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

Practical iphone uses in the museum

I watched this visitant for sometime in the exhibit rooms and suddenly I realized she was taking a oicture of the wall and signs on it. 

and here you have a close-up of what she was shooting at: labels?  the design of signaletic?  colors?

In any case it is really, a very handy tool and more and more it is becoming indispensable in modern life, especially for professionals as a notebook.

Vicente Todoli resigned and expansion projects for Tate, examined

Still in an age of financial and economical uncertainties, though with some signs of recovery in the arts market, expansions of museums are starting to be questioned and analyzed from a conceptual point of view.  Following are two interesting articles from The Art Newspaper, about Tate's new plans of expansions already in process with the construction of the Tate Modern new annex.

Why Tate Modern needs to expand, by Sir Nicholas Serota is an article about the new Tate building to be unveild by 2012. And arts consultant Adrian Ellis writes about Ten years on: Tate Modern reaches a watershed, that analyses the situation of the expansion projects for big, international (and somehow, maybe corporate?) museums and/or art centers, on the study case of the Tate Modern.
The critic also touches slightly reasons why Vicente Todolí, exiting director of Tate Modern, is calling it finished his involvement with Tate.

A stand-by on posting

Greetings from MuseumsMore.

I am working on a some renovation of the "face" and content for this blog and future site, therefore you will  see that I am posting scarcely these weeks.  More info to come soon.

I leave you today with an image of a museum in weekend.

Rotonda at entrance. Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin

Donald Judd: an artist's library legacy

Inside Donald Judd's Library in New York is an article from the New York Times where you can learn about the an interesting project for the creation of a, Donald Judd's own library with personal arrangement of books and catalogues, but virtual and that have required taken 672 photographs of the interior of the real building and a "custom software" to allow you browse through the titles and after indentifying a book the software tells where to find the book for borrowing, since the Judd's Library does not lend books.  technology is helping to bridge gaps between learning and places.



The library is part of the legacy of minimalist artist Donald Judd (1928 Excelsior Springs, MI -1994 Mara, TX), who lived in the building until 1972 when he decided to move to Marfa, TX but maintaining also residence in NY.  After his death in 1996, and in accordance with his last will, it was created the Judd Foundation in New York "to maintain and preserve Donald Judd's permanently installed living and working spaces, libraries, and archives in New York and Texas. The Foundation is dedicated to promoting a wider understanding of and appreciation for Judd’s artistic legacy by facilitating public access to these spaces and resources, and by developing scholarly and educational programs" (Judd Foundation's mission statement). 
(photo courtesy of Judd Foundation)

There is a second institution part of the Judd Foundation, The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX, that after 1972 was to be his permanent residence and studio "is a contemporary art museum based upon ideas of its founder, Donald Judd, to preserve and present to the public permanent large-scale installations" (Chinati Foundation's mission statement).  
The Judd Foundation in New York administers the private spaces and also the furniture store selling Judd's own furniture designs.  The store is illustrate by Judd's article from 1993, "It's hard to find a good lamp", where the artist expose his ideas about designing furniture.
(photo courtesy of Chinati Foundation)

virtual visit to an exhibition

Interesting use of the Flickr site from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, for the American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity (May 5, 2010–August 15, 2010) exhibition, with a tour to the Behind the Scenes—"American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity"
Technology working to help building bridges to save the geographical distance. 

Exhibition in Rotterdam by Olafur Eliasson: Notion Motion

Last Saturday opened a great exhibit at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, "Notion Motion" by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. Here are two images of the excellent display and a full review to follow.

Archeological team of the Xian Warriors win prize

Archeological team of the Xian Warriors win top Spanish prize

ICOM's International Museum Day

Today we celebrate ICOM's Intetnational Day, and this year's motto is "2010 Museums for social harmony".


You can find complete information, press kit and documents in ICOM's International Museum Day.
There is no better cance to enjoy your day than with a visit to your preferred museum!!

MuseumNext event

Here are two images from the MuseumNext's Reception Desk with and general view of the first coffee of the day

 and the auditorium with participants.

Following post will bring a summary of highlights from speakers.

London's walkabouts and museums

Yesterday was a day of preparation for the MuseumNext Conference and what better way to do it than a journey to some museums.  I had on my agenda a visit (a quick one this time) to the V&A to check on the new exhibit about Grace Kelly; a visit to, the reopened last year, Whitechapel Art Gallery and two more.  But the streets of London in a warm but grey day, kept me busy with taking photos capturing the life of the city.
And I could not make it to the Whitechapel (what happens there? This is the second time I try and cannot visit it!) it was closed for a private event all day long.

Here is an image from the V&A's Reception desk with lanes organizing queues for buying tickets for temporary exhibits, such as the Grace Kelly: Style icon.

But now I need to get ready for the event, it is promising interesting.

MuseumNext Conference 30th April, 2010 - London

I will be attending the MuseumNext Conference in London next Friday April, 30th.

It's about:  where museums, technology and audiences meet. How are they using technology to keep up with audience expectations? How are they using the web to build deeper relationships? How are they using technology to meet their wider objectives?

It sounds very interesting and appropriate, since we are all inmerse in the "web 2.0 revolution", and museums should not be an exception.  Comments will be  posted here after the event.

Opening of the Pompidou-Metz

More information information about the next opening of the new Centre Pompidou-Metz in the New York Times and the museum's website information on the festivities for the week of the opening with th motto of

Five days of discovery.

This new center could be considered another example of the use of the formula "build a huge or famous - well known museum" to attract economic development for a region. In few days the new institution will be unveiled. But the success in the endevour for the  Metz Metropolitan are and the Grande Région will need more time to prove it right.

Another subject for discussion will be the calendar of the permanent exhibition the center has designed: Not own collection on permanent show and every two years a complete different display of / and objects chosen, therefore, we assume, content; but it is confirmed there will be a calendar of temporary exhibits. Let's just waint until the curtain raises, in the meantime let's enjoy the architecture of a fascinating Shigeru Ban.

Technologies - Variations of a theme

Socializing without techonologies,

Learning and socializing

Ancient social networking