\u201cAlways Becoming\u201d, an outdoor sculpture installation at the National Museum of American Indian (NMAI), was the focus of the presentation by Artist Nora Naranjo-Morse, NMAI Collections Manager Gail Joice and NMAI Conservator Kelly McHugh.\u00a0 Like the work of art \u201cAlways Becoming\u201d, this presentation was engaging, thoughtful and inspiring.<\/p>\n
Nora Naranjo-Morse, a member of the Tewa tribe, Santa Clara Pueblo, won the NMAI outdoor sculpture competition in 2007.\u00a0 Nora Naranjo-Morse lives only a few hours from Albuquerque and was a welcome artist addition to the objects conservation talks of the day.\u00a0 Her creative and welcoming personality was apparent through out the presentation, as it is her artwork.\u00a0 The outdoor installation \u201cAlways Becoming\u201d consists of five ephemeral sculptures made of straw, mud, stone and wood built on a landscaped area near NMAI.\u00a0 The creation of the sculptures started a ten\u00a0year project that will continue to grow and transform for years to come.\u00a0 The design of artwork is based on indigenous architecture and has the ideas of environment, family and culture at its core.<\/p>\n
A one hour long documentary movie on this project will be coming out in the summer 2012, and we were lucky enough to see a few clips from it during the presentation.\u00a0 The movie clips clearly showed how the creation of this artwork was a truly inclusive project with NMAI staff members and interns working along side Nora Naranjo-Morse during the construction and subsequent yearly repairs.\u00a0 Interviews with passersby, workers and volunteers made it touchingly clear that the whole process was a moving one.\u00a0 The movie clip stated that the project was \u201cnot just a pueblo idea, it was an intertribal idea, it was a people idea\u201d and this feeling of inclusiveness was apparent in the movie interviews as well as in the presentation.\u00a0 Many NMAI podcasts are available, if you want to see clips of the creative process.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlways Becoming\u201d is an ever-changing artwork that is intended to melt back into the earth.\u00a0 The artwork is always deteriorating naturally as it weathers the DC snow and thunderstorms, summer heat and the passage of time.\u00a0 This is an idea that does not immediately correlate with conservation standards, but it was extremely clear that NMAI has worked through this initial change in conservation practice.\u00a0 Through continual communication and yearly visits by the artist, the conservation department at NMAI has been able to work past the automatic reaction to preserve and protect.\u00a0 By allowing the sculptures to change over time they are in fact protecting the original and continual intent of the artist.<\/p>\n
Gail Joice is the Collections Manager at the NMAI Museum.\u00a0 It is her job to monitor the adobe sculptures onsite.\u00a0 Gail made the enlightening comment about how her work with these artifacts has pushed the bounds of her thoughts on objects care.\u00a0 Before this project the ideal for a condition report was to be able to state \u201cno change\u201d, a statement that all of the conservators in the audience clearly understand, but to Nora Naranjo-Morse this would be a disappointment.\u00a0 Change is built into the life of these artifacts.\u00a0 If a piece falls off of the sculptures, it will be left where it falls without any picking it up, labeling it and placing it in a fragment bag (Obviously a collections managers first impulse!).\u00a0 The question session after the presentation clarified that these fallen pieces are often reincorporated into the sculpture during the yearly conservation workshop when the artist returns to work on the pieces.<\/p>\n
The sculptures have been a welcoming addition to the grounds of NMAI.\u00a0 Not only do the visitors and passersby appreciate the installation, but red tail hawks, mason bees, spiders, and a mother robin have all made their homes in the sculptures.\u00a0 One story they told occurred right before President Obama\u2019s inauguration.\u00a0 The nighttime security at the museum noticed flames coming out from under one of the sculptures and it became quickly apparent that a homeless man had crawled underneath the sculpture and had lit a fire to warm up.\u00a0 The museum officers responded quickly and the fire was extinguished, but the artist\u2019s and NMAI staffs\u2019 reactions to this are not what the conservation audience would have predicted.\u00a0 This was not seen as an act of vandalism, but instead it was seen as a man needing to find shelter in the cold and he had found the artwork welcoming and inviting as it was intended.\u00a0 It was a thoughtful and reflective moment in the audience when this was described.<\/p>\n
Kelly McHugh is the NMAI conservator that is involved in Nora Naranjo-Morse\u2019s annual visits and sculpture care workshops with the NMAI conservation interns and fellows.\u00a0 Kelly was able to sum up all of the main points of the presentation and clearly put them into a conservation context.\u00a0 As Kelly stated, \u201cAlways Becoming\u201d is a contemporary sculpture, a traditional sculpture, a community sculpture and an ephemeral sculpture.\u00a0 Nora Naranjo-Morse\u2019s intention of inclusiveness, community importance and sculptural interaction with the environment fits perfectly into the framework and mission of NMAI.\u00a0 Kelly made a comparison between a spider on an outdoor bronze sculpture versus one living on \u201cAlways Becoming\u201d that struck home with the conservators in the room.\u00a0 She said that a spider on a museum bronze sculpture would be seen as an invader and need to be removed, where as a spider coming to live on \u201cAlways Becoming\u201d would be welcomed and would have found his home.<\/p>\n
The question session after the presentation ran late, but this only served to make it clear how engaged the audience was in the presentation.\u00a0 The questions clarified further the process that takes place when the artist comes on her annual visits.\u00a0 Essentially the NMAI staff follows her lead and assists her in ways that she sees fit, whether that is cutting back weakened bamboo to be sent to the horticultural department\u2019s compost or reworking a delaminating section of the sculpture. \u00a0\u00a0Scott Carrlee asked about whether the artwork is accessioned into the NMAI collection and Gail answered that yes each of the sculptures has a number and is accessioned into the collection.\u00a0 She thought that once the sculpture has returned entirely to the earth that there may be a ceremonial deaccessioning of the piece.\u00a0 This seems like a very fitting course of action.<\/p>\n
I could write pages on this presentation, because it was interesting, informative and thought provoking.\u00a0 The audience was engaged in each of the speaker\u2019s presentations which all worked together to give a full and clear picture of this project.\u00a0 As Kelly pointed out, \u201cAlways Becoming\u201d continues to inspire them into always becoming something better.\u00a0 We, the world, and conservation is always changing and the NMAI staff and Artist Nora Naranjo-Morse clearly shared a project that had us all thinking about the ways that our profession has changed and needs to change in order to fit the future.\u00a0 This was a truly enjoyable and valuable talk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cAlways Becoming\u201d, an outdoor sculpture installation at the National Museum of American Indian (NMAI), was the focus of the presentation by Artist Nora Naranjo-Morse, NMAI Collections Manager Gail Joice and NMAI Conservator Kelly McHugh.\u00a0 Like the work of art \u201cAlways Becoming\u201d, this presentation was engaging, thoughtful and inspiring. Nora Naranjo-Morse, a member of the Tewa … Continue reading “AIC’s 40th Annual Meeting, Objects Session, May 11, 2012, Always Becoming, Nora Naranjo-Morse, Gail Joice, Kelly McHugh.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":5342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,32,16],"tags":[71],"class_list":["post-3202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-annual-meeting","category-objects","category-specialty-sessions","tag-aics-40th-annual-meeting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}