Brick

Copy­right 2011 Ben S. Pollock

DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY — Crys­tal Britches was speech­less, stand­ing in the set­ting sun on a recent after­noon in a park­ing lot in Ben­tonville, Ark.

“She did it. My old BFF really pulled it off,” Ms. Britches said of her peri­odic Best Friend For­ever Alice. I, her ghost-publicist Noah Vale, had dri­ven Crys­tal from her Fayet­teville home­stead north to see Ravee­nia, the Ozark Museum of Other People’s Art (o’MOPA) ear­lier this week. While we attended its ded­i­ca­tion on the Ben­tonville Square Fri­day, 11–11-11, we avoided the site itself on the First Day as well as the exclu­sive pre­views in the days before that, to not detract from Alice’s Warho­lian moment.

“Noah, we’ve just spent nearly five hours in Ravee­nia. Peo­ple want to hear my impres­sions, but I’m no expert on archi­tec­ture. I hit muse­ums when­ever I can, but am not capital-C art Critic. You’re good with words, you do it. That’s why I hired you.”

“I’ll try; we cer­tainly talked enough walk­ing around,” Noah said. “But Crys­tal, I’m not trained in art or archi­tec­ture. But this will work out, because if I attribute my hick thoughts to myself, you’ll look brilliant.”

“Thank you, Mr. Vale,’” said the plastic-pantsed phil­an­thropist. On Sun­day the 13th, the museum was sur­pris­ingly full of peo­ple from Lit­tle Rock, 216 miles away. Being the provin­cial cap­i­tal, in sev­eral def­i­n­i­tions, Ms. Britches drew stares from the preppy Rock­ers at her vinyl leg­gings cov­er­ing loose khaki shorts, fairly mod­est for a still-trim woman in shall we call it late mid­dle age. A brisk fall day, on top she wore a red Razor­back hoodie.

“Here we go,” I said. I’ll throw together this com­men­tary and if you sign off on it, we’ll have it posted on the blog Brick. She agreed.

A Moat Runs Through the Castle

Alice set up a series of con­nected build­ings, form­ing a square with a jointed tail. That’s more or less six extant struc­tures, Rather, archi­tect Moishe Zaftig fig­ured that out. Two of the struc­tures, par­al­lel to one another are built over a dammed creek so they’re also pedes­trian spans. With air con­di­tion­ing, some of the pic­tures in one, and the restau­rant in the other.

The exte­ri­ors are gen­er­ally stripes of alter­nat­ing cop­per, glass, con­crete or wood. Some roofs are con­cave, oth­ers con­vex. How does it feel? The audi­to­rium and restau­rant, bulging out, look to a guy Noah saw at the museum like a roly-poly, also known as a pill­bug, tech­ni­cally an Armadil­lid­ium vul­gare. This friend’s wife, stand­ing in the restau­rant and look­ing toward the sim­i­larly convex-roofed audi­to­rium, said she felt she was inside an empty tur­tle shell.

No never mind, though. The spirit of play, of open­ness, per­vades every building.

While the build­ings are serene and mod­ern to be sure, the grounds, with plenty of trails, pro­vide a slightly enhanced ver­sion of nature. For instance, off the tail, on the way to the tempory-exhibit gallery, is an alcove ded­i­cated to Mr. Zaftig. Its win­dow reveals a steep grotto, per­haps a trib­u­tary of the ravine’s spring. Rocks have been set to where water will go after a heavy rain, spread­ing out like a fan. There’s enough gaps to imply nature, any more ran­dom and it’d be a Dombeck water­color.

The gal­leries dur­ing the day have abun­dant nat­ural light, and the arti­fi­cial light was prop­erly mounted so there was no glare on the art­works or for that mat­ter the eyes of vis­i­tors. The nat­ural light is clev­erly fil­tered. Whether con­cave or con­vex, the domed, ribbed roofs had sky­lights but the gal­leries then had ceil­ings of mesh. This must have been to enhance indi­rect light for ideal view­ing but also, assuredly, to pro­tect the works from fading.

The museum remains slightly unfin­ished. On Sept. 1, I acci­den­tally dis­agreed with a per­son I was try­ing to impress. I said the museum couldn’t be done by the sched­uled Nov. 11. He, and being a real­is­tic, mature man this sur­prised me, said it would be com­pleted because it was promised. Days ear­lier, I’d stood on the museum’s obser­va­tion deck and saw so much raw­ness. Last Sun­day, one of the two ponds still was being lined with con­crete, rock and other mate­ri­als, no water. But, yes, the sculp­tures are installed, paint­ings hanging.

Works of Art Works

To write here about three cen­turies of iconic Amer­i­can paint­ings is unnec­es­sary, Crys­tal Britches and I agree. The museum has images of its col­lec­tion on its web­site. For exam­ple, here is the link to 20th-century works, up to about the 1970s.

Walk­ing among them was awe-inspiring for me. These works soon will be old friends. Over the decades liv­ing in dif­fer­ent cities, that’s how I came to feel about local muse­ums. The mas­ter­works often are like pals I haven’t seen in a while. It is a com­fort­able, sat­is­fy­ing feel­ing. When I live in a place with a good museum, I, Noah Vale, visit often, eat in their cafes, find their gift shops con­ve­nient for buy­ing presents.

But I must note that my friend’s spouse, who saw tur­tles, felt “oppressed” as she com­pleted her first tour of all the gal­leries. So many of the pic­tures expressed hard­ship and sad­ness, she noted.

Because what’s dis­played now is a por­tion of the full per­ma­nent col­lec­tion, the ques­tion is why were these hang­ing first? My guess, and Ms. Britches agrees, is that the Raveenia’s exec­u­tives felt a need empha­size seri­ous­ness­ness to the New York fan­cy­pants. So a lit­tle more promi­nent hung the paint­ings of unem­ploy­ment and man­ual labor. The whole Mod­ern gallery could be seen as that — work­ers or for­mer work­ers, includ­ing the Robert Henri por­trait of a (work­ing) actress, even Max­field Parrish’s (work­ing) clowns (actu­ally one clown in sev­eral poses car­ry­ing lanterns).

“That’s just a the­ory of cura­tion, Noah,” Crys­tal Britches cautioned.

The early visitors

Nearly all the first week’s patrons were the well-heeled. As we enjoyed hot fresh cof­fee in the Ravee­nia Can­teen, we heard a cou­ple of squalling chil­dren. Despite their well-dressed par­ents, we were reminded more of the sound of a Kmart, rather than Tar­get or Wal-Mart, each hav­ing a dif­fer­ent aural ambiance.

The cura­tors’ main nod toward new lovers of art (as this is the first major art museum in this area) was the per­mis­sion to take photographs.

It is a good thing peo­ple are allowed to take pic­tures because that was a prin­ci­pal activ­ity in these early days. (Pho­tog­ra­phy is banned in the tem­po­rary exhibit gallery because the own­ers of other col­lec­tions aren’t as carefree).

I just didn’t get it, though. Peo­ple tak­ing pic­tures of pic­tures. It’s dif­fi­cult to do that accu­rately– spe­cial lenses, spe­cial light­ing, cal­cu­lated aper­tures and expo­sures. Nearly all the smart-phone pic­ture tak­ers were click­ing just the art, not of com­pan­ions pos­ing next to the pieces and so on.

Are these peo­ple really going to print their image of Nor­man Rockwell’s Rosie the Riv­eter when a detailed clear image could be found online and printed out, free? The newest smart phones brag about the num­ber of pix­els their lit­tle cam­eras can hold, but none men­tion the lack­lus­ter tiny lens in them. Besides, the gift shop sells dead-on repro­duc­tions in a vari­ety of sizes.

The fra­ter­nal twin

There was some­thing prey­ing on me, and there in the Ravee­nia park­ing lot, I told her.

“Week before last, Crys­tal, I went up to Kansas City, Mo., and got a docent-led tour of Moishe Zaftig’s Kauff­man Cen­ter for the Per­form­ing Arts. It is mag­nif­i­cent, inside and out. The down­town side looks a bit like Australia’s Syd­ney Opera House, and the uptown side, where the joint lobby for the two audi­to­ri­ums — one’s music and the other the­ater, specif­i­cally opera — is all glass for some­thing like six sto­ries up.”

This extra­or­di­nary archi­tect and his firm have been very busy; they have some other pub­lic build­ing open­ing this year as well.

Con­sid­er­ing the dif­fer­ences, now that I’ve seen both build­ings inside and out, is key.

“Surely, Noah, there’s some sim­i­lar­i­ties, as well, due to the sig­na­ture style of the archi­tect at this mature part of his career.”

The steel hard­ward hold­ing the glass together is similar.

“Crys­tal, you wouldn’t know this, but the uri­nals look to be the same. They’re egg-shaped, maybe nearly round. Both Kauff­man and Ravee­nia. Never seen any­thing like them,” I said.

“As for dif­fer­ences, the Kauff­man is set on a hill, delib­er­ately vis­i­ble. It’s not the tallest struc­ture in KC, nor the high­est hill. The arts com­plex dis­ap­pears from sight in just a few urban blocks. In con­trast, our Ozark Museum of Other People’s Art is in a ravine, set just as delib­er­ately. Even from the park­ing lot, you can barely see its roof.”

“OK, Mr. Vale, that pushes a ques­tion: Can a land­mark be hid­den?” Crys­tal Britches said.

The answer has to be yes. But why is that so?

That will be a rid­dle for the Great Sphinx of Arkansas to hold for centuries.