Posts

Showing posts from October, 2013

Notes on Spirituality

Image
It's a good art exhibition that raises more questions than it answers. Some of those questions end up in our comment books, the bound black volumes that invite visitor feedback at the end of an exhibition. The comment book may seem like a retro convention. Social media has ushered in a whole industry dedicated to the capture and sharing of immediate impressions with large groups of people. But comment books have their advantages. Authors can take up as much space as they want, words can be enhanced and intertwined with images, and the flow of comments only moves forward, since remarks can only be seen by those coming to the exhibition after previous visitors have left their mark. Typical comments include praise or critique for curatorial decisions (we do read all messages), simple proofs of presence ("Jerry was here!"), and drawings from aspiring artists hoping perhaps to be discovered. Flipping through the books in the exhibition Beyond Belief: 100 Years

Utopian Design

Image
Title wall. Photo by Gary Sexton. Brian Scott is the Creative Director of Boon Design, and of our newest exhibitions which deal with the concept of utopia. We asked Brian what inspired this project, and he responded with a self-interview. Presenting Brian Scott interviewing Brian Scott on his process:   What was your approach to creating the identity for the exhibitions Work in Progress: Considering Utopia and To Build & Be Built: Kibbutz History ? I prefer to build from a typographic foundation, which helps to set a tone and tactile presence that we can then expand upon. For The Contemporary Jewish Museum, I first thought about the era during which the first kibbutzim were established, the early 1900s. What was the typography of that era? Was there a modernist typographic equivalent that shared an idealism with these the kibbutz pioneers? I believe that Paul Renner's font Futura (1928) embodies some of these utopian pursuits—Futura strives for geometric balance and h

#Beyond_Belief: Big Questions, Small Answers

Image
Inspired by our collaborative exhibition Beyond Belief: 100 Years of the Spiritual in Modern Art (on view now through Oct 27), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Contemporary Jewish Museum hosted a day of mindful social media. Since “spirituality” means many things to many people, we thought it would be interesting to tackle the big questions raised by the exhibition in short, concise answers. Here’s an overview of the conversation by social media wranglers Kathryn Jaller (The CJM) and Willa Koerner (SFMOMA).