LOCAL COLOUR: COLLECTIONS CAFÉ AND CHIHULY GARDEN AND GLASS IN SEATTLE, WA

A MUSE BOUCHE

BY: ERIKA ROBERTSON

“Did you visit any museums over break?”

“Three or four. One was all about this artist who… well, you know Chihuly.”

“Oh, cool!”

Detail of Nijima Floats. The glass spheres were inspired by Japanese fishing net floats that drift onto Washington Beaches. Photo by Erika Robertson.

 How many contemporary artists get that kind of instant recognition? Growing up in the Northwest, I feel like I’ve always been aware of Dale Chihuly’s work. He’s an innovative glass artist, entrepreneur, and collector. But until I moved to Toronto, I didn't realize how much he contributes to Washington’s culture and reputation abroad.

Born and raised in Tacoma, Chihuly brought the practice of art glass from Italy back to his hometown. He’s very visible there today, as shown the Chihuly Bridge of Glass at the Museum of Glass. Today, Tacoma is a former industrial seaport that is reinventing itself as a funky, innovative, coastal city. Walking through Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle Center, I traced regional connections from the artist’s hometown, through his museum, to the café.

Glass Forest, a collaboration between Dale Chihuly and James Carpenter. Photo by Erika Robertson.

Visitors to the ROM’s recent exhibition, CHIHULY, know it’s almost impossible to take a bad photograph of those glass sculptures. The camera loves those vibrant, smooth surfaces against black backgrounds. The museum’s lighting technicians illuminate the bold, yet delicate material. The sculptures remind me of the urban Northwest’s optimism, new modernist style, and reverence for natural forms.

Glass blowers interpret the process of hand blowing a glass bottle. Photo by Erika Robertson.

From the galleries, I was drawn outdoors to the Community Hot Shop. The mobile glass studio is designed to look like an airstream trailer. It reminded me of a food truck, but the ‘cooking demo’ consisted of two glassblowers making a bottle. According to Conor McClellan, the hot shop was a response to popular demand: guests wanted to see the process of glass blowing alongside the finished artworks.

While turning, heating, and shaping the glass, Conor explained that Dale Chihuly was once a gaffer, working from the bench like him. When the artist lost his eye, he moved to a designer role. This allowed him to hire more skilled workers, expanding the range of possibilities. As an institution about a living artist, Chihuly Garden and Glass feels almost like a showroom; guests can even buy a slumped bowl in the gift shop. Can those who don’t take home an original Chihuly carry away a piece of the Northwest in their memories?

Now that's a souvenir! Photo by Erika Robertson.

Beauty is a theme throughout the exhibition. Wall texts say as much, but tombstone labels for individual pieces are absent. The café’s menu quotes the artist as saying, “I love to find the beauty in everyday objects.” Vitrines in the restaurant tables display pieces from Chihuly’s personal collection. Mine happened to contain strings of glass beads, but others held ceramic animals and bottle openers. Other than a few sentences in the menu, these displays are presented without context.

Certainly an innovative approach, but I wonder who beaded these and how they came to the artist's collection. Photo by Erika Robertson.

Like the galleries, my meal is full of bright flavours and Pacific Rim fusion. The café offers Ste Michelle wine from Woodinville, Washington and local Beecher’s cheese curds next to meaty clam chowder. I tasted the char siu (Cantonese barbeque) sandwich with miso aioli and pickled slaw, itself a reference to Southern barbeque with a hint of báhn mi. (Ironically, the one thing you can’t get in this Seattle eatery is espresso. I overheard staff sending more than one customer across the square to Starbucks.) The flavours seem to say ‘this is the Northwest: funky, international, and irreverent.’

Is this sandwich a product of tasty, tasty cultural appropriation? According to author Soleil Ho, the answer may depend on who's in the kitchen. Photo by Erika Robertson.

Collection Café’s curation embraces regionalism: “the distinctive local character of a geographic area, or to a people's perception of and identification with such places” (source). To me, the practice of taking things, whether objects or foodways, out of context and remixing them characterizes Tacoma culture. Tacoma’s recent past, filled with boats and red brick, is thrown together with fragments gathered from around the world and mixed with enthusiasm for anything innovative. It’s flavourful, but we need to consider where it all comes from and how it arrived on our plates.

In a globalized era, is it possible to define regional flavours and cultures? Is it worthwhile? In my next article, I visit MOHAI’s Edible City, which attempts to capture Seattle’s complex cuisine and food industry.

CONTROVERSIAL ART?: KARA WALKER

WALK OF FAME

BY: MALLORY HORRILL

I have always been attracted to art pieces and artists that express significant issues through their work, stimulating and encouraging thought and discussion on the subject. Following this train of thought I would like to introduce to you an artist that I recently became acquainted with, the very talented Kara Walker.

Walker is an African American artist that is most well known for confronting gender, race, identity, and violence in her work, especially in relation to African American history. She was born in 1969 in California, and moved with her family to Georgia in 1982. Walker attended Atlanta’s College of Art where she received her Bachelors degree in Fine Arts in 1991. Walker continued her education at the Rhode Island School of Design, completing her Masters of Fine Arts in 1994. In the final year of her Masters, Walker kick started her artistic career with an exhibit at the Drawing Center in SoHo, New York. 

Slavery! Slavery! (1997) (The New York Times)

Walker’s career has continued on an upward trajectory, in 1997 she was awarded the MacArthur Foundation ‘genius’ grant, she has displayed her work worldwide in both solo and group exhibitions, and many museums own her work. The artist varies her artistic expression through a wide range of media, including but not limited to paint, cut paper silhouette, drawing, film, light projection, text, and most recently sugar! Walker currently resides in New York, where she teaches at Columbia’s School of the Arts and continues to create amazing art pieces.

While Walker’s work does stimulate reflection and thought it has also caused moments of contention. In 1997, her art was criticized by many for depicting the African Americans of the anti-bellum south through negative stereotypes. Walker stated: “So I saw the silhouette and stereotype as linked. Of course, while the stereotype, or the emblem, can communicate with a lot of people, and a lot of people can understand it, the other side is that it also reduces differences, reduces diversity to that stereotype.”(Columbia News)

Darkytown Rebellion (2001) (The Whitney Museum of American Art)

A similar incident arose in 2012, when the Newark Public Library took offense to a piece of Walker’s that they were displaying on loan. The piece depicts many different scenes but the one that provoked controversy was an image where a woman is depicted performing a sexual act on a male figure. Walker stated about the piece: “I wanted to make a point about the way these images arose for many when Barack Obama (pictured at a little lectern on the mid-left) gave his national speech on race. And the many times he invokes his or his wife's heritage to make an ideological point about American patriotism, which in some way grants permission to the ghosts of racist terrorism to be reimagined—here with KKK hooded figures, lynched bodies and sexual violence—and these should be horrible to behold, and should feel both familiar and uncomfortable.”(Art in America) The Newark library temporarily covered the art piece from public viewing until it was decided that it should be displayed.

Walker’s work is both praised and questioned. What do you think of Walker’s work?

The creation of the work A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby

Special thanks to Madeleine Adamson for introducing me to this extremely talented artist. 

THE FOLLOWING SOURCES WERE CONSULTED:
http://www.biography.com/people/kara-walker-37225
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/03/09/karaWalker.html
http://learn.walkerart.org/karawalker?n=Main.HomePage

http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/news/kara-walker-newark-library/

A WHIRLWIND IN THE WINDY CITY

MUSEUM MONDAY

BY CADY MOYER

Millennium Park, Chicago, with the Art Institute of Chicago visible at the far right. Photo taken by author. 

Happy Museum Monday from the Windy City; my name is Cady, and this is my first post for Musings.

Coincidentally, I actually HAVE something exciting to share. This weekend I was fortunate enough to be in Chicago for work. It was my first time to that stunning city, and if you are into museums you can have a literal field day on Museum Campus.

My plan originally, was to go to the Field Museum; however, I was swayed by my colleagues and locals that I had to see the Art Institute of Chicago. So off I went on a hot sunny Saturday morning. It took me half an hour to walk there from my hotel, leaving me an hour and a half before my next meeting. This meant that I only had 60 minutes to see the Art Institute.

I knew I would have to be fast in order to see it all in that time. Now, I’m of the school of thought that believes luck is good planning carefully executed (I’m not sure why I still prescribe to this belief; ironically more often than not, this is the opposite of my reality).

With the help of an information staff person, I planned out a route on the museum's map:

My map. Here on the `first floor, you can see my route drawn out.

FIRST FLOOR
1. Chagall's America Windows
2. Byzantine Special Exhibition , Of Heaven and Earth
3. Greek Art
4. Roman Art
5. Etruscan Art
6. Byzantine Art
7. American Art before 1900
8. American Decorative Arts
9. Indian, South Asian, and Himalayan Art
10. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Art
11. Indian Art of the Americas
12. African Art

SECOND FLOOR
13. Chicago Architecture
14. European Art before 1900
15. Prints and Drawings
16. American Folk Art
17. Renaissance Jewelry
18. Arms and Armor
19. European Decorative Arts
20. And finally…Impressionism (saving the best for last)

If you read all through that list, 1-20, you're amazing.
If you didn't, because numbers 3-19 all blended into the word art then, you are amazingly normal, like me.

I completely gave up on seeing other special exhibitions galleries, and the sections on Modern American Art, Contemporary Art after 1960, as well as the entire lower level of miniature houses.

So little old me, colour coded map in hand, set off thinking, yeah, I got this--Art Institute of Chicago in one hour--I can totally do that. I am practiced in getting through a museum quickly (my fiancé has about an hour internal time limit for such activities). Confident, I started my stopwatch and off I went.


TIME - GALLERY

0:00.59 - Greek Art

Not even a minute in and I deviated from my plan. In retrospect that should have been my first warning, but I felt great at the time. The Chagall Windows were just behind me, I'd go there next. Change of plans, not a problem. 

In the Greek Art Gallery, I found this object particularly intriguing. I don’t know exactly what it is. Anyone else know?

Object from the Greek Art gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago. Comment below if you know what it is! Photo taken by author.

0:03:47 -  Hellenistic and Roman Art

Okay still not Chagall Windows, but it was right next to the Greek Art gallery, so if I could get it done now, why not? 

Roman Art Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago. Photo taken by author.

0:04:03 – Chagall’s America Windows
The space exhibiting these windows was quiet and contemplative, bathed in a beautiful blue light. I loved it. I was only four minutes into my hour and already accomplished 3 galleries, so I decided I had time to spare, and stayed with the windows a little longer than I should have.

Chagall's America Windows, Art Institute of Chicago. Photo taken by author.

0:07:44 - Etruscan Art
In this gallery I was excited to find a polished bronze mirror that I remembered admiring in one of my textbooks when I took a course on Etruscan Art and Architecture. Here in the museum, it also came along with an interactive iPad. With the iPad I could explore the object from multiple angles, as well as select related objects that together with the mirror offered different narratives. What a great idea!

Playing with the interactive program on the display for discovering an Etruscan bronze mirror.  Photo taken by author. 

0:11:45 - Byzantine Art and Special Exhibition Heaven and Earth 

A little behind schedule at this point, but as long as I had no hiccups, my timing would be fine. Byzantines were champions of the mosaic, and this is the closest I ever got to one. I've seen the finest examples of Byzantine mosaic in Ravenna and Istanbul, but I never got to be so close to them as I did in Chicago. 

Mosaic Icon of the Virgin Episkepis, late 13th century, from present day Istanbul, currently at the Art Institute of Chicago. Photo taken by Author.

0:19:07 - Lost.
Despite my best efforts to stay on track, I managed to get lost. While my route looked good on paper, in reality it wasn't a natural flow between the galleries I had selected.


0:20:40 - and Found! American Decorative Arts and American Art before 1900
Due to my time delay getting lost, I should have really rushed through both the American Decorative Arts and American Art before 1900. Yet, there were so many unique objects and intriguing romantic paintings, that I just had to stop and share.

From the American Art before 1900 gallery. Alvan Fisher painted this scene out of author JamesFenimore Copper's 1827 book Prairie. Photo taken by author. 

0:33:32 - The American West 

The paintings in this gallery were quite narrative, and the sculpture very emotive. This piece stood out to me as the rest of the paintings in the gallery had to do with overt depictions of confrontation. This one though, made me think both about the subjects, and the artist. Considering the painter’s vantage point, was he really there? What was he trying to show? What does the painting’s title Historians of the Tribe mean?

Historians of the Tribe, Frederic Remington, 1890. 

0:39:59 - Indian, South Asian, and Himalayan Art
While this was not a walk through gallery, the space was at least easy to navigate as it was a single large room instead of a series of small rooms to move through (and get lost in…). This gallery had lots of natural light, and vibrant wall paint in shades of red, orange, and yellow. Also...half way through my hour, and nowhere near half way through the museum.

Statue in the Indian, South Asian, and Himalayan Art exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. Photo taken by author.

0:45:25 - Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Art
In all honesty, I wasn't going to go in to this set of galleries because I only had fifteen minutes left and had not even finished the first floor...but it looked so good! I couldn't pass it up.

Collection item from Japanese Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago. Photo taken by author.

0:52:39 - African Art and Indian Art of the Americas
The African Art collection on display was much more extensive than that of the Americas. I was really interested to see how the museum displayed their African art collection as I was in a class last week where we visited the Art Gallery of Ontario and learned about the development and display of its African Art collection. There are two very different sets of aesthetics and ideas about display between the AIC and the AGO...

Beaded mask from African Art Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago. Photo taken by author. 

0:59:38 - 22 SECONDS LEFT!!!

Time for a quick impression of Impressionism!

 A museum goer admiring Monet`s work up close. 

And there you go, the Art Institute of Chicago in 60 minutes. If you want, you can see more of my visit by watching the video, THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO IN 60 SECONDS, below.

This blog post may leave you spinning a little, like I was after my visit. I've intentionally left a lot of my comments on what I saw open, in hopes that you'll have something you want to add or respond to.

Do I recommend trying to see it all in an hour? Absolutely not.
Did I have fun trying to do that? Yes, BUT I did miss getting to know a few pieces really well, or developing any good ideas or thoughts.

My method of taking on the museum in such an ordered fashion didn't go to plan, and in my rush to stick to my route I ended up spending a lot of time trying to figure out if I was where I was supposed to be instead of seeing more of what the museum had to offer in the time I had. I did, however, stay longer in the Impressionism gallery than 22 seconds. I had to, they had 2 rooms full of Monet's work, and he is my favourite painter.

The list of things I missed in an hour is as long as the list of things I saw, but did I ever see a lot. In one hour, I was so fortunate to see a richness of the most beautiful and incredible things that humanity has ever made. Whether the art was created for love, for war, for pride, for passion, for faith, and for reasons unknown, what came into focus during my whirlwind tour in the Windy City, was simply that humans, across time and space, medium and method, are capable of such greatness.

I hope you feel energized, inspired, and full of ideas. You are part of the human race, whose art demonstrates and reminds us that we are all oh-so capable of ingenuity and beauty. So what great thing will you do today, or this week? Perhaps it will start with your comment at the end of this post. Like me stumbling across two rooms full of my favourite painter's works at the end of my marathon of a museum visit, you just don't know when or where you're going to come across your life's greatest wonders--until it just happens.

Happy Museum Monday everyone!