Thelen: [Feedback] Now why does it doing that, is it because the mics are too close to each other? That seemed to be… Franz
Thelen: Is that unusual? Charles
Download 0.61 Mb.
|
Thelen: Is that unusual? Charles: I thought it was highly unusual. I mean, I was part of the trip, I was part of the presentation. Staples: We do not know if it was unusual or not because of the system and the way it was working. We do not know how many meetings they had without us. Charles: We do not know if by then they were already deciding that this was not working so no reason to need to include them. I went out in September and they did not cancel the contract until November. I found that strange. Bruce Burnstein came to see us without Jim Vaulker. He made some comment about the meeting had not gone well. I said that I thought it had gone very well and I talked to the people and so on. He made some crack, well they are not, what do they know. Staples: What do those Indians know? Charles: Well he did not say Indians, but they are not, they do not know about museums, what do they know? It was very difficult. Staples: You did explain about Vaulker and the two-edged sword, double-headed dragon. Charles: It was just strange - it is like being, in some places increasingly this idea, which I am going to use vendor, which I think is a terrible word. You are a supplier, you deliver what we ask for. Whereas, we are not vendors, we are not toilet paper sellers. I mean vendor means peddler. We are not peddling a product. We are professionals. We present a service. You have hired us because we presumably have some capability that you do not have that you want us to bring to the table, so let us bring it to the table. Staples: What you are talking about is you are basically vendor, you are literally selling. Charles: I am being treated like a vendor in my view. My intellectual opinion, our design aesthetic is not important or that they do not like it or whatever. A really rough example was that I - this whole design concept of going down the river would only work if we had fabulous photographs of the landscapes that these different groups were in so that we could visually take you down the river. That means, one they have got to be very high quality, two they are site specific and they have to have perspectives that work together. You have to be able to see them all as a group. We were being given one or two choices for each site. We said, “we would like to see everything you have because we have to work out how this is going to work.” And we were told, “no the curators make that decision, they will give you the one that works.” I thought I had an agreement that I could look at what the other ones were, so I went over to the museum to look. Bruce Burnstein kept me waiting two hours. He said, “you do not have to look at that, it is not your decision.” I said, “I do have to look at it and I have come here to look at it and I will stay here until I can look at it.” That was sort of the beginning of the end of the relationship. Staples: That was when the crack came. Charles: But this is bizarre. How can you do a physical, visual, three dimensional environment if you cannot have some control over it? Staples: They were perfectly happy to take any image off the web and say that is it. Charles: That is what I finally found out, I said to them, “who are you hiring? Have you gone to National Geographic, have you gone here, have you gone here?” I found out that some of these were coming directly off the web. They were not hiring people. I was being led to believe that they were getting the very best photographers to do things. I was upset that we were not having input as to what was being shot. It turned out that was not even true. Thelen: Oh, oh. Staples: And again, part of the problem is that they do not understand the difference between an image and a quality image, there is a great deal of difference. One you can bring up this big, the other one you can bring up that big. Charles: That is something we learned at Eames. When it is huge you ought to still be able to see the dots in that picture. It was really rough when that ended. First of all, you know, financially but also at international meetings people knew we were doing the Museum of the American Indian, that was very important. I had been to a seminar, the Salzberg seminar and talking about it - then all of a sudden you are not doing it, the Museum of the American Indian. It potentially can be a career-crusher with something that prominent collapses. Staples: You know the military have stripes on their arms for services. Thelen: You have a few of those. Staples: We have got a few. Charles: Then you get a, well we had a reputation before that for being difficult to work with, but then you really have a reputation for being difficult to work with. After Science in American Life we applied for one of those quantity, you know, the museum, you may not know. So that every project would not have to open bid every project, they have made prequalified people. The contracting office and I think other institutions. Thelen: They are the government or the funder? Charles: No, the contract office of the Smithsonian about every five years calls for portfolios, you submit your hourly rate, you do all this kind of stuff. Your goal is to be a preferred supplier, preferred vendor. They either, now, initially they had five exhibit designers and five fabricators, it might be ten and ten now. The idea is that if this museum wants to use it and American Indian did not - if this museum wants to use it, they go to this list. They know that they are okay, everybody has vetted them and now they can within that list either ask all of them to bid or talk to a couple of them, however they want to do it. We did not apply the first time to be on that list, I do not know why. Second round we did apply we made it to ten but not to the five and the only time in our career I think that we have ever asked for a post-bid debriefing, some places will do that, was for that. I asked for it and it was not that long after Science in American Life. Even though we had had a fabulous relationship on Crossroads of Continents not, just a little before that and on Java C, both Smithsonian projects, but we were determined difficult to work with. Thelen: That is what they said for the science project. Charles: That is what they said for this quantity. Thelen: Who did the determining? Staples: Well, Margolis. Charles: Caroline Margolis, she was not the only one. They had a committee of people who review your portfolio and we presumably talk to people that you have worked with. Called references or they know all the projects so they call people on the projects. We were told that we did not make the list of five to be preferred suppliers because we were difficult to work with. Thelen: There is nothing you can do about that? Charles: No. so AU has a collection from difficult people. Thelen: Do not go there. [laughter] Thelen: Well one area you have clearly done some - and another bouncing in a different direction. I am thinking of traveling exhibits and you have done a number. I would be curious to hear the challenges they present and why you enjoy them. Staples: I mean the difference would between traveling and non-traveling is that you have to fit into many different spaces. Where a single source or a single place allows you to take advantage of heights or adjust to the lowness of something. When you go on the road, it has to fit every place. The doors are not always in the same relationship with each other, so you have to have kind of a flexible scheme to get out of the gallery. Some of the shows that we have done that have traveled have been smaller enough wads of pottery or whatever that you could arrange it without any problem anywhere you wanted to go. When you have something that is complex like Franklin where you have room settings you might say. Charles: Eight thousand square feet. Thelen: That is pretty big, is it not? Staples: Those became difficult to keep in order. Again you have to sort of, some places have one big room and you can do it all. Another place like the puppet show went to Copper-Hewitt. It is a bunch of little rooms, you know. It breaks it up into funny packages. That is the main issue about traveling shows I think. The weight of everything becomes an issue. Thelen: Could you give a couple of examples? Charles: Well, Puppets is a good one. It was a low budget traveling show. Staples: Well, Puppets and Crossroads are very much a pair. Charles: Quite different. Staples: Because you have the front of the case and then you have the back of the case. In Puppets you went through a trapdoor, an amazing hidden door and serviced the case from behind. Charles: Let me back up. Puppets looks big like it is a whole wall. It is flats and corners. that is all it is, they all bolt together. Thelen: So they could be unbolted? Charles: You take it apart, travel, put all the corners together to travel, put all the flats together. It all went in one truck, a very big show. Then behind that opening is a very clever design by Bob, it was not on the AU list, but because I think it is a simple enough design that students could really understand it and maybe use it. Staples: It is a little bit like dollhouse or a puppeteer’s showroom. Punch and Judy is behind a little screen with a little window and you are doing your punch and Judy. Charles: They would have a way to put a curtain there and a way to put a little stage that would hinge up because they have got to travel it flat too. We took that idea. The bottom of the case hinges up, has a little stick, you put your little wire up here, you hang your curtain you clip on your light, they are little stages. Very simple design, not very expensive. It looks like - then you could open one of, there is a door at one end that you could get behind. So you are dressing everything from behind. I think that that was a very creative design for a travelling show. Staples: This opened at the Corcoran. We had virtually the whole first floor of the Corcoran, two major galleries and then the courtyard or center court. We had some puppets that were fourteen feet tall. Charles: Fourteen or eighteen. This picture, this puppet is four feet tall. I do not know if I have the catalog. Thelen: I always think of puppets being small. Charles: Oh, exactly. Staples: There were all kinds of puppets, there are some of those too. Charles: This took us into a world we knew nothing about, it was wonderful and great people. Thelen: Did you know where all the places were that it was going to go? Did you know the physical challenges that you were going to face at the Corcoran and then wherever it went after that? Staples: We did not know all of them. Charles: This is that puppet. Thelen: Oh my god look at that, it is huge. Staples: That if you are ever up in that neighborhood in the summer. Charles: Bread and puppet theater. Staples: That is an experience that is worthwhile. Charles: We went to see it - that is our picture. It was wonderful. I think in that case we knew a few places where it might go. Thelen: So you sort of knew what were likely to be challenges. Charles: Right. What was very nice on this project was that the client hired us to do the layouts for all the other places. Thelen: So you did not only know, but had to deal with them. Charles: We had designed a lot of it. It was built before we knew all the places. We knew the problems. Staples: We had floor plans of places that it was going to go to, but nobody told us that it had a mezzanine floor in that space. Thelen: Oops, well. Charles: Now you put in this big puppet. I remember after that show because we had that problem, so many places do not have good floor plans of their own buildings that we really thought that architectural students or something. There ought to be some program the AIA [American Institute of Architects] could underwrite to get all these museums to have decent plans. Dallas History Center was off by a number of inches that once you try to install this place says oh yes we did not tell you that we put a balcony in since those plans were done. Thelen: I understand that that even happens to people’s apartments they are building. Charles: Or houses they are building. A different kind of - another favorite traveling show, big show. Where is Imperial Austria? This was one of Bob’s more brilliant designs. Staples: This is from an armory in Gratz, Austria. It is not just the king’s armor, but it is the everyman’s armor. Thelen: Well, every man who was permitted to have armor. Staples: In Austria they have a lot of armor because of the [doorbell ringing] Turks. [pause] This is the bottom. [Barbara talking in the background] Thelen: It is really cool. Staples: We did not do that picture, but that is the equipment that we travelled. Thelen: And it was going to travel all over Austria? Staples: No, it traveled in the US and Canada. Charles: And Australia. Staples: And Barbara gave a lecture in German, not a lecture, but a speech. Charles: At the opening. Well, we then did another. We traveled this show and installed it back in Austria. Then we also installed - they asked us - this is another view there, I do not know if Bob showed you that. They have fourteen thousand pieces. The idea was that the Turks are coming so every landowner had to send so many men, they would get there stuff, they would head out. When we first went, it did not have any lights, you just opened the iron shutters. Now they put in some lights. We then did an exhibit in the Kanownhala on the first floor there also and that is when that talk was. This was a wonderful show to travel. It is more of an art show. It had platforms that people like this went on. Did you describe how this was designed? Thelen: No, it is very arresting to me. It looks like it is in motion. Charles: You would come around a corner and here are sixteen guys with their pikes coming at you and they are not as close together as they would in real battle. In real battle they would have been shoulder to shoulder. Thelen: They are pretty fierce looking to me. Charles: And the pikes would have been a little more straight at you, we could not quite do in the visitors. It is just the helmets. Staples: It is a tubular structure, it sort of goes into the platform and is up the leg and branches out to be a second leg, then branches out to be a torso, then branches out to be arms. Then you dress them in the field. Charles: They would have to come apart for every venue. They have ethafoam donuts we called them, around the arms to hold the armor and the legs and so on in place. They have got tape here that goes around and back up and locks back in here. We had another group of them that had real guns open, outside of a case, but they were well secured. This was a fabulous show. Thelen: So designed that way, they could almost fit within any spaces that people would have. Charles: Yes, the platform could be reorganized. Thelen: You could put five in one row, three in another, whatever you needed. Charles: That picture alone has probably gotten us more jobs. Thelen: Oh my God that was my reaction, holy cow. Charles: The rest of the show had platforms with these guys. It had casework. For traveling the rest of it was not as unusual as how do you deal with this and how do you make a show out of ordinary armor when people are kind of wanting that stuff, the king. Staples: The Smithsonian exhibit central, who staged the first. Charles: It opened in San Francisco. Staples: But we did the staging here. Then we sent it to San Francisco, those mannequins. Charles: It was a very interesting project in that it was organized out of Austria. Staples: They had the goods. Charles: They had the stuff. Analea Hoclofer. Werstyermark and Gratz is its capital. We used to joke it is like the Texas of Austria, it has got the industry, the muscle, but it does not have Vienna and it does not have Stalsburg. It has this beautiful Baroque city, but only two percent of tourists at that point would go there. Analea has great music, a whole lot of stuff. She was assigned by the governor of Styermark to come to the United States. She had an office in New York working out the cultural center. To help develop projects for Styermark and put Styermark a bit more on the map. We had met the head of the Yonam, this is one part of a consortium of museums. He had told them, her to, Fritz Fyaker, look us up. She called and we were just finishing Crossroads at the time. We said, well come down to Washington let us go to Crossroads, go to the opening, get a sense of a big traveling show in the United States. We kind of talked to her, wooed her. Eventually it was agreed that a show could actually happen. We introduced her to Peter Marzio. We were trying to think about - they had to have an American partner. Do you know Peter, did you know Peter? He unfortunately died young, just died this year. He was head of the Houston Art Museum, great guy. We had known him from a very early project here. Staples: Started out at the Smithsonian and then got Houston. Charles: He was one of Dan Borstein’s bright young men. Staples: Same period as Skramstad . Charles: When they both were young. Peter had gotten his PhD at the University of Chicago. A double degree under Joshua Taylor and Dan Borstein. Anyway, called Peter and talked about the show. I said, “you know Peter if any show is Texas.” He got it immediately, he said “Texas would love this.” Peter and Analea got along great, so Peter then started working with her to help find other venues. Staples: Peter is the one who insisted on adding art to it. Charles: He wanted to add art and he got along very well with Peter. Staples: The other Peter. Charles: The head of the Zogous who was an art historian, we will fill it in. Staples: Peter Kryn. Charles: Peter Kryn. Basically a consortium was made of museums and each one would provide their own expertise. I am not quite sure how they developed it financially. Houston would be the registrars and they also organized the publication of the book. San Francisco, where it was going to open, San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts had a really good conservation department so they took on making the mounts, any conservation issues and the show was going to open there, so objects went there early to get there mounts made. It went to the IBM Center in New York and they had a big publicity department, so they worked on the poster, the brochure, organizing publicity, that kind of stuff. Smithsonian had the model shop, so Smithsonian agreed to do the mannequins that were needed to hold this armor up. It was a great sort of team effort. Thelen: Do traveling exhibits usually have that subdivision of labor? Charles: One usually organizes it and sells it to the others. I think what happened here is that Houston and San Francisco could apply for NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] for funding or NEH for funding. I think that they got some funding. Smithsonian could not because it is the government and IBM could not. As I say, I am not sure how all the funding worked. We were hired in effect by the consortium to be the designers. I do not even know if we have a contract. Staples: How did it get to Canada? Charles: Then Canada heard about it. Once it was all done in the United States it sort of belonged to Austria. I think it was understood they could have the cases, they could then do anything they wanted with it. Analea was aggressive and Canada heard about it. It went to two places in Canada, the Museum of Civilization. Staples: Ottawa. Charles: First in Quebec and then to Ottawa. Then it went back to Austria for a while. It had to come with a whole crew to mount these things. Then it went to Australia for three venues. Then it came back to Austria. Then there was, well, Starmark has been paying for this, supporting this, why are not we seeing it in Styarmark? Then they asked us if we would come to Austria and install it in a castle. So we put it in a castle in Austria. It was a wonderful when we worked with them on and off. Thelen: It sounds like a dream sort of synergy. Charles: It was a fabulous project. I had been an AFS student in Austria in high school so we would go see my Austrian family when we were back there. Staples: Analea became then a legacy. Not a legacy… Charles: Liability? Staples: Liability. Thelen: Because? Charles: There were questions about how much money she was spending or not spending and investigations and so on. I think a change of government as you can imagine. She was very much the person of one governor. When another government came in - because of being involved throughout the show all this time, as I say, they did invite us to do a permanent exhibit there. Then we put in the temporary one. This is the permanent exhibit down in the cannon hall of this same building that had been emptied in the Napoleonic wars because the cannons were sent off to fight Napoleon and never returned because they were considered archaic. Bob came up with, you cannot see too much of the steel here, but sort of your Sarah wall. Thelen: Your what? Staples: One artist, there is an artist that does big pieces of steel. I did little pieces of steel. Mine are quarter inch thick, his are an inch think. The idea was a very long narrow gallery, you enter here and you exit here. You had to go all the way up here and all the way down. It was very narrow so we could not afford a lot of furniture in there. We created a kind of curved, quarter inch steel wall that was held vertical and secure by some constructions at the end that had cases and stuff like that. We had this steel rolled, it was nice. Charles: It is the kind of thing, I do not know, who suggested steel? I mean, it turned out… Staples: I do not know, but there are these moments, these sort of ah-ha, eureka moments that, for instance, the pikeman was kind of a eureka moment. You were able to describe it and do it and it works. The steel of this cannon hall is another one of those moments. Charles: Well, what I was going to say is the Zoghouse is a treasure to the people of Styermark and Gratz, so everybody wanted to work on it. It is only three thousand square feet, but we had three different carpentry firms and a glass firm, I mean we had all these different contractors. Earlier, before it was designed, I think probably Bob and Tommy talking. Tommy was our project manager who mostly speaks German and Bob does not, but they get along great. Somehow all I just remember and all of a sudden Tommy and Bob are heading off to the steelmill. Directory: 2012 2012 -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? 2012 -> Annual InStructional unit plan 2012 -> University of Hawai‘i Maui College dental assisting program review october 21, 2013 2012 -> Committee on the rights of the child the rights of all children in the context of international migration 2012 -> Background on the Haitian Earthquake 2012 -> The Collected Wisdom of Science Olympiad Coaches 2012 -> Federal Communications Commission fcc 12-81 Before the Federal Communications Commission 2012 -> Aa and na members Dying from Tobacco 2012 -> [Baby Crying] 01: 04 [Ching Download 0.61 Mb. Share with your friends:
|