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I am spending time synergizing Frances Frei and Anne Morriss' Uncommon Service with  Wendy Pollock and Kathleen McLean's Convivial Museum . It is at the intersection of these two works that I hope to be focusing some of my work in the coming months and years, assessing the balance and importance of the visitor experience and the "content piece." It is the shared experience that seems paramount in the present day, and our museum field is telling us this, right? On the other hand, what are we, if we are not educators?  Illuminators? It is, in fact, at the intersection of these two things --conviviality and uncommon service that the transformative outcome can blossom.  This is the perfectly tepid-to-steamy bathwater environment where good things grow; where we are cleansed and revitalized.  From here, we can shock, teach through participation and invigorate.   The quality of aliveness we see in these images is what we call conviviality. We chose the ...

Rob Gronkowski poses with his new cereal “Gronk Flakes” which are available at Stop & Shops throughout New England. Rob Gronkowski’s new cereal “Gronk Flakes” hit store shelves on Tuesday, and the  Patriots  tight end was on hand to celebrate at a Walpole Stop & Shop. Who is this guy?! He looks like Stephen Malkmus! So I'm all "gronk?"  "Gronk?"  "What the F' is that phrase that guru and GLAM rous mentor Michael P. Edson uses?!..."  Gronk? Grunk? Grok? GROK!  And so I learn it is from Heinlein: grok 664  up ,  95  down Taken from the book ' Stranger in a Strange Land ,' literally meaning 'to drink' but taken to mean 'understanding.' Often used by programmers and other assorted geeks. It took me a long time to grok Perl, but now I can read it without going blind! I get it!  And it's beautiful!!   Drink to me only with thine eyes ... My brother read science fiction, I didn't.  Maybe b...

Arise, shine, [O Jerusalem,] for your light has come, the glory of the Eternal is shining upon you! Though darkness may cover the earth, thick darkness [the] peoples - upon you the Eternal will shine, over you G_d’s Presence will appear. Nations shall walk toward your light, and kings toward your sunrise. Raise your eyes and see! They are gathering, all of them, they are coming to you. Your sons shall come from afar, your daughters borne securely. You shall see it and beam with joy, your heart will thrill with pride, the sea’s abundance shall shower you, the wealth of nations shall come your way. A horde of camels shall cover your land, the young camels of Midian and Ephah, all coming from Sheba bearing gold and frankincense; proclaiming the praises of G_d! The flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to you, the rams of Nevayot shall serve your need - a sacrifice welcome on My altar, adding glory to My glorious house. Who are these that fly like a cloud, like doves to their cotes? The coast...

...thanks for sharing, Tosh and Tam Tam Books

Museum Legs: Fatigue and Hope in the Face of Art by Amy Whitaker My rating: 5 of 5 stars "The ability of museums to be institutions of civic importance rides on their collective capacity for intellectual empathy -- their ability to speak to people in their own idiom and to bring in new audiences -- through tireless effort at customization of messages to different groups.  There are any number of reasons why this doesn't happen...Knowledge benefits from this kind of exuberant free trade -- the more it circulates, the more there is.  Obfuscation is a weird and obscure mercantilism, an isolationism that in an economy walls off a country, and in museums circumscribes a field of knowledge." pp. 88-89 View all my reviews

It is impossible to seek out the face of Sitting Bull, and even more the knowing of Crazy Horse; for one, the photograph is never justice, nor his prime. The other never sat for a white man's camera machine. Rebecca Solnit wrote about the Ghost Dance and technology . I have to look that up. I've just come from Little Bighorn, and you cannot but cry and cry. Such nobility in its last. Ignoble.

In the Montana Triennial at the Missoula Art Museum there was a piece by an artist named Tom Foolery from Dillon, MT. Also some Richard Notkins and plexiglas assemblages by an artist with the last name Autio. Lela Autio. Rudy Autio's wife? Daughter? And eye-catching large soft pastel portrait drawings by a woman named Jennifer Pulchinski.

There was a brilliant installation of drawings and sculpture by an Indian (Lakota) artist named Dwayne Wilcox at the Missoula Art Museum (MAM). They were earnest and ironic; scathing, insightful, childish. Drawn on Ledger Paper, and so at once borrowed and repossessed; the material was also highly personal in feel like you'd discovered a trove of a) drawings of a self-taught skilled observer b) a refined, highly-stylized project by an agent provacateur or c) the working thoughts of a 21st c. Indian artist navigating a new language for his own erudition. I also couldn't not think of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith who means south to me.

Loving the Klosterman

What I'm Reading... I had tasked myself last month or so with reading three books that I then intend to synergize to answer all the questions about why museums are so important, broadly and to me especially. The first is Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct: Beauty Pleasure, and Human Evolution . The second is James Cuno's Museums Matter: In Praise of the Encyclopedia Museum . Cuno's was the first of these three that I read, and I was mildly troubled that Cuno appeared to be boxing his way out of a corner. The third book, which I just completed is Putting the Arts in the Picture , from Columbia College Chicago .  Putting the Arts in the Picture is a compelling work about integrative arts education practice in the schools. Putting the Arts in the Picture: Reframing Education in the 21st Century , our book on arts education, makes a new argument for moving the arts, usually located on the margins of public education, to its center. By examining the role...

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CIMG0334 , originally uploaded by levenj .

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Every important cultural institution in the United States faces almost insurmountable financial challenges every day, every year, decade after decade. The difference between the many that succeed and the few that fail is leadership, steady, enlightened, countercultural leadership that keeps an organization tacking upwind, no matter what happens to the economy. - Philip Kennicott Corcoran’s proposal to leave its historic quarters is laden with questions about leadership http://www.corcoran.edu/institutional-home

CIMG0227 , originally uploaded by levenj . This gem was at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts: http://www.artsmia.org/viewer/detail.php?v=12&id=1655

Now imagine the Internet.  And imagine Anton Vidolke.  E-flux and the French theorist and curator Nicolas Bourriaud – “The contemporary work of art does not position itself as the termination point of the ‘creative process’ (a ‘finished product to be contemplated) but as a site of navigation, a portal, a generator of activities.” That’s what we do in museums, right?  We have an obligation to promote this state as culture workers? Modern Painter’s article on Vidokle ( not this article ) goes on to claim, “…the contemporary transformations of influence through social networks -  a truly distributed collective --   and the concept of he commons, in which no single person has control over resources and production but shares them among peers.”  And isn’t this what we are beholden to do with our collections on-line and all the more now on-site? Vidokle says, “It’s kind of a dream that e-flux could evolve into some sort of structure like this, b...

facebook status Can't wait to dig into this !! Thanks for sharing Daniel Schifrin http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=591 Los Angeles Review of Books - Simon Reynolds interviews Greil Marcus lareviewofbooks.org Like · · Share Ryyan LeBllanc likes this. Timothy B Buckwalter it is possibly the longest interview in the history of the internet. Seriously. Yesterday at 2:11pm James G. Leventhal whoa...you know it's going to be long when it begins" "Let's start with your name..." Yesterday at 2:29pm · Like · 1 Timothy B Buckwalter Yep. And then it goes on for miles about his name. Yesterday at 2:47pm · Unlike · 1 James G. Leventhal ‎Gravity Goldberg whoops, it ends up California Dreaming would have been the tie in for Greil Marcus ;) GM: My wife always says I'm a California Jew, meaning I'm not Jewish at all. I didn't know any Yiddish. I have non-Jewish friends in New York who knew far more Yiddish than I do. I was born in San...

The ethics of accessibility are wrapped up in the intersection of two facts – art, at its highest echelons, greatest, happens within a system; and art is popular and meaningful to everyone when given over to its most natural state, mediated to achieve universality. Art within a system. It is esoteric. Or "What I admire most about Paul McCarthy ." Difficult. Scatological. Squeezing ketchup like a child, and tossing about in a tub. He is, in fact, riffing off of extremely popular tools – video, street life, pornography. Somehow McCarthy always strikes me as the ultimate “operator,” the Cal Arts professor, the deliberate charlatan. It’s important for me because the phrase, “Art happens with a system” were notes I took from a Swiss catalog from a brilliant exhibition entitled Lost Paradise. The Angel's Gaze . The Angel’s Gaze (Juri Steiner). The catalog created or well “curated” a brilliant exhibition inspired by Paul Klee’s Angelus Novelus and the related Wa...

I was on a plane out and there was this beautiful documentary about The Doors. A beautiful documentary, man. Mr Mojo Risin': The Story of L.A. Woman . LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT TEXAS RADIO AND THE BIG BEAT. And, boy, it reminded me so hard about why I am in this. Why I am here. Why I keep on keeping on. And there’s art in there. There’s a not-so-secret art. The art of Rimbaud. Back to the art of Baudelaire. Back to the Impressionists -- who spent more time painting brothels than any group of painters before them. Talk about your L.A. Woman. Back to Edgar Allan Poe -- just as dense and heavy, faux philosophical, American, chauvinistic, expressive and dense as Poe.  Popular, enticing and sexy. Was Poe sexy? I mean why did they make all those Vincent Price movies? Let me tell you about Texas Radio and The Big Beat. And The Doors lead to Iggy and the Stooges, right? Echo and The Bunnymen. REM. U2. Ray Manzarek borrows liberally from Chopin, equal as much ...

Spaces of Life: Sonya Rapoport @ Mills , originally uploaded by levenj .

Pacific Standard Time: MLK Weekend , a set on Flickr. What an amazing, long weekend!