Master's degree #2 and the exhibition

We had the most excellent time with Patti & Maggie last weekend. It was like a girls' weekend (+Stu, but he fits in nicely with the girls) with lots of eating and drinking and time outside. It was so great to have them visit before we move, and celebrate a little early about being done with school.

But this week was a big one. Thursday, I woke Stu up with the sweet sounds of me wretching in the toilet...I guess the whole morning sickness thing comes back when you feel stress? Because Thursday morning was my thesis defense, which I had to survive to graduate that afternoon! Aside from the sickness and then my class mate's alarm malfunctioning and thus us beginning an hour late, it all went very well. I now have a few edits to make before turning it in to the department for grades and archiving. And, most importantly, I now have a SECOND master's degree under my belt. Woot! Now the bigger question, am I employable?!?

Well, I darn well should be as a curator, since I also finished installing the small show I put together at Moderna Museet this week! It looks really professional, IMHO. Here is a little information online in English (though, admittedly, with some typos. Where did my italicized titles go, or that last 's'?)
I took pictures over the few days of installation, which I will post here whether you are interested or not. This blog has the secondary function, aside from communication, of 'archiving' our experience here, and I think its a project I want to remember. Regardless, it has been a lot of fun. I have felt a little insecure about some decisions, but I've still had to make them. I have done a ton of research and planning and installation, along with the *amazing* staff at the museum (I cannot get over how professional and nice they are!) It feels pretty good. And admittedly, it also felt pretty good when both the museum's director and deputy director came through and gushed about how good it looked. Almost like they were surprised about how good it looked, but regardless, I'll take the praise!

Day 1, a bunch of empty display cases

Day 2, placing the artworks, wherever they would actually fit!

"Closed for Re-hanging"

All of the works in their right places, display cases in their right positions.

Day 3, putting on the glass covers

The very funny conservator cleaning the inside of a case, while making Anchorman jokes about being in a glass cage of emotion.

Day 3, wall texts in place! Wow, I hope people read them.

And, we're done!

I love this wall. I love Henri Matisse. Holy wow, I got to put a Matisse in my school art show!

In the middle is the TV screen showing a sound piece in conjunction with one of the books. There are also two other screens showing book films I planned (and Stu edited!), from a selection of works in the show, with the idea that visitors can better see the three-dimensional object via film than they otherwise can under glass.

And then there are lots and lots of artists' books. Each book has a corresponding 100-word text to give it some context, so I hope people read them. You may not even realize what you are looking at without them! And each also had to have a specially designed cradle for it, so the conservator and prints & drawings technician worked incredibly hard to make these in a very short time span.
One of the other curators (one the museum actually pays for their work) wanted to use a few of the works I had already earmarked for exhibition, in addition to needing nearly ALL of the large display cases in storage for another show. I held on to the artworks, diplomatically, but since he had left post-it notes on so many of the best display cases, the technicians and I had to scrounge for whatever could be found. Surprisingly difficult, but it all worked out. I didn't have to cleave any of my darlings due to space issues. It just meant I could not group the books according to any particular theme; they just got placed where they fit.
There is no real 'opening' event. We had talked about it quite a bit, and early on, I had been excited about it. But in the last few weeks, I'd just gotten too busy and tired to pursue an opening or to think of a curator's speech, so it opens to no fanfare this morning at 10am. If you are in Stockholm any time this summer, go see it!

Last week of interning

I just finished up my fall semester internship at Moderna Museet, working within the registrar's department. During the 13 weeks with the exhibitions registrar, among other things, I got to help de-install the big Ed Ruscha show, assisted in this year's Modernautställningen, began helping organize the upcoming Eva Löfdahl, Siri Derkert, and the giant Turner, Monet, Twombly shows, re-learned the TMS database (surprisingly, this was far less painful after library school!) and made some lovely new friends. This is the third internship I have done for school credit, and this was by far the best experience and will take me far in applying for collections management jobs in the future. (And it didn't hurt that they gave me lovely presents on my last day!)

Learning from the master in the galleries

8 sculptures that all looked virtually the same, all were untitled, could not be physically labeled, in which none of the measurements added up, but belonged to several different collectors and therefore, needed to be differentiated. See my ingenious post-it note solution.

 But maybe one of the best things out of this was more short-term. To complete my master's degree in June, I have to write a thesis and curate an exhibition. And I just found out that I got the okay to curate my master's show AT MODERNA MUSEET! I am pretty psyched. It will be lots of work, and I think that next April and May will be the busiest 2 months I have ever experienced in my life, but it will be a fantastic experience. And pretty fantastic to put on the ol' CV, too!

Don't call the minister Frodo

First thing's first: holy blizzard, batman!  Today started innocently enough, with just a few more clouds than usual. But when I headed home during rush hour, I was stomping through 3-inch deep puddles of slush in a zero-visibility snow storm, bent over like an old woman to prevent the wind from literally bowling me over. You couldn't see one centimeter of platform space at T-Centralen, there were so many people taking public transportation to avoid the weather.

Anyway, to the post:
Stu and I decided to move to Stockholm from DC in March/April 2009, shortly before Daily Show segment the Stockholm Syndrome was aired (I tried desperately to embed the video, but Blogger was not having it. You'll just have to follow the hyperlink on Stockholm for Part 1 and Syndrome for Part 2.)  We thought it was hilarious, but only recently watched it again after *moving* to Stockholm, with more understanding of some of those things the Wyatt Cenac describes. Even funnier, because they do actually offer massages at Moderna Museet, on Tuesdays!

Another instance, I had NO idea who Leif Pagrotsky was in Part 2. And I didn't even really get why Cenac called him Frodo Baggins in the episode. I just thought it was because Pagrotsky was being kind of a stodgy douche...why not use lovely Swedish women to illustrate the insanity of the Swedish tax rate?!? But he was the Swedish Minister of stuff that included culture until a few years ago. Now, according to Wikipedia, he is apparently advising Greece on how to prevent more financial melting.

So, fast forward to Friday night, when I attended a very Who's-Who-in-the-Swedish-art-scene party at Moderna Museet to welcome the museum's new director. It was fun! The party was sponsored by Absolut Vodka and the food served was part of a relational aesthetics performance piece by an artist (meatballs and spicy noodles?) I had several "Oh My God, that's so-and-so" moments. The Swedish art scene is tiny, after all, but Joseph Kosuth was there!

As was Leif Pagrotsky. I didn't recognize him, really, until I was standing quite near him in the crush of people at the bar greedily awaiting another Absolut cocktail. Which was about when the interview with Wyatt Cenac slowly started replaying in my head, but it wasn't Leif Pagrotsky that I recognized this guy as, it was totally Frodo Baggins. I couldn't think of anything BUT Frodo Baggins!

This guy standing next to me, I have seen him before...what the eff was his real name again?!?

Sometimes words come out of my mouth before the filter kicks in, especially if I have had a drink or two, so I actually repeated in my head several times "Don't call him Frodo, Don't call him Frodo" while standing in line. Not that I introduced myself to him or anything, but did the whole hello & head-nod in recognition thing. How awful that my only knowledge of this apparently well-known and respected man is that he slightly resembles a well-known and respected hobbit. He is not a very tall man. Gah.

That particular drink was my last of the evening. Probably for the best.

Modernautställningen

Whew, busy week! I thought I was busy the week of Fotografiska opening, but this week was far crazier.

Thursday was the big opening for Modernautställningen (for which there were a total of 4 opening celebrations.) My supervisor at the museum got sick and spent most of the week at home with a 40c fever. So I did the exhibition registrar's work for the exhibition, after having interned less than a month. And admittedly, not the most efficient way: the opening started at 7pm on Thursday, and I was working with the curator until 6:30pm making sure the last details were in place. But it got done.

And the vernissage party was nuts. Everyone with a name in the Stockholm art/culture scene was present, crowding every corner of the 4th floor spaces. And because I was working to finish things until 6:30, I didn't eat dinner, so after a few beers and glasses of champagne, I was having a blast. Dinner was burgers at 10:30 at Max before the after-party at Berns. Not a bad night.

A few pictures:

Maybe they need priorities

I have mentioned that I am doing an internship in the fall at Moderna Museet here in Stockholm, and I have probably posted dozens of pictures on this blog from the museum...they are one of the biggest and most well-regarded in Scandinavia, with a large fantastic collection, interesting special exhibitions and events (for example, Ed Ruscha is doing an artist tomorrow at 4pm!) They also have a very colorful history that is well-known, from the eccentric days of director Pontus Hulten to having to close & remodel because of mold. I am super-psyched for this opportunity.

So I was surprised when I read that Moderna has failed a basic audit and has been accused of inadequate control of its collections. In part for LOSING AN ANDY WARHOL.

This Warhol seems to be a small lithograph from a book. But it is not the first time I have heard they misplaced a Warhol...we get to meet all sorts of interesting art people as a part of my program, and one particularly mad curator told us the story of the Andy Warhol retrospective exhibition at Moderna in the 1970s in which the artist brought a very, very large purple flower painting to Stockholm for the show (looks something like below...Moderna doesn't let you take their images from their site!) Apparently it was so big, Warhol didn't want to take it back to NYC so he gave the work to one of his Swedish acquaintances, who didn't have the wall space for Ten-Foot Flowers so he gave it to Moderna, but it was too big for the museum as well, and who knows how it got there, but it was found 20 years later in runway storage at an airport in Ohio. They got a call from some confused airport official saying "Uhhh, we got your big purple painting here," only identified because it said "Moderna Museum Stockholm" on the box. It now hangs proudly in the museum's permanent collection.

Anyway, slightly more disconcerting is the fact that this audit was failed because of the department in which I plan to be interning! Keeping track of art and collection objects in almost any museum is the job of the registrar's office...they organize loans in and out, they record any movement of any work inside the museum, they know what is in storage, what is under conservation, what can be used for websites and advertising, etc. Looks like I'll be learning by doing?

I have a meeting with the registrars at Moderna tomorrow afternoon, and I guess I'll have to ask about the report? I'd love to hear what happened! Or maybe its simply that Andy Warhol paintings in that collection just go missing?

Pictures from the opening party:

The entrance

The line to get in just after 7pm (yes, it did start at 7.)

The crowd. And it was part sponsored by Audi, so there is a random convertible on the plaza.

And someone decided it was cool to hire extremely skinny girls to wear giant hats and just stand by the entrance looking moody. Seriously.

Annie Leibovitz and Vee Speers arrived by boat.

And then she was totally mobbed by reporters. She stayed [maybe] half an hour.

  

Random weird fashion shoot in the middle of the gallery. But we had our make-up done, so that was kinda fun.

It was super crowded and scenester-y, but I had a great time. And no dinner and many cocktails. 

Fotografiska opening weekend

Today was the big press opening for the new Fotografiska museum in Stockholm! I have been on my feet since about 7:30, shuttling artists from one side to the other of a what is a very large museum. Thankfully, with two Americans and an Australian among them, it was all English, English, English all over the museum (which made me feel much less like an idiot.)

I'll make this post quick, because I only have an hour at home before going back for the VIP opening (ha, I had to add that VIP part.) But I got to meet famous artists Annie Leibovitz, Lennart Nilsson, the lovely Vee Speers, and Joel-Peter Witkin (who was way more normal than his works would have you think.) Yes, Annie was treated like a total superstar (and even better, she asked for Starbucks lattes and diet cokes to be available at her press appearance, neither of which actually exist in Sweden!)

I didn't get any decent pictures...I only had the guts to take a few during the press talk, and felt totally embarrassed by my crappy Sony camera beside all the giant fancy reporter cameras.

Everything seemed to go off without *many* hitches (the toilets all worked, but we were still sticking labels to the wall throughout the day.) Tomorrow is the official public opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony, and there is a full weekend schedule planned with lectures, signings, and tours. I'll try to take better pictures, but no promises.

Maybe we need some color

It occurred to me that we haven't been taking many pictures lately. We took so many while traveling...maybe Stockholm got boring in comparison? Its certainly more monochromatic. Nah, I know I have *seen* things that are picture-worthy, I just haven't had the camera with me. And come on, I am not really that interesting...the blog is just better when there are pictures. So I am using what we did this weekend as an excuse to steal a bunch from the web. With a little more color.

We went over to our friends' place for dinner Friday, and while they impressed us with filet mignon, and fancy salad and two different kinds of risotto, I brought chocolate glop. It was supposed to be brownie pudding, but it didn't set, and it turned out to be mostly pudding goo. It tasted like heaven, but turned out looking nothing like this:

Aaaaaaand I still suck at baking in Stockholm.

We stayed out too late Friday and slept in too late Saturday, and missed the few hours of sun in the day. Story of my life. But in the afternoon, we went out to an opening at Magasin 3, a contemporary art space in Stockholm. The curators there are huge supporters of my grad school program, so it feels a little like kissing up by going to the openings, but then again, they show some really great art! The current exhibition is "Always in a Spiral" by Maria Nepomuceno:

She creates these Dr. Seuss-like woven constructions, using rope and pearls and whatever else. They feel very organic and some look almost phallic or yonic, but since they are so super colorful and fun, you just wanted to lie on them like a hammock. We got the chance to meet the artist on Saturday (which is a privilege you get surprisingly often in Stockholm...galleries really support the artist meeting the audience!) and she was very nice. There is an interesting little video showing the installation and more pieces on the M3 website here.

Art sometimes makes me sleepy and hungry, and I think my body is now set to Swedish fika time. So when out for coffee, we also got our first semlor of the season. I feel like maybe the semla bun should have its own dedicated blog post, they are so good. Or maybe its own dedicated blog.

Because Lent is a time of self-denial, these only seem to come out in the weeks before Fat Tuesday. You can see why. Basically, its a sweet cardamom bun filled with almond paste and topped with whipped cream, and when you've finished the entire thing in 12 seconds flat, you want to order another. And then another.

Okay, so more pictures, of the non-hunger-inducing variety. We finally saw Avatar this weekend. It was pretty. It made you think. However, I liked the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus far more. Go see them both.

And Sunday, there was sun, and we actually got out to enjoy it! We walked to the Medeltidsmuseum, the medieval Stockholm museum, on the day it re-opened after a lengthy re-furb. Its built into a bridge in front of the castle, the oldest bridge in the city, in fact. The Norrbro:

I realize this is NOT in color, but what a cool image of the North Bridge from the 1840s!

They had the bridge closed while they reinforced it, so we hadn't even gotten the chance to stand on it until this past weekend. Saturday, the Crown Princess Victoria laid the final stone:

More photos of that here.

The medieval museum was packed with people, even people so hardcore they got dressed up in renaissance clothing for the opening. And I was struck that it had so much more information in English than most Stockholm museums. So we learned, too. We learned that we would never want to live in medieval Stockholm.

And I actually took this last one, a shot from the Norrbro over the river...in our most familiar color palette.

Oslo weekend

We are heading to Norway today! We are taking the train from Stockholm Central, so there will 6 blissful hours of study-time each way. We plan to check out the Munch museum, lots of walking, maybe the new Opera House, eat some moose. Maybe we will even figure out how Stu's last name was originally spelled in Norwegian while there...

Back on Sunday with pictures & stories!

Moderna Museet Cafe

Last Sunday was gorgeous and warm. Its been really lovely weather here, sunny and about 18c (that's in the upper 60s for the Americans.) Perfect fall days, really.

But I spent most of last Sunday writing a paper (remind me why I decided to go back to grad school again?!?)

Stu & I took a break, though, to go to the big Moderna Museet in the afternoon. They had just opened a Salvador Dali show, and it was the last day of a photography show that I thought he would really enjoy. Its a great museum, situated on a little island called Skeppsholmen (which is actually really hard for me to pronounce in Swedish) with several other museums. They are doing track work on some of the subway over there, so its not the *easiest* place to get to from our apartment (I found that out when I mixed up my course time at the MM last week, and ended up being 45 minutes late for class...I took a very expensive cab ride, and it still took forever.)

Anyway, we checked out the Dali, and then took a coffee break. They have several places to grab a fika in the museum, and the restaurant is really quite good, with a large balcony sitting over the water. But we grabbed coffee in the little cafe between the Moderna and the Architecture museum.



I didn't take a picture because we ate them too fast, but holy, we had some of the best waffles with blueberries and vanilla cream.



We have done the cafe thing at several of the museums, like Liljevalchs and others on Djurgården, and many of them take full advantage of the outdoors...something DC museums don't do very well. Don't get me wrong, the cafe at the NGA is great, and the food at NMAI is fantastic, and the space is fun. I guess there is just so much more rustic green space in Stockholm, and it just feels different. More relaxed.



It was definitely the first museum cafe I had ever seen that sold farmer's vegetables! And the prices weren't too bad, either. It's less than $3 for a big bunch of carrots, $1.50 for the bunch of fresh corn. And I learned a new word from this sign: artichoke in Swedish is kronårtskocka. Hmmm...who knew?



We sat on this rock, since most of the tables were taken up. It was a prime spot...there were little kids jumping all over the place.



Anyway, we caught the end of the photography show (I had only seen Larry Clark's work in his books...its even more disturbing and fascinating when blown up on the wall!) I bought a funky plate and lamented that I couldn't buy the whole set (the museum gift shops here are pretty good, too)

And I managed to mostly finish my paper while Stu went out to an Irish bar on Söder to catch the Eagles game with several of his new American-football-watching friends. They might come here next week to see it...Stu bought the NFL package to stream online. He's dedicated.