Right on, Lynda!!
 

So, how is it that, when it comes to art education, California comes in dead last out of all 50 states – even below Guam? According to State Councilman Bobby Shriver, California’s public schools no longer even offer arts education. … If art means as much to you as it does to me, or even if you’re just exploring the art world for the first time, I invite you to turn off the boob tube, pry the Wii controllers from your kids’ hands, and drag them to a museum….

Read the original:
Lynda Resnick: Why Art Education Matters

Regular readers know that this is one of my favorite art related blogs for its deep thoughtfulness and uncommercial concerns in discussing the modern museum experience. Rock on, Museum 2.0!

One of my favorite theoretical constructs is “social objects” –the idea that the most consistent social and dialogue experiences are mediated through shared experience of artifacts, stories, or images.
 
In 2005, Jyri Engestrom coined the term “social objects” and the related “object-centered sociality” in the context of designing successful online social networks, and I’ve been applying the idea in the physical design of exhibits. The basic idea is that by providing tools for people to discuss and share objects, they can come together in collective experience.
 
In a physical setting, I’ve found that successful social objects tend to be provocative, relational, active, or personal. Dogs and stuck elevators are social objects. Exhibits that visitors point at or photograph themselves with are social objects. Exhibits that ask visitors to work together or compete are social objects. Social objects help us connect with others, and they become focal points for conversations with friends and strangers alike.
 
Today, a colleague introduced me to a different description of social objects, one that comes from the world of poetry instead of technology. The term is “the third thing”…..

Continue reading here:
A Poetic Take on Social Objects: The Third Thing

If you like artist Julie Mehretu’s work in MCASD’s Automatic Cities show (closing at the end of January), you’ll love this terrific write-up of her work in the studio with good pictures and excellent video the artist at work.

ArtKnowledgeNews on the Getty in 2010.
 

LOS ANGELES, CA.- On view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Center, February 2 through June 6, 2010, “Urban Panoramas: Opie, Liao, Kim” brings together bodies of work by three contemporary photographers that recently entered the Museum’s collection. Each artist explores a specific city and how various modes of transportation define the urban infrastructure. Selections from Catherine Opie’s “Mini-malls” series, Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao’s “Habitat 7″ series, and Soo Kim’s “Midnight Reykjavík” series will be on display. This exhibition will run concurrently with A Record of Emotion: The Photographs of Frederick H. Evans.

Based in Los Angeles, Catherine Opie used 7×17-inch film negatives to document the mini-malls that are ubiquitous in a city traversed by automobiles. To trace the route of the number 7 subway line connecting Queens and Manhattan in New York, Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao used digital technology to combine multiple 8×10-inch negatives into seamless prints. Working with a 2¼-inch format camera in Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland, during the summer solstice, Soo Kim cut and layered the resulting chromogenic prints to suggest the transparency of a city characterized by pedestrian accessibility.

“This exhibition highlights three distinctive bodies of work, each of which explores a specific aspect of urban architecture to capture the essential rhythm of a city,” says Virginia Heckert, associate curator of photographs and curator of the exhibition. “Paired with photographs by Fredrick Evans, who worked in England from 1890–1910, these two concurrent exhibitions provide a wonderful opportunity to compare and contrast changing approaches to photographic documentation of architecture over the course of a century….”

Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao at the Getty Center

HOMESICK—adjective, longing for another place, another person, or time.

Read the complete original post from artist
Amy Elkins.

More here:
Through the Lens & Beyond California: call for photography …

Get the details and submission forms here:
SAQA Southern California: Call for Entries

I love this the Museum 2.0 blog. Here’s their latest from a conference in New Zealand.

This week at the National Digital Forum in New Zealand, a librarian stood up and said, “one of the great challenges of this sector is to make preservation sexy.”

People laughed with incredulity; no matter how CSI-like the pitch, it’s hard to capture public attention with preservation projects. And yet earlier in the week, at the Zealandia nature sanctuary in Wellington, I’d seen some hints of how to do just that.

Zealandia is a nature preserve with a big hairy audacious goal: to restore a neglected valley into a haven for native birds, plants, and a few special ancient species. Their signage is upfront and specific about this plan; the large sign at the entry says, “It will take 500 years to reach our goal.” Miles of public trails are littered with evidence of the ongoing efforts: volunteers at work, temporary feeders and enclosures, experiments ongoing and hibernating.

Zealandia provides visitors with a beautiful, peaceful experience in nature. There are interpretative trails and helpful staff to aid visitors in tuning in to the bird sounds and identifying the native animals now thriving in the preserve.

But the thing that stood out most was the sense that Zealandia is a place of action, where projects are actively underway. Many of the projects—like a huge, specially designed fence to separate birds from lizards until the populations of each stabilize—were both impressive in scale and were communicated well as short-term steps on a long path to a thriving natural habitat.

As a visitor, I repeatedly ran into objects, staff, and signs explaining the specific science at work on the preserve and how the project was evolving. The interpretation was frequent, clear, and adult in tone and content. I felt respected as someone who could understand science and might be interested in more than just a nice walk in the park…..

Read the original post:
Preservation in Action: Ambition and Excitement at Zealandia

This looks like a unique interactive museum-art-making experience happening in Palm Springs, California, a favorite San Diego getaway.

This weekend, the museum will feature a fun and interactive exploration of the exotic world of glass blowing by showcasing the Mobile Hot Shop, a fully equipped glass blowing studio from the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA. This is the first time this Mobile Hot Shop will visit Southern California, and attendees to this FREE event (running two days, on Nov. 14 and 15) will experience a complete glassblowing demonstration, with highly skilled artists working with molten glass while a trained commentator explains the art and science of glass and answers questions. A state-of-the-art audio-visual system will enhance the experience, and the audience will share in this right-before-your-very-eyes creative process, holding a collective breath as molten glass is transformed into a work of art.

Art in the Desert at Palm Springs Museum of Art

More art to do and see in the California desert this month:
The Coachella Valley Art Scene: Palm Springs Art Museum Happenings

We love Museum 2.0.

Last week, Jim Richardson and I hosted MuseumNext , a 24-hour workshop for museum professionals focused on bringing new, wild museum projects into the world. It was held in Newcastle in the north of England, and about 70 folks from around the world (but mostly Europe) came to play, learn, make stuff, and help each other work out challenges inherent in trying to make risky ideas happen.

Thank you to everyone who came and helped co-create an exciting experimental event in a beautiful city. MuseumNext had four main sections: Interactive activities , including an opening workshop with a group of designers associated with an extremely wonderful exhibition called Doing it for the Kids featuring sustainable toy designs.

Participants sewed sock aliens , injection-molded army men, constructed robots , and drew animals. We also ended the entire event with one of my favorite exercises, the Exquisite Corpse game, in which participants co-created comics of their craziest museum dreams. “Wild idea” sessions , featuring six dream projects, some already in motion, others firmly ensconsed in their creators’ heads. Folks from the Utah Museum of Natural History , Worcester City Museum , Manchester Art Gallery , Centre for Life , Netherlands Architecture Institute , and the Knowledge Media Research Center (Germany) brought projects they wanted to make happen…..

See the original post here:
Reflections on MuseumNext and Facilitating Brainstorming