|
Art
Imitates Bathroom Fixtures
A
trip to the loo isn’t usually the top attraction at an art
museum, but for the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton,
Mass., that’s exactly the case. The building’s artist-designed
restrooms, part of a recently completed renovation and expansion,
are bringing in new faces in advance of the museum’s official
reopening on Sunday. “We’ve been open for about a month with
just one exhibition, and a lot of people have heard about
the restrooms and are drawn in,” says museum director Suzannah
Fabing. “They go to the bathroom and then they go and look
at the gallery.” The specially commissioned restrooms are
part of a three-year, $35-million expansion that enlarges
the building’s size by a third and includes a 40-foot skylit
atrium and a new top floor of gallery space. And one-of-a-kind
wash basins.
“The
idea is that every aspect of the museum will be an
artistic experience,” Fabing explains. “Ellen Driscoll, a
Boston artist, did the women’s restroom, and Sandy Skoglund,
who lives in New York City, did the men’s restroom. We actually
heard about this from the Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin.
It’s the same family as the Kohler plumbing company, and the
center is attached to the factory. Turns out the arts center
has a program where it invites artists to come and do a residency
and work in the factory. The artists usually make their own
things, they use the company’s ceramic kilns and metal-working
facilities. But we had our artists actually decorate the fixtures
for the restrooms during their residencies, and then they
came back and planned the rooms.”
So, is peering into the toilet bowl part of the experience?
“Ellen’s bowls and basins are glazed ceramic, and her theme
is ‘Catching the Drift,’ ” says Fabing without missing a beat.
“It turns the ladies’ room into an underwater environment—the
basins are cobalt blue and they’ve got netting across them.
The toilets have pieces of kelp and things like that in them.
On the walls she used a special kind of glass that has a layered
effect; what you see is works from the collection featuring
women, and [the women] are caught in the nets and kind of
swimming around. It’s pretty wild.
“Sandy
used a decal process that is used a lot in high-end, commercial
bathroom decoration, and her restroom is called ‘Liquid Origins,
Fluid Dreams,’ ” Fabing continues. “Her theme is taken from
10 different creation myths from different cultures that all
deal with fluids.” And no, water is not the only fluid, and
yes, you should use your imagination. “The color scheme is
black-and-white,” Fabing adds reassuringly. Another non-gallery
draw is the museum’s 11 custom benches, each created by a
different New England artisan. “Many of the craftsmen started
out right here in the Pioneer Valley,” says Fabing. “The benches
are all different; they’re meant to be sat upon, and they
are great.”
The museum is known primarily for its collection of 19th-
and early 20th-century European and American art, and that,
too, is undergoing a change. Chief curator Fabing, who came
to Smith College in 1992 from the National Gallery of Art
in Washington, is overseeing the museum’s push into Asian,
African, Islamic, and Latin American art. “We’re broadening
that out because the curriculum now is much more about the
whole world and not just about the Western tradition,” she
explains. “[European and American art] is still the great
strength of this collection, and we don’t want to do any less
of it, but thanks to having a bigger building, we can have
a more active program of exhibitions in non-Western areas
as well. For the reopening, we will have a small show of Japanese
art, what’s called the Art of the Floating World, a
period in the 18th century, and a larger exhibition of African
art.”
Sparked by the need to replace the building’s cracking terra-cotta
exterior, the renovation was expanded to facilitate the museum’s
growth from a quiet, campus museum to one that can accommodate
its increasing public audience. The renovation had some unexpected
benefits. “It really feels like a new building,” says Fabing.
“We’ve discovered views we never knew we had, out over the
campus and the Holyoke Range, by opening windows where we
didn’t have them before. These days you can control the light
in ways that you couldn’t before, with light filters and different
kinds of shades.
“It’s
a beautiful space. We have a great collection, and now we
have the proper container for it.”
The Smith College Museum of Art will hold a reopening celebration
on Sunday (April 27) at 11:45 AM. The event will feature music,
food, children’s activities and new exhibits. Admission is
$3. For information, call (413) 585-2760.
—Ann
Morrow
Take
a Bow
Since
his arrival in 1992, Albany Symphony Orchestra conductor and
music director David Alan Miller has championed contemporary
American music. Just last month, in a well-received (and well-reviewed)
concert, the ASO presented the world premiere of Gordon Beeferman’s
Morbidity and Mortality Report, and the U.S. premiere
of Michael Torke’s An American Abroad. With the ASO
avant-garde ensemble Dogs of Desire, Miller has conducted
the premieres of more than 50 new works by Americans. This
effort has been rewarded; the classical music world has taken
notice. Miller has been named winner of Columbia University’s
2003 Alice M. Ditson Conductor’s Award for his commitment
to the works of American composers.
The award consists of a citation and $5,000. In the citation,
Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger praises Miller
as a champion of American music: “Through adventurous concerts,
educational initiatives and recording, Miller has enabled
the Albany Symphony Orchestra to affirm its reputation as
an outstanding supporter of American symphonic music and one
of the nation’s most innovative orchestras.”
“It’s
a great honor,” says Miller. “American music is so much of
what we [at the Albany Symphony Orchestra] believe in,” he
says, that the very existence of an award for promoting American
music is gratifying. Miller explains that while performing
the works of the great masters is wonderful, it is “equally
exciting to perform the masters of the present.”
Receiving the Ditson Award (which was established in 1945)
puts Miller in esteemed company—both past and present. (When
this is mentioned, Miller is modest, then asks, “do you have
the list in front of you?”) Legendary winners have included
Eugene Ormandy and Leonard Bernstein; among his contemporaries,
Michael Tilson Thomas, David Zinman and the Buffalo Philharmonic’s
JoAnn Falletta have been so honored.
The award will be presented to Miller tomorrow night (Friday)
at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, during the ASO’s performance,
by J. Kellum Smith of the Ditson Advisory Committee. While
the ASO’s program features Mahler’s Symphony No. 4,
the orchestra also will perform an American work, the late
Paul Creston’s Symphony No. 4.
“We’re
recording this piece,” Miller says, referring to the Creston
symphony. “We try to record pieces that aren’t readily available.”
While the ASO has recorded a number of new compositions, it
also has rescued the neglected works of American masters.
For instance, Miller and the ASO were the first to put on
disc works by such well-known composers as Roy Harris and
Morton Gould. In this case, Miller explains that for any number
of reasons, Creston’s Symphony No. 4 has never been
recorded—even though it is just as interesting and rewarding
as the composer’s earlier symphonies, which are better known.
After the current ASO season ends (there are two concerts
left: Mahler’s Heaven tomorrow, and The Prodigy Returns at
the Palace Theatre on May 17), Miller hopes to enjoy some
time off. He has conducting gigs lined up for the summer in
Portugal and Chicago, before the ASO begins a new season next
fall. Right now, Miller is enjoying the Ditson award, and
what it signifies: “It’s a wonderful imprimatur on what we’ve
been doing.”
The Albany Symphony Orchestra will perform tomorrow (Friday,
April 25) at 8 PM at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall (corner
of Second and State streets, Troy). Tickets are $17 to $36.
For reservations and information, call 273-0038.
—Shawn
Stone
This
Weekend They’ll Be Real
Starting
this weekend, Bard College will celebrate the opening of the
Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts with a series
of gala events. Designed by world-renowned architect Frank
Gehry—it’s his first completed project on the East Coast—the
Fisher Center contains two showcase theaters, the 900-seat
Sosnoff Theater (model pictured) and the 200-seat Black Box
Theater, in addition to rehearsal spaces, studios and classrooms.
Tomorrow (Friday, April 25) the American Symphony Orchestra
will perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 in the Sosnoff
Theater at 8 PM. JoAnne Akalaitis’ production of Jean Racine’s
Phèdre will have its New York premiere on Saturday
(April 26) in the Black Box Theater at 5 PM, and will run
for five performances over two weekends. Also on Saturday,
a program of contemporary music will be presented in the Sosnoff
at 8 PM, featuring Melvin Chen, the Da Capo Chamber Players
and the Emerson Quartet; Sunday will see the retrospective
Thirteen Years of the Bard Music Festival in the Sosnoff,
at 2 PM. The following weekend is, arguably, even more spectacular,
with performances by the Charles Mingus Orchestra with special
guest Elvis Costello; the Kronos Quartet with the Merce Cunningham
Dance Company; and Ballet Hispánico introducing a world-premiere
choreography. Bard College is located in Annandale-on-Hudson;
for showtimes, ticket prices and general information, call
(845) 758-7900 or visit www.bard.edu/fishercenter.
 |
|
Columns
& Opinions
