Community: bloggers@brooklynmuseum

So, the idea was pretty simple: the curators of Burning Down the House: Building a Feminist Art Collection wanted our visitors to hear directly from the artists in the exhibition, so we set out to create a series of videos that would play on iPod Touches in the gallery. As most people reading this blog already know, we don’t have a lot of resources here (read: staff time) to produce video, so we needed a way to do this project without putting too much of a strain on the department. We purchased a bunch of Flip Video cameras and the curators set out to film short interviews with the artists—check these out. We were impressed with the quality of these cams, so if you are looking for a cheap and easy way shoot some video this may be a good answer for your needs—worked for us!

The iPod Touch part of the project turned out to be a bigger problem. Why iPods? Well, they are cheap and small. We are all conscious around here that too much technology can compete with the work on view and the Touches were a good fit. Small enough to be installed in a way that does not overpower the visitor experience, yet large enough screens to watch the movies and built-in touch screens to navigate a list of movie files.

iPod Touch installed in Burning Down the House seen here with Marriage Bed, 2001. Edwina Sandys (British, b. 1938). Mixed media. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Henry Luce III and Leila Hadley Luce, 2004.29.

We were hoping to find a Museum Mode that would work for the Touch, but it doesn’t exist yet. I guess this makes sense, it took Apple a really long time to release Museum Mode the first time around and it looks like we may be waiting just as long for a version to run on this newer hardware. Best answer we could find was to use the API to create an app, but that doesn’t work either—the API won’t let you lock down the device in a kiosk-like way. No Museum Mode? No API? What’s a museum tech department to do? Our solution is not perfect, but it’s not difficult to accomplish and if you drop us a line we can point you to some existing documentation on the web that helped us.

Now that we’ve got them in the gallery, we will be watching usability closely. Apple is pretty good about providing easy-to-use interfaces, but it remains to be seen how it will translate in a situation like this one. We’ve got a fabulous team of security guards to help get feedback. I’ll be doing some of my own observation in the galleries and will report back with our findings.

This is more than a little overwhelming for us, but we’ve just been notified that the Brooklyn Museum has won a 2008 Forrester Groundswell Award in the Social Impact category. I won’t go into how great the book is—Nina has done a great job of that already, but it is more than cool to be recognized in this way by the very people who wrote the textbook of good example. If you haven’t already, go grab a copy and you’ll see why this is so insanely awesome. The competition this year was crazy—151 entries (finalists here) and as a non-profit, we couldn’t be more proud to be among the winners. Here’s what the judges had to say:

Social Impact

Brooklyn Museum for all three entries:

* ArtShare Facebook App
* Brooklyn Museum’s Click Exhibition
* Brooklyn Museum Posse

“Among many companies using social technologies for the greater good, we recognized a little museum in New York, the Brooklyn Museum. Why? Because of the multiple ways they have used social technologies to put their visitors in charge. They created a Facebook application in which 2,000 people identified and shared the bits of art in the museum that they liked best. They created a community curated exhibit – 3,000 people chose which art pieces to put on display, based on a total of 400,000 votes. And the museum has put the whole collection online, where the community tags it with identifying terms, allowing you to see pieces of art similar to the ones you like, or on specific topics. ”

Thank you to everyone around here who makes these initiatives possible—trust me, it would be hard to name almost everyone in the Brooklyn Museum—just know this very much a group effort around here and, by group, I mean every department. Thank you Forrester peeps and thanks to everyone out there who has been installing our Facebook app, participating in Click! and becoming a member of the Posse to work with our Collection online—most of all, it has been amazing to see what you’ve been bringing to these projects.

If you’re one of the few people who still read, you might occasionally reach for a bookmark. The Bureau for Open Culture at Columbus College of Art & Design has issued a set of bookmarks featuring librarians. Portraits on the front, stats on the back, like a baseball card. We are very proud that our own Deirdre Lawrence is one of the bookmarked librarians (portrait by Brooklyn-based artist, Katie Tuss).

If you’re in Columbus, Ohio, you might be able to get some of the Reference Collection bookmarks at participating libraries and independent bookstores (supplies are limited). Everyone else, check out the gallery of 42 bookmarks here.

This week there is a contemporary artists’ book conference being held in collaboration with Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair. The conference is being co-organized by representatives from the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA and the New York Public Library as well as several other institutions who are involved with artists’ books. The conference features a panel session, entitled Artists’ Books from the Brooklyn Perspective, which includes Brooklyn-based artists and publishers Emily Larned of Red Charming, Dan Nadel of PictureBox, and Matvei Yankelevich of Ugly Duckling Presse.

In conjunction with this event, we have just installed several artists’ books from our collection in two display cases in and outside the Library on the second floor, so come visit the Brooklyn Museum and see these interesting books! One strength of our collection is books by Brooklyn-based artists and publishers. I’ve done some blogging on the subject in the past and this time around Lilli Schestag, our great Pratt intern, has compiled lists of Brooklyn-based book artists, galleries and presses for your reference. If you are a Brooklyn based book artist, gallery or press, let us know if you want your name added to any of these lists for future publication. Just send us an e-mail.

We would love to hear your thoughts and comments!

Valerie Hegarty (American, born 1967). Fallen Bierstadt, 2007. Foamcore, paint, paper, glue, gel medium, canvas, wire, and wood. Gift of Campari, USA , 2008.9a–b. Photo courtesy Matt Verzola via Flickr. All Rights Reserved.

Hanging off kilter in 21: Selections of Contemporary Art from the Brooklyn Museum is Valerie Hegarty’s Fallen Bierstadt (2007). Looking like a charred painting that’s disintegrating, one corner of the ornate gold frame appears to lift off the wall while the lower half of the canvas and frame appear to have crumbled into pieces of debris that lie in small piles on the floor. What appears to be a painting is in reality a highly illusionistic facsimile crafted by Hegarty out of ordinary materials including paper, foam core, and wood.

Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite, about 1871-73. Oil on canvas, 36 1/8 x 26 3/8 in. (91.7 x 67.0 cm.). Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest) and various donors, by exchange, 87.9

Fallen Bierstadt refers to a painting entitled Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite (in the collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art) by Albert Bierstadt, the renowned 19th century American landscape painter. I was gratified to learn that Hegarty, who lives across the street from the Museum, has frequently visited American Identities on the 5th floor where our own examples of Bierstadt’s paintings can be found. The title, Fallen Bierstadt, seems to refer both to the physical appearance of the piece and to the end of a heroic tradition of landscape painting. By mimicking the high degree of illusionism found in Bierstadt’s paintings, Hegarty’s fabricated object reveals her own skill as virtuoso.

While Patrick Amsellem and I were installing the exhibition, we invited Hegarty to place the debris on the floor as she wished and the placement was documented by our conservation department so that we can replicate it whenever the work is on view at the museum.

After seeing this demonstration video, we couldn’t wait to answer this question. Before I get too deep into this, it’s important to keep in mind Photosynth is a new application and Microsoft released it in the early stages so anyone could work with it while continued development is made. I certainly appreciate that, so here are the lessons we’ve learned putting this into production.

The idea was simple—we queried three of our Flickr peeps (Amy Dreher, Trish Mayo, Stephen Sandoval) to see if Photosynth interested them as much as it did us. Turns out, they were game and couldn’t wait to get their hands on it, so we started planning to shoot at Target First Saturday. Before the date, we did some early trials with existing photography— all were shots of the outside of the building and all were shot at different times of day and in different periods of our history. Photosynth couldn’t make heads or tales of it—I can hardly blame it, we were not trying very hard at this point either It was clear, Photosynth was going to demand new photography and a lot of it, so we had a plan. You can see our early trials here and here.

Oh wait, can you see those trials? No? Well, you are not alone. This was our biggest challenge with this application and the most important thing to talk about at this stage of the game. In order to view or make a synth, you have to download a client and that client only runs on PC. Supposedly, the client will run in Firefox, but I could only get it to run in Internet Explorer (not something I ever like to use). Installing was a bear, you have to be an admin to do it and it’s a typical Microsoft installer package (i.e., heavy-handed). So how much of a pain is this really? Well, it turned into a bit of a circus for us. Amy and Trish are both on macs (so am I). Stephen had a PC, so he was testing on his own account and he could see progress when we were testing at work, but Amy and Trish couldn’t. Amy came over one day to check it out on a Brooklyn Museum computer, but other than that it was impossible to do more testing. To top it off, no one at the Brooklyn Museum has admin access to their computers, so they can’t even see the result of this work! Inside folks reading this—don’t call helpdesk—we shot some video to help you out. It’s hard to explain how silly I find it that I had to shoot this lo-fi video to show this off, but so be it. You do what you have to in order to make content accessible and I’ll get off my high-horse for now—Photosynth is early in the dev cycle, so fair enough.

Video and more after the jump (this is going to get long, sorry folks)… (more…)

What we do know about Ida Jackson can be found in an intriguing and beautiful diary found in the Brooklyn Museum Library’s Special Collections. The book came into the Museum’s collection in 1945 from Lawrence B. Romaine, who wrote an accompanying text about Ida Jackson. The book offers a view into an American woman’s life from 1858 to 1917 as well as insight into what women wore during that time period.

Beyond handwritten inscriptions you would normally expect to find in a diary, Ida Jackson’s Diary contains: photographs of herself, her family and friends as well as her homes and church, programs from musical soirées and postcards. The diary also includes clippings from 19th century fashion magazines showing images of a variety of dresses, skirts, shirts and entire outfits.

But what I feel is most compelling about this book are the remarkably well-preserved fabric swatches and trimming samples Ida cut from her own clothing throughout her life and carefully glued onto the page. Having been enclosed in the pages of this book for all of these years the fabric and trimming samples have been protected from the harmful fading effects of light exposure so these swatches and samples seem as vivid as the day they were worn. One really should see the book in person to appreciate the tactile quality of the swatches and to experience the charm of the entire document. You can visit the us to see the original document by sending an e-mail.

The first page of the diary, which Ida assembled in retrospect, is dated 1858 when she was 3 years old. The book continues to tell her story up to the final entry in 1917 when she was 62, she died in 1927. The inscriptions which are found throughout the book reveal a number of clues which intertwine personal memories with fashion history.

Clues about the dresses history:
“Formerly mamma’s first dress papa brought for her after their marriage.”

Clues about the use of the outfit:
“Cycling and rainy day dress, trimmed with black and braid panel.”

Clues about popular fashions at the time:
“Wore above draped over black mohair skirt when overskirts began to come into fashion.”

Facsimile pages from Ida Jackson’s Dress Diary will be on view at Proteus Gowanus in their MEND exhibition which opens tomorrow.

If you’ve been in Times Square lately, you may have seen this already, but we were waiting to post until we had some good photos. Tash put out a call to the Brooklyn Museum Members group on Flickr and Trish Mayo and Stephen Sandoval took a field trip to the square to get some shots. Trish, Stephen - thanks, these are awesome!

Photo by Trish Mayo. All Rights Reserved.

Video by Stephen Sandoval (with awesome Times Square street noise). All Rights Reserved.  [Hey, you need at least IE7 to see the vid, but use Firefox because it is better]

If you are in Times Square, check out Gilbert and George on the MTV 44 1/2, the high def screen on Bway between 44th and 45th Streets. The series curated by Creative Time show early works by Gilbert & George, A Portrait of the Artists As Young Men and The Nature of Our Looking, are from 1970 and 1972, respectively, and are timed to correspond with the Gilbert & George exhibition, on view from October 3 to January 11.

Schedule (subject to change) as follows:

Monday AM: 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00
Monday PM: 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00, 10:00, 11:00

Tuesday AM: 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00
Tuesday PM: 9:00, 10:00, 11:00

Wednesday AM: 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00
Wednesday PM: 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00, 10:00, 11:00

Thursday-Sunday AM: 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00, 10:00, 11:00
Thursday-Sunday PM: 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00, 10:00, 11:00

Paint brushes? Too obvious. A Brooklyn Museum Membership? Almost perfect. During the Members Preview & Reception for Gilbert & George this past Thursday, Museum Director Arnold Lehman seems to have gotten it right when he gave the artistic team this unique gift:

Photograph © Adam Husted

In an effort to find the most authentic souvenir of Brooklyn, the Director joked about having gone down to the “heart of Brooklyn,” otherwise known as the Fulton Mall, to find these classic hooded sweatshirts for his visitors. He was obviously having a little fun with his guests since these sweatshirts (with lettering in the Brooklyn Museum’s signature Cyan Blue, of course) are in sharp contrast to the double-breasted tweed suits Gilbert & George always wear in public. Nevertheless, they both seemed delighted with their new matching apparel and to receive this very special memento of their visit to Brooklyn.

Following this very insightful—and entertaining—discussion, Gilbert & George headed down to the lobby where they were met by a long line of Members eager to get their exhibition catalogues signed by the artist. In addition to these catalogues, Gilbert & George amiably signed everything from invitations to prints, and even one Member’s tie…while he was still wearing it!

The final highlight of the evening was the raffle drawing for a limited-edition Gilbert & George print which Members could enter by making a donation to the Museum’s Annual Fund. Although only one Member walked away with this special edition, over 800 Members attended this event and had the special opportunity to get up close and personal with the artist! If you didn’t make it to the Preview, you can still get to know Gilbert & George in our special exhibition galleries until January 11.

Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Museum Member, Stephen Sandoval.

Also, be sure to check out more photos from this event in the Brooklyn Museum Members group on Flickr.

Newly on view on our 4th floor: Italian Post-World War II Design

The Brooklyn Museum has been at the forefront of collecting Italian twentieth century design since the mid 1950s. One pivotal event made consumers in the United States aware of the diversity and accomplishments of modern Italian design and initiated the collecting of this material at the Museum—the exhibition Italy at Work, which traveled to twelve venues between 1950 and 1954. The exhibition was initiated by the Art Institute of Chicago in partnership with two organizations devot­ed to the promulgation of Italian design, Handicraft Development Incorporated in the United States and its corresponding institution in Italy, CADMA. Italy at Work included hundreds of objects by more than 150 artisans and manufacturers and featured furniture, ceramics, glass, textiles, metalwork, jewelry, shoes, knit clothing, and industrial design. The exhibition opened at the Brooklyn Museum, and at its conclusion, when the objects were dispersed among the host institutions, the lion’s share, more than two hun­dred items, came to the Museum.

Carlo Mollino (Italian, 1905-1973). Table, circa 1949. Made by F. Apelli and L. Varesio, Turin. Laminated wood, glass, brass. Gift of the Italian Government, 54.64.321 a-c.

Some of the objects on view here have not been seen since 1954 when Italy at Work closed, such as the mosaic by Gino Severini and the table by Paolo di Poli. In addition, some of the more recently acquired works are having their debut Museum installation here as well, such as the chairs by Alberto Meda, Ettore Sottsass, Jr., and Joe Columbo.

Ettore Sottsass, Jr.  (Italian, b. Austria, 1917-2007). “Casablanca” Cabinet, designed 1981. Manufactured by Memphis. Milan. Wood, plastic laminate. Gift of Furniture of the 20th Century, 83.104.