June 28, 2019

First of all, happy birthday to Talia! We stayed up until midnight to kick off celebrations with her, and also to get a grasp on our plans to use the city cards this weekend (there are a lot of museums included in the card, and so to get the most use possible out of them in the 96 hour activation period we tried to plan it out a bit). In the picture below, you can see we were really all just sitting around, but it was fun. :)

After a good night's sleep, a few of us got up early and headed to the Diamond Museum before our class started. The Diamond Museum was very cool! I definitely learned a little bit about how diamonds are formed, and where we find them, but mostly it was just fun to look at shiny things and admire their beauty. The coolest part was the last room of the museum, which was shaped like a diamond and lined entirely with mirrors!

The Diamond Museum group then left and hopped on a tram to go to class, where we ran into the rest of the group! Our class was held at the Amsterdam Street Art Museum, and consisted of a two hour walking tour around the neighborhood where the museum is situated to see the nearby graffiti and other street art. This museum was very unique in a lot of ways, the most obvious of which is their lack of use of the physical building. The choice to use a walking tour as the museum format creates a more authentic street art museum--as our guide pointed out a few times, street art was meant to be viewed on the street, and to interact with the community. Once it is taken away from its original setting and put into protection within a museum, it can no longer be considered street art. The museum is also unique for commissioning many (most) of the pieces they display on the tour, which was interesting to me, first of all because this seems contrary to the traditional form of street art, but also because it gives them a more active role in shaping the messages that they convey to visitors. They described a bit about their commissioning process, and it seems that they work with the artist to come up with an idea about what art to put into the city, and then check with the community to make sure that they also approve of the idea. What was interesting to me was that on multiple occasions throughout the tour, our guide mentioned that the community was not on board with the proposed work of art, and the museum would have to go back and confer with the artist about other ideas. These comments reminded me of our previous class discussions about the importance of including the stakeholder in the innovation process, and I think that sentiment applies well here. Perhaps if the museum worked more closely with the community to develop the original idea for the art, the process would move more quickly. There was also one instance in particular which he described to us, in which the original idea for a mural involved a depiction of the Little Prince, but when the community vetoed that idea the artist got a bit defensive and ended up integrating the Little Prince into his final mural anyway, and it seemed to me that this could have been avoided by including the community first. The artist was probably only attached to the Little Prince idea because they had been planning it for so long, but if they just started with a different idea this hostility (of sorts) could be avoided. Beyond just speeding the process, including the community in visions of what art should be displayed seems important since the museum is really integrated into their city.

This was one of the few pieces which was described as relating to the community in which it's situated. The strong blue is representative of the Netherlands, and the empty milk jug is representative of the poverty in the area.

One other feature of this museum which caught my attention was its lack of relationship with the city itself. Part of this stems from the lack of community input when planning the pieces that will be installed, but even without community input, it seems like museum employees could make an effort to commission pieces with themes that represent the people who surround the museum. Instead, our guide made a statement about how artists are chosen based on their aesthetic and desirability, and pieces are commissioned in a similar way. This, to me, seems like a missed opportunity, because the citizens of Amsterdam would probably feel more compelled to visit the museum, and feel a stronger affinity for the museum if the works reflected themselves in some way. Our guide mentioned that very low numbers of their visitors were Dutch, and I wonder if this would change if the content of the museum catered more to the people living here. Other than these few criticisms, I really loved this museum for its character. Getting to walk around the city to see the art was really amazing, and definitely changes the experience that the viewer gets. I also thought it was super cool how the museum just accepts that the art is impermanent--it will get covered, tagged, altered by the people living there or the weather--and that has just become part of the museum, rather than trying to preserve the art by taking it off the street. I think that especially for a street art museum, this is really cool because it respects the art form itself.

This mural caught my attention because the image for it was taken and used without the permission of the individual, which seemed questionable to me.

After the Street Art Museum, a group of us went to Pancakes Amsterdam for Talia's birthday lunch, and then to the Moco Museum. Moco was a perfect complement to the Street Art Museum, because they also display some street art, but in an indoor setting, something which was frowned upon by our tour guide from the Street Art Museum. The art below was spray painted on a garage door, and then the entire door was removed to be put in the museum. I must say, as much as I absolutely ADORED Moco, their collection of street art definitely had a different feel to it due to the nature of the unnatural setting. The messages which were conveyed by the street art didn't have the same effect once they had been removed from their original location.

The rest of their modern and contemporary exhibits were amazing, though (especially the Arsham portions). By far my favorite museum yet!

Our little group in a room designed by Arsham!

After we got home we all took a little nap and then got ready to go out for Talia's birthday. This was probably the most fun day I've had abroad so far!