Valentine’s Day with a Twist: Put Your Sweetie on Exhibit this Spring
Posted by Nina on February 10, 2012
Still looking for a meaningful Valentine’s Day gift to show your love how much you care? Feel like shouting your love from the rooftops or painting it all over the walls of a museum? We may be able to help (with part of that).
This year, you can express your love AND support arts and culture with a donation to the MAH. Donate $50 now and your gift will help underwrite MAH’s spring exhibition “All You Need is Love.” This interactive museum-wide art and history exhibition will invite visitors to explore the many ways that love is manifest in our everyday lives.
As thanks for your $50 contribution, your message of love will be displayed in the exhibition throughout the spring. And, if you make your donation before 5pm on Monday, February 13th, we will provide you with a hand-crafted, museum quality*, valentine to give to the person you are honoring on February 14.
Want to step it up one more notch? Donate $100 and you can book some sweet museum alone time in our artist-designed love chapel this spring – the perfect place to renew your vows, propose, remember old times, impress a date…
Flowers only last a week. Your love exhibited on the Museum wall lasts forever – (or at least through July).
Note: Clicking these buttons allows you to make a secure online payment with a credit card or Paypal. If you would prefer to write a check to the MAH, please come in or call Karen at 831-429-1964 x7021.
*by which we mean made in a museum.
What Do You Get Out of 3rd Friday?
Posted by Nina on January 31, 2012
As things are changing here at the MAH, we’re always curious to hear what you think. We want to know how the changes are impacting your experience at the museum, and more broadly, your experiences with culture in our community. It’s not easy to ask these questions, especially at an event like 3rd Friday, where people tend to be absorbed in all kinds of book-making, sculpture-building, yarn-bombing shenanigans. So a few weeks ago, the new MAH Director of Community Programs, Stacey Garcia, came to me with an idea. 3rd Fridays are informal, personal, and fun, but our feedback mechanism–onsite and post-event surveys–not so much. Instead, Stacey thought, why not make the feedback experience an activity unto itself?
In January, we experimented with a new feedback format at the 3rd Friday Poetry and Book Arts Extravaganza (full description here, photos from the event here). On the ground floor, Stacey created a “Show and Tell” booth out of an old refrigerator box and some paperbacks. She painted some cardboard black and framed it to look nice. We gave people chalk and the choice of four simple prompts:
At 3rd Friday I made
At 3rd Friday I loved
At 3rd Friday I met
At 3rd Friday I learned
After making a board and taking a photo, each participant had the option to have their photo shared on Flickr or remain private. We have an intern, Kathryn, who emailed each participant individually to thank them for coming, shared their personal photo, and gave them the link to the rest of the photos. We used a simple paper signup list to link individuals to their photos during the event so Kathryn could tie it all together. You can see all the public photos here.
We don’t yet know how people will respond to the emails, and we have some kinks to work out with the booth and camera setup. What we do know is that this is a vastly improved feedback system. I’m curious what you see in these photos, and what your experience of 3rd Friday has been. Enjoy the pics, and join us for 3rd Fridays this spring (Feb 17 – music, March 16 – fire art, April 20 – love fest).
Guest Post: Thoughts on Audience Participation by Artists Andrew Purchin and Lisa Hochstein
Posted by Nina on January 24, 2012
In the fall of 2011, Lisa Hochstein and Andrew Purchin collaborated to create a really special experience at the MAH that blended collage, living sculpture, dance, and active visitor participation. I asked Lisa and Andrew to share the story of their partnership and their reflections on how it felt to work with museum visitors in new ways.
How did MAH bring you together?
Lisa: Last July my show, Undoings, was installed at MAH. The word “undoing” occurred to me repeatedly as I completed this body of work, both in terms of how it relates to the process of collage, and also in how it is central to the impermanence of all aspects of life and the objects that we acquire and later discard. Andrew contacted me to see if I would do something as part of his Makers at MAH day-long residency. I had been wanting to work with the brown paper for a couple of years and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. The resulting performance, Reflections on Undoing, allowed me to translate elements of my smaller collage pieces into larger gestures of tearing and arranging.
Andrew: My Artists Everywhere Project is about everybody making art everywhere so I found myself wanting to create my ideal Makers at MAH day. My perfect studio environment is one in which I get to paint people creating and moving. What if Lisa Hochstein’s collages could move? What if Lisa found a way to tear and manipulate paper in public? I asked Lisa to find a way to move and create in public and I created a protocol where people learn how to move to Lisa’s collages.
What were you surprised by?
Lisa:
- How important the sound was. The range of sounds created by tearing the brown paper were evocative in ways I never would have expected, and the properties/characteristics of the paper were surprising to discover.
- How internal the experience was. I am not by nature a very public person and the way I was able to be comfortable doing this was to turn inward and really hear and feel the environment created throughout the day.
- When I returned to my studio, the work took some unexpected and wonderful turns, including some 3-dimensional pieces that I am casting in bronze now.
Andrew:
- I surprised myself by inadvertently creating a workshop. To promote the event I had to make a video. To make the video I had to create a workshop, which included a guided movement meditation and brief small group discussions.
- I was surprised by the therapeutic power of tearing paper. Afterwards, something caused me to feel a pang of grief, then I imagined I was paper being torn and felt relief.
- The range of participation:
- Some people appeared to be entering deep states of consciousness, others were completely silly, still others were observing and drawing. While quite a few people peered in and then left, others stayed and stayed.
Where is this work taking you?
Lisa: We are continuing to work together, exploring themes that came up during the original performance. We are experimenting with whole body paper manipulation and a range of art materials. We also are each continuing to work on our individual work, incorporating aspects of what we learned from this project.
Andrew: I’m working on sharing the “Moving to Visual Art Protocol,” with more people. I’d like to facilitate a workshop for athletes who would work out at a museum or gallery and then have the opportunity to move their bodies to appreciate visual art in a deeper way.
Lisa and Andrew: We are developing “Doings and Undoings,” a week-long performance installation in collaboration with Hospice of Santa Cruz County, which will involve tearing and manipulating a 1,000-foot roll of paper and exploring themes of avoidance of loss and loss itself.
As part of our research, working with paper will be introduced in workshops for Hospice staff and volunteers as a material for working with loss, grief, and transformation.
Biggest Day Ever… Any Ideas Why?
Posted by Nina on January 9, 2012
This part Friday, we think we set some kind of museum record. We had 2,174 visitors–611 during the day, and 1,563 in the evening for our First Friday festivities. More people came here on Jan 6, 2012 than visited in the entire month of January in 2011.
Why did this happen? We’re not really sure. Every First Friday is big, but this is out of the park.
A couple of special things about this First Friday:
- It was the last day of the toy trains exhibition in the Atrium, which has been incredibly popular with families
- It’s the first First Friday since new exhibitions opened in late December
- There was a big article in the Sentinel on Tuesday about the museum and its transformation over the past year
We also had a few special activities–a downtown sculpture tour with Moto Ohtake and the SculpTour group, and a flower-making craft activity in the classroom. But we usually have a few special activities, so this doesn’t seem too different. We also didn’t have a live band this week (because the trains are so loud), so you could argue that one of the chief draws for First Friday wasn’t happening.
Were you here on Friday? If so, what brought you here, and why do you think it was so busy? We’d love to understand what causes these kinds of spikes so we can plan for different kinds of experiences (and crowds) in the museum.
Happy New Year from… You
Posted by Nina on December 27, 2011
Thank you to Rachael Torres, Mitch Margo, and my dad Scott for making this video… and thanks to all the visitors, members, artists, and friends whose enthusiasm and energy are on display. It’s been a great year for the MAH and we’ve loved having you here.
Here are a few of the statistics we’re proud of this year at the MAH:
- attendance is up 57% compared to 2010
- new membership sales are up by 27% compared to 2010
- individual and corporate giving is up over 500% compared to 2010
- we have stabilized our operations with a $100,000 reserve and seven consecutive months in the black
- we’re expanding our impact through new partnerships with the Second Harvest Food Bank, the Homeless Service Center, the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Downtown Association