www.Museum-Conference.com
Zahava D. Doering
Zahava D. Doering, a University of Chicago trained sociologist, has had many years experience in social science research and studies in museums and educational institutions. In 1987, she was the founding director of the Institutional Studies Office (ISO), now part of the Office of Policy and Analysis at the Smithsonian Institution (SI). Doering’s museum activities include serving as Editor of Curator: The Museum Journal, past co-chair of AAM’s Committee on Audience Research and Evaluation (CARE), active participation in the Visitor Studies Association (VSA) and pro bono Research and Evaluation consultant to the Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM) and its member museums.
From Edward Rothstein at The New York Times:
“Iron Chink” proclaims the raised words on a cast-iron sign, once mounted on a fish-processing machine. In the early 1900s in Seattle the machine had been invented to replace Chinese laborers, who presumably were constructed of weaker mettle.
Now, of course, its casual slur inspires some shock. It is a companion piece to another object, a cap-gun toy from the 1880s, when the “Chinese Question” (as objections to Chinese immigration was called) turned violent: pull the trigger, and a suited gentleman kicks a braided Chinese man in the rear, setting off the miniature explosion. More…
From Carol Vogel in The New York Times Arts Special Section: Museums…
Some 150 yoga fanatics, mats in hand, gathered in the second-floor atrium of the Museum of Modern Art one recent Saturday morning. They were there to “Put the oM in MoMA,” as the invitation read.
Assembled in a circle, the group practiced poses while on the walls surrounding them flowed giant images of budding tulips, slithering worms and a pig in a verdant meadow biting into a juicy apple, all part of the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist’s monumental video installation “Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters).” The free 75-minute class was such a success that there is talk of holding another in the museum’s sculpture garden.
“In these difficult times we want to hit as many buttons as we can,” said Glenn D. Lowry, director of the museum. “We’re doing everything possible to connect with people.” More…
