of four-five people were standing in the middle of the main hall in between displays, just down by one of the spotlights (all show was very dark honoring the title of the exhibit!) discussing around an object.  I approach the group out of curiosity and stayed around to find out.

Definitely they were not normal visitors, so I immediately deduced they were working on the development and design of the next exhibition.  I tried to discretely take some pictures, as I am interested in how museum professionals debate over designing or taking decisions right in the very exhibition space and since this was unusual case since, as Saturday, the exhibit was quite packed with visitors.  The group seemed completely unaware of that.

Today, I am working on the pictures from yesterday and just realized what was going on: the museum's team were merely working hands on with "the star" of the new exhibition to open next September'10: Stephen Jones, milliner with long successful career from UK.

(poor quality of the picture for very dark ambient lighting)

They were working over one head's model that presumably will be used for the upcoming show and were trying different positions down the very dark lights of the current exhibition and were deciding on ways of displays.

This is the reference from the MoMu's website on the upcoming exposition Stephen Jones & The Accent of Fashion.

In 2009 there was an exhibition at the V & A  Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones (24 Feb - 31 May 2009).

V & A produced this video for the exhibition: Millinery in Action: making a hat in the Stephen Jones workroom 

Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones (note: text is from V&A exhibit's website, but individual website is already closed by the museum)

24 February - 31 May 2009

Working with radical hat designer, Stephen Jones, the V&A presented an ‘anthology of hats’. Drawn from V&A and international collections and ranging in style and period from a 17th-century Puritan’s hat to a 1950s Balenciaga couture piece to hats by Jones and his contemporaries including to the latest creations by young milliners such as Noel Stewart, the exhibition investigated the cultural and historic importance of millinery. The exhibition was arranged in four main themes - Inspiration looked at the myriad of sources including historicism, exoticism and the natural world; Creation explored the techniques, materials and processes; The Salon focused on the buying and selling of hats and the millinery shop; and The Clients which examined the wearing and etiquette of hats and featured headgear worn by well known clients of some of the world’s top milliners including Audrey Hepburn, Anna Piaggi, Dita von Teese.

Architecture exhibit at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London

This is the first post on summer exhibits.   The year’s calendar of exhibitions often provide a very conventional agenda during summer because, in many cases for obviuos reasons, it is designed to please the general that on the course of summer holiday travels do visit museums in major cities.

However, there are many cases in which the agenda may offer real gems, impressive quality and worth while the visit.  In the next weeks I will find for you some of these gems, and  highlight here why I like and recommend them to you.

One of my favourites exhibits of these days is the opened in June at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the show "1:1 - Architects Build Small Spaces" is running from 15 June - 30 August 2010.

The abstract from the museum's web:

Using the landscape of the Museum as a test site, the V&A invited nineteen architects to submit proposals for structures that examine notions of refuge and retreat. From these nineteen concept submissions, seven were selected for construction at full-scale.  Read more ... Seven built structures.

The overall concept is fascinating since what is offering is real architecture down to ground and construction to be proved by the visitor; it is connecting the magic of building to who might live in.  The V&A invited nineteen architects "to submit concept designs that should respond to the specific locations within the museum".  The concept models are actually on display in one of the rooms of the museum, and seven of them were decided to be built full scale.  In the V&A website you can explore each one of the seven final proposals and also other details about the development, on-going work and final stages of designing and building the actual show.  Diving into the site you can find interesting the pages with visuals (images and videos) of the real construction of the seven full-scale concepts.

One of the links is the exhibition's blog, by Abraham Thomas, curator of the show who is currrently curator of Design and Lead Curator for Architecture at the V&A.  Thomas started the blog in May 2009 when he wrote:

I want the exhibition to pose some crucial questions and to challenge our perception of the role of architecture, and its relevance to our lives. As this blog develops in parallel with the exhibition, I hope that it will offer a space for debate and discussion - examining this idea of creating personal space, and how we occupy this space both physically and emotionally - so please feel free to return and add your own comments, thoughts and questions

I invite you to browse through the monthly archive to find the curator’s notes and comments about the work and the evolution of the exhibition. Each entry is full of insights and references to architecture in the modern context.  The last weeks they were uploading videos with the building of each of the seven structures chosen to be built in the museum for the show.

The overall information in the site also offers good insight in names of architects and their studios that are developing trends in modern architecture.

Definitely, a fantastic plan to spend quality time in a museum if you are or plan to visit London, but also perfect for virtual visit to the V&A’s website.


Links for more information:
"1:1 - Architects Build Small Spaces"
exhibition's blog

Blog open for vacation!

I am back at posting!

Now, after a short period of disappearance due to work in new projects, I am back to posting.

Yes, we are already and "officially" in summer time, and next two months are to be considered the more idle time of year but not for all professional sectors.  In our case, museums are more than ever open for vacation.

 I thought it would be appropriate to open a parenthesis in the blog and publish in it, about events more according to the season.  In the next weeks, and until the "new course" begins, the posts will be devoted mostly to publishing the most interesting agenda of exhibitions I can find, whether real on virtual, and from international museums.

Stay tuned for news from MuseumsMore!

Week-end candy

I recommend today Eurasia, a history documentary in 8 chapters, hosted and writed by Alain Moreau, and coproduced by bradcasting company NHK Japan (Japan) and Point du Jour (France) in 2004. 

The chapter 2, "The Forgotten Alexandria", shows archeological and heritage sites and work done back in the 1960s by a French team in the northern part of Afghanistan and there are impressive (and moving images) inside the completely empty museum in 2004, and scenes with curators opening, for first time in many years, to the cameras, boxes with museum materials preserved during the war times from lutters and plunders, that were selling all they could take from the rooms of the museum, then full of invaluable objects and materials.






Links for more information:
Documentary series, Eurasia
NHK Japan
Point du Jour