Take a look at the 8-minute introduction . . . → Read More: National Convening for Teens in the Arts]]> Last week I helped Rosanna Flouty and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston host the second annual National Convening for Teens in the Arts. The event left me speechless, so I let the participants and eloquent teens from the Teen Arts Council Donovan Birch Jr and Rhonda Edwards do the talking.

Take a look at the 8-minute introduction to the ICA teen programming and Teen Convening here

National Convening of Teens in the Arts: 2010 from Colleen Brogan on Vimeo.

National Convening of Teens in the Arts: 2010 from Colleen Brogan on Vimeo.

www.ipaintironynotart.com/fabricfutures

A permanent link will be made on this page momentarily.

The online . . . → Read More: Documentation for Fabric Futures]]> The exhibition documentation is finally up! I cannot thank my friends, family, professors, models, fashion designers, and participating artists enough for making this event a reality. I am so grateful, it was absolutely surreal. Please see below the link to the hub of Fabric Futures documentation:

www.ipaintironynotart.com/fabricfutures

A permanent link will be made on this page momentarily.

The online exhibition catalog is available at

http://fabricfutures.jimdo.com/

Flickr photo stream of the event available here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fabricfutures/

And the Twitterfeed updates for the event and it’s progress, #fabricfutures, can be seen here:

http://twitter.com/cbrogan12

Please enjoy! And let me know your thoughts.

Firehouse 13 is . . . → Read More: Firehouse 13: The Exhibition]]> Forgive me for such a long break from posting; I’ve been writing for Smarter.com’s Fashion, Home Decor, and Beauty blogs daily and it’s worn out my tired typing fingers. No excuses, though: I am a digital humanist aspiring to more new media and digital humanist things, starting with an exhibition at Firehouse 13. Hurrah!

Firehouse 13 is an experimental art space in Providence, RI dedicated to hosting new and eclectic shows. They have a stage, a bar, artist-in-residencies, and frequent electronic music concerts. I booked the space for May 19-31 for students in the class I teaching assist at Brown University, called “Curating Contemporary Art”. The students are so experimental and radical, though, that curating in the “white cube” of Firehouse 13 was too white bread for them. I’ve had ideas of experimental shows since my trip to Newcastle for the Baltic Symposium on Curating and Commissioning New Media Art in the beginning of March– so I paid the rental fee, and Firehouse 13 is mine. The joy!

I’m planning on curating a show called “Fashion Futures”, an exhibition focusing on contemporary artist’s creating experimental fashion, textiles, embroidery, or fabrics inspired by the digital age. My ambition is to have a fashion show on opening night, Thursday May 20th, along with a DJ set by Danger William Robinson and an experimental open-source curatorial night in the days before the show. I’ll keep you posted!

For now, I just wanted to share the love, and get back on my digital feet!

Working as an Education Intern at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art has given me incredible opportunities this summer. This week I had the chance to sit in on Generation O: THe National Convening of Teens in . . . → Read More: Shock + Art: Ruminations of demediation in the gallery]]> -dog tied to the wall/ animal rights activists
-mao ze dong by Shep Fairey
-Gorilla Girls-not enough women artists in the museum

Working as an Education Intern at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art has given me incredible opportunities this summer. This week I had the chance to sit in on Generation O: THe National Convening of Teens in the Arts. It has been an incredible chance to hear from leading institutions in art education and teens that work at arts councils at contemporary art museums. One of the topics they talked about was controversy in art: how can controversy be discussed in a safe manner? How can teens be engaged, but not threatened? I wanted to weigh in with some of my own thoughts on the issue.

In a nutshell, what I learned is that teen art programs are first and foremost concerned with free expression and safe space. The programs (like the Teen Arts Council at the Walker Art Center and the ICA/ Boston) want to be teen-driven, with the administrator only stepping in as the liaison between the museum employees and the teens. When controversy comes in to light (either through student produced artwork or artwork on view at the museum), everything is about deep discussion and safety of the space. Personally, I am curious about methods in promoting and instilling safety in a space, and how to balance individual respect vs. respect for the general group.

What I learned from the discussion and hearing from such administrators as Witt Siasoco and Rosanna Flouty of the Boston ICA is that, when controversy enters the programs (may it be an art class, a tour, or a teen arts council meeting) the administrator or facilitator becomes the crisis manager. Everything becomes about mediation; the goal of mediation being to take shocking art and have deep, mature discussions about the controversy. The administrator is in charge of mediating between the art and the teens. This raises an interesting question for me: is there a danger in only dealing with controversy through mediation? Is there a threat to the authenticity of the experience once the administrator steps in and “explains” how to look at the art, why it looks that way, what the artist thought, etc. The teens may be diverse, and their opinions on the controversy of the art may be diverse, but the mediation becomes singular, fueled by the administrator and the curators and the museum administration’s way of promoting and selling their artwork.

Mediation taints the experience of the artwork, in my opinion. It makes the museum space into a system, with artwork being “sold” to you by the institution with its particular branding and curatorial slant. Maybe too harsh? Maybe too dark? Let’s break it down to the basic questions, and what it means for teen programs and art education at museums.

The question is, can you foster a healthy, productive environment with controversial or shocking artwork and viewers without mediation? Can understanding and acceptance of art being self-sought by the viewer or the teens, or do they need an administrator to hold their hand? Just speaking in terms of teen art history or studio art programs affiliated with museums, what are methods to encourage the teens to investigate their own explanations and opinions of how the controversial artwork is productive and healthy to think about, without the mediation of the facilitator?

Potential thoughts/ solutions I have:
1. Meeting with the artist themselves, talking with them, putting a face on the artwork
2. Have students lead tours and do research on particular controversial art pieces without any administrator or mediator’s help
3. Administrators introducing students to artwork, and instead of explaining the point of the piece, having students create a dialogue on their own. Administrators can point out certain points in the art, but they don’t give explanations. They open up the conversation, instead of creating a singular conclusion
4. Students do writing exercise as if they are writing a letter to the artist, asking why they made this controversial piece/ what they would have done differently.

I’m sure I will think of more. I’m going to explore possible solutions and create some diagrams as well of the hierarchy and circles of communication and safety within a museum institution.

It’s too hot and sticky in Providence right now to . . . → Read More: RISD Museum Director Resigned?]]> Today, August 3rd, President of the Rhode Island School of Design John Maeda released a statement saying that the Director of the RISD Museum, Hope Alswang, had resigned starting immediately and her post would be taken over by the Museum’s Assistant Director of Planning, Ann Woolsey.

It’s too hot and sticky in Providence right now to really dig into why this may have happened, but I met Hope Alswang through a class with Rhode Island School of Design Museum curator Gina Borromeo in Fall 2009. She was really sharp and no-nonsense, I was very impressed by her speech about balancing the administrative and artistic/creative side of the museum world. (Perhaps this tension was aggravated in the midst of the economic recession, is what caused the happy bond to turn sour?) According to Professor Borromeo, Hope Alswang was strong and liberal in her convictions and ideas about museum exhibits, exhibited artists, and engagement of visitors: she was untraditional, but very strong in her commitment to see an idea through to the end. Declared a “surprise move” by the Providence Journal, I have to agree. Hope was hired in the middle of the new Chace Center building project in Winter 2005 and has received nothing but praise for her creative and energetic efforts to improve the museum. Only time will tell.

While taking a class with Professor Steven Lubar in the American Civilization Department, entitled “Methods in Public . . . → Read More: Remember The Old Times: Cape Verdeans in Providence]]> How does an immigrant community shape the identity of a city, a university, and a culture? What right, and what precautions, do museums and curators have to take in order to “speak for” a cultural heritage that has been displaced?

While taking a class with Professor Steven Lubar in the American Civilization Department, entitled “Methods in Public Humanities”, a group of students and I considered these questions and other ethical issues of public humanities while designing a final exhibit on the Cape Verdean immigrant community of Providence, Rhode Island from the “golden years”, 1920-1945, before many of the Cape Verdeans were forced out of Providence and into surrounding towns in Rhode Island by Brown University officials.

The class learned to balance historical research and general exhibition ethics through this project, and on a very short timeframe. An exhibit that generally takes 6 months to a year to produce was completed in less than 8 weeks. Luckily we were helped by Erin Wells of Wells Design with the practicality of exhibit design, Claire Andrade-Watkins, a visiting scholar of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America and a Swearer Center Community Fellow, and Lou Costa, a Providence resident with a large repository of photographs of Cape Verdeans from the early 1900’s-present day. Claire was especially helpful; she grew up in Providence and produced a documentary film called “Some Kind of Funny Porto Rican” on her experiences as a 2nd generation Cape Verdean and the experiences of other Cape Verdean immigrants in Providence. With this network of educated and connected professionals and 30 energetic undergraduates and graduate students at Brown, the project was underway.

My involvement, practically speaking, was working on the exhibit design of the Bar Scene. Along with two other students, we were in charge of completely outfitting a display with labels, text, useful information/background information, and time-period bar architecture, bottles, coasters, picture frames, and signs that would have been in a bar on Wickenden Street of Providence, Rhode Island in the 1920’s-1945’s. With the help of Erin Wells, we set out with the intention of making our bar as realistic as possible–maybe a half-smoked cigar and some ashes in an ash tray? Antique bottles filled with colored liquid? We also asked ourselves, starting out, some of the general ethical questions: Would we touch on alcoholism in a label or panel? Would we idealize the poverty and despair sometimes associated with bars, which were often associated with fathers and brothers being out of work, or drowning their wages in a cup of whiskey?

The first, practical lesson we had was that “historical recreations” emphasize re-creation to such a degree that it can be considered fabrication. Nothing is malicious, just out of practicality our group had, at best, 2 photographs of bars from our time period in Providence to work off of, and “authenticity” was second to recreating the feel and carrying the message of the exhibit to the visitor. We couldn’t find original bottles and the contemporary alcohol labels did not fit with our aesthetic, so many hours were spent peeling labels off of wine, gin, and whiskey bottles found in recycling bins around Providence. The bar was built by the John Nicholas Brown Center carpenter and 2 days were spent staining it to look authentic. Each section of the exhibit had a rough budget of $100, which we spent on two stools and boxing gloves, the one authentic (in terms of time-period) object in our exhibit, but not from Providence. We bought some heinously cheap cigars from the local tobacco store and set up our dream half-smoked cigar with soot on an ashtray. We also discovered that coasters were first invented in Germany in the 1880’s and didn’t reach popularity in America until the late 1950’s, which was outside our time period. In all, the practicality of the exhibit design was my favorite part, and became our group’s obsession for the final two weeks before the exhibit opened. We stressed every detail, from the correct recipe of food coloring to recreate Jack Daniels to the color of the framed photos.

Ethically, we decided to avoid the topic of alcoholism completely and instead focus on general bar culture of immigrants in Fox Point (the neighborhood of Providence where most of the Cape Verdeans lived) and the popularity of boxing among the immigrants. We didn’t feel bad about this, because in general there were plenty of topics being “avoided” by this exhibit: such as the fact that there was an enormous, comparable Irish immigrant community living in Fox Point as well, and that women were not allowed in the bars, etc. This seems to be one of the big ethnical cruxes of most recreational, historical exhibits: when one thing is focused on, there are at least three other potential focuses that are eliminated, excused, or avoided. Of course we know that life is not that simple: personally, I took issue with the “Home and Household” design on the other end of the exhibit hall, which seemed extremely idealized and stereotyped to me, with a cross hanging on the wall, a rocking chair in the corner, and welcome mat on the floor.

It really begs the question what is the purpose of the exhibit, is it to protect and display artifacts (such as old photographs that would otherwise sit in a box in someone’s basement), is it supposed to recreate the reality or complexity of a time period, or is it solely educational, with everything a facade, re-fabricated, just to veil the fact that the exhibit is trying to push information and history onto its visitors.

In short, every exhibition is a combination of all three, with the asterisk being that all of these speculations are in reference to history exhibits, not art or performance exhibits. Personally I am far more interested in art museum exhibits, but I am also intrigued by how the two relate. I’m sure they overlap.

“Remember the Old Times: Cape Verdean Community in Fox Point, 1920-1945″ will be open at the John Nicholas Brown Center Carriage House exhibit space until October 16, 2009. Exhibit hours are Monday-Friday, 1-4pm, and free and open to the public.

John Nicholas Brown Center

357 Benefit Street

Providence, RI 02912

Zack and I created a 1m30sec film for Brown Financial Aid. It was a terribly trying experience, but satisfactory (hopefully?) in . . . → Read More: A brief, cinematic production success]]> Cinema Speramus

Zack and I created a 1m30sec film for Brown Financial Aid. It was a terribly trying experience, but satisfactory (hopefully?) in the end.