The time we spent was filled with sessions, preparing for our own presentation, keeping up with IMA work and seeing what the city had to offer.  We did a lot of everything despite the inevitable jetlag.  A 12 hour time difference is a doozie.

Nonetheless, we made the most of it.  Of all the sessions we attended I found the last one to be the most compelling.  It was a lecture by Khairul Azril Ismail called Pudu Jail�??s Graffiti: Aesthetics Beyond the Walls of the Prison Cells.

The presentation had two main ideas: documenting the graffiti of the Pudu Jail in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and studying it to determine its cultural and historical meaning.  Built in 1895, the institution had a reputation for cruelty and is an example of architecture that is vanishing from the Malaysian town.  The site is currently slated for destruction.

K. Azril Ismail presented a brief overview of the jail’s history and then presented some of his haunting photographs.  The black and white photos (give this link some time to load) document graffiti, architecture, vacant spaces and the memory of the people that passed through them.

His photos have captured a wide variety of graffiti, (the literal sense, not in the urban, underground style you might think of) and the second half of his talk was devoted to analyzing, sorting and categorizing the text and images left behind on the walls.  Their work struggles to make sense of images created by motivations that all human beings share as well as others that few experience.  And K. Azril Ismail continues this project despite considerable personal risk, a fact that he has seemingly suppressed with his dedication to the project.

Immediately following this presentation was the session Daniel and I led, Cramming Aesthetics, Art Appreciation & Education into a Fun Museum Experience.  Our talk focused on the exhibition, Nature Holds My Camera: The Video Art of Sam Easterson.

We shared the ways in which we worked with educators, exhibition and graphic designers, the artist and others to juggle a variety of goals.  Primarily we wanted to offer visitors a unique, fun and memorable trip to the museum that would also teach us something about how visitors participate in their own art viewing experience.  Those in attendance at ISEA seemed interested in the project and some even stayed after to ask Daniel and I more questions and get more info about IMA.  Of course we also took this public opportunity to run through IMA stuff on Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, iTunes U and the IMA Blog.  How could we resist?!?

And of course, we saw Singapore: ate a bunch of food, met with staff at the National Museum of Singapore, checked out Chinatown and Little India…discovered a new point of view.  As much as we gained from attending sessions, it felt equally invigorating as a person and as a professional to be exposed to the unfamiliar and allow the experience to overwhelm our senses.  Both creatively and academically this trip was a great success.

Taking concepts from philanthropy and social activism, entrepreneurship, the Underground Railroad and the music of Naptown, to The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Nascar, going green, public art, gas prices and a hypothetical mass transit system, artist Chakaia Booker has ignited conversation pieces on Indianapolis’s sidewalks. By cutting, twisting and weaving together rubber tires, Booker has fashioned a temporary urban art exhibition specifically for Indy, removing the road block between the city’s past and present.

Chakaia Booker: Mass Transit is a project of Public Art Indianapolis, which is managed by the Arts Council of Indianapolis. I asked Mindy Taylor Ross, Director of Public Art for the Arts Council, to share her favorite sculpture from the exhibition:

I have three works in the running at the moment - “Gridlock” at the Simon building, “Take Out” on Market Street and “Holler” at iMoca. I believe they are all good examples of the incredible texture and form artists can make with material. You can see Booker’s unique voice in the material. They are also interactive so you can look or move through elements of these pieces.

Pick your favorite work of art in the poll below, and share your connection to it in the comments section of this post. Be sure to visit iMoca to see Chakaia Booker: The Making of a Public Art Exhibition.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

Photo credit: “Cross Over Effects” image courtesy of Marlborough Gallery, New York.

BM conservator Lisa Bruno and registrar Deana Setzke were here for nearly 2 weeks to oversee the installation all of the artworks into the exhibition cases. As a way to remember all of the hard work that went into the installation of this show, IMA registration department staffer Jesse Speight made a card that I think wonderfully demonstrates all of the things that went into putting this show up.

The Later Canon, 2008, 8 7/8�?? x 11-3/4″, RoseArt Washable Markers, BiC ‘Wite-Out’ Correction Pen, Pencil,
Sharpie Permanent Marker (black) on File Folder

How long did it take you to prepare all of the artworks for the To Live Forever Exhibition?

We started to work on the first object, Coffin of the Lady of the House Weretwahset (37.47a-b), in the Fall of 2006, and were finishing up treatment on the very last object a week before it all left the building! While we have been working on these objects for a little over a year and a half, we have been working on many other projects as well. This includes exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum as well as preparing BM objects for loans to other museums.

There are a lot of different kinds of artworks in this show — from gold to papyrus to stone to ceramic. Did you work on all of these different kinds of artworks or did you have help from other conservators? Or are you a magician able to do all things in your conservation studio?

Many people have worked on this show. Most of the 121 artworks were treated by the objects conservation staff, headed by Lisa Bruno, and include Jakki Godfrey, myself, and intern Emy Kim (I abandoned the lab for 5 months in the middle of it all to go on maternity leave!). The papyrus piece, The Book of the Dead of Neferrenpet (35.1448a-d) was treated by the paper conservation department headed by Toni Owen, and include Rachel Danzing and intern Caitlin Jenkins. The treatment of Elaborately Painted Shroud of Neferhotep (75.114) was a collaboration between paper, objects and paintings conservation.

The Conservation Department of the Brooklyn Museum (Left to Right, Richard, Carolyn, Tina, Jakki, Lisa, Caitlen, Toni, Rachel, Elaine)

Our paintings conservators include Ken Moser (who is also the head of the entire conservation department), Carolyn Tomkiewicz, Richard Kowall and intern Katie Patton. In addition, we had some outside conservators help us with a few treatments. Hiroko Kariya, who has worked with BM conservation off and on over the past 12 years, spearheaded the treatment of the Coffin of the Lady of the House Weretwahset, getting help along the way from our staff as well as from private conservator Catherine Williams. A textile conservator, Kathy Francis, was brought in to help with the textile components of Mummy of Demetrios (11.600a-b) and one of the Mummified Dogs (37.1984E). And those are just the conservators!

Many other departments worked together to create this show �?? the curators, registrars, mountmakers, packers, art handlers, conservation scientists, carpenters, painters, and the list goes on.

What kinds of things did you do to prepare all of the artworks for this exhibition?

When any object is requested for display, we start by carefully examining it to understand its current condition, and to determine what treatment it might need to travel and go on display. We keep extensive records of every object that comes through the lab; and we document its condition through a written report and photographs before, during, and after treatment. We adhere to the code of ethics as outlined by The American Institute for Conservation. It�??s fascinating when an object with a long history of conservation comes through the lab. For some of these objects we have treatment records going back to 1918.

In terms of what we actually do when we treat an object: far and away, our main focus is on insuring structural stability for objects going on such an extensive tour. We want to make sure the objects are structurally stable enough (meaning they will not break or be damaged) to withstand travel to and installation in so many museums. In order to stabilize objects we may adhere previously broken pieces together with a stable and reversible adhesive, or consolidate flaking paint �?? again, with a stable adhesive. Integral to the stability of an object is how they are handled, travel and are displayed.

We work with a mount maker to create mounts or supports that an object may travel on and are displayed with. For example, when you walk through the exhibit, look at the two dog mummies. They are attached to padded boards, and held in place with metal mounts that secure the mummies to the board. Or, look at the ceramic Female Figure, (07.447.502). If you look closely, you�??ll see a metal mount, painted to look like part of the object, which is holding the figure safely in place. Once you start to look, you�??ll see mounts everywhere! We worked with several mountmakers for this exhibition, including David Geiger, Chris Bamford, Tracie Sachs and Larry Bamburg.

We also work with special art packers to make crates with appropriate materials to minimize any vibration while the object travels. All of these factors play into the structural stability of an object.

After all of the structural stability concerns have been addressed, we focus on the aesthetics of an object (making it look nice). This often means we will clean an object. How we clean an object depends on what material it�??s made from. Obviously, we wouldn�??t clean a ceramic and a mummy in the same way. The cleaning process (and stabilization process) is only undertaken after extensive examination and documentation of an object and discussion with the curator. After cleaning, we would discuss with the curator the extent of compensation if certain parts were missing.

Which artwork did you spend the most time working on?

The Coffin of the Lady of the House Weretwahset (37.47a-b) took the most work. While the bottom section of the coffin had been on display at the museum before, the lid probably hasn�??t been on view for a hundred years. It needed both stabilization and cleaning. I won�??t go into the details of the treatment but here are a few before and after treatment pictures �?? you can see what a dramatic difference conservation made.

Left: Lid of the Coffin of the Lady of the House Weretwahset, 37.47, before treatment Right: after treatment

Can you talk about conservation’s role in determining how these artworks are displayed? For example, did you advise on the mounts that will be used to support the artworks while on view or did you help determine things like the light levels at which the objects can be lit?

For every object that goes on display, conservation will weigh in on almost every aspect, working with curators, registrars, designers, and mountmakers. We recommend types of mounts, light levels, environmental requirements (temperature and humidity), safety requirements (type of vitrine, if the case needs to be alarmed, or platform can be used, to name just a few), handling and installation requirements (including case design and materials), packing requirements as well as how long an item can be displayed. If an object will travel to another museum, we work with the registrars to review facilities information of every venue to make sure our requirements can be met.

How did you get all the artworks from the Brooklyn Museum to the IMA?

Artwork can travel by many means of transportation, from special air-ride trucks that minimize vibration, to airplanes �?? both cargo and passenger �?? to ship. While I can�??t go into the details for how the objects traveled to the IMA, I will tell you that a courier was near the art at all times. This person made sure they arrived at the IMA safe and sound.

What’s it like for an artwork to travel halfway across the country?

Scary! No, not really. There is so much preparation for a show like this, and a huge team of excellent professionals working together to ensure that these objects travel safely. It�??s fantastic that people all across the US will have an opportunity to see and learn about these amazing objects.

What’s your favorite artwork in the show and why?

I love them all. When you conserve an object, even if you don�??t really like it at first, you end up spending so much time with it and learning its secrets, that you end up liking them all in the end. If I really had to choose, my favorite piece would be the Coffin of the Lady of the House Weretwahset (37.47a-b). It needed a lot of treatment, so we spent a lot of time getting to know her. What was really neat is that the coffin was reused in antiquity [go here (for a video that discusses this]. On the side of the coffin, you can see where the previous occupants name was scratched out and the name of the second occupant was written in. I know that the curator, Ed Bleiberg, went into this in much more detail in the catalog. I also love the shallow saucer (09.889.29) because it�??s so simple and such a fundamental shape. They used these shallow bowls 5000 years ago and we�??re still using shallow bowls today. Finally, I love the footcase of a mummy (73.89). I find it fascinating that even in death the Egyptians are stomping on their enemies (look on the underside of the footcase)!

I noticed one of the artworks in the show is a gaming board. I believe the game that is played on there is called Senet. Have you ever played Senet (of course, not with the museum piece!)?

I have not �?? but it sounds like fun! [You can go here to play an on-line version of Senet]

Since this show is called To Live Forever, and demonstrates some of the ways Egyptians dealt with the idea of the afterlife, did you find yourself considering your own mortality when working on this show?

Not really �?? I was too busy for that! When working with such ancient objects I always think about the people who made them. I think about every day things like what they may have looked like - what they had for lunch the day they were making that particular object - what they were chatting about with the other people in the workshop. I think about all the hands the objects passed through until now �?? ending up in my hands. I especially love handling an object, like a tool or a piece of ceramic, where you can feel the finger impressions of the maker. I think about the mummies in this show, like Demetrios, and what an amazing journey he has been on. Thousands of years old �?? living in Egypt in a time when no one there even knew the Americas existed, and here he is, in Brooklyn, NY. He�??s even been in Brooklyn longer than most of us have been alive. Now he�??s going to travel all over the US.

One piece in the show is the now-famous mummy, Demetrios, that the Brooklyn Museum had CT scanned. Can you tell us anything in particular we should look for when we see this piece?

You should take some time to look at that beautiful portrait, and the gilded parts on the body. I love that his feet were drawn on the linens and gilded.

At the ISM, Footprints features taxidermy to die for. In an exploration of the natural history of what is today Indiana, stuffed ice age sabertooths cavort with stuffed otters, owls, fish and badgers, arranged in an unintentionally surreal tableau. This is installation art if I�??ve ever seen it: a barrage of lives that were, juxtaposed for maximum emotional impact. Later in the show, there are piercing black-and-white photos of Indiana�??s hunting history. The eyes of the hunters and their giddy hounds smolder with pride in front a wall of raccoon skins, circa 1935. Footprints has a high haunt factor.

The Harley-Davidson Museum, on the other hand, is pure exaltation. This cathedral to industrial design and American capitalism opened just this month after a multi-year planning process. Founded in 1903 by two pals (Bill Harley and Arthur Davidson) pimping bikes in a shed, Harley-Davidson is now global. Designed by Pentagram �??the same firm the IMA is working with now on branding and wayfinding�??the museum building is gutsy urban chic on a 20-acre plot in downtown Milwaukee, and a new biker mecca, no doubt.

Inside, there�??s a motorcycle preservation lab, a stylistic gallery of engines and gas tanks, a social history of Harleys, and a slanted video screen with Evel Knievel footage. (The caf�?s corn-and-barley salad with tarragon pesto dressing was also super yum). Though the whole place could easily fall into the corporate propaganda category, I came away with an appreciation for the artistry of automotive engineering, an expanded concept of rugged American coolness, and a crush on the sexed-up architecture.

Both exhibitions raise questions about agendas in museums. Museums are by nature mediated experiences. How do artifact selection, building design and didactic language work on you? An object�??an embarrassed-looking stuffed fox or a vintage Harley Electra Glide Sport�??can leave you reeling.

We like to noodle on these issues at the IMA. The question of mediation or interpretation is especially interesting in the case of IMA�??s Art & Nature Park slated to open in 2009. You can�??t hang a label on a cloud. So we�??re looking for ways to create dialogue between art and nature in visitors�?? minds in surprising ways.

If you�??ve had any memorable museum pilgrimages this summer, or meditations on museum objects with impact, do tell.

Maybe CT Scan of the Week is more accurate. But we all know what a mummy-scan means… To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum opened this past weekend, highlighting ancient Egyptian art from the Brooklyn Museum!

This summer, I was at the IMA leading up to the debut of the website, and now during the exhibition opening. It has been really exciting to see all of the planning and thought that goes into making a website entertaining and informational for the online visitor.

The works of art in the exhibition detail Egyptian beliefs of afterlife, including where you go, what happens, and what you need. The IMA web team has tried to highlight a variety of the objects that are in the exhibit on the website with an online gallery, an interactive mummy-scan, and an interactive timeline of the objects, showing the works from Brooklyn contrasted with works from the IMA�??s collection.

The Nugget Factory also filmed and produced videos with Brooklyn�??s conservator (below) and curator, which are featured on the website, as well as being played in the gallery. New videos will be going onto the website throughout the run of the exhibition

There is also a page from the TLF Flickr set, featuring pictures of people around the Indianapolis community and their answers to the question, What can�??t you live or die without? Check out some of the hilarious answers. I don’t think my picture is up yet, but I think my choice is black mascara and my cat Osiris. That surely will get me some bonus points with the green guy.

I also got to be a part of a very unique event the IMA hosted this past Saturday. Despi and Daniel decided to preview the digital content of the TLF site, as well as some other aspects of the advertisement and design, to the other museums who will be hosting this traveling show at a later date.

I think there was generally a lot of excitement about what they would be able to do for their own exhibitions with access to content like this. It’s also a great way to show a wide variety of audiences and professionals in the field the type of work that is done here, increasing the renown and reputation (and notoriety?) of the staff at IMA. I don’t know if anything like this has happened before, but I think it’s brilliant.

The IMA is also hosting a handful of events in celebration of the TLF exhibition, which will be the meat of your bullet list this week.

• Friday July 18th, starting at 6pm, is an afterlife Double Feature with Performance Immortal, a dance show by NoExit Performance, inspired by the To Live Forever exhibit, and after that, Summer Nights features The Mummy.
• August 9th at 11am and 14th at 7pm join us for the tour Immortality in Art, a look at To Live Forever and immortality in cultures throughout the IMA’s galleries.
• Thursday, August 28th at 6:30pm is Deciphering Egyptian Art, a lecture on some of the forms seen in the To Live Forever exhibition.
• You can always check out programs and events for classes, tours and lectures on the IMA calendar.
• Some ancient Egyptians painted their coffins yellow in imitation of the gilded coffins of royalty.
• The Nile river flows North through Egypt, and is 4135 miles long.

Enjoy poking around the website and let us know what’s thrilling you to death.

Good news, right? Until the day when scientific advancements make living forever possible, everyday blogger-types like myself can pursue other life-extending options gleaned from those who do it best.

The Danish people seem to have figured something out. Ranked (once again) as the “happiest people in the world” in a recent international survey, one would expect the Danes to also have a longer life expectancy. Some suspect it’s low expectations that keep them content, while others say it’s the city’s way of life, with nearly one-third of Danes biking to work and another one-third taking public transit. Others suggest it’s the laid-back, carefree lifestyle they lead with free healthcare and top-notch education systems. I am not sure how Americans can avoid worry, but Hoosiers can certainly benefit from a better public transit system. The sooner it is on track, the sooner we’ll be whistling our way to work.

Next up, Japan boasts the healthiest population in the world, with a woman’s life expectancy averaging 86 years. A diet rich in fish, rice and seaweed helps keep heart disease and cancer under control, while government-sponsored fitness programs help the Japanese stay trim. My advice — spin class and sushi for dinner tonight. I hear the Wii Fit is also to die for.

Leading the world in smarts, the Finnish students come out on top. They attribute a good education system to student-teacher relationships, pupils’ enthusiasm to learn and an environment conducive to learning mathematics, with strict rules minus the high anxiety. Determining the smartest population is impossible because there is no standardized global exam. Staying mentally fit has been a proven factor in reducing the onset of disease. So it’s back to reading Middlemarch and playing Settlers of Catan next Friday for me.

To state the obvious, I think we can agree that happiness, health and intelligence all contribute to longevity. So my plug for an instant fix — RSVP for tomorrow’s exhibition preview and party for To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum at the IMA. Bring a friend, have a drink and learn a little about the ancient Egyptians’ quest to live forever.

• Get your tickets here

  

I had the pleasure of taking a tour through the IMA�??s conservation lab last week, for a chance to get a quick look at their space and see a sliver of all of the amazing things that go on down there. I am intrigued by conservation: it requires a high degree of patience, the hand skills of a surgeon and knowledge of a wide range of subjects like chemistry and art history. The lab is a huge space, 7000 sq. ft, and has separate rooms for painting, works on paper, sculpture and textiles.

The last room we toured, textile and fashion conservation, was the highlight for me. I have taken some Costume History classes, so I�??ve had a minute amount of first hand experience handling the F.I.T. collection- and this was mostly for examining construction. I don�??t really know anything about the steps that need to be taken for preservation or display. They mentioned Shared Beauty, an exhibition of Eastern rugs and Western beaded handbags, which had recently gone up in the Paul Textile Arts Gallery. So, I took a swing through the exhibit to see what it was all about. I was floored! I was hooked! Okay, no more rug puns.

I decided to learn a little more about Shared Beauty, and got a chance to meet with Kathleen Kiefer, the Senior Conservator of Textiles, and Jessica Barner, the textile conservation technician. Kathleen explained a little more about the work they did to get the bags and rugs ready for the show, and Jessica gave me a tour of the lab and the gallery space, showing me some specific examples of the work they did to prepare the objects for the show.

Most of these objects were in great condition, and the vast majority of their time and effort went into preparing the rugs for hanging. It�??s a delicate process involving, first, the repair of any damage the rug might have sustained, like worn or loose areas, but mostly the careful stitching of Velcro (on a twill tape support backing and perfectly centered) onto the backs of the rugs. This matches up to Velcro that is affixed to the wall. The silk rugs get propped onto strainers, angled boards covered in ultra-suede, to remove some of the pull of gravity off their more delicate knots and weave. Kathleen also mentioned that they had to devise a safe way to get the upward facing fringe to lay flat against the strainers. She used gold thread, tacked at intervals, to combat gravity and invisibly keep the fringe upright.

For the bags, not much work was needed. However, laying flat with no armatures or mounts, the bags did need a little more body shape. Kathleen and Jessica (assisted by Petra Slinkard, Curatorial Assistant, Textile and Fashion Arts; Brose Partington, Mount Maker; and Susan Mefford, a Textile Lab volunteer) created custom pillows for each one out of specially selected materials. Because the bags are enclosed in cases, the most important aspect is the material in and around them. A lot of fabrics and materials like plastics will give off gases harmful to the objects nearby. The ultra-suede used for displays is chosen specifically for its chemical stability. It also comes in lots of colors!

I highly recommend this exhibit. The bags are breath-taking in their intricacy; they glitter in their cases, miniature representations of the motifs on the rugs. The rugs are grand, lush interpretations of millennia old traditions, but look so modern. I longed to touch everything- a feeling, I think, that is natural in a gallery of objects so deliciously tactile. When you visit, you can think about all the loving attention each object got in order to make it there for you!

• Shared Beauty is open on the second floor through March 8, 2009.
• Simply Halston, a sampling of women’s wear by (Hoosier!) fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick, is open in the gallery next door until January 4th, 2009.
• The word textile, from the Latin texere, to weave, technically means interwoven threads, while fabric can mean woven, knit, looped, knotted, or fused fibers.
• The oldest carpet in the world, the Pazyryk carpet from 500 B.C.E., was discovered frozen in a Siberian cave burial site in 1949.
• The rugs in this show come from 5 major areas: Iran, Turkey, Caucasus (modern day Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia), India, and Turkmenistan.
• The IMA began their textile collection in 1888 with the purchase of an Irish embroidery.

120 feet of words to be exact. Jack Kerouac captured the beating heart of a generation �?? one of wanderers, writers, and dreamers �?? with his iconic novel On the Road, written in one sweeping session of 20 days in the spring of 1951.

The single piece of paper (which is really tracing paper sheets taped together), ancient in its tea-like stain and torn edges, personal in its hand-written corrections, and inspiring in its fervent immediacy, is a testament to all that is, or was, �??Beat�?? �?? a more free approach to self-expression, non-conformity, a bohemian lifestyle, among many other characteristics. The Beats wrote about sex, drugs, jazz �?? more than enough to shock our postwar nation�??s elders and enough to invigorate their children. Kerouac compiled notes from journeys across America to create the closely autobiographical nature of On The Road, sometimes accompanied by anyone from Neal Cassady to Allen Ginsberg. Even though there was exceptional attention paid to Kerouac�??s fortnight feat, the novel had been taking form long before the author�??s almost overnight success, in between scribbling lines at Cassady�??s and exploring each state he visited in great detail.

How did the scroll end up here? Aside the fact that it is on tour at museums and libraries across the country, Indianapolis Colt�??s owner Jim Irsay bought the scroll in 2001 and Jim Canary of Indiana University has been its conservator since.

To me, the beauty of On the Road is its timeless appeal of the great American road trip we all want to take, with those fearless zealots that we call friends and the never-ending search for inspiration in a world that becomes all to familiar with daily life.

Who�??s who in On The Road

Real-life person/Character name

Jack Kerouac / Sal Paradise
Gabrielle Kerouac / Sal’s Aunt
Alan Ansen / Rollo Greb
William S. Burroughs / Old Bull Lee
Joan Vollmer / Jane
Lucien Carr / Damion
Neal Cassady /Dean Moriarty
Carolyn Cassady / Camille
Hal Chase / Chad King
Henri Cru / Remi Boncoeur
Bea Franko / Terry
Allen Ginsberg / Carlo Marx
Diana Hansen / Inez
Joan Haverty / Laura
Luanne Henderson / Mary Lou
Al Hinkle / Ed Dunkel
Helen Hinkle / Galatea Dunkel
Jim Holmes / Tom Snark
John Clellon Holmes / Tom Saybrook
Herbert Huncke / Elmer Hassel
Frank Jeffries / Stan Shephard
Allen Temko / Roland Major
Bill Tomson / Roy Johnson
Ed Uhl / Ed Wall

On the Road Again with Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank is open at the IMA now through September 21.

I’ve had the pleasure to work on the team designing this exhibition and we�??re all really excited for next week�??s opening. How can you go wrong? Kerouac’s original scroll for On The Road, surrounded by Frank’s series The Americans.

Most of you probably read On The Road in either high school or college. I read it after reading an interview with Bob Dylan, who said that it changed his life. Its crazy, I’ve come across quite a few things in that way. Dylan says he likes it, I check it out. I first became aware of Frank in a modern art class that I took in college.

For those of you not familiar with either works, here’s the backstory:

In 1951, at a friend’s house, Kerouac sat down and started typing On The Road using sheets of teletype paper which he taped together to feed through his typewriter. 20 days and 6,000 words later he had the entire manuscript on eight, fifteeen-foot rolls of paper. The text is single-spaced, without paragraphs, and edited in pencil. Can you imagine creating one of the 20th-centuries most influential novels in 20 days of marathon typing? One word: Coffee. In the gallery you’ll be able to see the first 84 feet of the scroll until August 10th, at which time the other 35 feet will be unrolled.

In 1955, Robert Frank started out from New York to observe and photograph the United States. He traveled the country for two years taking 28,000 photos. What he came back with was black and white depictions of anything but the 1950s American utopia we’ve all come accustomed to seeing in pop culture. Ironically, Frank had trouble securing an American publisher so the book of photographs was originally published in France as Les Américains. In the gallery, you’ll see the 83 photographs Frank chose, arranged in the order of the book.

What I think is going to be a great feature of this exhibition is the educational space. Here you’ll get the chance to sample a real underwood typewriter, just like the one Kerouac used. You’ll see a first edition of On The Road and get to have a seat and view some great documentary footage and interviews, including Kerouac on a 1959 Steve Allen Show, reading from On The Road.

The exhibition opens next Thursday, June 26th. Be here for the opening celebration at 7pm for a concert with David Amram who was a lifelong collaborator of Kerouac’s. The two collaborated on jazz and poetry readings in New York’s Greenwich Village and on many other projects including the film Pull My Daisy from 1959. (written and narrated by Kerouac and directed by Frank). The museum is having a Robert Frank film marathon Sunday, August 17 which includes Pull My Daisy. Grab a new Art For You for more info. It should be a fun time. And it’s all free! So really, what’s stopping you? Come by and let me know what you think.