Posts tagged Museum
The Theseus Temple in Vienna’s Volksgarten is a Grecian-style temple built in 1819-1923. It was originally built to house just one piece of art: the sculpture entitled “Theseus defeats the Centaurs”. The sculpture was however removed at the end of the 19th century and is now the centrepiece of the Art History Museum’s (Kunsthistorisches Museum) dramatic staircase.
Following an extensive renovation in the last years, and as part of the the KMH’s Modern and Contemporary Art Programme, the temple is once more being put to it’s original use to house exceptional works of contemporary art, one at a time. The current exhibit - Ugo Rodinone - is the first is series of exhibitions that aim to do just that.
The Theseus Temple is free to enter and is set in the beautiful Volksgarten, in the heart of the city and just a two minute walk from the main museum itself and several of it’s satellite branches.
What a Physics Student Can Teach us About How Visitors Walk Around an Exhibition
From the Smithsonian blog which highlights some of the limitations of how we assess the successes and failures of exhibition layout and route design and suggests ways to improve/expand how we evaluate.
Museum Professionals - Omar Khan Massoudi, Kabul
The Museum Director - a video interview (with transcript, pictures and video clips) of Dr. Omar Khan Massoudi, General Director of Museums and Director of the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul. This interview is part of the series Kabul, A City at Work - A portrait of a city through its working people.
Very interesting. Thanks, Michal Przedlacki, for sharing this link!
Due to open on February 17th in Philadelphia, an exhibition about Bruce Springsteen - previously shown at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame - features many items on loan from The Boss himself.
“Springsteen’s music speaks to our mission about the fight for democracy,” said McLeary (exhibition coordinator). “He really speaks with an American voice.”
The Wall Street Journal has a review, discussing which items are on display and the scope of the exhibition. Interesting too, that The Boss stipulated that he could recall any of his guitars if he needs them. In fact, his Fender Esquire is currently missing as he wanted it back to play at the Grammys.
Vienna's Mumok (Museum of Modern Art) online resources
Vienna’s Museum Moderne Kunst (MUMOK)
The link above is to the English page featuring videos, podcasts and library search. For those who can handle German, the German page has back issues of the museum’s magazine and newsletters. I’m adding it to the list I’m compiling of ‘Museum Multimedia’. Any other illustrious examples I should add?
Podcast: The age of slavery apologies
Podcast from Liverpool Museums:
“Dr Mark Christian, associate professor of Sociology and Black World Studies at Miami University uses the case study of Liverpool’s apology for its role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade to explore the concept of slave apologies.”
Other podcasts on the most diverse subjects can be listened to here.
Free! The Guggenheim has put 65 modern art books and catalogues online.
From OpenCulture:
In recent days, the museum has made 65 art catalogues available online, all free of charge. The catalogues offer an intellectual and visual introduction to the work of Alexander Calder, Edvard Munch, Francis Bacon, Gustav Klimt & Egon Schiele, and Kandinsky. Plus there are other texts (e.g., Masterpieces of Modern Art and Abstract Expressionists Imagists) that tackle meta movements and themes.
Now let me give you a few handy instructions to get you started. 1.) Select a text from the collection. 2.) Click the “Read Catalogue Online” button. 3.) Start reading the book in the pop-up browser, and use the controls at thevery bottom of the pop-up browser to move through the book. 4.) If you have any problems accessing these texts, you can find alternate versions on Archive.org, which lets you download books in multiple formats – ePUB, PDF and the rest.
Third Man Museum
21 November 2011
Long time readers of this blog will probably know by now that, while I value a good science or history museum, natural or otherwise, I have a thing for quirky museums that cover topics off the beaten track, so to speak. You may also remember that I’m a big fan of movies, particularly old movies to be precise. So, you may begin to imagine how ecstatic I was on discovering that Vienna is home to the Third Mann Museum (‘Dritte Mann Museum’), apparently the only museum world wide dedicated to a single movie, and one of my top ten favourite movies of all time to boot. I’m giving a heads up now that, due to my love of museums and movies colliding, this will be a rather long blog post, but if you love movies, and this movie in particular, it will be worth your while.
For those of you unfamiliar with the movie (seriously, what have you been doing all this time?), or who haven’t seen it in a while and need a refresher, The Third Man is a British film noir from 1949, directed by Carol Reed with a screen play by Graham Greene. It stars Joseph Cotton as pulp fiction writer Holly Martins, who arrived in post war Vienna seeking bis friend, Harry Lime played by Orson Welles, who has offered him a job, only to discover that Harry was apparently killed in a traffic accident. Talking to Harry’s friends and associates he notices that a lot of things don’t add up and determines to find out what really happened to his friend. Interestingly, although the movie has gathered a world wide cult following, apparently the Viennese themselves aren’t great fans since they resented, and still do, the negative way their city was portrayed.
The museum stems from the private collection of Gerhard Strassgschwandtner, who for years collected anything and everything related to The Third Mann, before turning his hobby into a museum open to the public in 2005. The original collection of over 2,000 original objects and documents includes the film scripts and behind the scenes on set shots; historical film posters, promotional movie stills, cinema programmes and video/DVD covers from over 20 countries; newspaper cuttings of the time and over 80 editions of Graham Greene’s novel. A room dedicated to Anton Karas’ chart topping film score ‘Harry’s Theme’ is lined with record covers and sheet music and displays the museum’s prize possession - the original zither on which Karas created his composition. The hitherto old fashioned considered folk instrument became the most popular instrument of the 1950s due to the tune’s success. On a ‘juke box’ (a computer with joy stick), you can listen to over 400 (!) cover versions, from the Beatles to an Hawaiian rendition. Other interesting exhibits include the private photo collection from Anton Karas’ wine tavern, which he ran in the 1950s and 60s, displayed exactly as it was hung in its original location, and the collection of curious to bizarre music boxes from around the world playing Harry’s Theme, which became popular souvenirs at the time.
A fun feature is the original Viennese canal sewer grid where, without giving too much away for those new to The Third Mann, you can recreate one of the movie’s iconic scenes - did you know that it was filmed with a fake sewer grid as the real ones were much too thick to stick your fingers through?! But the highlight of our visit had to be viewing a short clip of the movie itself on the historical film projector from 1936, the same kind that the movie would have been shown on when it aired in Vienna in 1950. The clip is limited to two minutes for legal reasons, as they don’t have a screening licence, but the Burg Kino cinema just a few blocks away has regular showings of the full movie several times a week. The clip is in English, of course - as a letter among the original documents states, if there is one movie that should never, under any circumstances, have been dubbed, it is The Third Man, and one can only imagine, from the dubbed version, how good it is. Anyone familiar with the German speaking countries’ love of dubbing foreign movies, will appreciate the significance of this.
Since its opening, the museum has twice been extended, first in 2007 to include the exhibition “Harry Lime’s Vienna”, which gives the historical context of Vienna during the time of post war occupation 1945-55. According to Strassgschwandtner, this is particularly important for overseas visitors, especially younger ones, who often have no idea of Austria’s history. Here, quotes from the movies sit alongside original documents, newspapers, letters, photographs etc. offering a different way of presenting and conveying history. Then, in 2009, the museum was extended again to include the special exhibition “The Third Mann in Japan”, which, with over 100 original exhibits, gives an idea of the incredible cult status the movie has achieved in Japan. One of the train stations on Tokyo’s metro network even plays Harry’s Theme to announce approaching trains! And, if you correctly manage to count the number of times the movie’s closing scene features in the exhibition, you can collect a wee prize from the ticket desk.
This museum really is a labour of love, which you cannot fail to notice regardless of what your sentiments about the movie are, and one carried out at high quality and with attention to detail. It’s still run and funded entirely privately by Strassgschwandtner and his partner Karin Höfler, who in ‘real’ life work full time as a Vienna tour guide and a Japanese interpreter respectively, which is why it’s only open on Saturday afternoons or by special arrangement. The collection continues to grow and is also improving in quality as new pieces fill gaps or replace poorer examples already on display. The €7.50 (discounts available) entry fee may put some people off, and to be honest, if you’ve never seen the movie you probably won’t get that much out of your visit other than a unique view of Vienna’s post war history, but if you’re familiar with the movie you can easily spend enough time there to get your money’s worth (all interpretation is available in English as well as German) and if, like me, you’re a fan, you’ll regret not visiting and be happy to give this gem of a museum your support!
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My thanks to Gerhard and Karin for taking the time to talk to us about their museum, and for the press kit which greatly helped in writing up this blog post. By the way, real fans of the movie can also go on a walking tour around town retracing the various movie locations, or go underground for a tour of Vienna’s sewers which now boast one Europe’s most modern waste water treatment facilities.
[The majority of arts funding supports large organizations with budgets greater than $5 million. Such organizations, which comprise less than 2 percent of the universe of arts and cultural nonprofits, receive more than half of the sector’s total revenue. These institutions focus primarily on Western European art forms, and their programs serve audiences that are predominantly white and upper income. Only 10 percent of grant dollars made with a primary or secondary purpose of supporting the arts explicitly benefit underserved communities, including lower-income populations, communities of color and other disadvantaged groups. And less than 4 percent focus on advancing social justice goals. These facts suggest that most arts philanthropy is not engaged in addressing inequities that trouble our communities, and is not meeting the needs of our most marginalized populations.
Do you agree?
I am one of the most published writers in the museum field. Do you know how that happened? Nobody else wrote. Write now, write about everything. You will get published
The Homeless Museum of Art is not about the homeless problem in America, it’s basically a museum without a home. Since 2002, New York-based artist Filip Noterdaeme has been acting like the pretentious douchebag that I have grown to love. His homeless museum has been located in various places - his rental apartment in Brooklyn, an activist’s initiative, a vacant artist’s studio, part of a collection of original artworks and a mock museum booth in a commercial art fair. The mission statement of HoMu (which even has a board of trustees by the way) is “to subvert the increasingly impersonal, market-driven art world and expose the sellout of cultural institutions to commerce, cronyism, real estate, and star architects”. Believe it or not, the museum actually has a collection, a homeless one, but a collection nonetheless. Even though the museum’s been pretty quiet since 2007, it appears that the museum reveals its location from time to time. Hopefully it won’t turn up outside your home.
A grumble: Just when you think you are cresting the technology wave…
I recently got a smartphone. It wasn’t the iPhone that I so desperately wanted, but then androids have come on in leaps and bounds in the last years and almost all apps are available for both.
I was now able to download and play with all the museum apps I have been reading about for what seems like an age. Museum of London’s Streetmuseum for example, a great app that I can’t wait to try out in London. But technology is moving so fast, that there is always something newer. Do not get me wrong, I am all for development and progress, but when does the constant development of solutions for the very newest technology become exclusionary?
The example that prompts this post is the new BBC international iPlayer. The service costs either €6.99 per month or €50 for the year. It is not the same as the iPlayer in the UK due to licensing issues, which means that you have access to BBC-produced material, at the moment that is 150 old and new programmes (it’s a different grumble entirely that some of the material is shown on BBC Entertainment - the international channel - anyway). So this is a paid for, limited version of the UK iPlayer. Oh, and it’s only available on the iPad. Now, this baffles me. We all know that it is perfectly possible to produce a programme like this for the computer, it’s not like lots of phone apps that require GPS or other technology a computer doesn’t possess. A lot more people have computers than iPads, there are more people have iPhones than iPads. The decision was obviously not based on how most people would like to access the service. So why would they launch an exciting new product, which has been hyped since the beginning of the year and only mention a week before that it’s iPad only?
I know the parallel between the museum and the BBC is a little forced, but you do see this happening in museums too. Until three weeks ago I longed for a phone that would augment reality for me, or find me on a map. Does anyone else feel this way? Or are you all smugly reading this from your iPad??
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