A New Perspective on the American Views at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Like many New Yorkers who for the last few months have been deprived of the pleasures of visiting in-person our city’s numerous cultural institutions due to ongoing COVID-19 induced closures, I cannot wait for The Metropolitan Museum to reopen on August 29, 2020. Admittedly, my eagerness is in no small part due to a desire to share with the public an augmented reality (AR) composition I overlaid onto three historical paintings on display in The Met’s American Wing. With nothing more than a smartphone and a free app, museumgoers can scan the paintings and activate interactive digital content (imagery, videos, news articles, and expert commentary) regarding legal/illegal immigration, human trafficking, and border security issues along the United States southern border. Titled American Landscape(s) AR, this is an independent production made neither as a commission nor with the explicit permission of The Met (though I informed relevant curators and administrators of its activation).
I started researching and composing visual expressions on current affairs related to the US-Mexico border beginning in 2018. Last summer at a workshop in Aspen, Colorado, I shared some of my work with an influential arts patron who did not hesitate to advise: “Why don’t you tell your own story — where you come from, your people, your past — rather than minding all these at the American border?” He probably meant well, but I couldn’t help thinking, ‘Woah, I’m seeing racial profiling in action in artistic terms.’ I was perplexed by what he meant by ‘your people.’ Did he mean…Koreans? Or Korean Americans? All Asians? Korean women perhaps? Or women at large? Or foreign-born people in general? Millennials? I wonder if he would have advised differently had I had the time to share my background as an individual who was born and raised in Korea, settled in New York after working corporate branding in San Francisco, obtained a masters degree in American Fine and Decorative Art, has sold English antiques to Brazillianaires, worked on four different continents, and strives to maintain a degree of worldliness and empathy on what is happening in the world around her. Unfortunately there wasn’t time for such introductions and he perhaps just profiled me based principally on my obvious physical traits. Is commenting on America’s present within the purview of only those who are deeply connected with its past, when many people, including myself, come here to see the country with fresh eyes and contribute to its future?
Rather than be deterred by the senior patron’s advice, I decided to augment what might be the common American perspective with my thoughts and observations about the country using AR — a technology I’ve been working with since 2015 to encourage public discourse by augmenting physical locations and objects with digital content. My past AR projects include imaginary constellations that I ‘hung’ over the Venitian sky in Italy and an Antarctic iceberg that I ‘floated’ off the famous Lorne beach in Australia. For American Landscape(s) AR, I chose a public space in New York City where I feel very much at home — the American Wing at The Met, where I had spent many hours when working towards my master’s degree. The paintings I chose to augment are iconic American sceneries by three nineteenth century masters: The Oxbow (1836) by Thomas Cole, The Gulf Stream (1899) by Winslow Homer, and The Champion Single Sculls (1871) by Thomas Eakins.
My work builds on each of the American masters’ paintings — itself a commentary on socioeconomic and political issues of their day — and expands their reading to contemporary controversies. When scanned on-site using a free app called ROAR (iOS/Android), the paintings activate the digital overlay of interactive text, imagery and videos that spill over their gilded frames, which in this context resemble America’s gilded borders. I wanted to add dimension, compositionally as well as technologically, to these well-known, “quintessentially American” views, similar to how immigrants come to America and add their own character to the country’s foundations. I also want to pose questions, much like the ones being raised at the country’s borders, about unsanctioned independent productions such as this seeking access to institutional spaces. Is this a legitimate way to embed virtual content with zero physical footprint into the museum? Or is the museum’s interior and any content within its walls solely the purview of the administering institution?
I believe we live in a time where identity politics and racial profiling are influencing so much of public and private discourse in a manner that is excessive and counterproductive. Too many people assume a Korean creative is ill-suited to comment intelligently and express empathy on what’s considered ‘non-Korean’ subject matters. Too many people believe people of one race have no right to engage the experiences of another race. Too many people automatically see disrespectful and harmful cultural appropriation in food, fashion, music, and art, and dismiss genuine and well-conceived attempts at mutual learning.
I came to think of American Landscape(s) AR as an op-ed rendered in the augmented reality format — to state that no histories are off-limits to those who bring to one’s chosen subject matter sincerity, rigor, and empathy; that arguing over who is licensed to tell which story is inconsequential; and that, outsiders’ voices bring dimension to existing narratives.
The Met’s American Paintings galleries, while it offers so much to contemplate on, is unfortunately one of the less visited areas in the museum. I hope you’ll give it a visit when The Met reopens, if not for my American Landscape(s) AR*.
*To view this secret exhibit, install the ROAR app on your smartphone, and it will guide you from the moment you arrive at the museum to exactly where to find this AR installation. Free public wi-fi is available at The Met.
More about the project: https://www.sparkplusart.com/seolpark-american-landscapes-ar-met
Bio: Seol Park is a digital engagement thought leader and cultural producer who works and lives at the intersection of technology, art, and branding. Her work and writing have appeared in ABC TV, The Art Newspaper, Media-N, Southern Star, and more.
