Museum camouflage photographs by Harvey Opgenorth. (via nick baum)
Museum camouflage photographs by Harvey Opgenorth. (via nick baum)
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kottke.org posts about museums
“From September 27th - October 21 the Museum
“From September 27th - October 21 the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators will host ‘30 Years of Fantagraphics,’ a retrospective art exhibition of over 100 pieces of original art published by the Seattle underground giant.” Artists in the exhibition include Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, and Robert Crumb.
The London Science Museum will hold a
The London Science Museum will hold a video game exhibition starting in October. Visitors will be able to play vintage video games, including Spacewar, the world’s first computer game.
One of the three statues on the
One of the three statues on the top of the Washburn Lofts in Minneapolis unwittingly represents the period in the city’s history when it led the world in the production of prosthetic limbs. See also The Mill City Museum. (thx, paul)
The Mill City Museum
In 1965, the Washburn A mill, the last operating flour mill in Minneapolis, became also the last flour mill to close its doors, having been preceded by an entire industry that, at one time, produced more flour than any other place in the U.S. The closure came when the mill’s operating company, General Mills, moved its headquarters to Golden Valley, where real estate was plentiful and inexpensive. The area around St. Anthony Falls, the geological feature responsible for the beginnings of industry in the area, had long since fallen into general disrepair and it wasn’t long before the Washburn A was deserted and inhabited by the homeless.
The area started to show signs of life again in the 70s and 80s after being added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. Old mill buildings were converted for non-industrial business and residential use as people began to recognize the unique character and history of the area around the falls. In 1991, the Washburn A building burned and part of its structure collapsed, but firefighters saved the rest of the historic building from destruction. The remnants of the building and the adjacent grain elevators remained empty for years afterwards, save for the occasional graffiti artist and urban spelunker.
I knew very little of this when I moved to the Twin Cities in 1996 and not much more when I left Minneapolis for San Francisco in 2000. Almost every weekday for two years I drove or pedaled past the shell of the Washburn A mill on the way to and from work on Washington Avenue in the warehouse district, where we manufactured web pages to fill a growing online space. Topped by the Gold Medal Flour sign, the mill became my favorite building in the Twin Cities, leading me to include it in The Minneapolis Sign Project I did for 0sil8 shortly before I left for the West Coast.
It seemed the perfect symbol of a time and industry long past, broken down but not entirely wiped away. I returned to visit Minneapolis occasionally and would drive past the Falls, wondering what would happen to my building, hoping against hope that they wouldn’t eventually tear it down. With the structure in such bad shape, demolition seemed to be the only option.
Last week, Meg and I spent a day in Minneapolis on our way to visit my parents in Wisconsin, my first stay in Mpls since mid-2002. Meg wanted to investigate running trails and I wanted to sneak a peek at the Gold Medal Flour Building (as I had taken to calling it), so we walked the three blocks to the river from our hotel, housed in the former Milwaukee Depot. The Gold Medal Flour sign was visible from several blocks away, so I knew they hadn’t torn down the grain elevators, but it wasn’t until I saw the shell of the Washburn A building peeking out around one of the other mill buildings that I knew it had been spared as well. As more of the building came into view, I saw a glass elevator rising from the ruins, backed by a glass facade.
What the??!?
Now practically running along the river in excitement and bewilderment, dragging poor Meg along with me in a preview of her jog the next morning, I saw a wooden boardwalk in front of the building and headed for what looked like the entrance. The burned out windows and broken glass remained; except for the elevator and the 8-story glass building sticking out the top, it looked much the same as it had after burning in 1991. I scrambled through the entrance and, lo, the Mill City Museum.
And what a museum. It was just closing when we got there, but we returned the next morning for a full tour of the museum and the Mill Ruins Park. The highlight of the museum is an elevator tour of the mill as it was back in the early 20th century. They load 30 people at a time into a giant freight elevator, which takes the group up to the 8th floor of the museum, stopping at floors along the way to view and hear scenes from the mills workings, narrated by former mill workers. After the elevator tour, you’re directed to an outdoor deck on the 9th floor, where you can view the shell of the mill building, St. Anthony Falls, the Stone Arch Bridge, the Gold Medal Flour sign, and the rest of the historic area.
Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle are the architects responsible for the project, and they deserve all the accolades they get from one of the most unique museums I’ve ever been to. The statement from the American Institute of Architects jury explains the design of the museum:
A creative adaptive reuse of an extant shell of a mill building, with contrasting insertion of contemporary materials, weaving the old and the new into a seamless whole…A complex and intriguing social and regional story that reveals itself as the visitor progresses through the spaces. It is museum as a verb…A gutsy, crystalline, glowing courtyard for a reemerging waterfront district that attracts young and old and has stimulated adjacent development.
I still can’t quite believe they turned my favorite Minneapolis building (of all buildings) into a museum….and that it was done so well. More than anything, I’m happy and relieved that the Gold Medal Flour Building will always be there when I go back to visit. If you’re ever in Minneapolis, do yourself a favor and check it out.
Photos on Flickr tagged “mill city”
Photos on Flickr tagged “mill city museum”
Mill City: A Visual History of the Minneapolis Mill District was helpful in writing this post
A Washington Post review of the museum from September 2005
The new Guthrie Theater is right next door and is a dazzling building in its own right (photo, more photos)
Slightly surreal panoramic shot of the Guggenheim in NYC.
Slightly surreal panoramic shot of the Guggenheim in NYC.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is raising
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is raising its ticket price to $20 (from $15). The fee is recommended…you can pay nothing if you wish.
The Tate Museum in Britain lets you
The Tate Museum in Britain lets you make your own collection out of all their works of art. “You can create your Collection, print it as a leaflet, or send it to a friend.” Current collections include The I’ve Just Split Up Collection, The Odd Faces Collection, and The I’m Hungover Collection. See also unofficial audio guides for MoMA and the Met. (via nick)
They’re refurbishing the outside of the Guggenheim
They’re refurbishing the outside of the Guggenheim and stripping away the facade reveals a doublestrike on the “T” in “The”. It’s like they started putting the printing on the building and then the architect stops by and says, whoa! that text is supposed to be lower, you morons.
The Type Museum, located in London and
The Type Museum, located in London and housing “one of the world’s best typographic collections”, is being shut down due to lack of funding. The folks in the TypeMuseumSociety GoogleGroup are trying to find a way to save it. (thx, mark)
Whitney Biennial 2006, through May 28 in NYC. NY
Whitney Biennial 2006, through May 28 in NYC. NY Times review. Momus describes his first day as a performance artist at the Biennial.
Mark Rothko’s Seagram murals were to hang
Mark Rothko’s Seagram murals were to hang in the then-new Four Seasons restaurant in NYC. How did they come to hang instead in the Tate Modern in London?
Edward Burtynsky at the Brooklyn Museum of Art
I can’t remember where I first ran across Edward Burtynsky’s photography, but I’ve been developing into a full-fledged fan of work over the past few months. From a Washington Post article on Burtynsky:
Burtynsky calls his images “a second look at the scale of what we call progress,” and hopes that at minimum, the images acquaint viewers with the ramifications — he avoids the word price — of our lifestyle. But what if viewers just see, you know, some dudes and a ship?
“Another photographer might focus on the loss of life or pollution,” acknowledges Kennel of the National Gallery. “He uses beauty as a way to draw attention to something. It’s a very particular strategy.”
The Brooklyn Museum of Art is displaying an exhibition of Burtynsky’s photos until January 15. Well worth the effort to try and check it out. The scale of modernity, particularly in his recent photos of China, is astounding. In Three Gorges Dam Project, Dam #4, this huge dam seems to stretch on forever and you don’t know whether to goggle in wonder or shrink in horror from looking at it.
John Lasseter at MoMA
MoMA just opened their show about Pixar last week and on Friday, we went to a presentation by John Lasseter, head creative guy at the company. Interesting talk, although I’d heard some of it in various places before, most notably in this interview with him on WNYC. Two quick highlights:
- Lasseter showed colorscripts from Pixar’s films (which can be viewed in the exhibition). A colorscript is a storyboarding technique that Pixar developed to “visually describe the emotional content of an entire story through color and lighting”. They are compact enough that the entire story fits on a single sheet and if you’re familar enough with the films, you can follow along with the story pretty well. But mostly it’s just for illustrating the mood of the film. Very cool technique (that could certainly be adopted for web design and branding projects).
- Near the end of the talk he showed a 2-3 minute clip of Cars, prefacing it with an announcement that it had never before been shown outside of Pixar.[1] Some of the CGI wasn’t completely finished, but it was certainly enough to get the gist. When the first preview trailer for Cars was released, I was skeptical; it just didn’t look like it was going to be that good. Based on the clip Lasseter showed and some of his other comments, I’m happy to report that I was wrong to be so skeptical and am very much looking forward to its release in 2006.
At 15 minutes long, the Q&A session at the end of his talk was too short. The MoMA audience is sufficiently interesting and Lasseter was so quick on his feet and willing to share his views that 30 to 40 minutes of Q&A would have been great.
[1] For you Pixar completists and AICN folks out there, the clip showed Lightning McQueen leaving a race track on the back of a flat-bed truck, bound for a big race in California. As the truck drives across the US, you see the criss-crossing expressways of the city stretch out into the long straight freeways of the American west, the roads literally cutting into the beautiful scenery. A cover of Tom Cochran’s Life is a Highway plays as the truck drives. The world of the movie features only cars, no humans…the cars are driving themselves.
Just Van Gogh!
A quick note about the Van Gogh show at the Met that’s closing at the end of the month: if you’re in NYC, go see it. Admittedly, I’m a fan of Van Gogh, but I thought this was one of the best museum exhibitions I’ve ever seen. The exhibition features drawings (as well as a few paintings) from his short 10-year career as an artist, and you can really see how much he progressed during that time and how much his drawings and paintings were related. I can’t wait to go back over to the MoMA and look at Starry Night and The Postman and view them not as paintings, but more as drawings done with paint.
Audio interview with John Lasseter (basically creative
Audio interview with John Lasseter (basically creative director at Pixar) and Ron Magliozzi, who helped curate the just-opened show at MoMA on 20 years of Pixar.
A museum of pull-down menus, for US
A museum of pull-down menus, for US states, currency, colors, etc. (via do)
Safe: Design Takes On Risk
At the risk (ha!) of missing it, I waited until this late in the game to check out Safe: Design Takes On Risk at the MoMA. Great show. Two of my favorite items:
- Safe Bedside Table by James McAdam. If the need should arise in the middle of the night, the top of the table separates from the leg and can be worn on the arm as a shield while you use the leg to beat the crap out of a surprised burglar.
- Suited for Subversion by Ralph Borland. Don this highly visable suit before heading out for a day of protesting. It’s padded to protect against police brutality, an optional wireless camera acts as a witness to the day’s events, and a speaker amplifies the wearer’s heatbeat, letting those around him know that’s he’s scared, anxious, exhilarated, or simply human.
For you armchair museum goers, what looks to be the entire exhibition is available online.
Also, the MoMA around holiday time, not so crowded. (Well, relatively so. There were still a fair number of people there, just not so many as in the Build-A-Bear store on 5th Avenue.)
The Burtynsky exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum
The Burtynsky exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art sounds good. I hope to get over there before it closes on January 15. Here’s his site with lots of photographs. “He often will shoot an image on three or four different brands of film, then print each image on three or four different brands of paper…then chooses the combination that produces the richest and most vivid look.”
There’s a Charles Darwin exhibition at the
There’s a Charles Darwin exhibition at the Natural History Museum in NYC through May 2006. A tidbit not reported in the US press: the exhibition failed to attract corporate sponsorship because “American companies are anxious not to take sides in the heated debate between scientists and fundamentalist Christians over the theory of evolution”. Pussies.
Update: This letter sent into TMN throws some doubt on the whole lack of corporate sponsorship angle. (thx, chris)
MoMA is running a Pixar exhibition from
MoMA is running a Pixar exhibition from December 14 to February 6, 2006. “Featuring over 500 works of original art on loan for the first time from Pixar Animation Studios, the show includes paintings, concept art, sculptures, and an array of digital installations.”
Time magazine profile of Ho Chi Minh (
Time magazine profile of Ho Chi Minh (see also his bio from the Communist Party of Vietnam site). We went to a couple of museums in Saigon today and I was curious about his life.
Opening tomorrow at the Met Museum in
Opening tomorrow at the Met Museum in NYC, an exhibition of drawings by Vincent van Gogh. October 18, 2005 through December 31, 2005.
Coming soon to the MoMa: Safe: Design
Coming soon to the MoMa: Safe: Design Takes on Risk “presents more than 300 contemporary products and prototypes designed to protect body and mind from dangerous or stressful circumstances, respond to emergencies, ensure clarity of information, and provide a sense of comfort and security”.
Update: Business Week has a preview of the exhibition as well as a slideshow of some of the objects in the exhibit.
A look at Jefferson Burdick’s baseball card
A look at Jefferson Burdick’s baseball card collection which he donated the Met Museum in NYC. One downside to the collection: most of the cards are pasted into albums and so are in poor condition.
Pan of the newish MoMA building in
Pan of the newish MoMA building in NYC. I like the new building, but I agree that there are too many people sometimes; they’re certainly not having a problem with that $20 admission price. (via cdl)
Update: a rebuttal by Greg Allen.
Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld
The Chanel exhibition at the Met showcases the fashion designs of Coco Chanel as well as the more recent fashions of Karl Lagerfeld’s design. The exhibition attempts to draw parallels between the older Chanel fashions and Lagerfeld’s newer work (words like “interpretation” and “reinvention” sprinkled the exhibition walls), but I had a hard time seeing Coco’s influence in much of his work. Seems more like Lagerfeld is out on his own, which is in keeping with his thoughts in this 2001 interview with Paper magazine. Initially he says he hates “nothing more than people who only look in one direction, which means only in their direction” but then that he finds it hard to collaborate with others (except with himself). Then:
When I do my own things, I’m not really too interested in other people telling me what to do.
Lagerfeld is a fascinating figure and may have captured the cultural zeitgeist of the 80s and 90s in Chanel’s fashions, but I don’t know if I buy any of this reinvention business. If you’d like the check out the exhibit for yourself, you’d better hurry…it’s only on for a few more days.
Cezanne and Pissarro at the MoMA
Cezanne and Pissarro at the MoMA. “Working in tandem or with each other in mind, Cezanne and Pissarro formulated a distinctly modern art, simultaneously self-confident and self-critical.”
J. Seward Johnson, Jr. recreated a bunch
J. Seward Johnson, Jr. recreated a bunch of impressionist paintings as sculptures you can walk around in. Looks very cool…the photos are from a show going on through Aug 7th at the Nassau County Museum of Art.
Pi, God, and apartment supercomputers
The New Yorker recently ran a feature on how a couple of mathematicians helped The Met photograph a part of The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. That same week, they ran from their extensive archives a 1992 profile of the same mathematicians, brothers David and Gregory Chudnovsky. The Chudnovskys were then engaged in calculating as many digits of pi as they could using a homemade supercomputer housed in their Manhattan apartment. There’s some speculation that director Darren Aronfsky based his 1998 film, Pi, on the Chudnovskys and after reading the above article, there’s little doubt that’s exactly what he did:
They wonder whether the digits contain a hidden rule, an as yet unseen architecture, close to the mind of God. A subtle and fantastic order may appear in the digits of pi way out there somewhere; no one knows. No one has ever proved, for example, that pi does not turn into nothing but nines and zeros, spattered to infinity in some peculiar arrangement. If we were to explore the digits of pi far enough, they might resolve into a breathtaking numerical pattern, as knotty as “The Book of Kells,” and it might mean something. It might be a small but interesting message from God, hidden in the crypt of the circle, awaiting notice by a mathematician.
The Chudnovsky article also reminds me of Contact by Carl Sagan in which pi is prominently featured as well.
According to Wolfram Research’s Mathworld, the current world record for the calculation of digits in pi is 1241100000000 digits, held by Japanese computer scientists Kanada, Ushio and Kuroda. Kanada is named in the article as the Chudnovskys main competitor at the time.
(Oh, and as for patterns hidden in pi, we’ve already found one. It’s called the circle. Just because humans discovered circles first and pi later shouldn’t mean that the latter is derived from the former.)
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