Activating the third spaces.
Audience development is something you’ll hear me talk about because it’s a primary focus of the Barnes. In most institutions, there is a lot of opportunity to speak to new audiences because there are often multiple exhibition spaces to program, a permanent collection, and public programs to round out the equation. In the case of collecting institutions, there’s also the chance to grow the collection with audiences in mind, but that’s not the case here because our collection is no longer growing.
When we moved to the Parkway, we gained a second space; our main collection galleries now sit alongside our Roberts Gallery where we can present special exhibitions three times a year. Long before I arrived, there were plans for an expansion of public programs that could activate our facility and grounds. Our education team is hard at work on this and, moving forward, you’ll start to see more happening in our “third spaces” — our west terrace and public plaza.
But there are other “third spaces” to think about and this is where technology can help us considerably. Two new projects demonstrate how creative use of the existing facility can help us expand our offerings.
The first project — curated by Martha Lucy, our Deputy Director for Education and Public Programs — thinks about our collection experience in a new way. A site-specific piece — Andrea Hornick: Unbounded Histories — comprised of a string of poems by Philadelphian artist Andrea Hornick, responds to specific works in our collection. Her work is streamed via visitors personal devices, but it’s not an audio tour and, in fact, the decommission of our audio tour is what helped make this a reality because we could create a visual language onsite that offers this an alternative with great clarity.
The poems offer unexpected narratives and dream-like imagery — I’ve never been so entranced by anything audio in a collection prior to this work. The resulting juxtaposition of sound and sight encourages us to consider works in the Barnes collection in a new way — as portals to the unconscious.
The work actually goes beyond our first ever sound intervention. Hornick worked for months directly in the collection, putting herself in a trance-like state in order to access the depths of her own psyche, letting the works in our collection lead her toward stories and images that the mind normally keeps buried. Video of the artist working in the space is also present in our collection classrooms and includes footage shot by third parties following her in the space, our security cameras (!!) surveilling the scene, and a gopro mounted headcam on the artist herself.
The second instance is a project that we’ve commissioned from Man Bartlett for an upcoming exhibition, Person of the Crowd. Man is creating digital artwork exploring themes related to the exhibition and the concept of “cyberflânerie.” Bartlett will act as a flâneur by documenting the street performances taking place throughout the run of the exhibition and inviting the general public to step into the position of the flâneur and share their perceptions of everyday urban life via social media using the hashtag #personofthecrowd. He will also work with teens in the Philadelphia region to develop videos documenting their own experiences as flâneurs inspired by their engagement in the public spaces of the city.
Man’s project is being featured on a microsite for the exhibition, but more importantly is coming into our facility including an installation with sound and projection that will be running in our light court during the exhibition.
More third spaces to come; there are exciting possibilities when you start looking at every thing as a potential place.
