When the Museum Comes to You

pic provided by Corning Glass Museum

As some of my previous posts shoudl have indicated, I'm a museum nerd. The ones that are not too far away I visit a few times a year. However, I've only been to Corning once on a school trip, and that's when I saw Corning Museum of Glass.

But the museum recently came to me, or at least a lot closer to home when it began its replication of a historic trip up the Hudson from Brooklyn with the GlassBarge. I found the demonstration intriguing enough to follow up on it as a marketing story by speaking to Rob Cassetti, the museum's senior director of creative strategy and audience engagement.

He spoke to me about how he conceived the idea for the GlassBarge as a combination of “pure mission” to educate people about glass “and pure marketing” to raise their interest in the museum.  Both objectives are served by delivering the experience of live glass blowing to audiences at various ports  from May through September.

Cassetti explained, that their “mobile glassblowing deployments” date back to 2001 and have extended through the country and even to Europe and as far as Australia. These demos have also appeared on cruises as a form of popular shipboard entertainment. Having realized that the glass demos had made it to NYC but not to the rest of the state which makes up a significant portion of their visitors, the museum resolved to reach out. The timing also fit the 150th anniversary of glassmaking arriving in Corning via boats and the Erie Canal Bicentennial.

I asked Cassetti what his goals are for the live campaign. He answered that one aspect would fall under branding, “this intangible of reputation building.”  But there is also the practical consideration of reaching its target market. He pointed out that the Hudson River stop are within 20 miles of 80% of New York State’s population. Accordingly, he anticipates more visits from those who got a sampling of the museum close to home.

Those visitors would likely include families with children who were particularly engaged by the demonstration. The presenters intentionally target that demographic, responding to their question. They also let them dictate if the glassblower should reveal the intended outcome or if they should guess what it is. At the show I attended, the kids opted to guess, and after some amusing wrong guesses, one realized that the blob of glass was being fashioned into a fish. Cassetti said that people don’t automatically include a museum of glass among attractions for children, but these live events show its kid-friendliness.

While organizations vying for the same audience don't usually cross-promote, they do when they are museums because each one offers something somewhat different. The GlassBarge also effectively promotes two other museums that are centered around water travel.The South Street Seaport Museum offered representatives to talk about about their historic tug that is used to move the GlassBarge along the waterways.The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum sent its people to show  the Lois McClure.

The Lois McClure is an authentic replica of a wooden canal boat from 1862
pic from Corning Museum of Glass

I got the back story to this from Cassetti. He explained that he was introduced to the people connected to the historical boat at a conference. He was told, "you absolutely have to talk to the people that do it," meaning navigate the Hudson and the Erie Canal. These people "knew how to do it," he explained, working off first-hand experience of "what would work and what wouldn't work." That deep expertise "was reason alone to do it." He considered it a "huge bonus that theirs is an 1862 canal boat from the period when glass making would have moved from Brooklyn to Corning" in 1868.

Bringing together history and craft is fitting for glass blowing, which is still done very much as it was over a hundred years ago. The mix of chemistry and artistry is what enables the essence of sand to be transformed into something beautiful that may have a particular function or just be admired as a work of art. Watching it take shape with the explanation of the necessity of a particular gets people excited about the process and the industry. And that's what museum experience is really about.

Feminine feet: a study in contrasts

Two current exhibits at the New York Historical Society offer a study in contrasts in representing the feminine ideal as represented by their feet. In one feet are said to become worthy of their own cameras on the red carpet when they are encased in shoes like the diamond encrusted sandals pictured below:

$1,090,000 dollar sandals  decorated with 464  Kwiat diamonds.  In 2002, these diamond shoes were worn by Oscar nominee Laura Harring. Supposedly, that's what started the trend of a cameras placed to capture footwear at the Oscars. A replica of these shoes are  the first object in the current exhibit, Walk This Way: Footwear from the Stuart Weitzman Collection of Historic Shoes.

A number of problems I had with the exhibit:

1. The shoes are arranged in a particularly logical order like a chronological one or even an arrangement of shoes for work and shoes for parties and shoes for occasions. The arrangement keeps jumping around in history. There is some attempt to tie some shoes to historical events-- from changes in hemlines and dance styles to women's role in producing shoes, but there is no particularly cohesive story line.

2. The exhibit is about 90%  decorative but impractical high heels.  You can hear Weitzman talking about the eternal quality of high heels in the exhibit's audio tour. He claims they will always be around because nothing makes legs look better. He seems oblivious to the fact that not all women are willing to sacrifice their comfort and stability to heighten their decorative appeal. He also seems to be unaware of the trend since the 80s (as far as I recall from my own exposure to shoe brands and ads) has been to offer women shoe options that actually allow them to walk beyond a red carpet. Even before that, there were always women whose first priority for shoes had to be something durable.

This brings me to the point of contrast on what we idealize in women I noticed when viewing Norman Rockwell's famous "Rosie the Riveter" painting in full in the Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms exhibit.  One freedom that is not included in the four is the freedom of movement for women constrained by feminine fashion. Here we see a heroine for the World War II period named Rosie who is dressed in practical clothes with practical shoes (no high heels on a job that requires you to be stable on your feet). In fact, her comfortable loafers are poised over a copy of Mein Kampf. It is not delicate footwear that will defeat tyranny and hate but sensible shoes worn by a woman who is willing to get her face dirty and get the job done. 

Rosie is, in fact, shown as angel with a dirty face. As the description of the painting points out, her protective mask is pushed up in a position to assume the shape of a halo.  She is depicted as the strong female force of good that will stamp of evil. 

The exhibit also shows the usual poster associated with Rosie the Riveter, which is not a full length picture and includes the slogan "We can do it!" This version, which you can see in the still from the video below, was not created by Normal Rockwell but the Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller. Why more than one Rosie? The idea of Rosie the Riveter was depicted in song. You can hear it on this video. 

If you'd like to see a video that offers more information on the Four Freedoms and Rockwell's depiction of them, you can click on this video.

Missingness at the Museum

Pic credit By Ingfbruno - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29455109

Explanation on the title: Missingness is the term for missing data. I may come across it more than
most people because I've read a lot of blogs on data scraping projects. It occurred to me that it really fits the context for this post.

The museum in question is the AMNH, which is world-famous for its dinosaur exhibits, though not so famous for its pricing structure. This is just one aspect of missingness in place.

The lines to purchase tickets get fairly long at this museum, though this past Sunday was not nearly as bad as another summer Sunday in which the line extended outside and around the block. Perhaps the special exhibit on mummies is not such a great draw. (BTW if you are interested in mummies or anything else Egyptian, you really have to take a trip to Brooklyn to see the exemplary collection of the vastly underrated Brooklyn Museum.)

I'll talk briefly about the problem with pricing information because it is related thematically to missingness, though it is not my main point. As I said, the lines to pay get very long despite the fact that there are various options to purchase tickets without waiting on that line. They include buying them online and buying them at the machines right next to the lines in front of the human cashiers.

On this particular trip, the family behind me on line made two attempts to purchase tickets via machine and then gave up and returned to the line. I noticed only one group that got off the line, purchased the tickets there, and then went straight in. Why is that? Wouldn't everyone want to cut out the wait time and go straight in?

There are a number of reasons why people persist in waiting for humans, but the primary one seems to be confusion. The entrance to the museum offers various ticket levels, from basic, to plus-one, to all-inclusive. Those prices themselves also vary by age and status: adult vs. student and child. But there are two additional factors that complicate the selection even more: One is that some of the "specials," which include both temporary exhibits and films call for times entry. The other is that really the basic admission price is supposed to be "pay what you wish" just like at the Met. However, any time you add on any special, the basic "suggested" price is rolled in.

 You may be willing to forego the specials to knock down your basic admission price from $23, but that's not an option you have when you pay at the machine. It will only accept full payments. It also will not issue you a ticket for showing your Bank of America card on the first weekend of the month. Yes, this museum is among the ones that participate in the Museums on Us program, but if you didn't check this out on your own, you'd have no way of knowing it from your visit in person. Consequently, it seems that people rarely take advantage of the program. In addition, due to the pricing structure in place, the museum does not allow visitors to count the Museums on Us entry as covering the basic cost and allow for an add-on price just for specials, something other museums do allow.

Given the fact that most of the people in the line appeared prepared to pay full suggested amounts, though, it becomes clear to me that they either don't realize that the machines will help them complete their transactions faster or that they want the person to provide information and guidance on the profusion of alternatives available. This is a major flaw in informing the public about how thing work there ahead of time in order to expedite entry.

Now to the main point of missingness, which some people fail to grasp altogether: the missingness in basic numbers that are accepted as the basis of data.

On this trip, we took a guided tour of museum highlights (though we've seen them all before). This guide included a stop in the Hall of Ocean Life, pointed out the blue whale (which you really can't miss) and spoke about how scientists come up with the population numbers now versus what they were in the past. He explained that in the past, when whales were hunted, the numbers were a function of the number killed with an extrapolation for how many must still be out there. Now that hunting whales is illegal, they use other methods to come up with an estimate of the numbers, and so they conclude that the population has diminished.

Now, I recall years ago reading about people who used a similar method to justify catching and killing wild mustangs. They figured that there were several that they didn't see for each one they did. At the time, that approach came under fire from those who considered it to favor the hunters by allowing them overstate the numbers. So if the same was the case for whales, the numbers estimated in the past were likely overstated. Even if there were not, comparing that system of counting with a count that is based on completely different assumption of counting is the proverbial comparison of apples to oranges. In other words, you're mixing two completely different systems with their own sets of missingness to come up with conclusions about numbers, and that is both inconsistent and misleading.

There is a great deal of guesswork in science. Certainly, the guide admitted this in showing the Titanosaur. Not only is it not the actual fossil but a 3D printed replica, but the replica head is based off of a completely different fossil because no head was present. We see things put together as one and assume that they are accurate. But that is often not the case, so we have to bear in mind that even visualizations that appear compelling may not reveal the whole story of the data. Misssingness  can be dealt with, but one has to know which approach was taken and whether that solution contributes to better understanding or pushes to a particular outcome that is not truly objective. For true scientists, getting things to fit alone is not the answer. That's why you see reworkings of dinosaurs exhibits every once in a while. 

Related: http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2016/10/data-visualization-you-have-to-c-it-to.html

Have desk, will travel

When we picture mobile now, we picture something  small and light like this.

from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/MANEJANDO_LA_NUEVA_TABLET.png

But a hundred years ago mobile meant something different than it did today. The concept of a mobile desk was just one that could be moved, not necessarily one you could easily carry with you.  It serves some of the same purpose as a tablet does, holding information one wants access to in an organizaed fashion with space for writing your own additions to all that data. 

photo of Lyndhurst interior  by Ariella Brown

This is the desk that Jay Gould used at Lyndhurst and when commuting from there to his office on his yacht.  Though the railroad did pass right by Gould's summer home, it was built by Vanderbilt, and he vowed never to use it.  But he didn't suffer too much, sailing in on a yacht took only 45 minutes, an enviable commute by today's standards. However, he could have been travelling too lightly if he took the desk-- and likely an attendant or two  pull it for him--along for the trip.

That formidable piece of furniture is a Wooton Desk, which is known for having many compartments as well as casters, which makes it mobile as in designed to be moved. As the Wikipedia article explains, "The Wooton desk was introduced at the end of the 19th century, at a time when office work was changing in a drastic fashion with an increase in paperwork that led to the introduction of filing cabinets, among other things."

 According to the tour guide at Lyndhurst where the desk still stands, this particular one has over 100 compartments, which likely includes some secret ones. Instead of password protection or biometric identification, you'd rely on physical keys and hidden levers for securing your confidential documents from prying eyes. One plus for the desk: it is still usable over a century later. It's very unlikely that will be the case for today's tablets and smartphones.

Update for the CE (Covid Era) timeline. Lyndhurst has not been open as usual to visitors (though it has hosted the film crewfor The Gilded Age series ) since 2020. For spring 2022, it is scheduled to reopen on  May 6. For more information, see the sitelyndhurst.org and be sure clarify what the current policy for entry as spelled out here: lyndhurst.org/covid-19-protocol

Related: 
How many times did Edison fail in attempting to invent the light bulb?

A grand vision of Victorian architecture and engineering

French vs. American Style: the du Pont Estates in Delaware 

Context for common content

This is a reworking of a post I wrote this past August 6th, Andy Warhol's birthday, and the same week of my visit to the Whitney Museum in its new location. I had been to the old one a few times,
including once for a special Hopper exhibit.

The MoMA houses some of his most iconic works, which includes the Campbell's soup cans. But what Whitney has is his Green Coca-Cola Bottles pictured here. The museum's description begins as follows:

Green Coca-Cola Bottles was created the year that Andy Warhol developed his pioneering silkscreen technique, which allowed him to produce his paintings through a mechanical process that paralleled his use of mass culture subjects. Here, the image of a single Coca-Cola bottle is repeated in regular rows, seven high by sixteen across, above the company’s logo.

. Instead of stressing the monotony inherent in repetition and mass production of consumer goods, Warhol stressed that there was a great equalizing effect in offering everyone the same Coke, no matter how rich or poor they may be: “'A Coke is a Coke,' he explained, 'and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.'”

In the card next to the work in the  museum the description actually was even more positive, as it also included this statement, "All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good." I looked up the quote and found that it's part of a full paragraph from  The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again). Here it is:

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

Objectively, we know that the  sugar-loaded, caramel-colored drink is not a really good choice for nutrition or dental health. But there is something reassuring in the sameness and the fact that the exact same quality of the product is within everyone's reach. Coke puts consumers all on equal footing.

This becomes even more fascinating in light of  Horace M. Kallen's "Democracy Versus the Melting Pot" published in the Nation on February 25, 1915. Contrary to the general spirit of the age that promoted the assimilation of immigrants into a more uniform American culture, he defended the differentiation of ethnic identities what only came into vogue many decades later. Nevertheless, he maintained that a certain amount of assimilation is inevitable.

A certain uniformity occurs with no conscious agenda through fashion or what he calls, the "process of leveling up through imitation" that is promoted through "'standardization' of externals." This was the age in which people came to be more alike in terms of consumption:  "In these days of ready-made clothes, factory-made goods, refrigerating plants, it is almost impossible that the mass of the inhabitants of this country should wear other than uniform clothes, use other than uniform furniture or utensils, or eat anything but the same kind of food."  Certainly, Coke fits into that category.

Going for the brass ring

Today I rode the  carousel at Hempstead Lake State Park. Counting my daughter (who did not want to go on by herself) and one other kid, the total number of riders came to three. On the round just before ours there were just two riders. I suppose carousels have fallen out of favor, though they actually have a much longer history than I suspected. 

On the cashier's counter was a pile of papers with some more information about the carousel. Unfortunately, the powers that be at Hempstead Lake State Park did not bother to upload that to the park's site. For example, the historic carousel is named for Heckscher  because August Heckscher donated it to the park in 1931. It continued operating until 2001  (though according to this, it faced a crisis in 1981. In 2003, the carousel was taken apart and shipped across the country to Carousel Works in Ohio  for a full restoration at a cost of $400,000. The carousel was put back in place  and once again opened to the public in 2005.

 Pictures and some more details about its history are in About article by Linda Tagliaferro. What's interesting about the major restoration is that it truly lived up to its name. Tagliaferro writes that in the decade between 1951 and 1961, eight of the original horses were replaced by aluminum ones. During the restoration project 10 years ago,  those replacements were taken out. In their place "four original Illions carved horses that had been found in storage, as well as two Illions horses that were taken from a carousel in Pennsylvania, and two new horses that were carved in the Illions style by Carousel Works, Inc." were put in their palce. 

The handout at the carousel also gave some general history of carousels, which is easier to find sourced online. Specificially, what we consider a plaything of children -- and the young at heart, of course -- actually started out as an exercise in knightly combat. Wikipedia covers that in its entry on carousels:

The word carousel originated from the Italian garosello and Spanish carosella ("little battle", used by crusaders to describe a combat preparation exercise and game played by Turkish and Arabian horsemen in the 12th century).^[3] This early device was essentially a cavalry training mechanism; it prepared and strengthened the riders for actual combat as they wielded their swords at the mock enemies.
By the 17th century, the balls had been dispensed with, and instead the riders had to spear small rings that were hanging from poles overhead and rip them off. 

The same point is made in a NYC report http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/downloads/pdf/reports/2528.pdf posted online  in connection to a carousel in Queens (which wasn't in operation when we visited the park a couple of years ago). Starting out with an eye to SEO, the NYC report includes all variant on name and spellings: "including carousel, carrousel, carousell, carousal, carosello, merry-go-round, roundabout, and steam riding galleries. " However you spell it, the mechanism dates back to the 16th century:  "Following Henri II’s unintentional death during a jousting match in 1559, French horsemen began practicing with straw and wood figures attached to rotating circular frames."

The NYC report includes  this  citation: 

Much of the information found in this section is found in Frederick Fried, A Pictorial History of the Carousel  (New York: Vestal Press, 1964, various editions), Lisa English, “Roundabout,” Metropolis (July/August 1990), 57-69, “Forest Park: The Carousel,” viewed at http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/forestpark/highlights/12049.  Also see Richard W. Johnston, “The Carousel,” Life (August 27, 1951), 100ff.; Robyn Love, “The Painted Ponies of Queens: Celebrating the Magic of the Carousel,” poster, City of New York Parks & Recreation, 1995, LPC files; Eric Pahlke, Treasures from the Golden Age: East Carousels (forthcoming, 2013). It is worth noting that most essays and books that are devoted to carousels lack specific citations and references to primary sources. 

In the Hempstead Lake State Park handout, it explained that the brass ring that used to adorn carousels represents what the knights tried to catch as a test of skill. That was later adapted for riders of the ride for amusement around the beginning of the 18th century, according to the NYC report cited above.  The oldest one still around is in Germany. It was built in 1780, and there is more information about it here. 

As for the power used to propel the carousels, according to the NYC report,  the rides were first moved by serfs, then oxen. Later carousels incorporated steam power. In 2011, GE set up a solar powered carousel at South Street Seaport that it called Carousolar. But the ride was not intended as a permanent fixture in New York. 

New Yorkers are far more honest than the folks in DC

I was thinking about this today. You know, New York gets bad rep, but I believe that people in Washington DC are less honest than people in the Big Apple. As it turns out, the Honest Tea test proves my hypothesis. Not only did 80% of participants there fail the honesty test, but one person even stole the rep's bike! And NY turned out to be much more honest than people predicted. heck out the infographic for a quick overview. To see it contextualized by more information about the test, see http://thenationalhonestyindex.com/   Oh, and beware of people from our nation's capitol. Perhaps the lack of integrity so often found in politician seep into the water there.

Fom $7 to priceless: masterpiece marketing

The crowd waiting to get in to the Frick on Sunday, November 17th

Today I visited the Frick Collection to see the special exhibit on view through January 19, 2014,  Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis. (Of course, I also went into the rest of the museum, but as I've there several times before, the real draw for me, as it was for the many people waiting around the whole stretch between 70th and 71st and even round back onto 71st -- in the rain as pictured here.)

The visiting  painting that is the unquestioned star of the special exhibit is  "Girl with a Pearl Earring." Not only does it illustrate all the promotions for the exhibit, but it  given pride of place -- the equivalent of a solo performance -- in the museum. It is the only painting hanging in the oval room. Its special position allows visitors enough room to cluster around it without blocking people's view.



The exhibition details tell a rags to riches story about the painting, both in terms of its restoration and in terms of its valuation. The audio guide, relayed that the star painting was sold for the equivalent of just $7, as relayed here:

The history of the acquisition of the Vermeer has by now become legendary. Des Tombe purchased Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in 1881 at a sale at the Venduhuis der Notarissen in the Nobelstraat in The Hague for 2 guilders with a 30 cent premium.  ...After Des Tombe’s death on 16 December 1902 (his wife had died the year before and their marriage had remained childless) it turned out that he had secretly bequeathed 12 paintings to the Mauritshuis, including Vermeer’s famous Girl with a Pearl Earring."⁴(from Quentin Buvelot, "COLLECTING HISTORY: ON DES TOMBE, DONOR OF VERMEER'S GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING" in the Mauritshuis Bulletin, Vol. 17, no. 1, March 2004)

 Why should a painting that originally sold for just $7 become such an attraction? The answer is simple.   It is now Vermeer's  best known painting,  thanks to Tracey Chevalier's 1999 novel, which was the basis of a very successful 2003 movie. Now that's an interesting point in terms of marketing value. The Frick is well aware of the film's role in the painting's popularity and so is offering a showing of it on Monday evening, November 18th, with an exhibition viewing to begin at 5:30 and the film at 6.  

 Not to say that the painting is not worth of attention, but I'm not certain it would have drawn such a crowd if not for the attention cast on it by a bestselling book and well-received movie. It's certainly not the only painting by Vermeer to feature a woman in pearl earrings. One of the three Vermeers that the Frick owns is a later work of his, "Mistress and Maid" pictured here.  But no one wrote a book to popularize the story that the painting seems to tell and then went on to dramatize the same in a film, despite the suggestiveness of the woman's expression at being handed a letter by her maid.

It's something to consider: commissioning a book that could turn into a popular film to cast the spotlight on a particular work of art.

Representing 100 years of childhood

Representing 100 years of childhood

At the rate of 2.5 quintillion bytes of data a day, we have created 90 percent of the data we have in just the past two years. And while 10 percent sounds small in comparison, working with the data of the past presents the same challenges as any Big Data project. You have to consider what to include and what to exclude to come up with the questions, correlations, and contexts that relate to your concerns. They are key to the representation of your data, whether in the form of a report, an inforgraphic, or a physical exhibition.

Some of those essential components were missing in  the  Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900–2000 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art.  It’s described as “the first large-scale overview of the modernist preoccupation with children and childhood as a paradigm for progressive design thinking. The exhibition will bring together areas underrepresented in design history and often considered separately, including school architecture, clothing, playgrounds, toys and games, children’s hospitals and safety equipment, nurseries, furniture, and books.”

Granted, it is impossible to show everything. Yet, I question the omission of an American Girl Doll. (The company that produced it was sold to Mattel  in 1998 for $700 million). The line was introduced in 1986 and was considered a significant departure from the Barbie style that had dominated the doll market at the time. These dolls represented girls rather than full-figured adults and offered some historical insight with their accompanying books. When they first came out, the $100 dolls also raised questions about how much parents are expected to spend on toys, something worth bringing up in relation to consumerism.

Of course, people get a nostalgic kick out of seeing the toys and furniture they associate with their own childhoods, like classic wooden and Lego blocks, an Erector set, an Etch-a-Sketch, a Rubik’s cube, a Slinky, and a Barbie house.  Still, the toys should have offered more than a trip down memory lane. While  the exhibit points to the rather obvious cause for the proliferation of toys associated with the space age, it does not explore how other toys were also a product of their times.

Aside from what different types of toys represent, there is the evolution within toy lines to consider.  For example, Lincoln Logs also started incorporating plastic and premade windows into its sets.  Tinker Toys evolved from simple wooden forms to plastic ones that included specialized pieces and set in pastel colors that were marketed to girls. These modifications raise questions about materials, imaginative play, and gender that should be considered in such an exhibit.

Without context and explanations, you just have random items that do not signify meaning. As Jean Aggasiz said, “Facts are stupid things until brought in connection with some general law.” The same holds true for data, no matter how big.