Walking Through Campus

In this week's visit to the Thomas Hart Benton Murals, at the IU Auditorium, I found a lot of what David Finn spoke about in his article: Walking in the City. In my personal experience, if I wrote an article about my relationship with the murals and the IU campus, I would title it: Walking Through Campus. I have been to the IU auditorium multiple times for various reasons. I have gone to shows, bought tickets for friends, and I have even gone specifically to look at the murals. In all these visits I have never really "seen" the mural and all it has to offer as a story of Indiana's history.Finn talks about walking the streets of the city and noticing new things about places he sees everyday. In this case, I had a similar experience. After we had our group discussion about the different parts of the murals, my view about everything around me changed. I can no longer walk campus without noticing something different or discovering a new tree, or a cool building, etc.

In the article, Finn talks explicitly about making new discoveries and how it can become a game that you never lose. He explains that there is always something new to see, in his case, walking in the city of New York. As I walked into the auditorium I realized how much I had missed. There was so much to the mural to discover, and I had been there so many times before not even taking a second glance. Finn gives one example of this when he discusses his photograph that he had taken out of a car toward the street. There was a man walking and reading. Not until he developed the film, did he realize that there was another man in the shot. The other man was sitting on a stoop. Each person showed a contrast between "living in their own little worlds." When looking at the mural in sections, we were able to see this is a similar way. When you stand there and glance upward at the mural and scan across it's length all around the auditorium, you are just taking a picture from a moving car, but as soon as you look for a while at a small section of the mural, you have then developed the film and are able to see individual stories.

Like Finn, we were looking at the daily lives of people in small snapshots of time, and then speculating about each person's individual story. The artist provided characters in specific motions, clothes, form, and locations on the mural to allow the viewer to make assumptions and tell stories about what they saw. I do not think the artist was trying to make each and every person perfectly recognizable, or even each scene portrayed, I think the main idea was to find what you believed to be important in the mural. In my case, when I looked at the mural I associated with the farming scene. I have grown up in a rural farming community all my life and as a Hoosier, I relate to that section of the mural.

Money, Morals, and the Divine Market

After our visit to the IU Art Museum exhibit of Renaissance through Modern art, I have a deeper understanding for appreciation and analysis of artifacts. In the time that we walked the area of the exhibit and after our discussions of a few of the paintings, I feel like I am able to look at an artifact with several different lenses. I can look for basic facts and describe only what I see, analyze what I see, and then interpret what I saw. A lot of the still life paintings we looked at gave you the power to decide what was most important, and what each individual object meant. In discussing still life paintings, and learning to really look at artifacts, sometimes longer than you would think you might need to, I have also connected Joshua Wolf Shenk's article: The Things We Carry to my overall experience this week.

In this article Shenk articulates the importance of moral versus market value and worth being intrinsic or extrinsic through the use of a short story regarding his typewriter and objects mentioned on Antiques Roadshow. he also discusses how everything we have are becoming commodities and the market is a divine force. In many cases, once people found out how much their morally valued objects were worth in dollars and cents, the object became more significant, or significantly less important. It was almost heartbreaking for many of the people he mentioned who went to the appraiser because what they found out made them question what they carried. I think one good example of this was the old man who had the whale tooth. As he got it out of the bag, the appraiser, with little patience told him it was worth nothing and that he could find that particular object anywhere he wanted.  The author's description of the mans response to this made me feel so badly. Would it not be better for him to just appreciate what he has and be happy with its intrinsic and moral worth? Now that he was told it was worthless, at least in regards to dollar value, the man became somber and disregards his previous feelings. This is also a great example of another one of Shenk's points. Int he article he discuses the belief in things that can be touched or counted and the belief in feelings, that are evoked by these things. I think both aspects play an important role in why we carry the objects we carry.

Although this article seems more appropriate in suggesting ideas about an antique store, I find it crucial to take a step back and look at this as a way of looking at museums in general, regardless of the exhibition and artifacts presented. at the IU Art Museum, when we were looking at all of the art I was not thinking of value, I just thought that all the artifacts had value, and worth because they were displayed. it makes me wonder what my opinion might be if some random person on the street had it and their grandfather painted it in the past. With grandfather not being famous and having no other well known works, would I still consider it valuable? If you asked me I would probably say no. But that is because we are learning to stray from intrinsic and moral value, and judge on market value. In this day and age, it becomes a question of would I buy that? Not, what is that object's moral history? Interesting concept to think about. I really enjoyed this weeks reading.

Neglected Histories

As soon as I stepped in the door of the Bloomington Antique Mall, I felt at home. The smell of aged antique wood and books is a very familiar and comforting smell to me. Ever since I can remember there have always been antiques and collectibles in my life. The first person I thought of when I walked in and looked around was my grandfather. All his life he devoted every chance he could get to collecting, trading, and selling antiques. He owned a small antique mall in Carmel Indiana called The Heritage of Carmel. I will admit that there was a sense of sadness that overwhelmed me as I walked around, but only because everything I saw brought back good memories. It reminded me of how much I miss him. I was surprised to see that many of the items in the mall resembled many of the items that my grandfather had in his shop. On in particular was the wooden cigar store Indian that is brightly painted and really tall. My grandfather had three or four variations of the one that I saw. He gave my mother one of them and I grew up with it in my house. My mother, very much like her father, adores antiques and most of our house was filled with them.

In Gordon's Historical Display, Commerce, and Community, he discusses the idea of neglected private histories. He also explains that these smaller museums, truck stops, and antique malls are more personal. These places, whether classified as a museum or not, are a place to invite the visitor to have a perspective on the past through an exhibition medium. He also discusses that these kinds of private places are interesting places to visit because they allow the visitor to bring prior knowledge and motivations of understanding and interpreting themes. In the Bloomington Antique Mall his points are reflected. When I walked in the mall I had prior knowledge and memories about antiques. A lot of what I saw connected with my past and I made personal assumptions about people who might have owned the objects displayed,  in regards to my own experiences. I think this makes things so much more interesting.

On one level, visiting places like the Indiana University Art Museum are  great learning experiences. But I do feel like there is a disconnect when the objects you are viewing are not part of your culture or a part of your past. I think it is very important to learn about cultures and places around the world so you have a greater appreciation for what people can create, but it becomes difficult to connect with something that is not familiar. I also think that society neglects to see what is in front of them. The idea of a public private museum seems like an alien idea, but how cool is that? Exposing yourself and presenting the past through everyday objects that people consider private and personal.

Gordon also mentions the three concepts of community, entrepreneurial, and vernacular as public dialogue in various exhibitions. The Bloomington Antique Mall brings to light all three of these concepts. It has local history, it imitates the functions of small business, and also makes consumption an act of public identification. The fact that all the items in the mall are for sale, allows the history of the objects to continue and get passed on to another private owner. It is a cycle. We make assumptions about what are displayed in the mall, we buy objects that we find valuable and has personal history, and then eventually we are judged for what we display. It makes you wonder why something so common and close to peoples' hearts is neglected to be seen as history.