Home Again, Home Again...

By Chris Rossi, Associate Curator of Exhibitions

Taking down an exhibit is something akin to taking down your Christmas tree. The hours of joy you spent carefully arranging each ornament have their end in a relatively quick undressing of the tree. Ornaments that had comfortably fit in their storage boxes for years seem not to want to go back in their cases.

Last week, we dismantled Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art and just like the Christmas tree, it is going very quickly in comparison to our meticulous installation. It was good to see that our old friends, the objects from our collection, were in good shape and ready to go home. The objects mounts, like those Christmas tree ornaments, did seem to have multiplied or grew. Trying to get them all back in their bins was a bit of a challenge. That said, by the end of the week we had them sorted out and ready for the long ride home.

Once back to Fenimore Art Museum, the objects, mounts, and we curators all get to take a little break until our next venue in the fall. Next stop – the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Stay tuned!

The House Posts are traveling

By: Eva Fognell, Curator of the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art

As some visitors and museum volunteers noticed when we opened our doors for the 2010 season here at the Fenimore Art Museum, the large Tlingit House Posts that are usually in the Great Hall, flanking the entry into the Thaw Gallery, are missing! But don’t worry, they’ll be back.

Of all the objects slated to travel to the Cleveland Museum of Art with our exhibition Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection nothing made me worry more than the Northwest Coast House Posts. How are we safely going to deinstall these huge posts and get them into crates? But my fears were put to rest when the US Art art handlers expertly and safely got the Posts dismounted from the wall and onto the floor, which we cushioned with foam blocks.

After a condition check they were carefully placed into their large travel crates.

A couple of weeks later Chris Rossi and I were at the CMA as they were being installed there. So, they are now installed and grace the entrance to Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Stay tuned for Chris’ blog with a short video on the installation in Cleveland.

Wrapping it up in Cleveland

By: Chris Rossi, Associate Curator of Exhibitions
Taking an exhibit on the road is always an adventure. Once you have prepared and packed and shipped the objects you actually have to install them at your new venue. Depending on the size and location of the museum you are taking your work to you could be working with a large crew or just a few people.

Overseeing the installation of the Thaw material at Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) was made easy for Eva and I by the large, welcoming, and proficient crew assigned to the task. Here at home at Fenimore Art Museum we have a smaller staff and are used to doing much of the work ourselves. At CMA there is someone to curate the show, someone to design the exhibit, someone to oversee objects, a crew to make mounts, a crew to install artwork, someone for making the labels, and someone to do the lighting. And I am probably missing someone in the vast array of folks that make their exhibits happen. It was amazing to see all of these different elements coordinated and brought together for a stunning final product.

(Southwest Gallery almost complete)

As with all exhibit installations, there were snafus along the way. The appropriate parties calmly put their heads together and came up with smart solutions that were then quickly and expertly executed by the appropriate team member.

With Thaw now installed it’s time for me to put my designer/installer/graphics hats all back on and get to work on our spring exhibits here at home. It was wonderful to have such a big team to pull the exhibit together with in Cleveland, but I do look forward to working with our little home crew to make Fenimore shine for our April 1 opening.

(CMA lighting designer, Mark, works on a tricky northwest coast case)

A catalog for Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection

By: Michelle L. Murdock, Curator of Exhibitions
 As I write this, we are about to “put the catalog to bed.” It has earned a good night’s sleep for sure. For the past few weeks I and my colleagues have been editing and proofing the new catalog that accompanies our traveling exhibition, Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection which debuts at the Cleveland Museum of Art on March 7th. I am absolutely in love with this book. It includes new essays by several authors including Janet C. Berlo, Ruth B. Phillips, Joe D. Horse Capture, Aldona Jonaitis, Steven A. LeBlanc and Norman Vorano. Several other scholars also contributed: D.Y. Begay, Marvin Cohodas, Chuna McIntyre, Scott Meachum, Marla Redcorn-Miller and Megan Smetzer.

Rather than publishing typical regional surveys of American Indian material, the authors were invited to choose an idiosyncratic approach to their essays, which offers the reader new insights into objects, makers and cultures. Phillips, for example, compares & contrasts three Great Lakes bags from the Collection, while Jonaitis discusses the art and culture of food in the Northwest Coast, as exemplified by objects from the Collection. The shorter essays in the catalogue demonstrate the varied ways that particular objects of Native art can be studied, understood, and appreciated, using diverse critical methods. The combination of these varied approaches has resulted in unique and engaging storylines.

And the design is just gorgeous. Our long-time publication designers at Nadeau Design Associates in Utica, N.Y. have worked their magic again. Their innovative approach this time includes details of many artifacts reproduced at full size. This allows readers to appreciate the intricacies of quillwork, beadwork, etching and painting.

The book Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection will be available from our Museum Shop very soon!

On the Road Again

By: Chris Rossi, Associate Curator of Exhibitions

The last year has been devoted, in one way or another, in preparing our exhibition, Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection, to hit the road. (First stop, Cleveland Museum of Art.) This is no small task. Getting close to 150 objects chosen, conserved, cataloged, mount-ready, insured, packed and ready to transport is a Herculean feat.

Now we are down to the wire. Large wooden crates are packed and ready to go on the truck. We have 3 bins and 3 boxes of painstakingly made mounts, all meticulously wrapped and ready to go. Each mount is documented with a how-to description of what to do with the oddly shaped piece of brass or Plexiglas meant to support masks, rattles, textiles and the like.

In addition to the mounts, we have to pack tools. We took this collection to Paris back in the mid-winter of 2000. We ran into many travel problems, mostly having to do with taking objects created from natural materials such as feathers and hide through customs. But back in those pre-9/11 days it was easy and acceptable to saunter onto an airplane with a ratchet wrench and X-acto knife in your carry-on bag. Now all tools need to be shipped ahead with the artwork. I find myself continually adding stuff to my little red toolbox, as if I were going to do an installation on the moon! My coworkers remind me that they do have hardware stores in Cleveland, not to mention a topnotch exhibit department at the museum itself.

What’s in the Toolbox: Picture hangers and nails, nuts and bolts, acrylic paints, a saw, mylar tape, muslin twill tape, brass rods, shrink tubing, acrylic felt, 10 lb. Test fishing line, needle nose pliers, hammer, tape measure, small level, X-acto knife, metal ruler, file, needle and thread, museum wax, pencil.

We have a week to go–plenty of time to add more must-haves to the toolbox before the truck pulls away from the loading dock! Which reminds me, I should add a handful of lag bolts for the house post mounts…

Mount Up!

By: Stephen Loughman, Preparator

This is the first post for Stephen Loughman; he is the new Preparator for the Fenimore Art Museum and The Farmers' Museum. He joins us from SUNY Plattsburgh where he previously worked at the SUNY Plattsburgh Art Museum. He is very excited to be here, and show everyone what exactly a Preparator does here at the museum!

As we are gearing up and focusing more and more on the Thaw traveling exhibition, it is important to remember that it isn’t just the art work traveling to the Cleveland Museum of Art. For the past two weeks or so I have been working on preparing the mounts, for which many of the Thaw pieces need in order to be displayed on, for travel. Three large boxes of mounts to be exact! Each box was divided into little cubbies that the mounts will call home as they travel about the country. Many of the mounts themselves needed to be sanded and painted before travel. Once painted the layout of the boxes was configured taking into consideration the size and durability of certain mounts compared to others. I taped and hot glued a system of dividers and shelves so that each mount had its own place within the box making sure thus that the box could withhold the changing of venues and the wear and tear that goes along with such a process. The mounts themselves were then bubble-wrapped, labeled, inventoried and boxed, ready for Cleveland and beyond!

Thaw Travelling Crate Construction

By: Christine Olsen, Registrar

As you may already know from previous blogs, our traveling exhibition, Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection is going to be shipped to the Cleveland Museum of Art in February. It will be on exhibit there from March 7, 2010 – May 30, 2010. This week has been especially busy here at FAM with preparations for this venue. Six professional packers from a fine art shipping company have been here all week packing the objects into custom made boxes and crates for their travel across country. The skeletons for the boxes and crates were built off site at the shipping company’s production facility, and shipped here last week on a tractor trailer. These types of custom made crates and boxes are the industry (i.e. museum) standard. As you may recall, some of my previous blogs have discussed crating for paintings and sculpture in our most recent exhibits America’s Rome and Through the Eyes of Others travelling exhibit. The crates for this show are no different in design their interiors are just more elaborate to accommodate intricate three dimensional objects such as masks, headdresses, moccasins and clothing to name a few. The interiors of the crates and boxes are being customized here at FAM by the packers to fit each piece of artwork perfectly, thereby providing the necessary stability for travel. It is a long and bumpy ride, even on an air ride truck, and it doesn’t take much to cause damage to artwork. Interior supports are built from various acid-free, inert materials well known in the museum world, such as ethafoam and polyethylene foam blocks and sheets cut into various shapes and sizes and volara or Teflon film for use as barriers and over-wraps. The supports must be able to keep the work stable within the crate while touching as little of the object as possible in order to prevent undue stress. There are often instructions written on the boxes and crates that detail how to unpack and unload the object safely step by step. Many of the objects going to this venue are old and extremely fragile by design; beads fall off easily, animal hide tears, basketry fibers crumble. Crate building is an art and these packers certainly have their work cut out for them!

Results of the Photo Shoot

By: Eva Fognell, Curator of the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art

Last time, I blogged about a photo shoot we did here on Nov 23rd in preparation for the catalog that will accompany Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection, which opens at the Cleveland Museum of Art on March 7. Here is the stunning result of Richard Walker’s images of the Haida dish. Look at this amazing bowl! I love the photos that show the translucency of the horn. You can even see the veins in the horn, reminding us that this material was once alive. Northwest Coast artists were skilled carvers of sheep horn. The resilient horn was first steamed and then molded into shape. The dish is remarkable for its beautifully observed rendering of a small alert seabird. The bowl’s outer surface is carved in relief with formline designs representing the bird’s wings, feet, and tail-feathers, and there is an additional face on the breast with a projecting hooked nose. It is great to have an opportunity to photograph an object from many angles. I think readers of the forthcoming catalogue will really appreciate that feature.

Above: Dish, ca. 1840-1860. Haida, Queen Charlotta Islands, British Columbia. Dall mountain sheep horn, T0181

Farewell to America's Rome

By: Christine Olsen, Registrar

As you may have read in my blog post “Making an Exhibition Happen” a lot of steps are involved in putting up and taking down an exhibit. In our exhibit, America’s Rome: Artists in the Eternal City, we had 134 works from 24 lenders, including Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Toledo Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum of Art. In addition to some of the other projects that I am working on which I have blogged about, such as the Through the Eyes of Others Travelling show which returns from NYSM in January and preparing for the Thaw Travelling show to go to Cleveland in February, I am currently working on returning the loans for America’s Rome to their lenders since the exhibit closed on December 31st. Instead of shipping with UPS, Fed Ex or a standard moving company, I work with a handful of exclusive fine art handling companies who specialize in shipping for high value and fragile cargo. Their trucks have special air ride suspension, temperature/humidity control and dual drivers with a security system; a few more options than the standard shipper would provide! Sometimes, lenders require an exclusive use shipment, which means that their loan is the only one on the truck. For those that do not require exclusive use, I often combine shipments for lenders that are geographically near one another; they call these direct shuttles, and many lenders like to know that their artwork is on board with loans from other museums who lent to the same exhibition.

As I have discussed in detail in my blog “Making an Exhibition Happen”, each loan has specific requirements from the lenders which must be followed; for example, just as upon unpacking and installation, there are three lenders to this show that require a courier to oversee de-installation and packing. This means making flight and hotel reservations for each courier, and scheduling de-installation and shipping to coincide perfectly with their visits. It is a difficult juggling act, and it has taken me weeks to work out the details. Finally, two lenders to this exhibit require that their courier also ride on the truck for the return of their artwork; one lender will ride all the way from Cooperstown to Detroit in one day!

All of the crates for the work in this exhibit have been stored since April in a storage space with security, pest and environmental controls (you can go back and see the pictures I posted of crates stacked in the hallway in my previous blog). When it is time for de-installation, the crates will be moved into the exhibition gallery to be packed by myself and other Curatorial staff. The artwork itself is thoroughly examined again by me for condition changes and has detailed pictures taken of its packing. As anyone who has read my blogs knows, condition reporting itself takes a lot of time, and I can only do it when the museum is closed to the public.
This is the life of every loan that comes in and out of the museum; after doing this for so long I have a system down so that this process goes smoothly. But of course there are glitches along the way and unexpected things that come up that I and my colleagues must contend with. It certainly makes the winter go by quickly! I will soon be blogging about loans that will be coming in for our Spring exhibitions, such as John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women…if the technical aspects of registrarial work interest you, stay tuned!

The Fall of (America's) Rome

By: Michelle Murdock, Curator of Exhibitions

It’s true what they say – all good things must come to an end. January is always a bittersweet month for us here at Fenimore. It’s sad to see the exhibitions we’ve come to love taken down, but it’s very exciting to prepare the road for new exhibitions. This week, we packed up America’s Rome, and several staff dropped by the gallery to say goodbye to their favorite works. While we are all looking forward to re-opening in April with a bevy of new exhibitions (cant wait for John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women!), this is the time to lovingly pack up the old friends. Here’s a picture of Chris Rossi affixing a painting to its crate using Oz Clips.
As my colleague Christine Olsen noted in her blog Making an Exhibition Happen, there’s just as much involved in taking an exhibition down as putting one up. Thankfully, we have a new Preparator to help us out. Stephen Loughman comes to us from the Plattsburg State Art Museum where he was a Preparator. Look for his blogs soon, too.

Pardon me, ma’am, there’s a body in your office

By: Michelle Murdock, Curator of Exhibitions

We had our first messy weather of the year today. Area schools were closed and several staff couldn’t make it in. I took advantage of the fairly quiet morning to work on some mounts for the Thaw Collection artifacts that will travel to Cleveland. The textiles that will hang from battens needed to have sleeves sewn on. Other textiles will be displayed on mannequins, so those needed to be freshened up. As I was working on one mannequin, a coworker walked into my office and yelped with surprise. It was a bit of a change of pace seeing me working on mounts instead of paperwork, I suppose. Or it could have just been the body laid out on the floor…

Photographing for the catalogue

By: Eva Fognell, Curator of the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art

We are sending 111 objects as part of the show and if anyone of you has read any of my blogs you know that one of the preparation phases for many of the objects have been a date with a conservator. Then on to condition reporting and photographing the objects and then in another month or so, art handlers and packers will be here to work their magic packing and crating the collection. Exciting and nerve wracking all at the same time just thinking about the treasures out of my sight.

There is also a catalogue to accompany the exhibit The Thaw Collection: Masterpieces of American Indian Art. It will be about 120 -125 pages with new scholarship essays by leading authorities in the field of American Indian art, Janet Berlo, Aldona Jonaitis, and Ruth Phillips just to mention a few. In addition there will large color images and a short text to accompany each object.

Today I want to show you some images from the process of photographing the collection. Richard Walker was here for a whole day photographing objects for the catalogue. The catalogue is being designed by Nadeau Designs, a Utica based design company and Richard Nadeau was also here during the photo shoot. We had a great day playing with outfits, bowls and war helmets just to name a few things being photographed. In most catalogues you will have one photo of lets say a particular bowl documenting the piece. One of the things we are trying to do here is to show the dish from a few different angles. Here are a few photos from our day. As we are working to bring out the translucent qualities in the amazing Dall mountain sheep horn dish. When I get the professional photos I’ll post them for you all to see.

Thaw Travelling Exhibition Condition Reporting

By: Christine Olsen, Registrar

As you’ve already read on previous blogs from my colleagues, the Thaw Travelling exhibition is going to be going to the Cleveland Museum of Art in February 2010. There are many steps that are taken in advance of a travelling show, or any loan for that matter, including signing loan agreements, making packing and shipping arrangements, and condition reporting. It is the latter step, condition reporting, that the Curator of the Thaw Collection, Eva Fognell, and I have been diligently working on the last few weeks.

There are over 100 objects going on loan with this show, from goggles to totem poles, and they all have to be photographed in the round and have every detail of their condition recorded. For large or detail heavy works or those with many condition issues, condition reporting is time consuming and tedious. We use ample lighting, black lights, magnifying glasses and other “toys” to help us see minute detail. Condition reporting it is a very important step in the processing of any loan and has to be done many times along the way. If damage should happen I need to know where along the way it occurred and develop a plan to remedy it as soon as possible.
Once the objects are unpacked at CMA they will be condition reported again in case anything has changed during packing and shipping. Eva and Chris Rossi, our Associate Curator of Exhibitions, are going to be responsible for this task on that end (they are taking over my role as supervisor of condition reporting and installation for this travelling show; and as any registrar will tell you, giving up control but maintaining the responsibility is hard on the nerves!).

When the venue is ready to be de-installed in May, Eva and Chris will go and do it all over again; with a final round of reports done by me upon its’ unpacking at FAM. Travel is inevitably hard on objects and I expect there to be some changes seen on some items, particularly those that are very fragile (which our American Indian collection inherently is); however, the opportunity to share our collection with visitors far and wide makes it well worth it.

If you have good attention to detail and lots of patience, you would do well as a registrar; condition reporting is the ultimate test of these skills. I am sure Curators such as Eva and Chris would agree that it is best left to registrars; I thank them for being such great team players!

Quilting up a storm of activity

By: Michelle Murdock, Curator of Exhibitions

In January of 2004 (hard to believe it was that long ago!) I had an amazing opportunity to participate in the Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival held at the Tokyo Dome. Fenimore Art Museum sent 35 of our best quilts to the Festival to be featured in their showcase exhibition. I worked with guest curator Jacquie Atkins to install and answer questions about our exhibition Uncommon Quilts: Treasures from the Fenimore Art Museum. We greeted over 289,000 (!!) women, men, and children from all over the world during the course of seven days. Many visitors to the exhibition wanted to learn more about Fenimore Art Museum. It was an amazing opportunity for us to gain true international exposure. The quilts at Fenimore Art Museum include textile masterpieces that represent the history of New York State and each reflects the historical, social, and cultural context of its time. For example, one of the most unusual quilts ever made in America, known as “Trade and Commerce,” shows its maker was clearly familiar with the busy river commerce so important in the development of New York State. This unique pictorial quilt, made about 1825 by Hannah Stockton Stiles, is a lively appliqué depiction of life along the shores and on the waters of a major river.

During 2010 and 2011 Fenimore Art Museum and The Farmers’ Museum are embarking on a brand new quilt project. Next year we will hold a state-wide juried quilt competition and exhibit the entries in the Louis C. Jones Center at The Farmers’ Museum in the fall. We will also exhibit many of our historic quilts on beds throughout the Historic Village.
The top three winners from the competition at The Farmers’ Museum will be included in an exhibition at Fenimore Art Museum in 2011. The exhibition will feature our masterpiece quilts such as Night Hunt from our permanent collection. The Farmers’ Museum will continue to feature quilts in the Historic Village and both museums will host lectures, workshops and seminars on the art. Finally, the Fenimore exhibition will hit the road in 2012, traveling to several venues throughout the United States.
Are you a quilter? Do you know a quilter? Maybe you want to become a quilter! We want your quilts! Keep your eyes peeled for more details on the competition, coming soon.

Top: Inside the "Tokyo Dome"

Center: Trade and Commerce. Quilt top, ca. 1835. Gift of Hannah Lee Stokes, N0222.1956.

Bottom: Night Hunt. Quilt, 1885. Gift of Dorothy E. Hubbard, N0024.1973

The Thaw Collection of American Indian Art hits the road

By: Eva Fognell, Curator of the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art

LATE BREAKING NEWS FROM THE CURATORIAL DEPARTMENT

So, as you’ve probably noticed, for the last few years many of us here in the curatorial department have been organizing a traveling exhibition of art from the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art. It has all come together in the last year as some of the finest art museums in the country have signed on to host the show. The date for the first departure is getting close! The exhibition premieres at the Cleveland Museum of Art where it will open on March 6^th and be on view to the end of May 2010. Then in the fall of 2010 it will go to the Minneapolis Institute of Art where it will be until early January of 2011 and then in December of 2011 its off to the Indianapolis of Art. Check out our official press release.

The exhibit is a masterpiece collection of American Indian art but on a more subtle level it also tells a story about its collectors, Eugene and Clare Thaw. All of you that are familiar with the Fenimore Art Museum knows that the objects were collected and are displayed here as art. It is going to be so exciting for me to see the things I take care of on a daily bases in other environments. And for Chris Rossi and I who both are traveling with the exhibit to install and deinstall at the venues it will also be an experience we could call “Three winters in the Midwest.” As a native Swede, Minneapolis may be almost like home with its January weather!

Stay tuned – I’ll be sure to keep you updated with more of our preparations.

Top: Mask, ca. 1800-1840. Tlingit, Southeast Alaska, Thaw Collection, Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, N.Y., T0214. Photograph by John Bigelow Taylor.

Bottom: Shield, ca. 1860, Crow, (Apsaalooke), Montana, Thaw Collection, Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, N.Y., T0048. Photograph by John Bigelow Taylor.

Making Mounts for the Thaw Collection

By: Eva Fognell, Curator of the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art

It’s all about the traveling Thaw exhibition for me right now. Spicer Conservation has been here weekly for about 6 months to stabilize and clean the objects (see here and here) and now it is time for the mount makers to work their magic. David and Mar from Benchmark, have been here making mounts for 9 of the traveling objects. The conservation lab has been turned into a mount making workshop complete with tools and all the stuff needed to make safe cradles for the objects. Most of the things that need mounts are masks. We want to be able to install them with out having to affix new hardware to them and we are trying to spare them being handled too much. I have attached a few photos of the lab as it looks right now with objects propped up so that their backsides are available for fitting. Also check out how unobtrusive the mounts are and how nice it is to see the masks set off from the back. This will add to the visual impact of the mask, as well as provide an opportunity to light the masks in a more dramatic way.