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To recap previous blogs, the mummy of Demetrios is wrapped in linen, then the entire surface of the linen is painted with red lead. On top of that are areas of gilded decoration. The next step in preparing Demetrios for exhibition was to check the stability of the surface paint and gilding. Where necessary, this was consolidated using an appropriate adhesive. Next, surface dust was removed with a soft brush into a vacuum on very low suction. Then the surface was cleaned with an appropriate solvent. A small area is cleaned at a time, using cotton swabs. We constantly check the swabs to make sure we are only removing surface dust and grime, and not any of the original material. When necessary, we work with the aid of a microscope, so we can see the effect of our cleaning in greater detail.

during treatment. the area to the right has been cleaned revealing the read lead paint and gilding

For the most part, the linens on Demetrios are in relatively good condition; however, the linens around the feet are unstable. There are large holes on the bottom and proper left side.

the condition of the linens at the feet before treatment

The BM does not have a textile conservator on staff, so we hired a specialist in this area to work with us. (Learn more about hiring a conservator through the American Institute for Conservation.) Kathy first patched the area with a piece of linen held in place with a piece of sheer material called Tetex (an open weave polyester material). While the linen material is very noticeable, it was needed to contain all of the powdering fragments of ancient linen. The Tetex material is very sheer - so you don’t really see it - but also very strong. By using Tetex to secure the linen (she sewed this to the new linen, then wrapped it around the feet and sewed the Tetex to itself) she did not have to sew through the ancient linen material which would cause further damage. Next, she covered the whole foot area with another piece of Tetex, also sewed to itself. Again, this material is strong enough to hold all of the loose linens in place, but sheer enough that you can see the underlying material. When you look at this object on display, it will not be that noticeable unless you are specifically looking for it.

the foot, after treatment

The next step was to create a display board that he could also travel on so that handling would be minimal. How objects are handled plays a huge role in their long-term preservation. A bed of polystyrene balls and polyester batting was sealed within a giant bag, and covered with display fabric. Demetrios was then placed on this. The polystyrene balls conformed to his shape, fully supporting him and helping to absorb any vibration as he travels. The installers can handle Demetrios by the support board rather than having to lift his actual body at each venue. This drastically reduces the possibility of damage to Demetrios. That’s it for the conservation treatment! Demetrios will then get crated by a special art packing company, and head to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Look for him there beginning July 13.

the support board

Demetrios on his support board

As silly as this seems, it’s just not real until the signs go up and here they are. I will admit, I was more than a little giddy seeing these unwrapped and going into the lobby case and Mary Jane (pictured above) was humoring me a bit by letting me take pics.

Jook Leung (above) from 360vr came in yesterday to shoot a virtual tour of the gallery. For all those who helped curate from lands far away, you can tour from your computer if you can’t make it to the Museum. But, if you can come…do it! Christine and Sarah from our Digital Lab made a wonderful set of prints (the photographers will be very happy) and Lance and Tomoko designed and installed a rockin’ gallery.

Enough already, right? Click! opens today and the panel discussion is at Figment tomorrow

…it is a study in crowds. It should come as no surprise that this title made it into one of my blog posts (there are many colleagues of mine chuckling about this right about now). That said, we are releasing the Click! website today and you’ll find it is designed much like the gallery. Images are displayed by size relative to each other given the query you are looking at—lists and scores (not something we equate with subjective subjects) are avoided. Some images fared better than others, but it’s all relative depending on what you are looking at and what questions you are asking.

All 389 images are on the website. In addition, the 78 images that will be in the gallery can now be viewed—see “In the Gallery” on the Click! menu. Keep in mind, the sizes on the website are more variable than the sizes in the gallery, so if you see your image in that 78, the sizing in the gallery will be slightly different.

Coming up we’ve got more guests writing for the blog, including two of our consultants, James Surowiecki and Derek Powazek. Our own Chief Curator, Kevin Stayton, will be posting in the coming weeks and we may have a few more surprises along the way. For now, check out the website. The results button on the right side of the page will take you there. Bear with us if you find it slow, we are expecting a bit of traffic today. Need a little introduction? Check out the lo-fi screencast. Click! will be on view beginning this Friday (June 27) and we are making good progress installing the show (see below)!

And now, one quick note of thanks about this website. I count myself lucky that I work with an incredibly dedicated and talented team who loved this project as much as I did and made sure Click! was awesome via the web. Mike, Paul, Jen - I can’t say this enough: you are awesome, you rock my world and this site is rockin’ because of your dedication. Jessica, Joe - you make life around here fun, easy, and accurate to boot. It’s a pleasure to come to work every day—thank you.

Lance and Tomoko hanging the show. We are about half way through.

As with many things for Click!, we’ve made life a little difficult, but for good reason. This Saturday (June 28) we’ve organized a great panel discussion that will be held on Governors Island. Yup, you read that right: Governors Island. A little while back, I was contacted by the peeps running Figment 2008 and asked to present something there. Figment is billed as a “celebration of participatory art and creative culture” and I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate than a panel discussing the participatory nature of Click!. If you want to know a little more about Figment, check out this article from the NYT about the event last year—I just love the “Burning Man East” reference.

This part is seriously awesome: Panelists include James Surowiecki, New Yorker financial columnist and author of The Wisdom of Crowds; Jeff Howe, contributing editor of Wired magazine, who coined the term “crowdsourcing”; Eugenie Tsai, Brooklyn Museum’s John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art; and me. The panel will be moderated by Nicole Caruth, Brooklyn Museum’s Manager of Interpretive Materials and a freelance writer and curator based in Brooklyn.

Now for the hard part: June 28 on Governors Island and the panel starts at 11 a.m. In order to make the panel on time you must take the 10 or 10:30 a.m. ferry. Ferries are free and depart from South Ferry, but seating is very limited. When you get to the island, start looking for Perkins Hall.

OK, ouch, we know that’s early on a Saturday, but Figment should be *fun* and I’m couldn’t be more excited about sharing a table with Jim, Jeff, Eugenie, and Nicole. Have an extra cup of coffee, come take a boat ride and join us!

With the opening of Click! rapidly approaching, I have been asked to describe my approach in designing and mounting this particular exhibition. It is important to note that although this exhibition is comprised entirely of photographs, it is not foremost a photography show, but rather an art installation addressing the conceptual nature of a crowd-curated exhibition. For this reason, the show will not be hung in a traditional manner, but rather laid out in a way that illustrates the diverse, anonymous, web-based crowd selection process.

The exhibition is being held in an intimate gallery space to allow the viewer to be immersed in the images of the “changing faces of Brooklyn.” Because of the gallery’s space constraints it was determined that of the 389 images submitted, the top-ranked 20% of images would be printed for display. Of this 20% (or roughly 78 photographs) a distinction was required to reflect the crowds selection process; for this reason some photographs were printed as large as 20” x 30” and some as small as 5” x 7”, depending upon the crowd’s rankings.

Rough layout of one of the gallery walls. Full layout: click_full.jpg.

When these images of varying size are displayed in a random arrangement it serves to illustrate the crowds’ selection process not as linear, but rather a diverse response with certain ideas or, in this case, photographs rising to the front of a collective conscious in much the way a tag cloud uses text to visually illustrate how within many voices certain responses carry varying degrees of impact.

Cloud tag from Flickr.com

The exhibition promises to be interesting on many levels, and I hope all that participated both in submitting photographs and those involved in the selection process can make it to see the results.

The mummy of Demetrios raises a large number of questions that can only be answered with the help of a team of scholars. Each of the team members brings a particular kind of knowledge to answer these questions. Their specialties include medicine, culture, language, and materials. I want to try to tie together some of the contributions made by all of the team members here.

I chose the mummy of Demetrios to include in the exhibition “To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum” from Brooklyn’s nine human mummies. Demetrios was one of two mummies never unwrapped in modern times, a prime consideration for presenting him to the public in a respectful way. His wrappings were also in better condition than the wrappings of the other candidate, a woman named Thothirdes who is on view in the galleries in Brooklyn. So Demetrios’ mummy could travel more safely than Thothirdes. But Demetrios posed certain problems for me in explaining to visitors who he was.

Demetrios most likely died in the first century of this era (called both A.D. and C.E.) Carbon-14 testing suggests he died in the year 39. He was an Egyptian, but perhaps he had a Greek ethnic background. He lived in the time when Greek was the language of government in Egypt, following Alexander the Great’s conquest about 300 years earlier. He probably was born during the time of Cleopatra the Great and thus witnessed the change of Egypt from an independent Hellenistic kingdom to the property of the Roman Emperor.

Demetrios’ mummy was prepared in the manner called a “red shroud portrait mummy.” This means that over his mummy bandages priests wrapped a linen shroud painted red. In addition he had a portrait in the Greek style placed over his face rather than an Egyptian-style mummy mask. Also, the inscription on the shroud was in Greek rather than Egyptian hieroglyphs as was typical for most of Egyptian history.

The CT scan performed by Dr. Larry Boxt’s team at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York in 2007 revealed some of Demetrios’ medical history. Dr. David Minenberg recognized the gall stone preserved in Demetrios’ gall bladder, a feature of the scan I initially thought was a scarab! Dr. Boxt was the first to suggest that Demetrios had to have died in his 50’s rather than living to the age of 89 as scholars had first suggested in 1911 based on a reading of the inscription. Dr. Boxt based his estimate on the condition of Demetrios’ spine.

Dr. Boxt’s observation led me to ask Dr. Paul O’Rourke, an expert in both the ancient Egyptian and the ancient Greek languages, to look again at the inscription on Demetrios’ shroud. He explained that the inscription recorded Demetrios’ name followed by a sign that resembles the letter “L.” The “L”-like sign indicated that the following letters should be read as numbers. In this case the first sign intended to represent a number was partially erased. The inscription showed two parallel lines that look like this: ІІ. Originally scholars interpreted these lines as the letter Π meaning “8” with the top missing. The following letter, Θ is complete and slightly raised from the line and means “9.” Together, scholars read his age as 89. But, Dr. O’Rourke pointed out, if the two parallel lines were understood to be the remains of Ν with the diagonal line missing, it would be the Greek writing of “5.” Thus Demetrios’ age could correctly be understood as 59, bringing it into line with Dr. Boxt’s observations of the spine. Knowledge of the aging of the spine helped determine how to restore the Greek inscription properly!

If you want to see Demetrios’ spine and his other bones for yourself, look at:

These web pages were prepared by Ed Bachta at the Indianapolis Museum of Art as part of the “To Live Forever” website. You can see Demetrios himself in Indianapolis beginning Saturday, July 12, 2008. Check with the Indianapolis Museum of Art for the details.

As a visual sociologist looking at the images as to how people define “face,” “change,” and “brooklyn,” I was very impressed with the quality and array of images submitted for the Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition.

I can see that these photographers at least regard externalities as “face” as though it was “skin” surrounding some other content; e.g., there were few photos inside places and spaces. “Change” seemed to be mostly about physical structures as opposed to people and social activities. It also seemed to me that the photographers were showing something of which they didn’t approve. “Brooklyn” was represented geographically in a very limited way with a concentration on some of the most “Brooklyn-branded” of spaces such as Coney Island and Carnival. It might be also that the focus on places like Red Hook, Dumbo, and Williamsburg reflects where artists (photographers in this case) are living or hanging around. An aspect of Brooklyn’s growing “Creative Class” perhaps. Due to the choice of venues, it gave the impression that perhaps “groups” of photographers traveled to the same spots. Some of the images were almost identical—see below for three images submitted to Click! along with one of my own from a similar vantage point.

Left: Douglas Padgett. Redhook Waterfront, 2008. All rights reserved
Right: E.M. Farmer. Red Hook Wrecked, 2007. All rights reserved

Left: Maria Castanos. Red Hook, Brooklyn, 2007. All rights reserved
Right: A similar photograph I took a while back of the same subject matter.

My sociological point is (like crowd theory) that there is something “organized” (structured), predictable, understandable about what people see and how they interpret what it is they are looking at. It is a sort of common visual language which of course varies from culture to culture, education, class, etc…

As an aside, my own orientation is toward people so when evaluating Click! submissions, I gave the highest evaluations to “people images” as well as good evaluations for those not of people but with exceptional (in my estimation) artistic or documentary quality.

As promised, this week we’re writing about the subject matter of the submitted images. If you evaluated all 389 or even a large part of the pool, you know exactly where we are headed with this and may be saying “Ugh, no more!” The image below is from our upcoming advanced search where we’ve tagged images according to location and basic subject matter. In the search, you’ll be able to take any of these tags and run a comparison to see which images from Coney Island or Red Hook happened to fare the best among the evaluators. It should be pretty cool, but for our purposes today, this will give you an overview of what was submitted.

Keep in mind this was a blind open call where photographers couldn’t see what others had submitted. I find it fascinating that some subjects seemed to ring true among many photographers. For instance, 43 images of Red Hook alone with 5 shots of the trolley cars behind the Fairway, 4 shots of the Ikea under construction (opening this week), 11 shots of the Revere Sugar Refinery (torn down to make way for Ikea’s overflow parking). I realize that many evaluators found it tedious to see these same images pop up over and over again, but you have to wonder—what is it among these particular images or ideas that make them touchstones for the “changing face of Brooklyn?” It’s definitely something to think about when you can explore search results in detail and it will be even more interesting to see if the evaluators felt the same was true when selecting images.

Still interested? Check out this analysis from Page 291, this comment from Trish caught my eye and, as always, we’d love to see your own thoughts and impressions in the comments area.

Now I’d like to introduce our first guest blogger for Click!, Jerry Krase. Jerry is a visual sociologist and professor over at Brooklyn College and who better to ask what he saw in the 389 submissions? For those of you who don’t know, Jerry runs a bus tour through Brooklyn every year for incoming faculty at Brooklyn College. Rumor has it, this is an awesome tour looking at the communities and cultures throughout Brooklyn which enables new faculty to get to know the incoming student body and surrounding area. I’ve known people who couldn’t stop talking about the tour after taking it and with that, check out Jerry’s post up next.

I’m back from leave, and during the last several months we’ve been busily getting all of the objects ready for the “To Live Forever, Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum“exhibition. In this post, I’ll talk about the conservation of Demetrios to prepare him for this show. Let’s start with a brief history of his past treatment. As I wrote in a previous blog, Demetrios was excavated from a Roman cemetery in Hawara, Egypt in 1911, and is believed to date between 30 B.C. and 395 A.D. After his excavation, he came directly to the Brooklyn Museum. It’s unclear if he went on view in the galleries in these early days of the museum or if he was placed in storage. In April of 1939, conservators noticed that a vertical crack had developed in the portrait. The portrait is painted with encaustic on a cypress wood panel. Wood is very susceptible to changes in temperature and humidity, which fluctuate with the changing seasons, and this causes the wood to expand and contract. The conservators at the time decided the best way to treat the portrait would be to remove it from the mummy. They did this, and stabilized the panel so that no further cracks would occur. A decision was then made to place the mummy back into storage, and just exhibit the portrait. When you see these so called “Fayum Portraits” at other museums, they are often no longer associated with mummies either. There may be numerous explanations for why this was done. While this is a larger topic for discussion than I want to address here, it may have been the convention in the early 20^th century to view these solely as beautiful portraits, rather than to think about them in a larger context and being associated with a mummified body. In addition, a small portrait is much easier to transport than the whole body. Whatever the reason, our portrait of Demetrios was then exhibited almost non-stop from this time forward, while the body of Demetrios remained in storage.

Today, there is a greater appreciation for the importance of these portraits in their original context so for this current exhibition we have decided to reunite the portrait with the body. In order to do this, objects and paintings conservators worked together. A silicone support was cast to conform to the shape of the back of the portrait panel. This provides a rigid support for the portrait that can help absorb any vibration that may occur while traveling and is easily reversible in the future. The portrait, on its new support, was placed back onto the mummy of Demetrios. Using the old photograph as a guide, some new linen fabric, toned with paints to match, was added to recreate how the portrait originally appeared on the mummy. As with any conservation treatment, we carefully documented this process and used appropriate materials so that future generations of conservators and scholars will be able to distinguish between the original ancient Egyptian materials and our modern additions, and be able to remove our additions if necessary. In the next blog, I’ll talk about the next phase of the conservation treatment - how Demetrios was cleaned and areas of torn linen repaired.

the portrait associated with the mummy, as it appeared in the 1930’s

the mummy with portrait removed

the portrait exhibited on its own Lisa and Carolyn hard at work

the portrait and mummy reuinted

I spent a day last week in an auditorium at the Brooklyn College Library surrounded by librarians donning “Hello My Name is” tags and mulling over topics ranging from Facebook to the NSA. It started out on a good note, I was happy owing to the absolutely perfect warm/grey/water-y-without-being-rainy weather. And I didn’t get at all lost. Until I got a little lost and almost went into a nearby high school. This clearly would have been a catastrophic if hackneyed turn of events. What if they didn’t let me leave? I would have to take algebra, I would get hassled by mean girls, no one would like me, yada, yada, yada; hilarity ensues. It turned out upon further inspection (reading the sign) that it was none other than my mother’s high school which would add a whole other Back to the Future-y layer to the scenario, but I do eventually find the library and there is free coffee! The program, presented by Brooklyn College Library, METRO and the Brooklyn Museum focused on how libraries are inviting users to contribute, communicate and collaborate (a positive thing) and the interplay between cutting-edge technologies and privacy (a worrisome thing). The program was actually very good. (more…)