Museum Staff Attend Southeastern Museums Conference Annual Meeting

The annual meeting for the Southeastern Museums Conference (SEMC) took place October 8–10, and the Georgia Museum of Art was well represented. This year’s conference was in Jackson, Mississippi, and offered staff members the chance to visit all of the museums and sights in the city. These included the Mississippi Museum of Art, Two Mississippi Museums, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and the Old Capitol Museum.

One traveling exhibition on view at the Mississippi Museum of Art was “Central to Our Lives,” which was most recently on view here. Michael Lachowski, who attended the conference, commented, “It was fun to see [the show] in a totally different configuration.” He also enjoyed the show of contemporary art by Jeffrey Gibson, “Like a Hammer,” on view through January 27, 2019. Director William U. Eiland was also happy with the conference, stating, “I was impressed by the hospitality and generosity of our hosts—the museum community—in Jackson.”

The conference also presented many sessions for attendees over its three days. “Talking Race: The Power, Influence and Responsibility of Museum Professionals,” “IGNITE SEMC: Inspired Professionals Speak” and “Museums Rise Up with Creative Funding” were but a few of the options from which attendees could choose.

The Georgia Museum of Art left the conference with more than new information and skills. We were awarded two awards in publications design and two for exhibitions. The museum’s quarterly newsletter, Facet, designed by Athens firm The Adsmith, took home the gold in the Newsletters and Calendar of Events category. “Clinton Hill,” an exhibition catalogue that surveyed the artist’s career as a printmaker, painter and pulp-paper pioneer received gold in the Book and Catalogues category and was designed by Almanac, in St. Louis, Missouri. 

The museum also received awards for two exhibitions. “Crafting History: Textiles, Metals and Ceramics at the University of Georgia,” which included works by dozens of UGA faculty members, received a gold award. The museum received a bronze award for “Modern Living: Gio Ponti and the 20th-Century Aesthetics of Design,” an exhibition that presented more than 50 objects, representing some of Ponti’s most outstanding pieces of furniture and decorative objects.

SEMC is a nonprofit organization comprising museums, museum staff, independent professionals and corporate partners who work to provide educational and professional developmental opportunities, improve the exchange of ideas and information and encourage respect and collegiality. SEMC focuses on Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Next year’s SEMC annual meeting will take place October 21–23, 2019, in Charleston, South Carolina.

GACAA Pictures

The Georgia Assembly of Community Arts Agencies (GACAA) held its annual conference at GMOA May 1-3, and we were pleased as punch to host them. Above are some images from the events GACAA held at the museum, including many that show folks dressed as characters from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."

Living Walls Conference

Go ahead and mark your calendar for the Living Walls Conference, set to take place August 13-15 in Atlanta. Focused entirely on street artists, it also incorporates an exhibition of their work, drawing from artists all over the globe. On August 13, there's a lecture series, which will be held at Georgia Tech. Saturday, August 14, there will be an exhibition and Pecha Kucha-style presentations held at Eyedrum gallery. The exhibition of poster art, wall painting and wheat-paste will be open through the end of September. Check out the website!

Reports from CAA

Lanora Pierce, one of our preparators, recently attended the College Art Association 98th annual conference in Chicago, where she went to a lot of sessions and took copious notes, including some on the Field Museum's exhibition "The Nature of Diamonds," from whence the above spectacular image comes. To read Lanora's notes, click here for a pdf.

SLSA Atlanta

Carrisa’s report on the GAEA conference below reminded me that I should blog about the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA) conference I attended the weekend before last. This was the first year I didn’t present a paper, but as it was held in Atlanta this year and is probably my favorite professional conference, it was one I just couldn’t miss. SLSAers are a fun bunch, and the topics tend to be wide ranging. This year was no exception. To give you a sense of the pop-culture scholarship end of it, two of the talks I missed were "Postcolonialism without the Guilt in Joss Whedon's Firefly" and "The Turning Legacy of Decoding and its Relevance to ThunderCats." The sessions I attended this year were almost all about Duchamp in one way or another, dealing either with his art, his sources, those for whom he was a major source, and/or his artistic milieu.

James McManus (California State University, Chico) chaired a session entitled “Beyond Likeness: Propositional Statements—Displacing/Replacing the Recognized Capacity of Portraits to Represent” and presented a paper on “Dr. O’Doherty’s ‘HeArt Machine’: A Portrait of Marcel Duchamp.” Brian O’Doherty is an ex-MD-turned-artist who, in 1966, created portraits—some moving, some still—from electrocardiogram readings he took from Duchamp. Other presenters included James Housefield (UC Davis), “Starry Messenger: Marcel Duchamp and Popular Astronomy ca. 1920;” M.E. Warlick (U. of Denver), “Magritte and Alchemy: Elemental Transformations;” Anne Collins Goodyear (National Portrait Gallery), “Duchamp’s Perspective;” Hannah Wong (UT at Austin), “Portrait of a Lady: Humor and Francis Picabia’s Mechanomorphic object Portrait, Jeune fille américane;” and Kate Dempsey (UT at Austin), “Seeing Double: Ray Johnson and Marcel Duchamp.” James McManus and Anne Collins Goodyear also held a wonderful panel discussion on Jean Crotti’s Portrait sur mésure de Marcel Duchamp. McManus and Goodyear recently coauthored a book, Inventing Marcel Duchamp: the Dynamics of Portraiture (MIT Press, 2009), which I highly recommend.

“Artmaking as an Imaginary Solution: Alfred Jarry as an Intellectual Source for Twentieth Century Art,” chaired by my former UT classmate Peter Mowris, and featuring papers by Fae Brauer (U. of East London) and Michael Taylor (Philadelphia Museum of Art) was another very Duchampian session. Taylor’s Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés exhibition—closing Nov. 29—has been met with deservedly rave reviews. In case you’re not familiar with Jarry (French, 1873-1907), he coined the term “pataphysics,” and is best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896), which was a key source for Surrealist poets and artists, and for Duchamp’s “playful physics.” The best description of pataphysics I’ve heard is that pataphysics is to metaphysics as metaphysics is to physics, which suggests to me “mind over mind,” or as the title of the panel puts it, presents “imaginary solutions” to real problems.

“Occultism and Science in 20th-Century Art” was another outstanding session. Linda Henderson (UT at Austin) presented “’Four-Dimensional Vistas’: Claude Bragdon’s Synthesis of Theosophy, Ether Physics, and the Fourth Dimension in the 1910s;” Ashley Schmiedekamp Busby (UT at Austin) gave a paper dealing with the tarot as a visual and conceptual source for Surrealists; and Dante scholar, Arielle Saiber (Bowdoin College) presented “The Architecture of the Afterlife: Paul Laffoley’s The Divine Comedy Triptych.” I’m a big fan of Laffoley—a story for another post—and Saiber’s talk was inspiring. I hope to bring her to speak at GMOA sometime.

Isabel Wunshe presented a paper on the Russian artist and composer Mikhail Matiushin and the properties of crystal growth, which drew me into a remarkable session where fellow speakers Drew Ayers (GA State), Maria Aline Ferreira (U. of Aveiro, Portugal), and Christina Nguyen Hung (Clemson) presented papers on works of art created by using cutting edge science and technology, such as DNA models and lab-grown neurons. The neuron art is particularly awesome. You can see some of Hung's work here.

GAEA: A Report

Carissa DiCindio, associate curator of education, was kind enough to write us a couple of paragraphs about her experience last weekend at the Georgia Art Educators Association fall conference:

Last weekend, Cece Hinton, curator of education, and I went to Young Harris for the Georgia Art Education Association fall conference. I always enjoy going to this conference because it is a wonderful opportunity to meet art educators from around the state. This year, I had the opportunity to present at three sessions. The first one was called “Making Connections: Educational Materials and Programs at Museums” in which I talked about the resources GMOA has to offer teachers, listened to what teachers would like to see from us and asked other museums to share their programs and materials. For the second session, I co-presented “Exploring Divergent Thinking: Synthesis in Clay” with NaJuana Lee. NaJuana and I are students in the doctoral program in art education in the Lamar Dodd School of Art together, and we presented a lesson on creating something new out of existing parts using clay. As an award winner last year, I also was invited to talk about GMOA and my position at the museum at a session called “Create.”

During this conference, I attended some informative sessions on museum education, including one on interdisciplinary collaborations by Shannon Morris, curator at the Georgia College and State University Museum, and another on how teachers can use cultural resources with their classes. There was also an interesting session by Cindy Bowden, director of the Robert C. Williams Paper Museum, on the World Crafts Council. This conference gave me the opportunity to learn more about the successes and challenges educators are experiencing in Georgia and to make sure everyone knows about the Georgia Museum of Art and all of our resources for teachers. I am already looking forward to next year’s conference!

Thanks, Carissa. We appreciate all the work our wonderful department of education does. GMOA wouldn't be GMOA without their incredible outreach and commitment to reaching everyone through art.

Connecting to Collections Forum: Day 2

[Top: Burchfield Penny Art Center, University at Buffalo; Bottom (added by popular demand, left to right): Susana Tejada, Albright-Knox; Lynn Boland, GMOA; Laura Anderson, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute; Monument of Rick James.]

Today’s speakers at the IMLS’s Connecting to Collections Forum in Buffalo, NY really got to the heart of the topic at hand, discussing ways in which conservation serves communities. The buzz words today were “win-win,” and examples abounded of mutually beneficial partnerships and networks, such as the Regional Alliance for Preservation (geared towards museum professionals), and the Nebraska PBS station’s “Saving Your Treasures” program and website, which has a wealth of good, general information.

Following the talks, we went to the Burchfield Penney Art Center and participants had an opportunity to talk one-on-one with the forum’s presenters. I’m happy to report that I got some great advice on strategies to address some of our own conservation needs. I also left the forum with a stack of useful handouts—and a snazzy tote bag in which to carry them—along with a much larger rolodex than I had last week.

After the planned activities, I tagged along with some of my new friends for a trip to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin Martin House Complex. With a major renovation project underway, and having just come from a forum on conservation, preservation, and restoration, I felt well primed to appreciate not only Wright’s design achievements, but also the tremendous yet rewarding efforts of the Martin House. After that, we toured a bit of the city and I was fortunate to have two of the best tour guides possible: Susana Tejada, Head of Research Resources at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and Lorna Peterson, Associate Professor in the Department of Library and Information Studies at Buffalo State College. Lorna, a Buffalo native as well as an astute historian, spoke about the city’s history with an ease that would make you think she’d lived here since its founding.

In addition to seeing some other architectural treasure like Louis Sullivan’s Guaranty Building, we made a brief trip to the Forest Lawn Cemetery. Millard Fillmore’s grave was impressive, but the highlight of the cemetery was definitely the tombstone of Rick James, Mr. Superfreak himself. There is an extremely goofy picture of me next to it striking a Rick James pose, but I can’t bring myself to post it. Maybe with a little prodding I could be persuaded to share.

Connecting to Collections Forum: Day 1

Today’s sessions at the Connecting to Collections Forum in Buffalo, NY were completely varied but consistently engaging, covering everything from “going green” to volunteerism. Much of it was “nuts and bolts,” so I won’t recount it all here, but if you’re interested, the talks will be available online at the IMLS website, as are previous forum sessions. There is also a great video making the case for the preservation and conservation of our cultural heritage that you can watch here.

As one of today’s speakers put it, “we understand the world through our images…and together we must preserve these extraordinary resources for future generations.” In their wisdom, the organizers of the forum made the best case for our cause--for me, anyway--by starting the day with docent-led tours of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, one of the nation’s great collections of modern and contemporary art. Seeing some modern art history college textbooks in the gift shop, I half-jokingly asked if they used them in lieu of a collections catalogue. They do not, but appreciated the joke anyway.

First post / Connecting to Collections Forum, Buffalo, NY

For my inaugural blog post I would like to start by thanking the entire GMOA staff and community of volunteers for helping make my first month here so pleasant and productive. I'm off to Buffalo, NY this afternoon for the Connecting to Collections Forum, “Stewardship of America’s Legacy: Answering the Call to Action,” a Leadership Initiative of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, organized in cooperation with Heritage Preservation. More posts on the forum will follow in the coming days.

AAM 2009

Tricia Miller, our head registrar, was kind enough to share with us the photographs that she took while attending the American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting in Philadelphia a few days ago, and you'll find a slideshow of them below.

Tricia says, "the Perelman building is a historic building acquired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art that is newly renovated with an addition on the back designed by Gluckman Mayner [the design architects on the GMOA expansion and renovation]. So it was great to see another museum project completed by our design architects. Richard Gluckman gave a great tour of the building on Thursday. He is in the first picture labeled Perelman Building. You can see their addition in photos 3-6. Most of the others are of the main building at the PMA and some of my favorite works shown inside."

AAM Conference

Several of our staff members left today or yesterday to attend the American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting in Philadelphia, one of the most important of professional conferences to the field. This year's annual meeting has a blog and some other associated social media, and its theme is "The Museum Experiment," explained at this link. Keynote speakers are Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, and Malcolm Gladwell, author of several New York Times nonfiction bestsellers, including "Blink" and "The Tipping Point." We're excited to hear what our staff members bring back, as well as what they contribute through their attendance.

NAEA Conference

Carissa DiCindio, our associate curator of education, recently attended the conference of the National Art Education Association in Minneapolis to present, and here's what she reports back:

From April 16 through April 19, I attended the National Art Education Association Annual Conference in Minneapolis, Minn. This organization has a large museum education division, and educators travel from all parts of the country for this conference. I attended many sessions by leaders in our field, including one on how to discuss emotional content in art and another on museum/ school collaborations using the National Endowment for Humanities’ Picturing America portfolio. I also was one of four museum educators selected to be part of the museum division’s special issues forum, “Current Research Trends in Museum Education” during which I presented “Understanding Experiences of Young Visitors in Art Museums: A Review of Empirical Research.” This conference was a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the current issues in museum education, meet colleagues in the field, share ideas, and get feedback on my research. Although it was a busy, event-filled weekend, it was definitely worth the trip!

From now on, whenever museum staff members attend professional conferences, we will try to bring you an account of what they learned. Travel funding has certainly been a concern of the news media, the public, the legislature and others lately, but it is important for staff in all areas of the university to continue to attend professional conferences, both to learn and to share their knowledge, and we'd like to communicate what exactly we're doing with those funds to you, our public.