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drwexNPR did a fascinating piece on art conservation as public display. Seems the newly reopened Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery have a new area with floor-to-ceiling glass walls behind which visitors can watch conservators doing their daily work. Apparently they get to wear custom aprons designed by Isaac Mizrahi.
Back when I used to inhabit the Media Lab we did much of our work behind similar glass walls, referred to as "fishbowls" and frequently plastered with signs like "Please don't feed the graduate students." The signs mostly amused visitors but really annoyed the Lab PR staff who had to give tours of the (in)famous place. Clever research groups plastered their glass with pretty pictures and work samples to amuse and distract passers-by. I mean, how exciting can it be to watch a bunch of scruffy grad students banging away at keyboards?
The Smithsonian experiment also reminds me of long ago when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tamidon and I used to go out often to dinner and glass-walled kitches were all the rage. She used to sniff at the notion of cooking as performance art, though the wild popularity of the Food Channel and this weekend's animated conversations over the utter fascinatingness of Alton Brown might lead one to think differently. I have to wonder, though, if there's really so much "fascinating" stuff in conservation as the Smithsonian is making it out to be.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, it appears that the Dewey Decimal system of library cataloging is still alive. I thought Library of Congress designations had wiped out Dewey, but apparently not. Harper's Magazine published this list of new Library of Congress subject headings that received Dewey Decimal numbers last year. The list includes such topical gems as "Exaggeration (philosophy)", "Middle-aged sexual minorities", and "Video wrestling games".
coslinks pointed me to a YouTube page with a "music video" called Tyger, inspired by the William Blake poem The Tyger. The video is a cool mix of animation, live action and puppetry. I used to have a link to a good analysis of this poem but I lost it many years ago and simple Google searching isn't helping me. If someone knows of a good page that annotates or comments well on this poem I'd love to read it.
Back when I used to inhabit the Media Lab we did much of our work behind similar glass walls, referred to as "fishbowls" and frequently plastered with signs like "Please don't feed the graduate students." The signs mostly amused visitors but really annoyed the Lab PR staff who had to give tours of the (in)famous place. Clever research groups plastered their glass with pretty pictures and work samples to amuse and distract passers-by. I mean, how exciting can it be to watch a bunch of scruffy grad students banging away at keyboards?
The Smithsonian experiment also reminds me of long ago when
tamidon and I used to go out often to dinner and glass-walled kitches were all the rage. She used to sniff at the notion of cooking as performance art, though the wild popularity of the Food Channel and this weekend's animated conversations over the utter fascinatingness of Alton Brown might lead one to think differently. I have to wonder, though, if there's really so much "fascinating" stuff in conservation as the Smithsonian is making it out to be.Oh, and in case you were wondering, it appears that the Dewey Decimal system of library cataloging is still alive. I thought Library of Congress designations had wiped out Dewey, but apparently not. Harper's Magazine published this list of new Library of Congress subject headings that received Dewey Decimal numbers last year. The list includes such topical gems as "Exaggeration (philosophy)", "Middle-aged sexual minorities", and "Video wrestling games".
coslinks pointed me to a YouTube page with a "music video" called Tyger, inspired by the William Blake poem The Tyger. The video is a cool mix of animation, live action and puppetry. I used to have a link to a good analysis of this poem but I lost it many years ago and simple Google searching isn't helping me. If someone knows of a good page that annotates or comments well on this poem I'd love to read it.
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Date: 2006-07-05 04:37 pm (UTC)David's father said that the first time he actually saw the Enola Gay was at the Air and Space museum that is on the mall. They were doing a "watch people work" exhibit on plane restoration and he said he looked over and just sitting there, with no signs or anything, just kinda, waiting for it's turn to get repainted, was the nose section of the Enola Gay. He said it shook him up a little. I think it would me, too.