Photos of Staff Show by Trish Mayo.

One of the great parts of working in an art museum is how many fine artists come out of the woodwork for events such as this. There were pieces by artists who work in conservation, collections management, digital collections, curatorial, public information, visitor services, education, audio/visual, and more. Some pieces came from the artist’s “other life” as a painter or sculptor but some, such as Digital Ikebana by Anita Cruz-Eberhard (Digital Collections and Services) fused these two lives and, as a result, made me see their museum job in a whole new light. Ms. Cruz-Eberhard uses the same skills to produce her own work and to help the museum archive ours. She also shows internationally and has a BFA. She’s a great example of yet another career that I can now tell young art students to consider.

Another option for young artists might be to think about a job in education. Jeremiah Jones, a Teaching Artist in the Brooklyn Museum’s Gallery/Studio Program, contributed Sewing Table, a multimedia sculpture piece that fuses video, textiles, and sculpture. Jeremiah also taught a fall 2010 course in moving art and animation in which a class of 8-10 year olds created original stop-motion animations with drawings and found objects. It was on exhibition last semester in the education gallery, but (yea technology!) can still be found on the Museum’s Gallery/Studio facebook page.

Museum employees need not be fine artists, or even art history buffs, but for those who are the museum is an ideal place to work. You are constantly fed new ideas in the form of special and permanent exhibitions. For example I’ve returned to the Nkishi Power Figure in the Arts of Africa Exhibition many times, thinking about wrapped sculptures. In my “other life” as an artist I work mostly with fabric, but I’ve also worked with metal and clay sculpture and, if Nkishi stays there for me to pass on my way to get my morning coffee, I will probably end up fusing the media again.

Someday I will get around to my new project of googling all our staff artists and looking at their web pages, but for now I’m just happy to see their work up on the walls.

Image Courtesy of Sarah Gentile

Remembering the Triangle Fire by Know Your Museum

March 25, 2011 marks the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Brooklyn Museum staff will join the world in ringing a bell at 4:45PM to commemorate this horrific event.

Where are you originally from?

I’m very proud to say that I was born and raised in Brooklyn.

Where do you go to school now and what are you studying?

I’m currently a senior at Swarthmore College, a small liberal arts school in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. I am studying Art and English Literature.

Do you have a favorite piece or collection here and why?

I had so many over the years! Growing up, I remember loving the statue of a standing Ibis in the Egyptian collection as well as Albert Bierdstat’s A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie.

Kiki Smith (American, born Germany, 1954). Born, 2002. Lithograph, 68 x 56 in. (172.7 x 142.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Emily Winthrop Miles Fund, 2003.17. © Kiki Smith

I think if I had to pick a favorite though, it would be either one of two prints by Kiki Smith: Born and After Lewis Carroll: Come Away From Her. It was after seeing these prints that I started to become familiar with her work, and from there, became very interested in modern and contemporary women artists.

What has been your most interesting experience here?

I think developing and giving tours while I worked as a Museum Apprentice was definitely one of the most interesting and important for me. I think especially at that point in my life having that kind of autonomy and freedom to make decisions and work independently was so crucial—it was an incredible learning experience for me, personally as well as academically.

What is was your favorite thing about Museum Apprentice?

I have so many amazing memories. I wish I could go back! We all had so much fun working together and it was like we were a family. Developing our own tours and presenting them to camp groups was one of the best learning experiences. I loved figuring out how to tailor the tours for different age groups.

Do you recall your first visit to the museum?

I think I must have been too young to remember it specifically. I remember one of the Arty Fact lessons was looking at art with food and then going back to the studio and making art depicting foods.

What was your experience like in the Gallery/Studio program?

I always loved when we worked outside in the Botanical Gardens. I especially enjoyed drawing and painting in the Japanese Hill and Pond Garden. Combining my love of nature with art making was perfect for me. While a Gallery/ Studio Work-Study assistant, I was always amazed by how creative and smart younger children were. My exposure to children’s responses to artworks helped with my teaching in Museum Apprentices.

What projects did you work on while interning in with Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art?

I assisted with two exhibitions coming up at the time. For Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864, I photographed and cataloged the doll and all of her accessories. For the Kiki Smith exhibition, Sojourn, I cataloged and archived images of the pieces included in the exhibition. I also researched and wrote the Feminist Picks of The Week for the Sackler Center Blog.

What do you want to do now that you’re almost finished with college?

I am really drawn to curatorial work and jobs that include a good deal of researching, writing, and closely engaging with art.

What advice do you have for teens interested in art or art history?

The most important thing for young artists and art historians is to go out and look at art, to get a sense of what kinds of images speak to you and inspire you. And if you don’t like everything you see, that’s okay too, but understanding why certain things spark your interest and why others don’t, and being able to articulate those reasons, is a great way to begin thinking critically about art. Visiting museums is especially important. They are the absolute best resources for learning about art and art history. I would also encourage teens to take part in art programs while in high school. There are some amazing programs out there and it’s a great opportunity to have a hands-on experience seeing and working with art.

Installing a Tipi by Know Your Museum

Where are you originally from?

I was born in the Bronx and moved to Long Island at 6 months of age.

What do you do here at the Museum?

I assist the Deputy Directors of Administration and Institutional Advancement in their day-to-day affairs.  I am the facilitator for communications in the Director’s office – overseeing the grapevine, and those all staff e-mails. Additionally, I arrange meetings for the Director and act as a greeter for dignitaries and celebrities. I’ve met everyone from Farah Fawcett to Leonard Nimoy.  Artists such as Ron Mueck , Hernan Bas, Fred Tomaselli , Swoon, Murakami, Annie Leibovitz and countless others.  Judy Chicago certainly gives me a hug and kiss every time I see her.

How long have been at the Brooklyn Museum?

Just starting my eleventh year now, but as of this past September, I’ve cut back to 3 days a week.

Why just 3 days?

I am completing a Master’s of Social Work at Fordham University and am interning at a mobile soup kitchen providing social services to Brooklyn’s neediest.

Providing social services –you do a lot of that here at the museum as well. Can you give some examples?

I provide information to the staff and sometimes lend my ear to those who need me. I have been known to assist with everything from employee’s love lives to their diets.

Yes, I’ve heard you are partially responsible for an engagement and several births.

Perhaps.

Do you have a favorite piece or collection here and why?

I like the Egyptian Sculpture of Erotic Group. It’s nice to know the ancients had a sense of humor.

Sculpture of Erotic Group, 305-30 B.C.E. Limestone, painted, 6 1/2in. (16.5cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 58.13. Creative Commons-BY-NC

I’ve heard that you yourself have several collections. What are they?

Everything from Santos to chamber pots, but I think I’m most proud of my collection of the portraits of myself done by my artist friends. Quite a few of them even work here like Katie Welty (Registrar’s Office), Elaine Komorowski (Collections Management), and Jason Grunwald (Art Handler). One of the artists featured in 1^st Fans, Matt Held, did me as well.

Peter's collection of chamber pots.

What has been your most interesting experience here?

Working here on 9/11 was surreal. We all gathered in the 6^th floor window watching the smoke, not knowing what was happening.  No one really left work and I found it comforting being with others during that time.  I remember Arnold called us into the auditorium for an all-staff to brief us on what little we knew.  It took 3 hours to get home that night and most everyone came in to work the next day. I was proud that the Museum was open then – it was important to show that New York institutions would keep running.

What were you doing before you came to the Museum?

I was a stock broker and options principal on Wall Street for seven years while getting my Master’s in Art History from CUNY.  Previous to working on Wall Street I worked for a French Art Gallery and a Swedish Art Gallery which sparked my interest in the arts.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be an architect like Mike Brady from The Brady Bunch.  How funny is that?

I know.

So in the tradition of Brooklyn’s Finest, I have to ask: What is your commute like?

Although I live on Prospect Park in Windsor Terrace, there are no direct transit options. I take a ride when I can get one, I walk, and I’m seriously considering getting a bicycle.

Conservation Object Cleaning by Know Your Museum

Where are you originally from?

My family is from Malawi in Southern Africa but I was born in Los Angeles. So, questions of origin are part of my artistic search.

What do you do here at the Museum?

I am an audio-visual technician. My real specialty is sound which comes from being a musician.

How long have been at the Brooklyn Museum?

About 6 years, 3 part time and about 3 full time.

Do you have a favorite piece or collection here and why?

Right now I’m really interested in Sara Van DerBeek’s, A Composition for Detroit.  It is a series of four images on the fourth floor. She has managed to capture the severity of this moment in America in terms of urban decay and poverty without leaving the viewer hopeless.  The images tell a story.  You see Detroit and the crumbling of industry but in every image there is a human face. The faces are black even though the artist is white.  I love it when any artist is sensitive enough to move beyond the idea that race, gender or class must dictate who you can represent in art.  Human suffering is human suffering.

In the first image you see a profile as though the subject is unwilling to engage. In the second image you see can see a pair of eyes through a rear view mirror as if you were in the back seat making eye contact with the driver who again is not ready to engage.  In the third image you see the full profile of an elderly black woman who looks firm even in the midst of the decay. In the final image you see a half face that may be staring directly at you from the shadows. This seems to represent a reversal , it as if the portrait is now looking at you and asking you what you are going to do about all of this.  There is a newspaper clipping that says “Tragedy” right in the middle of image four.  So, the artist was not willing to let you miss the point which is that there are people catching hell right here in our country right now and we must become participants instead of just viewers of reality.

What has been your most interesting experience here?

That is a hard one! Just yesterday I met Randy Weston who did a concert for Black Brooklyn Rennaissance in the Auditorium. He is my favorite living jazz musician.  He was a protégé of Thelonius Monk.  He was explaining that the ancient Egyptians made musical scales from studying the sound vibrations that planets give off.

In the last month, I’ve gotten to do sound for Kara Walker, Women of SNCC and work with Osaro Hemez our other AV tech on the Jay-Z and Charlie Rose episode that was filmed for TV. The Women of SNCC panel was really powerful. I think SNCC was the most important organization in the history of America because they were young people who decided that they could shape the direction of the country through vision and collective work.

I guess what I’m saying is that there is a lot of amazing stuff that happens in the museum these days.

What were you doing before you came to the Museum?

I had been doing music in South Africa where things have been going pretty well since 1999. I have a group called Blk Sonshine. Here is a video clip from back then:

What did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a musician or the president of the United States. I decided to give Obama a shot though because he was definitely going to lose to a black man who could sing…

What is your commute like?

I live a couple stops away, so I often ride my bike which is an adventure in a city where everyone is trying to get everywhere as fast as they can.

Tell me more about being a musician?

For me, music is a vehicle to move people into the world of their emotions.  I am a songwriter with a deep love of poetry. I read up a little on Sara Van DerBeek and found out that she is into Walt Whitman’s, Leaves of Grass.   I think that is why her work moved me. She understands that there is always a story to be told with art and that the telling of that story should be poetic in nature. Good art in my opinion is an attempt to show the world that everything is intrinsically connected and interdependent.  That is what I attempt to do with music. This is a video that was filmed by my nephew Opiyo Okeyo and includes my children Jabulani and Aminata:

Blk Sonshine “Gliding” [Video] from Stellar Creative on Vimeo.

Are you performing anytime soon?

I will be at a new bookstore called Daddy’s Basement on the 30^th of December. It is bookstore started by two of my wife’s students from Medgar Evers University.  I like to support them because they are attempting to move the community towards literature in a time when folks are too busy paying the bills to read. I think that when we subvert the intellect in an attempt to pay the bills we begin the process of spiritual death which creates the automatons we see taking the train to Manhattan in the mornings. The one thing I love about working in the museum is that I’m always surrounded by creativity which makes it impossible for me to become a machine.

How did you end up on the Putumayo South Africa CD, for sale in the Museum’s very own gift shop?

My group Blk Sonshine was nominated for a South African music award in 2010 for our CD, “Good Life.” The nomination led to us performing at the Fifa Fanparks during world cup and performing at the biggest international arts festival in South Africa. One of the scouts from Putumayo came out to a gig and next thing you know we were got a request to have one of our songs on their 2010 South Africa CD. That has been really good for me too because Putumayo is well respected and they have pulled me in for interviews with stations all over America which has given our music a greater audience. Pick up the CD in the gift shop – it makes a great Christmas present in the year of the world cup.

Conservation Hammering Mount Metal by Know Your Museum

How long have you been a volunteer here?

I’ve been here for 15 years and have always volunteered in merchandising. The staff in this department has always kept me very engaged.  Sometimes I do mundane tasks like pricing new merchandise or dusting or even folding gift boxes–wherever I can help out. But I also get to do more interesting things like writing product descriptions.   Products sold in the Shop are to be connected in some way to the Museum’s collections or exhibitions. So my test is to write a product description card that makes the connection…it’s kind of a personal challenge for me.

This is all a fascinating change from my first life as a school teacher. Teaching can be a very structured environment, and now I have a lot of flexibility and variety in my day-to-day tasks here in the merchandising department. Plus, everyone’s really open to new ideas so conversations are lively.

Where are you from originally?

I’m from the midwest, from a small farming town near Chicago. A really small town. I arrived in Brooklyn in the 1960s for my first teaching job and never left. Moving here was really the escape I longed for, to get away from the confines of  my small rural home town…New York City was just a big adventure and  I’ve had a great life here.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

I always wanted to be a teacher. It was a common career for women in those days before liberation. You could work and have a family without sacrificing too much.   But also, I came from a big family and I was naturally bossy, so teaching was a good fit for me.

Why did you want to volunteer at the Brooklyn Museum?

While I was a Brooklyn teacher, before there was much of a school program at the museum, I used to bring my classes to fill out the study of Ancient Egypt, Northwest Coast Indians (remember those totem poles), African ritual art and other topics.  The Brooklyn Museum is such a gem and it used to be passed over by teachers who had to develop their own on-site experience.  When I retired from the school system, I called the volunteer office thinking I might do docent work, but the merchandising department contacted me and the rest is history.

What are you working on right now?

Right now I’m working on the Children’s Book Fair. A few years ago, Sallie Stutz (Vice Director for Merchandising) had a connection with a professional colleague who had been doing a book fair at the Portland, (Oregon ) Historical Society. They are locally famous for their book fair which make use of many volunteers, so we looked to their example and started planning to hold  a children’s book fair here at the Museum.

How long has the Book Fair been going on?

This is the fourth year. We started working on the first book fair a year in advance by looking for  authors  and illustrators to invite to participate. Our good fortune was to have contact with  two children’s book authors/illustrators who were on staff: one was Keith Duquette, who was interviewed for Brooklyn’s Finest, and the other was Sean Qualls who used to work in the merchandising stock room and has since gone on to be an important illustrator. They led us to other children’s book authors/illustrators who might be Brooklyn-based. So we started to develop a list of some twenty Brooklyn authors and illustrators. That was about the same year that the annual Brooklyn Book Festival started at Brooklyn Borough Hall and we looked at what they were doing and scoped our event to include only recently published children’s books.

How many authors participate now?

This year we have 37 authors and illustrators. We have a core of author/illustrators who have retuned most years but each year we are led to invite new people. We have pretty specific guidelines: the participants must have published a new book within the last 18 months or if it’s an older publication, it must have a Brooklyn theme. Through the years we have brought together authors with the illustrators whose names appeared together on the book, but had never personally met each other.  The author Nancy Krulik of the Katie Kazoo adventure series was surprised to meet John & Wendy, who are the illustrators of that series.  They continue to collaborate and John & Wendy have gone on to get their own books published.  The success of the Book Fair has also led the way to our Eco Fair Event and author signings in the Museum Shop.

What do you like about this event?

It’s a free admission public event that coincides with the museum’s mission. The book fair is about reaching out to the community and over the years we’ve expanded to reach out to many ethnic groups and cultures. We’ve also connected with different Brooklyn neighborhoods and gotten in touch with individuals who bring their peers and community with them to the book fair and sometimes to the museum for the first time. All of this keeps the museum’s mission on education and community involvement in focus.  One author/illustrator who is a parent, publicized the event at his children’s school where he is a local hero and many families attended the book fair and experienced the Museum for the very first time.

What’s your favorite work of art here?

The Burghers of Calais series of sculptures by Auguste Rodin, which I’ve always admired since taking trips to the Musśe Rodin in Paris. I am also fond of any art work that includes the Brooklyn Bridge.

Finally, what’s your commute like?

I live in Carroll Gardens so it’s pretty close. It’s easy–I just drive my car into the parking lot.

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To meet more of our staff, visit the Brooklyn’s Finest Flickr set.