The UA Museum Takes a Field Trip to Crystal Bridges
Alison Fong is a senior Honors College student majoring in history, international and global studies, and Asian studies. Currently, she is the University of Arkansas Museum’s social media and outreach intern. After college, Alison desires to pursue a masters in applied & public history and further her knowledge of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The opinions expressed by Fong in this blog are her own, and do not represent the U of A Museum.
Figure 1 Enter the room of air.
Last month, Laurel, our curator of education and engagement, and I took a little adventure out of the office to the Crystal Bridge Museum in Bentonville. We went to see a special exhibit that featured numerous artifacts from the U of A Museum collections. Celebrating 10 years of sharing art and experiences to the Northwest Arkansas community and to the world, Crystal Bridges worked with 10 artists to create 10 special exhibits to best commemorate the past 10 years.
From a 3D tour of Francis Guy’s Winter Scene in Brooklyn to a personal letter of art that visitors can see intimately grow day by day by local artist Ziba Rajabi, Crystal Bridges at 10 has a room for everyone to enjoy. As Laurel and I strolled through these 10 rooms, each explored a different theme yet seemingly streamed together in an introspective narrative of the museum’s mission and purpose. Community, individuality, conversation, nature, interaction, experience, and history – it was a commemoration of 10 years of upholding these ideals and a love letter to the community and to art itself.
There was likely nothing more introspective than Massachusetts-born artist Mark Dion’s four rooms on the elements. Titled “Elemental Collections”, Dion took artifacts from the University of Arkansas Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology, Arthropod Museum, Herbarium Collections, and the University of Arkansas Museum collections and matched them to the four elements. When I first heard about the theme of the exhibit, my first thought was something more along the lines of this.
Gen Z humor aside, “Elemental Collections” made me ask more questions about the role of museums and the orthodoxy of curation. It was strange to walk into a room without exhibit labels for every object. The only explanation to the exhibit was an introduction at the beginning that opened the gateway to the first elemental room. It felt very unnerving like we were tossed into a jungle with an unmarked map. The personally designed wallpapers revealed to us the element of each room, and the unique doorways ushered us to our next destinations.
There was no context, no story between each room, and I truly felt adrift. Perhaps that was what Dion’s goal was – for museum-lovers to have this sense of loss and absence. We have become so used to museums providing the information, the narrative, and the context that the absence of such direction opened a can of worms. And for Dion, whose specialty is challenging these perceptions of institutions as dominant educators and influencers, perhaps this was his goal.
Figure 3 When you get to the fire room from the water room, be sure to watch your head!
Figure 2 Introduction to the exhibit
Figure 4 Birds for the air room, and jellyfish for the water room
“Elemental Collections” was not a presentation of the artifacts; the fact that each room, wallpaper, and doorway were curated for the artifacts like frames for an artwork suggest that the exhibit itself was the piece of art and not the objects. Examined individually, it is very easy to view the rooms as a hodgepodge of objects lacking narrative. Consumed as a whole, the four rooms transform into an enormous cabinet of curiosities. It was curation for the sake of curation. A case of ceramic birds, gas masks, and smoking pipes appeared confusing at first. Having curated an exhibit in the past, I have learnt that curation was another form of storytelling, and the placement of objects needed to be accessible and comprehensive to the public. My first instinct would have never been to place ceramic birds in the same case with gas masks and smoking pipes. The story made sense such that they were all connected to the element of air, but as a case, it messed with my brain.
Figure 5 A case with ceramic birds, gas masks, and smoking pipes below two images of smoking men
Figure 6 The water room, bathed in blue, save for a tiny island in the center like a beacon on a dark, cold night at sea
It was another odd experience recognizing artifacts on display as a part of our collection. Many were displayed in ways that most museums would have likely avoided such as a room bathed in neon blue that sucked the color from the artifacts or a case of birds covered with frosted glass. Some of the objects, the masks in particular, were a big part of one of my projects, and I was hoping that Dion or Crystal Bridges might have discovered more about these artifacts. Perhaps that was the point, however, as the lack of information forced me to ask why the artifacts were there and presented in that way rather than accept the spoon-fed knowledge.
Figure 7 The Guerrero masks are also instruments of storytelling and celebration in Mexican culture.
Museums are traditionally perceived as powerful institutions of education. When we go to a museum, more often than not, we are not questioning the objects on display nor are we questioning the information written on the labels. In this way, museums have become objective educators in a subjective field. History and science are so steeped in tradition and convention that it is hard to remember that facts can be concealed and twisted, and fiction can be written with extra flourish to pursue a motivation. We trust museums and their voices so much that we have forgotten the origins of the museum as a cabinet of curiosity, a privilege reserved for the elite men of history. We forget that some artifacts were not given willingly; some were taken through violence and exploitation. And maybe some of the artifacts we see should not even be on display or should not even be called an artifact because the term suggest antiquity when the object remains in use today.
This is what Dion plays with – conversation amidst nothingness, words when there is silence. How have museums become the authority in telling us the way artifacts should be used and should be displayed? It is only in recent years that museums have begun uncovering hidden histories and empowering voices and stories that decades of elitism and racism have conveniently erased. Mark Dion’s “Elemental Collections” made me realize that we should always be curious and questioning as a society and that knowledge and information are always interpretative, ever-changing as they are consumed by humans. For me, Dion’s exhibit is not about the story that it can tell; it is about the story that it can inspire in others. This is my story and my experience, but what will be yours?
Crystal Bridges at 10 opened on July 11 and will run to September 27, 2021. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art first opened in 2011 and has shared art, architecture, and nature to over five million visitors from around the world.
All photos belong to Laurel Lamb.