Exhibition Videos

The first video, The Lowdown on Lowbrow: West Coast Pop Art, explores what is known to some as "lowbrow" art. Art of this genre is often rather crass, crude, and draws from pop culture.  It was a reaction against "highbrow" art, which was more exclusionary. Some say it reaches out to the masses more than esoteric highbrow art, because it draws from art that is a part of their lives, such as pinups or comics. Lowbrow art could still deal with heavy issues, however, such as McCarthyism during the Cold War and consumerism. According to one curator, the movement began in the early 1980s with Robert Wiliams's heady paintings. Ed Roth's 1960s rock posters, using bright colors and psychedelic imagery, would be huge inspiration for Lowbrow art. From the 60s until fairly recently, museums did not want to show Lowbrow art. Now, however, museums are clamoring to display R. Crumb's work.

Even now, gallery curators look down their nose at most Lowbrow art. While Pop Art like Andy Warhol is sought out, Lowbrow artists believe curators are trained at universities to have certain opinions of what can and can't be Fine Art. Within Lowbrow art, however, there is little exclusion. Women, for instance, have become very prominent in the movement, believing they are better qualified to be painting women. The internet has allowed the movement to reach many people, and the artists are typically present at the showings so the audience can see and interact with them. With the 1970s came punk rock, and many people were first introduced to Lowbrow art with record covers. This medium reached a much wider audience than placing the art in a gallery. Many artists served as their own gallery curators, creating their own shows. The curator Billy Shire, however, saw Lowbrow art as Fine art, and opened up his gallery to them. Now known as "Pop Surrealism" in many cultures, Lowbrow art is finally being sought out in Fine Art galleries, even in New York.

Displaying Modern Art: The Tate Approach, is about how the Tate Modern museum changed how art is presented in galleries. The early twentieth century, with MoMA, set the standard for displaying art up until the Tate approach. Different art movements would be separated into different areas, each seeming to be a reaction of the one that came before it. By the 1970s, young artists were challenging this sort of distinction. Art could no longer just be hung on white walls. It was no longer just white male artists, but also females of many different ethnicities. At Tate, the art is separated into four sections, each divided thematically: landscape/matter/environment, still life/object/real life, history/memory/society, and the nude/action/body. This allows artworks from very different time periods and contexts to be displayed together. Claude Monet's Waterlilies, for instance, is in the same room as the British artist Richard Long's wall drawing, which was made much later, for the opening of Tate Modern. Placing them together makes one have to think about the potential parallels that exist between them.

Some people, however, believe that this makes the artworks harder to see individually. Monet's painting, for instance, was never supposed to be seen in relation to Long's work, so it takes away from it. Abstract expressionist paintings, which were placed in the landscape section, are now limited to only being perceived as landscapes, when really they could be anything. Without things being divided chronologically, it's harder for people unfamiliar with art movements to understand how art has progressed. Still, the self-contained rooms are very carefully thought out by the curators, one room holding a very different mood from the next. Very abstract artworks, such as Piet Mondrian's might be hard to classify by these four themes. His work is placed in historical art, but only those with art history knowledge would be able to understand this. Still, the planning can also be seen as Populist, for everyone can appreciate what landscapes, history, still lives, and nudes are, at least at their conventional level. People learn to think about artwork's connections rather than simple chronological art history. Like tv, the Tate Modern has displayed its artwork in a manner that is more fun and less work for the viewer, with artwork jumping to different styles and movements in the same way that one might flip through channels.

Bones of Conention: Native American Archaeology is about the ethics involved in collecting, studying, and displaying artifacts of culture. Many Native Americans are demanding that the bones of their ancestors, which are studied at museums, be returned to them. The historians and curators, however, believe that this would be akin to burning books, for it would be a loss of knowledge. In many states beginning in the 1970s, laws were passed that protected Native American remains. Sometimes, such as in California, the laws are so excessive that archaeology becomes quite difficult, and one archaeologist even quit and ran a bar instead. Unfortunately, the studying of human remains was given a black eye early on by Samuel Morton, who concluded after studying skulls that Caucasians were the most intelligent, while Native Americans were third. Suzan Harjo fights to return the skeletal remains of Native American ancestors, for she believes these people deserve to remain buried just like anybody else. By 1995, the bones have to return to the tribes that they were originally from, which one scientist believes is actually unfortunate for Native Americans, for they will now know less about their own history.

Many Native Americans, such as Lebeau, believe that they have always lived in the Americas. It does not matter to them if scientists study how they migrated to America, for they do not believe this to be the case, which is their right. Some scientists are measuring skulls in order to determine which tribe they are from, so they can be returned, but some Native Americans accused them of doing work similar to Nazis. Archaeologists may believe they are helping Native Americans by determining which tribes the skulls belong to, but to many this appears arrogant, for it should not be up to scientists to determine who's related to who.

In Nebraska, the Native Americans have actually worked with scientists and historians, asking them to study skeletons in order to learn more about their health and culture. Today, the Omaha people are often plagued with diabetes and have a very short average lifespan. By studying the remains' bone chemistry, they can better understand why they are so prone to diabetes. After the bones were studied, they were then reburied, and both parties could be satisfied. 

 The last video, George Eastman House: Picture Perfect, explores both the life and inventions of George Eastman and the process that goes into curating and archiving the photographs and cameras at Eastman's house-museum. What is unique about the George Eastman museum is that you can get the entire history at this one location, rather than hopping from museum to museum. In addition to this, the viewers also get to learn about the life of Eastman in his very own house. Many "firsts" are housed at Eastman's, such as the first photograph of lightning or the first camera sold in the US. Many photographs at the museum not only document, but are works of art. Here is also the largest collection of daguerreotypes outside of France, that were the first to permanently capture photographic images.

George Eastman's greatest contribution was inventing cameras that were easy to use and affordable. He called his company "Kodak," a made-up word that he felt would be easy to pronounce and remember. The Brownie was an early camera that he sold for only a dollar. "You press the button, we do the rest" was a Kodak slogan that showed how simple using the camera really was. Ansel Adams himself used a Brownie, which is housed in the museum. Later, Eastman and Edison would develop one of the first motion cameras.Eastman constructed his house, which is now the Eastman museum, in 1902. Photographs, which are on display in the museum, show what the grounds and the house looked like during his time, which allows the director and curators to recreate what the house looked like. The house also has one of the largest film collections, from classic silent films to more recent works by Spike Lee. The curators admit that it's much easier to have a collection when you're only collecting things from the past hundred years. In 1996, the museum began teaching people how to restore films. The museum reaches out to people in several ways. Photographs are on display, they project films for people to see, and they can access their website.

Some of the videos related more to the creation of my Art Exhibition project than others. Displaying Modern Art, for instance, presented a way to arrange artwork that I think I would emulate. They arranged art not by chronology, but by theme. My artwork, too, would be split by theme. My overall theme is animal relationships with people, and the artworks I exhibit would not be separated by movement but by type of animal-human relationship. The first video, The Lowdown on Lowbrow, taught me that it is important to try not to dismiss certain types of art just because it is different from what is typically considered Fine Art. While searching for my exhibition's artworks, I should try to include art from more "lowbrow" settings, in order to present a more complete spectrum of human-animal relationships.

The George Eastman House video went into detail about how much they store at the museum. It also explained the various ways that they make their stores accessible to people. While this was good and important to know, I'm not sure how much it pertained to my particular Art Exhibition project, other than to be sure to include photographs as well, and perhaps even films. The Bones of Contention video also provided some very vital information about how curators and historians need to be sensitive to the requests of other cultures when studying people. Many groups of Native Americans believed that scientists were violating their ancestors when they studied their bones, while others believed it was for the good of the current tribe. Either way, a good exhibition is not worth insulting an entire group of people. I'm not sure that my exhibition was going to include and insensitive materials, but it was good to hear nonetheless.

Considering their subject matter, the videos were much more interesting than I was expecting. I wasn't sure how captivating videos about curating art would be, but indeed they were. Of course, that's not what Bones of Contention was really about, but the other three focused on the process of Lowbrow art becoming eventually accepted by mainstream museums, the storing of artworks, and the displaying of artworks in a manner that fits today's short attention span culture. Bones of Contention and The Lowdown on Lowbrow both heavily feature those that will be on display, whereas the other two focused mostly on the curator's perspective. It was good to see two new sides that exist in art exhibitions when we're typically only aware of one perspective--that of the viewer.