Tag: Dispatches from the Mid-Atlantic (Page 5 of 6)

by columnist Madeline Karp

I have dreams of wearing a big hoop skirt. I’m talking like a BIG, Scarlett O’Hara hoop skirt. Sometimes a corset, or a bustle; on occasion knee britches and a man’s coat from the Revolutionary War, but tailored to fit and flatter a woman’s figure. I’m a fan of the First Virginia and the Second New Jersey Regiment’s coats in particular, in case you want to make me a replica. I have a bit of a love-crush on historical fashion.

And yet, when it comes to modern fashion, I’m less enthusiastic. I kind of hate shopping. I have to put thought and effort into wearing something that isn’t black, gray or navy, and I work hard to make cardigans fit every occasion. I don’t really care about Oscar dresses, What Not To Wear only interests me when I have the flu, and I wasn’t following New York Fashion Week 2013…

Until.

Right after Fashion Week concluded (perhaps as a dovetail, perhaps not), the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened a temporary exhibit entitled Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity. Fresh from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, the exhibit combines Impressionist artwork with period textiles to demonstrate the interplay between fashion and art in late nineteenth century France.

So often my fashion-conscious friends will try to explain to me how modern fashion is art and I’ll smile politely and nod, but privately disagree – wearing a raw meat dress strikes me as sickening and shamelessly political instead of artistic. But, with this exhibit, I finally see what they’re talking about.

Placed throughout eight parlors, Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity displays period costume alongside famous works by Renoir, Degas and Monet. According to curator Susan Alyson Stein, one of the exhibit’s big ideas is that modern fashion came of age in nineteenth century France, during a time when art was also experiencing an aesthetic revolution. The late 1800’s in France represent a time of tumult on so many levels – historians, art historians and fashionistas would be remiss to ignore the connections and influences each had on the others.

One display case boasts incredibly detailed corsets and slippers. Monet’s painting of his wife Camille in a green and black striped dress is displayed next to a similar period dress from England. Vitrines are arranged to look like Parisian shop windows. The mixed mediums ensure a wide audience.

Maybe it’s because I love Impressionism, hoop skirts, and the French Revolution, but I’m seriously trying not to drool and dream of springtime, as I stare at the pictures of big poofy dresses and paintings of water lilies and picnics on a scenic lake shore.

Impression, Fashion and Modernity runs at the Met until May 27. After that, it will be at the Art Institute of Chicago. …Road trip anyone?

To read more about the exhibition and see some drool-worthy pictures check out these websites:

• Met Museum – Official Exhibition Page
• NY Times – The Cross-Dressing of Art and Couture
• The Daily Beast – Fashion Meets Impressionism at the Met

by columnist Madeline Karp

For those of you not up on your children’s authors, this weekend marked the 99th birthday of beloved children’s author, poet and illustrator Theodor Geisel a.k.a. Dr. Seuss.

The Please Touch Museum celebrated by reading Dr. Seuss’s best-loved books at story time, by making Seuss-esque self-portraits with children in the art room, and by inviting the Cat in the Hat to come in for a meet and greet photo opportunity.

(Be it known: I am terrified of mascots. Many children were far braver than I when it came to approaching an 8-foot tall cat to pose for a photo.)

I think Dr. Seuss is one of those rare figures who unites people. I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who outright hates How the Grinch Stole Christmas or Hop on Pop. Grandparents and children were both pumped about meeting the Cat in the Hat. Twenty-something babysitters cooed over If I Ran the Circus and older children begged for multiple re-reads of Horton Hears a Who.

All this makes me think that perhaps Mr. Geisel would be excellent fodder for a variety of museum exhibits. So here, in rhyme, are a few ways I think we could incorporate Dr. Seuss into unusual spaces, in an attempt to bring in a new or wider audience to the museum.

Art
With stylized faces and bold use of color
Dr. Seuss’s cartoons look unlike any others.
With a pen and some paper,
You’ll go through the museum
To re-draw classic portraits as Seuss would’ve seen ‘em.

Math
With poems there comes meter, and timing and rhymes
You could do your addition and maybe cosines,
But you still have to count syllables, iambs and verse
To make your math better, instead of much worse.

Science
We all know the Lorax, he spoke for the trees,
And showed us the downside to big industry.
We can use Dr. Seuss to teach kids about seeds,
Along with earth science and biology.
Since climate debates are happening now
Maybe Ole Dr. Seuss can show us all how
To care just a little, just like we were taught
To make our earth better by a whole awful lot.

Literacy
“I hate poetry!” young children declare
“I won’t read it, it’s boring, you can’t make me care!”
But with poems there comes reading
And spelling and rhyme
I assure you new readers will have a good time
Learning new words and big words
–They’ll turn on a dime!
They’ll love to read, and new poems they’ll pursue
Just like parents and teachers would want them to do.

For older readers, there is more to the story,
Dr. Seuss’s short poems were all allegory.
Re-read through your kids’ books
Like Horton and Grinch
And you’ll soon see some themes
That might make you flinch.

Which leads us to…

History
Dr. Seuss was a man with a good, strong opinion
He didn’t like Nazis, he rooted for women.
The Great Butter Battle told of the arms race
Yertle the Turtle? How Hitler saved face.
Capitalist Grinches, and pro-lifer Whos,
Seuss’s tales carefully – subtly – all spread the news,
That learning history is kind of the cool thing to do.

So you see, there are ways to put to good use,
The morals, the drawings, and words of good Seuss.
My friends in museums from far and from near,
Tell me in comments how you hold him dear!

**Dedicated to my own personal Seuss, Dr. Richard Bronson.

I love novels. I hope to publish one someday. I read them constantly. I use the margins to write notes cheering characters on, or chastising them for behaving badly. I give novels to friends. I organize them on shelves first alphabetically, then when that gets boring thematically, then yet again by cover color, height, or number of pages.

So when I read that Turkish novelist and Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk had created a museum based around his novel The Museum of Innocence, I was deeply fascinated.

Pamuk’s novel revolves around two lovers – Kemal and Füsun – who cannot get married. To ease his pain Kemal begins collecting everything Füsun has touched, creating a museum dedicated to his lost love. (Thankfully the spoilers end there. I’ve not yet read the book. It’s behind three others on my reading list.)

While he was writing, Pamuk was also collecting to create his own museum and he discovered some interesting things. While combing through flea markets in Istanbul and, later, other non-Western cities, he found that people tend to want the same objects. Whether you live in the USA, St. Petersburg, Rio de Janeiro or somewhere else, objects like baseball cards, teacups, old keys and antique matchboxes are the center of personal, private and prized collections. 

Where others might calls this desire to own specific knick-knacks an emerging market, Pamuk calls this trend emerging humanities. What people collect and why is deeply personal, but also reveals quite a bit about the human condition. We tend to agree that museums should collect certain kinds of objects, and yet what we collect on our own is often very, very different. What is it about polished rocks, or lighters or miniature cars that holds sway with us, but yet are “unworthy” of being collected by museums? If they are so deeply important to us as individuals, why don’t we think they are deeply important to our cultural institutions? We often look for cultural difference, but what if you look closely, it’s easier to find cultural sameness.

Pamuk makes a great point: it’s one thing to see a painting of George Washington. It’s completely different to see Elvis Presley’s recipe for his favorite peanut butter, bacon and banana sandwich. One of these things you naturally relate to more, as a person; You want to know why he liked that sandwich. You sort of want to taste it.

There is another angle of Pamuk’s projects that interests me as well; the idea that people learn in different ways. While writing his novel, Pamuk collected things as Kemal did. He imagined what Füsun used, touched and ate, and developed his novel using items from his personal collection. And then he put them on display. Friends asked Pamuk why he did this. His response:

“…I also felt the need to point out that while novels appeal to our verbal imagination, art and museums stimulate our visual imagination; the novel and the museum were therefore concerned with entirely different sides of the same story. …What triggers the creative mind, in art as in literature, is not just the will to transmit the energy of ideas, but also a desire to engage physically with certain issues and objects.”

So you don’t like to read? Great! Check out the exhibit. Can’t bop over to Istanbul to see the Museum of Innocence in person? Fantastic! Read the book. I have had the privilege of having a Pamuk experience as a child when I read E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. This book introduced me to The Met, informed my first tour of the museum, and is one of my most beloved novels on the shelf.

So you can see why this idea strikes me as a foolproof sort of plan. What if museums were more like novels? What if we wrote novels about our museums? How would our exhibits, collections, and audience change? Let me know what you think in the comments!

To read more about Orhan Pamuk’s novel and museum, check out this Newsweek article.

And because I know you’re curious, here is the recipe for Elvis Presley’s sandwich.

by columnist Madeline Karp

Lately, a series of weird things have been happening at my museum. A short while back, Philadelphia had massive wind and rainstorms. In a matter of two weeks, we experienced no less than two power failures and a flood. It sounds drastic to call them disasters, but had the museum staff been unprepared to handle the situation, there certainly could have been disastrous consequences.

Given our recent roller coaster ride, I thought this might be a good moment to go over good museum practice. In case of emergency…what should you do??

Do you know where your department meets for a head count in case of a fire drill? How about where visitors should go in case of a power failure?

Knowing where to go and what to do in case of an emergency helps maintain calm among visitors and employees. When the power went out at the Please Touch Museum, all of the museum staff ushered visitors into the main hall. Parents and children remained calm, because the staff was calm. Yes, something was amiss, but there was no need to panic. Everyone knew where to go and what to do. During the flood, operations managers and cleaning staff knew the most efficient ways to eliminate the water and the smell. The museum opened for business as usual, with only a few extra “Wet Floor” signs hinting that something had happened.

CHECK: Does your museum have an emergency preparedness plan or handbook?

What do you do when your lecturer suddenly gets sick? Or when your museum experiences a power failure? Having a back up plan can keep you from having to cancel events.

Instead of kicking people out, the PTM staff jumped into action. No, visitors couldn’t see the theater show during the power outage, but they could attend an interactive story time in the main hall! Using costumes and puppets, Education, Visitor Services and Community Outreach staff worked together to put on educational programming that connected stories, puppets, games and songs to appropriate learning standards. Children learned about the parts of bugs and played with various bug puppets, and were read stories about sharing and making friends. Visitors had so much fun playing this way, there was a little disappointed groan when the lights came back on a short while later.

CHECK: Do you have back up programs? Having an emergency program (and a battery powered microphone kit) up your sleeve never hurts!

Floods happen for a variety of reasons. Ours was thanks to heavy rain and a blocked sewer system. Museum staffers came in to over a foot of water in the some parts of the basement, and a less-than-pleasant smell.

The Community Outreach department had a program later that day. Thankfully, because they stored their supplies off the floor, none of their materials were wet or damaged. But several file boxes left on the floor were water damaged. It is always easier to save supplies damaged by water than those damaged by fire; however, storing your files, collections and program aids correctly can prevent any damage at all.

CHECK: Are your supplies and collections stored according to good stewardship practices? Need a refresher? (It’s okay, we all do sometimes.) Check out AAM’s guide to good collections stewardship here.

A visitor falls down the stairs and injures herself. Someone’s Nalgene explodes, spilling water all over the floor. A researcher accidentally tears a priceless document in the reading room. Who do you call?

At the children’s museum, we experience a lot of spills, involving both liquids and people. It’s important to know when to call in the cleaning crew, the supervisor or even an ambulance.

CHECK: Do you know who to call and when? If not, familiarize yourself with your museum’s First Aid policies and emergency cleaning procedures.

When something goes awry, it’s stressful for EVERYONE. In case of emergency, keep calm, and lend a helping hand wherever you can.  I’m so proud of the way my colleagues handled themselves these past few weeks. Just when we thought nothing else could go wrong – the power would go out again. Sticking together and helping each other has really made us a stronger team.

And while our forays into emergency preparedness have been exciting (dare I say…fun?) let’s keep our fingers crossed that our dance with disaster is over for a little while.

Has your museum experienced a disaster? What did you do? Which policies helped? Which needed work? Share your stories with me in the comments!

by columnist Madeline Karp

I’m ashamed to tell you how I learned about Hemingway cats. It was not in a high school literature class, nor an intro to evolutionary sciences lecture. No, I learned about the six-toed felines from Tiger Beat Magazine – Backstreet Boy Nick Carter owned one. Obviously as a BSB-loving tweener, I found this detail totally important, and filed it away for future use.

The future is now!

“Hemingway” is a colloquial term for a polydactyl feline; it’s a cat with extra toes. They’re quite common in New England, but are instead called Boston thumb cats, Vermont snowshoe cats, or mitten cats. Folklore bounces between Boston seafarers considering them lucky, and frightened Puritans killing them for being witches’ familiars.

Here in the Mid-Atlantic, we don’t have any particular superstitions about them, but we do call them Hemingway cats because many are descended from Ernest Hemingway’s beloved six-toed pet, Snowball.

Currently, 40-odd Hemingway cats reside in the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West, Florida. They have complete run of the place – they are allowed to sleep on the furniture, walk around the yard and more or less do what they like as Snowball’s “heirs.”

But, according to the federal government, the museum is toeing the line (if you will), by refusing to follow federal regulations regarding the treatment, exhibition and transport of animals under the Animal Welfare Act. (For more on that, click here.)  Because the cats are used in museum advertising, are highlighted on tours, and have their likenesses sold in the museum gift shop, they are legally considered part of the museum’s collection.

The museum has cried foul, saying they follow state and local regulations by feeding the cats, giving them regular vet visits, and spaying and neutering when necessary. Museum staffers say the cats aren’t part of the collection because they don’t deal directly with Hemingway’s legacy – just Snowball’s. So long as the cats are not mistreated, they say, it’s none of the government’s business.

However, a recent U.S. Court of Appeals ruling has stated that the museum must, in fact, abide by the Department of Agriculture’s rules. Whether or not they like it, legally the museum is subject to the agency’s whim; since 2003 the government has threatened cat confiscation, shut down tours for federal investigations, recommended the museum hire a night watchman for the cats, and stipulated that the museum must install higher fences and have specific food and water dispensers. As one can imagine, sudden changes to such federal policy could wreak havoc on the museum’s budget.
I understand why the federal government wants to regulate the Hemingway cats. But every time federal agents have reported on the cats, they’ve found little more than fat, happy cats with a few extra toes. The cats rarely wander off the property and it seems the museum is as attentive to the felines as any domestic pet owner. This seems to me like little more than red tape and a waste of time and tax dollars.

However, if you use the cats in museum advertising and tourists come specifically to see them, how can one argue that they’re not part of the collection? If an aggressive Hemingway cat wanders off the property (as cats will sometimes do) and bites someone, is the museum liable?

What do you think? Should the cats be accessioned as a living collection and regulated under federal law? Or is the museum just where they happen to live? Tell me your thoughts in the comments!

To learn more about the Hemingway cats and the Ernest Hemingway House’s legal battles, check out these articles:

• NY Times “Cats at Hemingway Museum Draw a Legal Battle”
• American Thinker “Hemingway Home Battles the Feds Over Cats”
• NPR “The Feds Can Tell Ernest Hemingway’s Cats What To Do”