Two Sundays ago I hauled over to the Weisman for the opening weekend program of their new exhibition The HOME House Project: The Future of Affordable Housing. It was the title for the panel that grabbed me: The HOME House Project: How A Museum Can Initiate Change. Exactly. How CAN a museum initiate change? That is one question I’d sure like someone to answer for me. So off I went with notebook in hand.
The talk didn’t address this question in direct terms. The director of the project, David J. Brown, talked about the development of HOME House and showed images of the proposed houses the exhibition showcases. I had not yet seen the show, so I was perfectly entertained to look at drawings and models of high quality architecture that would be cheap and sustainable AND have the modern, pre-fab look that is all the rage these days. Can you imagine a place where the affordable housing is the hippest in the whole city?! That is the metropolis where I want to live.
Anyway, the projects curated in the exhibition are fascinating, but I went there to learn about how a musuem could create change and no one was really talking about that. It wasn’t until the post-lecture comments and the panel Q & A that I realized that my question was being addressed not as a direct topic of discussion, but in practice as we sat there.
As my fellow attendees started asking questions, I realized that we were not your typical architecture audience. The people sitting around me were non-profit housing developers, social service providers, and government housing people in addition to architects and architecture students. One woman who identified herself as a manager of a non-profit housing access program said that she was impressed and encouraged to see this conversation taking place in a museum. To her, the fact that an institution like the Weisman has taken up the issue affordable housing will make more people pay attention and make her work easier. The Education staff at the Weisman seems to get that too, since the public programs around the show include a Mayor’s summit and a public discussion on the topic, among others.
SO, is that the answer? Is it about making a public platform for subjects normally stuck in the offices of organizations working with small budgets to solve the problem? Is it using our big, institutional cache to start conversations?
When affordable housing made out of trees starts cropping up around Minneapolis I guess I’ll know for sure.
congrats, mnspeak linked to your post.
Comment by billy — 2/9/2006 @ 9:28 am