Community: bloggers@brooklynmuseum

We all know this feeling, right? When you walk into an exhibition and there’s one work that really stops you in your tracks? On a recent trip to Pittsburgh, it happened to me at the Mattress Factory’s Inner and Outer Space exhibition. I was fascinated with a work by Mary Temple, a Brooklyn-based artist, that was installed on the MF’s 5th floor.

Installation view, courtesy Mattress Factory.

Every day, as Mary was reading the day’s news via various news sites on the internet, she would select a political figure to draw on a tabloid sized sheet of paper. Each day, she would scan the drawing, send to the MF where they would print and hang it in the gallery in a calendar style format on the walls. I spent a long time pouring over the walls of the exhibition space and left wanting to follow this project day-by-day, but knew that I wouldn’t be able to.

When Will and I first conceptualized the 1stfans Twitter Art Feed, this project of Mary’s was one of the first works that came to my mind. Could we figure out a way to bring this project into the feed and tweet each day with a link to the drawing? I knew that the MF show was closing in mid-January and wondered if a continuation could take place online for the 1stfans, so a quick call to Jeffrey at MF was in order and the next day I was e-mailing Mary (thanks, Jeff).

Mary Temple has been working on this series since 2007 and drawings are archived in stacks by month in flat files that reside in her Brooklyn studio.

This has been an incredibly fun collaboration for us on many levels. In reaching out to the artist, it was our chance to work with the MF and they’ve also given us some video footage of the process that will be up soon. For Mary, we developed a way to display the drawings in calendar-format, so the virtual presentation will mirror the layout in the gallery with an added Twitter twist. 1stfans will be able to follow day-by-day, then everyone will be able to see the work in our own galleries because we will be installing the work for one night only at the March 7th Target First Saturday. You can follow along by joining 1stfans and we hope to see you there!

I’ll leave you reading Mary’s own narrative about the work:

Mary Temple
Currency
2007-present

On September 24, 2007 the president of Iran spoke at Columbia University amid protests and much controversy. I found the event, coverage and images of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad compelling and made some drawings of him from various Web–based news sources. The drawings piqued my interest in him as a character—I wanted to know more about his history as well as Iran’s past. Drawing him expanded my thinking about world events. I’ve continued to make a drawing of a world leader every day since then. My goal in the beginning was simply to concentrate on one event each day—to try to grasp a minuscule portion of the barrage of information that surrounds each of us in a 24-hour news cycle. As the research and drawings accumulated, I found that the news events marked my own personal history as well as delineating a (biased) global event time line. In order to underscore that relationship, and the diaristic nature of the undertaking, I hung the drawings in a calendar format—7 day (columns) across, and 5 to 6 week (rows) down. I placed the drawings on the page according to my own feelings of optimism or pessimism regarding the day’s event, the higher on the page the greater my hope for world harmony.

Each evening I select a story and the character (a world leader), draw a portrait in pen and ink on a tabloid size sheet of paper, and record the event with an image caption at the bottom of the page. The drawing is then scanned and emailed to a museum. Every morning the museum staff receives my email scan, prints the portrait on a similar tabloid size sheet of handmade paper and hangs it in a gallery next to the previous day’s drawings in the calendar grid. Entire calendar years accumulate in this way.

The title, of the piece, Currency, most obviously references my desire and attempt to keep current of world events, to try to understand some of what is happening in the world. It also refers to something that fascinates me about an industry that trades in a product that is only valuable until the moment it is heard, at which time it instantly loses its value. Yesterday’s news is an artifact which no longer has currency or power as a trade worthy item. The title Currency also refers to the scale of the portraits themselves, which might evoke a bank note or dollar bill portrait, the image of power and money entwined.

Update 1/29/09:  Video posted to YouTube.

In addition to our original partners (Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Jewish Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, V&A) we’ve now been joined by Art Gallery of New South Wales, Carnegie Museum of Art, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, Honolulu Academy of Arts, Houston Museum of Natural Science, The Hunter Museum of American Art, The Jewish Museum, Museum of Modern Art, New-York Historical Society, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Taft Museum of Art—in all, 17 16 institutions willing to help engage their community of photographers to help get the wiki folks what they need.

My own personal props have to go out to Victor over at MoMA, who wins the gold star for bending over backwards to figure out the best way they could participate and still ensure everything falls into the public domain. Victor, that’s dedication! CJN212, thanks for the legwork over there. I have to say from an organizer standpoint, I couldn’t be more thrilled about how many institutions took the leap work with us on what will hopefully become a massive cross-institution community collaboration!

Not so super-secret meetup for the Wikipedia NYC Chapter. Topic of discussion? You guessed it: Wikipedia Loves Art. Wiki peeps and guests including Denise and Hazel from the MET, Victor from MoMA and moi. Check out that awesome ceiling w/ globe lights at Columbia University.

In the next week, we’ve got a lot of work to do to get scavenger hunt lists published and many of us are making final preparations for meetups. All details, including the lists will be published to the Wikipedia Loves Art Flickr group, so keep an eye on things over there (and congrats to us for creating what might be the longest Flickr group description…ever). There’s even a discussion getting started about the best way to shoot in museums to avoid glare off cases while working with no flash, no tripod restrictions.

Now that we have institutions, we need photographers! Please help us spread the word. Remember, because of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s offer, there’s a way you can participate from almost anywhere in the United States even if your local museum is not on the participant list. Good luck everyone, we are looking forward to seeing your shots!

You may have seen Carol Vogel’s article in the New York Times about the exciting news concerning the Brooklyn Museum’s costume collection, and our collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but if you haven’t, please have a look.

Charles James (American, born England, 1906-1978). Dress, Evening, 1952. Silk. Gift of Mrs. R. A. Bernatschke.

I am taking questions about this collaboration this week via our blog. However, I am also on vacation, away from the Museum, with a slow dial-up connection. So please bear with me, as I try to respond as soon as I can.