Friday, July 30, 2010

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

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

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

Sunday, July 25, 2010

"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






Friday, July 23, 2010

"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.


Thursday, July 22, 2010

" 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.


Sunday, July 18, 2010

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 Jonesmilliner 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)

Purple straw bonnet, c.1880
Anna P, top hat, Stephen Jones S/S 2009 
Par Avion, beret, Stephen Jones S/S 2003
Photography by Angela Moore
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.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

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!

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