Off Center

“I traced out that Morandi drawing … Traced that son of a bitch out on a blank piece of paper, and I said, ‘There’s the artwork.’ ” Who says curators aren’t badasses? Read, via Greg.org,a brief yet fascinating account of curatorial license by the legendary Walter Hopps—all with the noblest of goals in mind: to promote the work of Giorgio Morandi, who in the late ’50s/early ’60s was mostly unknown, at least on the West Coast. At an early stage of his long and illustrious career, Hopps founded and ran the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles (from 1957 to 1962), showing the likes of Robert Irwin, Ed Kienholz, Wallace Berman, and Ed Ruscha, in addition to Morandi.

We’ve noticed this, too: “The word ‘curate’,” lofty and once rarely spoken outside exhibition corridors or British parishes, has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, who seem to paste it onto any activity that involves culling and selecting.” From a recent New York Times piece.

You be the curator, option 1: Help commission a work of art with the stunningly simple FEAST MPLS: Attend a (not all that expensive) dinner. Peruse artists’ proposals with your fellow diners. Vote. The winning artist gets the take from the door (minus the dinner cost). Uses money to create proposed work. Shares work at the next FEAST MPLS dinner. Try it out on November 14.

Chief Curator, Darsie Alexander and Curator of the Permanent Collection, Betsy Carpenter, planning upcoming PC exhibiton, Event Horizon, opening November 21, 2009 and running through August 26, 2012, in Galleries 1 and 3.

You be the curator, option 2: Make your own exhibition at the Walker’s After Hours Preview Party on November 20. Select thumbnail images of works from the Walker collection (including photos, videos, films, performances, or sound pieces). Arrange works on a gallery floor plan. Put the works you care about the most in prominent places. (“Curate” comes, after all, from the Latin for “to care”?) Paint the walls of your miniature gallery. Find ideas connecting the works. And finally, title your exhibition. Get tickets to the After Hours Party here.

Who are the Walker’s avian neighbors?

My father and I went “city birding” to see the surprising ways wildlife dovetails with the urban environment. In May and then in October, we wandered the grounds of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, then migrated to Loring Park, and concluded our observations perched atop the Walker’s green slope. Here is a bird’s-eye-view of the territory we covered.

1: Minneapolis Sculpture Garden; 2: Walker’s greenspace; 3: Loring Park; 4: Walker Art Center, Gallery Tower; 5: Walker Art Center, Theater Tower

First, to introduce the birders:

Abbie

• Novice at bird identification
• Walker Art Center staff
• Fledgling artist

Renner

• Enjoys applying the principles of evidence-based medicine to his birding
• Admires thorough, rigorous experimental design
• Empty nester

What we saw may surprise you! Take a look at our list, then go look for yourself. I welcome your comments to this post — I’m curious to see if you see the same species or others!

FIELD NOTES:HIGHLIGHTS

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

• In the Garden we enjoyed observing a fairly diverse bird population. In both May and October, lots of birds find their way to the Garden grounds.
• In May, the Green Heron was our most unexpected sighting. We saw it flying low overhead at 8:41 am. Later we spotted it in a pine tree along the western edge of the Garden. Maybe it nests in the wetlands located about 1/3 mile west of the Garden?
  
• As we walked along the park’s eastern and western edges in October, we saw Ruby-crowned Kinglets in the pines, often at very close distances (as close as 4′). They would flit from one pine bow to the next, and would frequently hover (almost like a hummingbird), positioning themselves just under the pine needles’ tips. Could they have been drinking water droplets?
• Another great bird to watch was the Brown Creeper. It lands at the base of a tree trunk then slowly hops and spirals up, foraging for insects. Once it gets as high as the branches, it takes flight and alights at the base of the next tree. We watched it scale 5 tree trunks, very methodically and consistently repeating its search for food.
  

Walker Art Center’s Greenspace

• In May, virtually all the observed individuals were flying over.
• Contrasting the greenspace observations with those recorded in the Garden or in Loring Park, one can hypothesize that features such as physical structure, diverse flora, and a water source make a quantifiable difference in the abundance and diversity of birds, even on a micro-local level.
  

Loring Park

• In both May and October, this location had the most diverse populations of our three sites.
• Mourning Doves: We saw them all through the Sculpture Garden, even atop George Segal’s Walking Man, but we didn’t see any in Loring Park!
  
• 70% increase: In October, we saw 70% more species than we saw in May! This was striking because the species counts at the other sites were consistent for our two survey dates.

We submitted our observations on e-bird, an free online checklist tool. E-bird  offers organized record storage and customizable reports to users. Its greater purpose is to serve researchers in the fields of conservation and ecology.

Every two facts in the hand is worth a third in the thicket.

Had my dad and I only surveyed the Garden, our experiences would have been less dimensional. The accumulation of information is not a strictly additive process, but can compound our knowledge multiplicatively. With every observable datum, relationships exist between that singular bit and all the pieces that came before. In this context we cobble together patterns, discriminate and identify categories,  speculate as to meaning and postulate as to the future. How many bits and pieces must we put together to present a satisfactorily convincing semblance of a whole?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a discussion between artist Fritz Haeg and some Walker staff. Reflecting on his works and practice influenced me to conduct this bird census. I appreciate the power of Haeg’s work to remind us that wilderness is always at hand, and closer at hand than we might casually believe.  Thank you to Education and Community Programs for making this encounter, this exploration, and this learning possible.

Sekou Sundiata – Voice and Passage

Today, I ponder death. I am thinking of life’s inevitable end because it is gray and I have just returned from Paris and feel the demise of my own vacation, acutely (and remember some vain and heroic graves in Pere Lachaise cemetary that now lie in ruins or are forgotten.) I am also thinking of death in relation to my lost compatriot, the poet Sekou Sundiata, whose life and work we celebrate and remember this week at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis.

Sekou created in voice – invisible exhalations of sound and meaning. In our time, voice can be preserved in analog and digital technologies. But constitutionally it is wind – ubiquitous, forceful and completely mysterious. Voice (as wind) shapes and moves us, wounding and restoring, animating and destroying. As long as we breath (easily) we give voice to ourselves and to others. Our (or at least my) beloved and hated remembrances are linked to these invisible currents of the lungs, throat and lips. We are upheld by those moments when we are nourished and sustained by the voices of care; of friendship; of understanding; of compassion: and often crushed by those breaths that carry the forces of hatred, contempt and violence. Spirit. Voice. Are we not wind too – ubiquitously banal – blown and blowing; arriving as departure?

These dark and light gifts of voice: a newborn’s cry; words of love and endearment from someone we long for; news of the passing of someone we cherish. Passing – always – wind and voice – words that wound, heal, reverberate and echo. Sounds carried in the head and heart; in the caverns of the body. Voice – inescapable – whisper or harangue. Voice as phantasm – mystery and mist – more allied to expiration than to form.

Unlike others who in print lie forever prone on a page; Sundiata rises holographically even now in his voice (listen to him on the web- linked here); ghostly returning to stand before us, nearly as gorgeous and tall as he was in life; convening and communicating in his crooner’s baritone; lulling in his clear tones – smoothing over the very depths he so expertly navigated. Making it all seem so easy (His Coolness forever preserved). Listen in. He tells how he temporarily escaped the inevitable through transplantation, accident and re-creation. In the end, by aligning himself with voice – perhaps he mastered expiration; escaped the final silence by refusing to just be written down.

We return this week to his work (an expiration of voice together in song and conversation); perhaps, to dance our own undoing; to be with him in passing.

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Singing the Legacy of Sekou Sundiata: The America Project
Thursday, October 22, 2009 – Saturday, October 24, 2009
2822 Lyndale Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55408 | 612.871.4444

Intermedia Arts is proud to host Singing the Legacy of Sekou Sundiata: The America Project Twin Cities, a series of community events including Art Treats lunches, citizenship dinners, a film screening and community sing, all designed to inspire and ignite our passionate ideals around citizenry, civic work, and active engagement in civic life. Together we will use art, music, conversation and laughter to discuss what it means to be an American today, and to dream about what it could mean in the future

The Huffington Post has an AP story today about the contemporary art revolution that has taken place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since the Obamas took up residence there. There have been a few reports on this development since the election — including excited reactions from gallery owners and museum directors — but with today’s story it would appear that the checklist has been finalized (or at least the First Lady’s office released a list earlier this week).

Work by Glenn Ligon and Ed Ruscha, both of whom are important to the Walker’s collection, is on view (at left is a Ligon piece from the Walker – not the White House!), along with pieces Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns, and Richard Diebenkorn; the HP story has a pretty extensive slide show of some of the selections, but the Washington Post’s has even more (along with a review of sorts by critic Black Gopnik).