BURN WITH DESIRE

MUSEUM MONDAYS

BY ALEXANDRA JEFFERY

Hey y'all!

For the last Museum Monday I'll write, unless I get gainful employment writing semi-interesting blog posts exclusively on Mondays I thought I would talk about an exhibit I just saw.

On until April 5 (quick act now, one day only, SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY) is Burn with Desire: Photography and Glamour, curated by Gaelle Morel, at the Ryerson Image Centre. The exhibition uses a variety of media to demonstrate the role of photography in defining celebrity and glamour since the early 20th century.

Burn with Desire Exhibit at RIC. Photograph from Carole's Tips.

The show features uses photographs from Ryerson's Black Star Collection:

"Assembled over a period of eighty years at the Black Star photo agency in New York City, the photographs in the Black Star Collection describe the personalities, events and conflicts of the twentieth century[...]The Black Star Collection at Ryerson University includes more than a quarter of a million photographs created by more than 6,000 different image-makers, many of them acknowledged as individuals who helped define picture journalism as it evolved throughout the twentieth century."

I was actually a little bit more interested in the history of the Black Star collection than I was the exhibition... though I thought the exhibition was really good.

Manfred Linus, Untitled [Marilyn Monroe], date and location unknown.
The Black Star Collection, Ryerson Image Centre.

 The Image centre also linked the other exhibitions in the centre with Burn with Desire, currently there is an exhibit titled Anti-Glamour: Portraits of Women, a case of 20th century costume jewellery from the collection of Carole Tanenbaum, a video installation of Alex Prager's short films commissioned by the New York  Times titled A Touch of Evil.

Selection of pieces from Fabulous Fakes by Carole Tanenbaum, from the 50's and early 60's.
Photograph from Carole's Tips

"HOUSEWIVES OF AMERICA!"

MUSEUM MONDAYS

BY ALEXANDRA JEFFERY

Lately I've been searching a lot of film archives and a lot of online archives. Recently this led me to the Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive. While snooping around in their collection I came across their online exhibit WWII Propaganda Films and IU: Audiovisual Production, Circulation, and Education. 

Screenshot from Survival of the Fittest

 The exhibit features films from Indiana University's Bureau of Audio-Visual Aids. According to the website the I.U. distributed 16mm films as a  a way to provide a "vital link in the distribution of information from the Federal government's Office of War Information to the citizens of Indiana and throughout the mid-west."

Screenshot form Indiana University Goes to War

 I watched quite a few of the videos which are organized by subject and include topics like health, agriculture, production and women in wartime.

Some of the films I watched included some really great dialogue like: "they're not naturally familiar with mechanical processes nor machines" (Supervising Women Workers), "Food to keep our husky young fighting men fit" (The Gardens of Victory) and "every year 2 billion pounds of waste kitchen fat is thrown away" (Out of the Frying Pan and into the Firing Line).

Here is a list of the other things that I liked: the music was peppy and made me want to support 'Merica, there was a lot of corporate involvement in the films, the Office of Civilian Defense logo looks a lot like the Deathly Hallows symbol and the narrators have the olde tyme news voice.

Screenshot from The Gardens of Victory

 My favorite and most informative film was "Out of the frying pan and into the firing line."

SUPER FANCY JEWELS, A SUPER FANCY THIEF, OH AND ALSO NAPOLEAN

MUSEUM MONDAY

BY ALEXANDRA JEFFERY

Napoleon's mother, Maria Laetitia Ramolino Bonaparte's acrostic bracelet that
spells 'Letitia': Lapis Lazuli, Emerald, Turquoise, Idocrasio, Tourmaline,
Ialino (Hyaline) and Amethyst. From Jeweler Magazine.

Recently I came across a story about Napoleon's jewels. They had arrived in Australia, at the National Gallery of Victoria. And by recently I mean last month and by "had arrived" I mean in 2012.

Well whatever they're still pretty no matter how behind I am in the news.

Empress Josephine’s shell cameo diadem, presented to her by her
brother-in-law Joachim Murat Empire period 1804–15 gold, shell,
mother-of-pearl, cameos, pearls, precious and semi-precious
stones From Jeweler Magazine.

1808–13 Box with a crowned N monogram Empire period 1804–15
gold, diamonds, enamel.  From Jeweler Magazine.

1780–1814 Malachite parure (Parure en malachite) Empire period
1804–15 gold, malachite, pearls. From Jeweler Magazine.

There are a couple fancy, pretty things you can see above. What really caught my eye was the touch watch that belonged to Jerome Bonaparte:

Abraham-Louis Breguet Swiss 1747–1823 Touch watch belonging to
Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia 1809 gold, diamonds,
pearls, enamel. From Jeweler Magazine.

I had to look up what a touch watch was because I hadn't heard of one before. They are also called montre a tact or tact watch, and were invented by Abraham-Louis Breguet. The intent of the watch was to relay the time based on touch. According to Foundation De La Haute Horlogorie: "In the late eighteenth century it was considered impolite to consult one's watch in company... Knobs representing the hours are positioned around the case with a large hand that could be turned until it met resistance. Its position in relation to the knobs gave the time."

The one above was discovered on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW, well according to my Wikipedia search it was, so now it is FACT.

Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823).

My little sojourn into Abraham-Louis Breguet's watch-making (the Breguet Company is now the luxury division of the Swiss Watch Group) led me to this awesome article in Wired about the theft of a rare collection of timepieces from the Mayer Institute in Los Angeles. One of the pieces stolen was "The Queen:" "a priceless gold pocket watch designed for Marie Antoinette by legendary Swiss watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet."

I'll just give you the highlights here of what happened: April night, 1983; theft valued at 700,000.00 (USD); ex-Israeli army intelligence officer as the investigator; becomes a cold case; 2006 woman contacts a lawyer about some timepieces her husband had owned THAT HE CONFESSED ON HIS DEATHBED THAT HE HAD STOLEN 2 DECADES AGO; the pieces are returned to the museum; the Queen now valued at 30 million dollars.

Also the Wired article gives a pretty cool summary of the thief's--Na'aman Diller--life as a burglar. This is some real life heisting okay?

CROWDSOURCING -- OUTREACH, OR SCHEME FOR FREE LABOUR?

MUSEUM MONDAY

BY ALEXANDRA JEFFERY

Many archives—and museums too, like the Brooklyn Museum*—are crowdsourcing their activities. Could this indicate that archives and museums are now sharing their authority with those that patronize their institutions? Or, is this simply a ploy to make you think they are-- a ruse to get you to work for them for free?

I’m going to choose to give museums and archives the benefit of the doubt and consider this an interesting way to a) increase awareness of institutions and collections and b) make more material available online. 

For instance, I recently came across the University of Iowa’s DIY History transcription project. The intent is to have willing victims decipher olde tyme handwriting so that they can make full-text digital copies available. I gave it a go to see what it was like—willing indeed. I chose to transcribe letters that fell under the “Pioneer Lives” category because I’m just into that. My task of choice was the Bartholomew Family Letters, 1852-1893.

1867-07-02 Page 1

The particular letter I transcribed (seen above) was written in 1867 by the J.P. Foster Real Estate Office to Mr. B. A. Bartholomew. I'm usually quite into this kind of thing--I even listened to some fiddle/folk/banjo music while I did this, to get in the mood--but whoooeee that handwriting is  difficult to read, and this letter wasn't all that interesting--just money and contract matters. Well, I suppose that's probably what you can expect with pioneer life. I bet the WWI or WWII diaries were more interesting, or THE COOKBOOKS.

So all in all, not the most exciting experience. However I liked the program, pretty easy to use and the whole website is pretty good looking, which is something that I can't say for all the projects I've listed. 

Here are some other projects (check out zooniverse for more):

1. The Old Weather Project – “Help scientists recover Arctic and worldwide weather observations made by United States ships since the mid-19th century by transcribing ships' logs.”
 
2.What’s the Score at the Bodleian? – “By describing these images, you will not only be helping to provide access to this valuable but hitherto 'hidden' collection, you will also be facilitating future research into popular music of the period and the wider social function which it performed during the Victorian age.”

3. NYPL Labs at New York Public Library – “NYPL Labs is an experimental design and technology team working to expand the range of interaction, interpretation, and reuse of library collections and data.” One such project is Building Inspector : “Building Inspector is a mobile-friendly web app for improving information extracted from 19th century New York City insurance atlases.”


 
4. The Smithsonian Transcription Center – “Become a Smithsonian Digital Volunteer and unlock our stories as you transcribe our collections.” There is the Bumblebee Project, where you get to describe bee species!

5. Notes from Nature a collaborative effort of multiple institutions - "We have thousands of specimen images, labels and ledgers from museum collections and the biologists who maintain those collections...help us transcribe that data and make it available for further use in biodiversity and conservation research."

6. Ancient Lives at the University of Oxford - YOU GET TO TRANSCRIBE GRECO-ROMAN PAPYRI FROM EGYPT

*The Brooklyn Museum's projects Tag! You're It and Freeze Tag have now ended but users can still tag objects in the online collection.

PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTIONS - LET'S GET VISUAL

MUSEUM MONDAY
BY ALEXANDRA JEFFERY

New British immigrant to Canada having a bottle of Coca-Cola and a cigarette,
1947, Archives of Ontario (I0002997.jpg)

It's no secret that we are living in a world that is primarily visual; the things that grab our attention are often bright, colourful and loud. Photographic collections have the same impact in archives; they represent some of the most accessible parts of the collections. Archives (and museums) have a really fantastic resource at their finger-tips (in my humble opinion). So, for this Museum Monday, I thought I might post a list of some interesting photograph collections!

1. The City of Toronto Archives has a collection of their favorite photographs, but they also have the photographic collection of Ellis Wiley. This particular collection contains photographs from 1945-1993 of many different areas of Toronto like Kensington and St. Lawrence Market, Ontario Place, the CN Tower…

EDIT: the City of Toronto Archives also has a pretty awesome Flickr page, if you want to see a fair number of photographs without having to search in their database.

St. Lawrence Market, Ellis Wiley fonds (Fonds 124), File 12

Campbell House, Ellis Wiley fonds (Fonds 124), File 2

Ontario Place, Ellis Wiley fonds (Fonds 124), File 9

2. The New York City Department of Records has a collection of Police Department and Criminal Prosecution photographs. The website includes a disclaimer, and I’ll put one here too, be aware that there are photographs that include some graphic images such as homicide crime scene photographs.

Street view, gun in street, political posters in windows, 1916-20 (pde_0127)

George Marthens mugshots #67095, 1916-20 (pde_0390)

Front view of house with door open and footprints in snow, 1916-20 (pde_0187)

3. The McCord Museum has a collection of William Notman photographs. During Notman’s career he “built up the largest photographic business in North America” with 7 permanent studios in Canada at one point or another. Notman's business was held by his family until 1935 when Willam Notman’s son Charles sold the business.

Foot race, Dawson City, about 1900 (MP-0000.2360.36), McCord Museum

Ice shove, Commissioners Street, Montreal, QC about 1884
(VIEW-1498), McCord Museum

Quebec Bridge, Quebec City, QC, 1917(?) (VIEW-6191), McCord Museum

4. The Glenbow Museum has a large photographic collection as well, including photos related to my favorite subject: agricultural labour.

Children picking sugar beets in field, Raymond, Alberta, September 1953
Glenbow Archives (NA-4510-191)

Men model women's clothes in fashion show, Calgary Alberta
Glenbow Archives (NA-5600-7229a)

Threshing crew, Southern Alberta, Glenbow Archives (NA-4548-2)

5. The Toronto Reference Library was just donated a huge collection of photographs (1900-1999) from the Toronto Star. The collection is in the Baldwin Collection of Canadiana. The library has not digitized the collection yet, although I’m not sure if that will even be part of the plan for the collection. However, the Toronto Star did do an online gallery of the highlights of the collection.

Gordie Howe with sons Mark and Marty, February 27, 1976
Toronto Star, Dick Darrell

Queen Elizabeth II with Pierre Trudeau, October 15, 1977
Toronto Star, Jeff Goode

Woman on corner of Bay St. and Front St., March 4, 1985
Toronto Star, Tony Bock

MINKA

MUSEUM MONDAY

BY ALEXANDRA JEFFERY

 

I came across this video a couple of years ago and loved it. It is a short documentary film about a Associated Press foreign correspondent and a young university student who move and rebuild an old farmhouse in Japan in 1967.

I find it interesting for a number of reasons: I think it is really well done in terms of a documentary, I think its moving and I think it demonstrates a lot in terms of heritage.

EMILY CARR AND THE NASS VALLEY

MUSEUM MONDAYS

BY ALEXANDRA JEFFERY

This week for Museum Monday I'd like to direct you to a Globe and Mail article about a new Emily Carr exhibit being put on by the Nisga'a Museum located in the Nass Valley in BC.

Nisga'a Museum

The exhibit, called "Emily Carr’s Return to Ank’ida," seeks to bring only a few Emily Carr works back into the context in which they were created. Carr visited the Nass Valley in the late 1920s as part of a sketching tour that was a prolific period for her art and an exploration of Native culture.

Forsaken (1937) is on loan from the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Photo.

The article raises several issues which I would like to draw attention to. Firstly, while the trip was a success for Carr, not everyone enjoyed her visit. The idea of Emily Carr as a "not nice" "guest" of the area is rather incongruous with her status as a preeminent Canadian artist. This aspect of these works, which the director seems to want to tease out, are so important. I think in terms of art and Canada there is such a small canon of art and artists, not only that but much of the art is somewhat formulaic and often represents very specific subjects. Within this tight space, I wonder how easy it is to bring these facets of the work to the fore, and whether this challenge (if we can call it that) makes a difference.

Secondly is the idea that in the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Royal BC Museum these works have very different meanings than when they are displayed in the Nass Valley. In these large metropolitan museums they become assimilated into the rest of the body of Carr's work, and individually they lose their facets. I really appreciate this idea of recontextualizing the works and understanding them in a different light. I believe that this is a process and a concept that need not only apply to art.

One of my favorite items the article highlighted was the fact that the accompanying publication was not published preceding the opening of the exhibit. I think all to often exhibit catalogues become simply souvenir objects without some of the same nuances as the exhibit and without the surrounding atmosphere of the exhibit captured. This is an indication I think of what is possible to change about museum practices and what is possible when we reconsider objects and artworks.

So short post for you this week, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

Ankeda, The Pole of Chief George Kindealda (1928)
Photo

CONTEMPORARY COLLECTING

MUSEUM MONDAYS

BY ALEXANDRA JEFFERY

3D printed gun "The Liberator" which will be on display in the
Rapid Response Collecting exhibit,  photograph from Dezeen

Primark jeans purchased after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building, photograph

Opening this summer at the Victoria and Albert Museum is a new exhibit called Rapid Response Collecting. The press release can be found here. However, other than the press release, I can't seem to find much else about the exhibit on the V&A website. According to the press release objects like the 3D printed gun above; a pair of jeans made in Rana Plaza, Bangladesh, after its collapse; Katy Perry Cool Kitty false eyelashes; and a Lufsig IKEA toy, as well as other items. The intention is to collect items that have certain cultural significances, in a time in which they retain those specific significances. Feel free to read about the objects mentioned above here.

Exhibit in Shenzhen, photograph from Dezeen

This collecting strategy was initially used in Shenzhen, where V&A curators Keiran Long and Corinna Gardner asked citizens to choose objects to put on display that would say something important about their current city and current lives. Gardner said "These objects together tell a story about that city in this moment and offer a broader, more wide-ranging portrait of one of the most interesting, fast-changing cities in the world today." Check out an interview with Keiran Long here.

The V&A exhibit leads me into talking about collecting contemporary items. With the strategy above, the intention is more towards items that have an immediate and significant meaning that can be used to explain current culture. The other type of collecting, that is simply acquiring contemporary objects for posterity's sake is also demonstrated by the V&A, read an article about the V&A's history of collecting the twentieth century here.

Vivienne Westwood Autumn/Winter 1993-4 platform shoes,
donated by Vivienne Westwood, photograph 

Ostensibly, contemporary collecting makes sense, the items are on the market currently and are not therefore priced as old or rare; and the objects exist in multitude, there are many to acquire.

Furnishing fabric by Marc Foster Grant, "Haircut? Yes Please!"
1973, donated by Marc Foster Grant, photograph

The reason I have been thinking about this is that my internship is sorting through a private donation of fashion related ephemera. My job is to assess the material and in what museum/archive/private collections it will best serve. Lately I've been coming across quite a lot of more recent material: formal wear catalogues from Toronto retailers from the 1980s, Eaton's and Simpson's mail order catalogues from the 1970s, even obscure French magazines from the 1990s. All of these collected largely during these decades. From our perspective now they seem useful or relevant, but the prospect of collecting current objects, like the style book for Holt Renfrew Spring 2014 seems a bit useless. And for museums, why acquire that when it could acquire early 20th century advertising material from Ryrie Brothers Jewellers?

Page from a 1970s Eaton's catalogue

 Further, my pondering led me to wonder if every museum started collecting contemporary material in one hundred, or four hundred years' time would items from the early 21st century no longer be rare? Would an object be one of millions instead of the one example of pre-1600 dress the V&A has in its collection?

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

MUSEUM MONDAYS

BY: ALEXANDRA JEFFERY

Babe Paley in a Charles James gown, 1950.
Photograph from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photograph by John Rawlings, Rawlings / Vogue / Condé Nast Archive. Copyright © Condé Nast

The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently underwent a 40 million dollar revamp of its Costume Institute galleries, including the new Anna Wintour Fashion Center. A week, and a bit, ago the Institute opened its "inaugural" exhibition called Charles James: Beyond Fashion.

The Costume Institute's Andrew Bolton (left) and Harold Koda stand among a trio of Charles James's dresses. Photograph by Matthew Kristall for Wall Street Journal

The exhibit will focus on James' innovative construction and design. About 65 of his designs are shown in two different locations in the Met. One of which is the first-floor special exhibition galleries which "spotlight the glamour and resplendent architecture of James's ball gowns from the 1940s through 1950s." Additionally the new Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Gallery "provides the technology and flexibility to dramatize James's biography via archival pieces including sketches, pattern pieces, swatches, ephemera, and partially completed works from his last studio in New York City's Chelsea Hotel."

Charles James Ball Gowns, 1948
Photograph from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photograph by Cecil Beaton, Beaton / Vogue / Condé Nast Archive. Copyright © Condé Nast

Charles James "Butterfly" Gown, 1954
Photograph from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph by Cecil Beaton
The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby's

What is interesting, and intentional on the part of the museum, is the marriage between James' technological and technique based advancements in dress construction and the techniques and technology the Met is applying to the exhibit as well as the museum itself with the new upgrades courtesy of the renovation.

Part of the exhibition experience is recordings of James' voice and 3-D image projections that show the inner layers of James' designs. The use of X-ray images to show visitors a different view, or different perspective of the designs is mirrored by James' own use of complex structures for his gowns. For instance, his use of millinery net, willow and buckram for interior structure provided the basis for astounding architectural constructions.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Met's new renovations are not restricted to gallery spaces: "a new conservation lab, equipped with wide doors to accommodate large gowns, a wet lab for treating fabrics and a fume-extraction unit. There's also an updated storage system to handle the museum's collection." 

Michelle Obama cuts the ribbon alongside Thomas P. Campbell, director and CEO
of the Metropolitan Museum, Anna Wintour and Emily K. Rafferty,
President of the Metropolitan Museum.
Photograph from The Telegraph

It is clear that the Met's renovation is beginning with a few big names, as it were. We've got Charles James, couturier extraordinaire; Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue; and even Michelle Obama cut the ribbon. Sometimes, it seems when it comes to big museum exhibits all there is are big names. The name of the exhibition, the name of the gallery and the name of the museum itself. However, especially when it comes to fashion exhibits, I often wonder who these exhibits reflect. Certainly the socialites, debutantes, magazine editors who feature and wear designs like James'. With the Met's Costume Institute this seems, perhaps, natural. That the Met would feature this exhibit after recently opening it's renovated facilities is not surprising, in some ways this is where couture belongs.

"Charles James: Beyond Fashion," on view through August 10
Photograph from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Instagram

This also reflects broader problems in museum collections for me (and this can certainly be said of archival collections as well), that the objects only show a certain type of individual. And this is of course for the simple reason that these are the objects that survive. In fashion collections the evening dresses of young, wealthy women are reflected in abundance. They are the dresses that are kept and remembered. We know who wore it and where they wore it, we even have the photographs to accompany them. 

I found myself contemplating this last year when the ROM had their BIG exhibit on. Not that I didn't enjoy the exhibit in some senses, but it did make me wonder what that Dior dress was doing at the ROM, in Toronto. I have recently read a few of Alexandra Palmer's (senior curator at the ROM) works on Toronto's post-war couturier's and I found them fascinating.  For me, this is the story I want to see at the ROM, or really anywhere. Not the story of a Dior gown constructed in Paris and immediately purchased for a museum collection.

But I suppose I have to remember that museum's have to work with what they've got. You cannot show gowns you do not have. Museum's must work within their collections, or what they can get on loan, and create stories from this. And really, who am I to talk about not wanting to see big names, I just posted five photographs of Charles James' gowns and would definitely want to see the exhibit.