A Collection a Day

It's been a very long time since either Casey or I posted anything, but when I came across Lisa Congdon's project 'A Collection a Day' where she would draw/paint/photograph a different collection everyday for a year, it seemed worth posting (well, that and I just recently retrieved my password...). Here's a little quote about her project from the blog...

"Since I was a young girl, I have been obsessed both with collecting and with arranging, organizing and displaying my collections. This is my attempt to document my collections, both the real and the imagined."

Here are just a small sample of some of the photographed collections...

Behind the scenes

These are a couple of photographs I wanted to share from various museum archives. They were part of a show called Camera Obscured in 1997 curated by Vid Ingelevics and they can be seen here on this website. I love them because even though I study museums and galleries and the roles that run such institutions, I rarely actually think about the people who created the ‘environments’ in galleries, or the beginnings of museums. They are lovely photographs of lovely museum collections.

Visitors walking through dirt fields towards newly constructed Field Museum of Natural History, Grant Park, Chicago, 1921. Photographer: Charles Carpenter.

Photographers at work in the 'operating room' in the High Attic, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1924. Photographer: not recorded.

Dr. James L. Clark and unidentified technician with lion group in preparation, Akeley African Hall, American Museum of Natural History, New York, 1934. Photograph: Julius Kirschner.

Working on Flying Bird Group, Sanford Hall, American Museum of Natural History, New York, 1947. Photographer: Alex J. Rota.

Billo and Bella, museum guard dogs, with their trainer, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1941. Photographer: not recorded

- casey

Martin's Owl Collection

Recently I found on the unusual museums website this funny collection of owls by 'Martin'. Actually, the entire Unusual Museums website is kind of odd. The website itself holds a strange collection of other strange collections and museums and is made fairly roughly and is subsequently incredibly challenging to navigate. If you can, it's definitely worth a little exploration.

I kind of have a thing for owls, so obviously this collection popped out at me...

- layne

Jeff Wall: Invisible Man

For those of you who are not familiar with Jeff Wall, or the photograph Invisible Man in particular, I thought I would share it with you.
The set reminds me of Dr. Hicks museum of incandescent lighting which kasey blogged about back in november '07.

The photograph is based on Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel Invisible Man which focuses on a black man who falls into a forgotten cellar in New York during a street riot, and decides to stay living there. The photograph illustrates the introduction of the novel describing the basement home which is described as being 'furnished and even cluttered with his possessions, some purchased, some found, some fabricated, a few saved from before he went underground.' -Ellis

It is also written that the protagonist's ceiling is covered with 1,369 illegally connected light bulbs. 'Perhaps you'll think strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it exactly because I am invisible. Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form … Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one's form is to live a death.' - Ellis

The notion of an invisible man needing light has many connections to the general work of Wall as well. In his photographic practice his prints are displayed as light boxes, lighting characters from behind to give them form and visibility in a way to bring them into the light in society. 

After "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue 1999–2000

Transparency in lightbox 1740 x 2505 mm 

Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation, on permanent loan to the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel

Cinematographic photograph

© The artist

Detail

For more information visit the Tate Modern website  or The Masticator Blog.

-layne

Figures du Corps: Une Leçon d’Anatomie à l’École des Beaux-Arts

I have a little dream for next year with OCAD. I am hoping to participate in our school's mobility/exchange program and spend a semester taking classes at the École Nationale Superior des Beaux-Arts.

Anyway, during some internet procrastination today I stumbled upon the school's collection/exhibition of anatomical parts; skulls, photos, bones, etc. on the Morbid Anatomy Blog and then followed up with a review of the exhibition's catalogue by the Bearded Roman. The exhibition of this collection took place October 21 2008 to Jan 4th 2009 at the school.

"The catalogue is an ode to the bewildering and wonderful arsenal of contraptions, tools, plaster casts, photographs, and any other useful aid created to assist artists in the study of human and animal figures."

"One of the greatest costs in training was the hiring of live models. As a result, contraptions of all kinds–mannequins, photographs, stereoscope images–were made to substitute, or perhaps more accurately, supplement, models. "

The photos are quite beautiful and perhaps when I study there I could get a chance to have a glimpse of the real thing...







- layne

the mount vernon museum of incandescent lighting

Dr. Hicks - a dentist - collected, in his lifetime, over 75 000 light bulbs. He has every shape, size and kind, some of historical and scientific significance. He started a museum in his basement which still exists today.

the value of objects

Coming from a family obsessed with collecting, saving, keeping, hoarding and recycling everything, has left me fascinated with collections and collecting. Living in such a material world, it is interesting to think about the value we attach to certain objects - the commodity fetishism and socially constructed values and prices attached to objects that are, in actuality, much higher than the production value of these objects. Instead of simply buying the object needed or desired, you are throwing down extra money to buy the "lifestyle" or "brand" associated with this object, and the ideologies that are embedded. This hierarchy of value is interesting to look at in comparison to our own personal value, often considered to be priceless, that we attach to certain objects. On the other hand, in an era where material objects are so easily disposed of, it is interesting to examine what is saved and collected.
This blog is an attempt to explore and study collections, collectors, savers, hoarders and pack-rats, to discuss and debate what constitutes as a collection, to examine and research the reasons behind value, and why we collect and how we display collections as objects of beauty, art, obsession, compulsion and neurosis.