Third Thursday

Unfortunately last week I became sick with bronchitis so I couldn't work in the library as much as I would have liked. I was able to make it a full day for the "Third Thursday" open house. For this month we were exhibiting maps of Mexico to go along with an MFA student's final project that was going on in the room next door. The student's name was Aaron Johnson-Ortiz and the name of his exhibit was "Exile & Utopia." He wrote a book about a little known attempt at an early Mexican revolution that took place within the United States, and the maps from the Map Library were a large component of his research. He purposely opened his show at the same time that the Map Library featured their "Third Thursday" open house, and I find this to be an interesting choice. While working at the Kelsey Museum I learned about another MFA student who made a similar decision. This student is a sculptor and has developed a piece that is purposely meant to deteriorate and fall apart in a short amount of time. A large component of their piece is its context as this artist wanted to feature this piece amongst the other artifacts in the Kelsey Museum, and display it in a case just as if it were an artifact in the museum's collection. I absolutely love this idea because it brings to question the context of a museum, and what that means to us when we're viewing objects. There are so many directions that museums can head in, yet they have generally remained the same over the years. Mixing modern art with antiquities may be confusing but may also lead us to new thought that we may not have expected when entering the museum. I believe that the museum itself can be a piece of art to be viewed, and there is a lot of room for creative innovations within the industry.