May 30, 2006
With so many blockbuster shows at the Museum of Natural History, it's easy to lose sight of the museum's permanent exhibits, some of which clearly have not been changed since before the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union disappeared. While reading a review on Saturday of Stephen Quinn's Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History, I decided it was time to revisit and rethink these exhibits, classic examples of approaches to depicting habitats in museums from the early- to mid-20th century.
My thoughts on dioramas were tempered by visits throughout the 1990s to museums of ethnology throughout Europe, Russia (including Siberia) and China, where fascinating yet sometimes crude and downright ethnocentric exhibits and forced guided tours still underscored how a dominant culture looks askance at minorities within its own borders as well as natives of other countries. To be sure, one of history's (and certainly the 20th century's) most frequently-rendered museum lessons from a didactic perspective can be reduced to: the mighty conquer the weak. Most lilely my rose-colored museum glasses were additionally tinted by John Berger's classic 1980 essay "Why Look at Animals?" as well as Catherine Lutz's 1983 book Reading National Geographic. Because it's not just that these dioramas have monumental and historical qualities that endlessly fascinate, but they also tell us much about who we were.
And in this age of globalization and global warming, the lack of visitors to these parts of the museum tell us about who we are now. As wild turkeys and a coyote have encroached on Manhattan in recent weeks, I wonder if the call of the wild beckons more—or less. Based on the crowds I observed at the museum—granted, it was a holiday weekend—it seems the dioramas, gems and minerals attract and fascinate less than ever. Granted, it is tough for a stuffed bear—several decades old at that—to compete with multimedia exhibits, IMAX, and large-scale depictions of the solar system. But perhaps it underscores our weird relationship with nature these days, both as tamer and master, how we are increasingly divorced from nature as we continue to modify it. The mountain goat and Alaska brown bear in particular are two exhibits worth studying, for the average American is unlikely to ever see these two animals except in captivity. But the surroundings depicted in these dioramas are equally enchanting, stilted and charming in a way that children of the digital age doubtless have trouble understanding. Stated differently, they look quite dated, even despite a virtual refreshing on the museum's website.
On to the Halls of Minerals and Gems, where a number of specimens are from "West Germany," "East Germany," and the "U.S.S.R." (For reference, next week's World Cup takes place in a Germany that's been united for over 15 years.) In my 30 minutes spent gazing at substantial chunks of minerals and spectacular gems, I encountered only a handful of other visitors. Granted, access to these Halls is complicated at present, requiring you to pass through exhibits on Central America, then to take an elevator (not terribly well-marked) that opens on to the Hall of Meteorites. The video presentation appears to hail from the golden age of filmstrips, and it did not seem clear to some visitors from the Deep South exactly why the Hall is kept so dark. Despite some dazzling items in the collection, clearly revamping the earth science and geology sections have been on the back burner for some time. Given those curious radioactive as well as fluorescing minerals in addition to those stunning gems, crystals and beautifully-carded jade, surely something more could be done to bring all these dioramas and exhibits into the 21st century?
Merely standing in the endless line awaiting an entrance ticket, confounded and confronted by several add-on choices for the special exhibits, underscores how moneymaking and actually turning a profit are foremost on a museum director's mind these days. I could not help but tell some visiting naval officers standing in front of me that general admission is only suggested, and one need not pay the full $15. I also told them the line was far shorter than the previous Sunday, when three of the automated ticket kiosks were out of order. Technology brings us so many wonders, and with us the necessary crowds to pay a high price to keep a world-class museum open. Yet looking at the natural world of the past century, I would hope we won't let classic exhibits wither and perish along with the filmstrip.
photo credit: American Museum of Natural History
Tags:
alaskan brown bear, halls of gems and minerals, museum of natural history, stephen quinn
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Posted on 5/30/2006
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May 07, 2006
What likely will be the blockbuster show of the season opened last Wednesday at the Metropolitan Museum. I arrived right after the museum opened today and advise you to also arrive early in the morning to avoid the madding crowds. Anglomania, the craze for all things English, has again gripped this side of the Atlantic in a show that oscillates between 70's punk and British tradition, rethinking and recasting the English period rooms and their objects that date back almost 300 years with a postmodern veneer.
Right at the entrance you're immediately aware of this dichotomy, with a red wool suit from the mid-18th century to your left and a punk shock wardrobe made infamous by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood in the seventies to your right. Step inside the darkened entrance, and the first object to greet you is an Alexander McQueen tattered Union Jack frock coat worn by David Bowie atop a model with a shock-shellac orange hairdo. The very notion of Britishness stands on its ear here, which fortunately shocks the visitor into a realization that the very wide pantheon of what constitutes Englishness will be displayed in full panorama here, a bit like visualizing the multiheaded Hindu deity Vishvarupa. You proceed on to the English Garden, with the sound of burbling water in the background, lovely ladies in traditional English costume, along with a stunning frilly pink dress with of hundreds of nylon rosettes standing atop a poufy bed-like mound strewn with rose petals.
I won't describe all the rooms and costumes—allow yourself to be pleasantly surprised and shocked—but a number of smashing details stick out: In The Hunt, the paintings by Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds in the context of the permanent collection they become superfluous, indeed just wallpaper, given the shock value of enormous fiberglass horses and hunting dogs and models in transgressive dress atop the long table.
Gentlemen's Club includes a tartan blazer worn by Johnny Rotten, a/k/a Johnny Lydon, who threw a hissy fit at the show's opening last week because he was seated at the end of a long dining table. Lydon recently sounded off on the Indie 103.1 fm show Jonesy's Jukebox with his old Sex Pistols mate Steve Jones. Seen in the context of recently-released third edition of Re/Search's Punk '77 about the San Francisco scene, the snarling photo of Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten all seems so quaint 30 years later, somehow so weirdly English as chintz and tartan. That a Sex Pistol now also sells his line of clothes is—well, it's so very English. Curious that punks who previously were adamant about anticommercial principles now fixate on revenue.
In the Empire and Monarchy room, Vivienne Westwood has created a stunning ensemble aside a painting of the virgin queen Elizabeth I from Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire. How a pro pos to see the Renaissance inscription (from Caxton, I think) propped on a chair beside a pair of gloves:
The fiend that goth a-night
Woman full oft to guile;
Incubus is named by right,
And guileth men other while
Succubus is that wight.
Indeed. With its motifs of peculiar aquatic creatures that evoke Renaissance imagery, the Westwood dress is especially stunning, along with the virgin queen's orange bouffant hairdo, backlit by a flickering fireplace. Meanwhile, at The Deathbed, the extraordinary Shaun Leane and Alexander McQueen dress with spine corset suggests perhaps Blade Runner meets punk rock, an exoskeleton to inflict mortal injury while in the mosh pit. And then you notice the astounding memento mori necklace of bird claws, rabbit skulls, wooden beads, Victorian jet and crystal by Simon Costin. Meanwhile, you won't miss the Stephen Jones raven headdress, the Manolo Blahnik black satin shoes or the Galliano black silk taffeta dress in the Francomania room, because the crowing ravens beckon you in. But I digress.
What could more epitomize the clash of cultures; the appropriation of punk rock by British fashionistas; and the intransigent vs the intractable? Why it's The Gentleman's Club room, where a mohawked punker wearing a t-shirt with silkscreened breasts has just bashed another punk's head with his Doc Martens boots. The other punk has a mohawk made of a translucent Doc Martens sole, his own head having apparently cracked apart a plate. At this point, you become rather oblivious to the furnishings, the ceilings and other period pieces and simply focus on the 'hawks: one made of dolls' legs, another of cut-up 45 r.p.m. records, yet another of barbed wire, and one of newspaper emblazoned with the headline "punk rock". And of course, another with the ubiquitous Union Jack (see photo). Despite the shock and awe factor of the mannequin yobs—which also include, for example, a Tom of Finland x-rated t-shirt—the entire exhibit is surprisingly family-friendly, perhaps underscoring yet again how punk was so successfully co-opted and regurgitated by the brilliant houses of haute couture. Ars vt artem falleret, perhaps.
Coupled with The Hunt Ball room—astounding confections by Galliano, McQueen, Westwood et al contrasting against the staid backdrop of, for example, a gorgeous mantel from Chesterfield House in London bedecked with caryatids—you walk away and wonder, "Is anyone looking at the art?" I put this question to a guard, just wondering what her casual observations were. "I really don't know," she slyly replied. Earlier I'd spotted the dapper guard I'd seen last week setting up the Cai Guo-Qiang rooftop exhibit. He was instructing two other guards about this exhibit, which likely poses a crowd-control challenge in the cramped and narrow rooms. With so many fancy, cotton-candy colored puffed up hairdos (heavily reliant on traditional punk materials of glue, hairspray, shellac), the visual candy becomes nearly hallucinatory and subsumes the furnishings. Which of course turns the traditional theatrics topsy-turvy. Call it a postmodern Masque of Blackness, if you will.
Exiting the exhibit, you are deposited back in the American Wing, whereupon you float back to earth, and have to make a left turn into the American Wing to reach the Anglomania Sales Desk. Unlike the other two big exhibits right now—Hatsheput and Tibetan Warriors —fortunately this part of the Met wasn't rejiggered solely to create a shop. Were it so, perhaps Trash & Vaudeville could have supplied the merchandise. (photo credit: johnlydon.com)
Tags:
alexander mcqueen, anglomania, cai guo qiang, francomania, galliano, john lydon, johnny rotten, manolo blahnik, met, sex pistols, vivienne westwood
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Posted on 5/7/2006
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May 05, 2006
So many superlatives can be used in describing Renzo Piano's brilliant redesign and addition to the Morgan, that I won't even begin. Instead, I'll judge the success by the huge crowds I saw there this morning. Should you find yourself struggling to get through a long line, instead bypass it and head directly for the café, gift shop or dining room in order to get an initial glimpse at the masterful renovations. Just a quick visit to the rear room of the gift shop—there are few gilt wood-paneled rooms in New York, and even fewer that function as auxiliary gift shops—reveals the intricacies and complexity of this powerful and stunning place.
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morgan library, pierpont morgan
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Posted on 5/5/2006
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May 01, 2006
Of all the fascinating objects now on display on the Met Museum's rooftop garden, it is in the nine stone steles that comprise a long wall relief that the utter genius of artist Cai Guo-Qiang's installation is readily apparent. Even more extraordinary is how many visitors walk right by it and fail to notice it, or even bother to pick up a pamphlet that details the 70 fascinating motifs that have been masterfully carved into the stone. This phenomenal work recalls several thousand-Buddha grottoes along the old Silk Road throughout western China, where you can constantly observe the hordes of tourists passing by the most intricate carvings. (In the Met's Japanese galleries you might also observe groups quickly walking by one of the finest and most intricate works in the Asia collection—the Buddha achieving paranirvana—without even noticing it.)
The 70 motifs, hallmarks of this bizarre era in which we live, are chronicled in a fascinating manner, neither linear nor chronologically, but blended together much as the events traditionally depicted in a complex Chinese wall carving, a Tibetan thangka or even as seen in some Brueghel paintings. This snapshot, if you will, of everything from migrant workers in large cities to Iraqi children to Kim Jong Il, the Three Gorges Dam, Harry Potter—and of course, G.W. Bush, FDNY and twin towers—is both sobering and thought-provoking. This hodgepodge further reflects the artist's mastery of his subjects by paying homage to his own works, firmly placing himself in the pantheon of events of the new millennium. Serious, satire, or farce? Were you to stop and pause for a few minutes, perhaps you will decide for yourself.
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cai guo qiang, met, rooftop garden
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Posted on 5/1/2006
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May 01, 2006
A 12-foot-long crocodile sculpture, pierced throughout with knives, forks, and other objects confiscated by the dreaded and dreadful Transportation Security Administration, serves perhaps as a metaphor for the society we've created in recent years. Fear, repulsion, fascination with the dreadful and dreaded—indeed these crocodiles against the skyline, were they not so amusing, would be quite depressing.
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cai guo qiang, met, rooftop garden
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Posted on 5/1/2006
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May 01, 2006
Of the three site-specific pieces designed for the rooftop garden of the Metropolitan Museum, Transparent Monument is the one that reminds us of our own presence as observers, both on the rooftop and in the city itself. The huge glass—some 15 feet high and 9-1/2 feet wide—looks spectacular against the dramatic backdrop of Central Park and the tall buildings of Midtown in the distance. With several lifelike birds cleverly strewn around the base of the glass, we are reminded of both the transitoriness of existence (i.e. birds flying into human-made glass and dying) as well as humankind's increasingly-unfortunate interactions with nature.
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cai guo qiang, met, rooftop garden
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Posted on 5/1/2006
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May 01, 2006
An interesting facet of this quick sequence of explosions is attempting to photograph or videotape. As on the Fourth of July, everyone jockeys with their own cameras, camcorders, cellphone cameras, and so on. But what does the professional do? Bring a tripod and find a position away from the madding crowds. This gentleman was quite reluctant to let me take his photograph, and I am grateful he ultimately relented.
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cai guo qiang, met, rooftop garden
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Posted on 5/1/2006
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May 01, 2006
Obviously explosions, even those designed for a repeating work of art, must be precisely calculated and prepared to exact standards. Above and below the Rooftop Garden, a number of workers could be seen preparing the day's site-specific explosion. Fire extinguishers are readied down below, while up above this fellow can be seen doing some interesting things. Click on next for additional scenes.
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cai guo qiang, met, rooftop garden
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Posted on 5/1/2006
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May 01, 2006
Before the explosion that marks the dramatic action of Clear Sky Black Cloud, guards rope off Cai Guo-Qiang's fascinating sculpture Transparent Monument to keep the visitors away from the pyrotechnics.
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cai guo qiang, met, rooftop garden
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Posted on 5/1/2006
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May 01, 2006
So on this clear sunny day, the black cloud appears over the Rooftop Garden, and quickly dissipates. Everyone stands around wondering: "That was it?" But the ephemeral nature of Clear Sky Black Cloud is both fascinating and haunting, particularly for those of us who watched the horrors of 9/11 unfold before our eyes. Although the stage has been set by the guards roping off Transparent Monument (and you can always check your watch to see if the stroke of noon approaches), if you are not paying rapt attention, you will miss the dramatic action as it quickly unfolds.
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cai guo qiang, met, rooftop garden
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Posted on 5/1/2006
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