Friday, April 21, 2006, 05:35 PM
The NHM team is on to the next thing. The artists have gone but the rest of us remain to finish up. Steve Seidel is walking the exhibit with the visitors. He will start at the beginning, read all the text, see the LA: light, motion film, listen to the 12 minute loop of Jon’s sound installation. He will be thinking about the visitor’s path of inquiry and processes of learning while he closely observes himself and others. Peter Kirby and Todd Sali are in post production on the Conversations documentary and slide presentation of The Burial by McCarthy and Puusemp. Vanda Vitali, the Vice President of Public Programs for NHM, is e-mailing the universe, putting the finishing touches on next year’s operating budget presentation at NHM, saying good-bye to the artists who come through for a last look before heading home, congratulating the Naturalis staff and talking to Dirk about next steps in documenting and evaluating visitor experience. It is her normal routine of juggling the past, present and future. All the paraphernalia that accompanies an international collaboration is being boxed ready for shipment back to LA. Loose ends being tied up from the last two weeks; fishing lines being cast for tomorrow.
I will be reflecting and digesting this experience for a long time. It was magical. For many who worked on this project, this will be the collaboration against which they will judge all future collaborations. The caliber of work and the intent of the participants were of the highest order.
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Friday, April 21, 2006, 12:00 PM
It is hard to switch gears from doing to receiving. It is hard to make public what has been a private experience of questioning, discovery, creativity and refinement. It is hard to come to an end of an intensely alive experience of collaboration: with the artists, with the specimens, with the Naturalis’ curators and collections manager, with the crews of both museums supporting the work being done, with the lighting designers and the builders, with the administrators shepherding all the details. It is hard to open this exhibit because it means leaving what has become a tight knit temporary family.
The dignitaries arrive, Mr. Ambassador of the United States and Mrs. Arnall, The State Secretary of the Netherlands, Mrs. Medy van der Laan, directors of museums from throughout the Netherlands and the press. Those of us from the Natural History Museum stood in the heart of the lilting and fluty language of the Dutch talking about what we had done and why it was important. Madame State Secretary ended her remarks with, “I suggest you go and see for yourself. Be surprised, so that later on, a great many “Conversations” will arise as a result of this exhibition.”
And they did. Delighted. The galleries filled with sounds of excitement and animated conversation.
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Friday, April 21, 2006, 10:30 AM
Yesterday was a continuous flow of activity culminating in the Opening of Conversations. There was little enough time for lunch let alone for writing an entry. It was clear early in the day that everything would be completed on time - with time left over. This can be a very dangerous moment. Humans are amazing in their ability to make use of the resources available. What does more time mean? If you are a producer or a curator, it means that you are bombarded with requests for additional lighting changes, another sound installation, the repositioning of an object from here to there. In my family there is a name for this kind of behavior, futzing. Peter Kirby, the film-maker documenting Conversations, when I observed that we were all futzing said, “Futzing is thinking by another name.”
I, blissfully, had interviews to conduct with Jon Hassell, the composer on the intent of his installation, with Steve Seidel to explore the process of discovery and examination of phenomena that draws both the scientist and the artist and with Raivo Puusamp about the Burial of Paul McCarthy’s sculpture marking the beginning of the Conversation. My futzing was sufficiently bounded and controlled.
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Wednesday, April 19, 2006, 03:00 PM
The pace and excitement is quickening. Not only have the poles arrived but additional voices in the Conversation. Steve Seidel of Project Zero at Harvard has arrived to look at Conversations from the point of view of his pioneering work in learning theory in informal settings and through the practice of the arts. What role does imagination and intuitive response play in supporting deep learning and discovery? Why have an artist look at phenomena that has already been studied by a scientist? More conversations to come.[ add comment ]
Wednesday, April 19, 2006, 11:00 AM
We were planning to film interviews with the artists in front of their completed work tomorrow in the morning before the Opening late in the day. The installation work would be done and the galleries would be silent. Since we are in ”Pause” waiting for the banners, it’s now possible to get a head start on this bit of filming.
I sit down with John Outterbridge to talk about Sankofa, his installation. “John, I have had the privilege of watching you as you work and have been so struck by how slow and specific you are in your actions, so deliberate in the placement of the specimens. It is almost as though you are listening to the objects and they are speaking to you. A communion. Can you share with us what it is that you are listening for, listening to? What is it that intuitively leads you on?”
Wise eyes in a beautiful face looked deeply into mine as he said, “It’s an interesting thing about choices. Some you make and some make you.”
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