Breaking news at the Contemporary…well for me this is wonderful breaking news since I am an ice cream fanatic. I am not much of a sweetaholic (for example I’m not a big fan of birthday cake (or any kind of cake for that matter)…something other Contemporary staffers just don’t understand, and they explain how they do not understand every time we celebrate someone’s birthday), but when it comes to ice cream, I’m there. Today an ice cream machine was brought into the Contemporary! (I wish I had one at my house). Staff members and gallery attendants all had to “test” out the ice cream machine to be sure it was working properly, and that we did! You are probably wondering why I am babbling for so long about an ice cream machine. It has to do with a very exciting collaborative project between the Contemporary and the Pulitzer, called the Light Project. From September 4 through October 17 visitors will enjoy free ice cream! You can learn why an ice cream machine at an art museum is relevant by reading Rachel’s corresponding blog post! Today, the ice cream we tried was just plain, white vanilla. When the ice cream stand is open to the public, it will be “the color of a St. Louis sunset.” How cool is that?

Hey friends, it’s me Crate 4 of 6.  I’m good just livin’ my life.  It’s been an exciting journey all the way here from Lutz’s studio in San Francisco.  I’ve taken the US by storm, friends!  It’s too bad I’ve been in the back of a truck with nothing to see except my crate brethren and sometimes some questionable truck drivers.  Now me and the Crate fam are at CAMSTL just chillin, no literally  ‘chilling.’  Ya’ see I’m like a goldfish, not in the fact that I have a delicious snack named after me that even moms love, but because I have to adapt to my climate before I get opened.  Really I’m like a body guard, just servin’ and protectin’ out here in the rough and tumble world of art shipping.  I even have some new tats to make me look tough and let people know not to mess with me (okay okay, the tattoos are rub-on, but don’t’ tell anyone, I need my street cred).I can’t wait to get opened so I can get all this art work out of me.  It’s hard having to be tough all the time with all this fragile stuff inside.  I feel like Tony Soprano mixed with a fed ex box.  It’s weird being me! Later y’all

Crate (aka Cole, the Registrar)

Though there has been talk about this at the museum, I didn’t really look into the story too much in detail until I received an e-mail from my boyfriend’s father…I have talked about him before-he is the kind of guy who just doesn’t get it (”it” being contemporary art). His email simply said “modern art” and included a link to an article that began with: “A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist…”

Our Main Galleries are currently closed for installation of Lutz Bacher: Spill and Aida Ruilova: The Singles 1999 - Now, but The Front Room remains open to the public. Yesterday was the opening of The Center for Advanced Visual Studies. The Center for Advance Visual Studies is devoted to the production of artworks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in The Front Room shows a sampling of their work from the past four years. Take a look at the below installation photos and then visit our website to read further about the exhibition and a workshop offered to the public this weekend. The first photo is of a birdhouse installed right outside the Contemporary’s front doors! Creator, Pam Larson titled the piece Flacon vs. City, 2008. The birdhouse has been installed with hopes of a co-habitant. It has a video camera inside it with a view of the Contemporary’s outside entrance from out of the entry hole-framing the world. Visitors can experience the view on a live feed to a monitor in the Contemporary’s lobby.

An interview with Chief Curator Anthony Huberman was recently published on Flashartonline.com. The interview starts with this as an introduction: “Anthony Huberman joined the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis as chief curator in August 2007. Flash Art posed him a few questions about his plans and ambitions for the forward-looking museum” and goes into a variety of questions regarding details about the curatorial vision, The Front Room, and our upcoming exhibition Lutz Bacher: Spill and Aida Ruilova: The Singles 1999 - Now. Click here to read the interview and to gain a little more insight on the Contemporary.

Kiersten, our Visitor Services Coordinator and Gift Shop Manager, shares some of her top music choices with us. Visit the Contemporary’s MySpace page to give them a listen. You can also see museum pictures and read and leave comments for us here! These are her choices…

LCD Soundsystem  All My Friends

Raveonettes  Dead Sound

The National  Mistaken for Strangers

Spank Rock  Bump

The Unicorns  I Was Born (A Unicorn)

Arcade Fire  No Cars Go

Gossip  Are You That Somebody

Radiohead  Weird Fishes/Arpeggi

Santogold  LES Artistes

Les Savy Fav  What Would Wolves Do

Broken Social Scene  Backyards

Vampire Weekend  Campus

The Dodos  Red & Purple

The Ting Tings  That’s Not My Name

Panda Bear  Bros Edit

She and Him  Why Do You Let Me Stay Here

The exhibition is already close to be completely de-installed! There are photos of the process below. This exhibition has brought up some interesting topics of conversation and was the first of our new curatorial team and the one plus one equals three theory. Here are a few links that will allow you to reflect on the exhibition, John Armleder and Olivier Mosset.

Opening

Toblerones

Photos

Thoughts

Leave your own reflections in the comment section, even if you weren’t able to make it to the museum in person to see it…you lived it through this blog! 

This weekend is the last chance for guests to view the John Armleder and Oliver Mosset exhibition. On Monday it will start to come down and the installation of Lutz Bacher: Spill and Aida Ruilova: The Singles 1999 - Now will begin. Typically during the installation process all of the galleries would be closed-however, this time The Front Room will remain open! You can click here to see more information on The Front Room and the exhibiting artists. Visiting The Front Room is one way people can stay connected, but I also like to remind our visitors that there are many ways they can stay connected to the museum online. They can visit this blog as well as our facebook, myspace, and You Tube pages-all of which provide insight on museum happenings and also allow for public discussion. All of these online communication tools are also a good way for out-of-towners to involve themselves. How did we live before the internet?

For the current exhibition in The Front Room we built a ceiling! The room is now completely dark as the only light coming in is through the doorway. I walked in the room for the first time today and was immediately drawn in listening to and watching the video that is being projected onto the wall. Artist Brent Green currently occupies the space. According to our gallery guide he “makes films that are eccentric, delicate, anarchic, both melancholic and hopeful.” On the wall aside the one showing the video, Green painted a scene from his film Abe Lincoln. There are photos of the room and the painting below.

At our last Playground of the Ridiculous we broke out our new toy…our “Flip” video camera. It is terrific! Jennifer (our Director of PR and Marketing) found out about this little wonder from the Education Director at KETC. It is video camera the size of a small digital camera with the USB that flips directly out of it. All you have to do is shoot the video, stick the USB into your computer (the software automatically pops up), edit the video (you can only take time off of the beginning and end, but is still a neat feature), and you’re done! You can take screen shots so you have still images. You can upload video directly to YouTube. You can insert the video into a greeting card and send it through email…and this is all by using the software already installed on the computer. This is so perfect for capturing lectures, performances at events, crowd shots at openings and so on. You can see some of the video captured from the night below: