Fighting my inner curmudgeon about social media

On an institutional level, I think social media is a pretty neat thing. On a personal level, I wish someone would permanently crash the servers at Facebook and Twitter.

I've been thinking a lot about social media lately. A couple of weeks ago, I attended Social Media Art Camp, a two-day conference that took a broad look at the cultural landscape and discussed how social media could become a pivotal transformation point for how arts organizations engage with their audiences. It was all very kumbaya (and predictable) as the speakers discussed how different platforms on the web can create a virtual gathering places, allowing people to share their thoughts and come together to discuss common interests, desires, thoughts on past programming, and ideas for new events.

I should like social media. It's useful and taps into a collective knowledge. It's democratized the cultural conversation, allowing anyone to participate. It's made our cultural institutions appear more transparent and customer-service oriented. Unfortunately, when practiced by hundreds of individuals as a part of their personal lives, I often find it nauseating as we all strive to prove to our friends and followers the meaningfulness of our lives and the uniqueness of our own perspective (I do recognize that I have a blog and a Facebook account and that I'm a hypocrite).

Arts institutions and individuals have different goals. Institutions are self-perpetuating machines. In the most basic Darwinian sense, they ensure their survival always. Social media might eventually be the tools that most successfully allow them to retain audiences outside of their hallowed halls. Of course, they still need to create great experiences inside those halls.

Social media makes clear an odd tension in the human psyche, both the desire to stand out and the desire to fit in. We all participate because of the herd mentality (and because some real-life people have achieved popular media fame through the great equalizer--we all are waiting to be the unique exception plucked from obscurity). What's the cost of our new interconnectedness?Is the momentary pleasure from discovering that the vain cheerleader from high school gained 50 pounds worth the now life-long commitment to having her as a "friend"? Not all people are supposed to stay in our lives forever. In fact, it's sort of freeing to leave a few behind. Moreover, do you really want to discover how self-involved your acquaintances are through their status updates? As for Twitter, boiling down observations to 140 characters doesn't make your quotidian interesting. In fact, it's sort of depressing. It's the moment when I most wish the conversation hadn't been democratized.

So, is there anyway to just have arts orgs use social media and leave everyone else behind? (I didn't think so, either).

The Snarks

This weekend, instead of watching theatrical magic, I'm actually getting to create some of my own. I'm volunteering with the Snarks, an amateur all-female theatre troupe that just celebrated it's 100th birthday. They're producing "Mornings at Seven," a 1939 comedy by Paul Osborne.

The Snarks (mostly women in their 50s, 60s, and 70s) share space with the Amateur Comedy Club, which owns an adorable carriage house on Lexington and 36th. On the first floor is a tiny stage and seating for about 75. The second floor houses the work room, dressing rooms, meeting room, and kitchen. The first time I entered I felt like I had gone home. The spirit of the place reminded me so much of Wellesley's Shakespeare Society, where women did everything and ran everything together.

Yesterday, about 20 women and a few men gathered to finish building the set. Even a simple set takes a lot of work and we had our work cut out for us. My partners and I screwed homasote to the stage floor and glued down green carpet squares for grass. Grass laying was the best part, the "lawn" areas weren't square, so we had to cut the square up as if we were making a jigsaw puzzle.

It was wonderful to be back in a theater and to get my hands dirty. It was nice to feel the sense of instant camaraderie that a show produces and to come together to create a unified artistic product. I'm really looking forward to running the lights next weekend.

So Impressed with BAM

Last night, a representative from BAM called me. He began by noting that it was my first time buying tickets for a production there and he wanted to know what I had thought about As You Like It. My first response was shock, my second response was to begin speaking as quickly as possible. I've never had the opportunity to tell a professional theatre what I thought of their production (and I've certainly never taken the initiative to write to one after seeing a performance). That I hated the performance was beside the point; I felt all warm and gushy inside because I got to share my thoughts and, in some small measure, they counted. Someone at the organization actually cared.

Before my phone died (I couldn't believe it, I was so enjoying myself), the BAM representative and I had a wide ranging discussion (or was wide-ranging as you can get in 5-8 minutes) about directorial choices, competent Shakespearean training, and name-brand actors vs. relative unknowns. Throughout the conversation, I made it clear that I took issue with director Sam Mendes's choices and placed the blame squarely on his shoulders. My dislike of the production, at this point had nothing to do with BAM as an institution. Still, I think the rep was slightly taken aback-- after I had leveled the first criticism he did say, "Well, tell us how you really feel." To which I might have responded: sugar-coating my disdain doesn't do you any good.

Still without that call, I'm not sure how soon I would venture back to BAM. I certainly have no desire to go see The Tempest, the second play in the Bridge Project, directed by Mendes, and which starts in rep soon. I also didn't even know what was next in their season until that call. But after the call, I'm curious to see something else. I'm even hoping that I get called again. I like that this place called me. I'm just one of the unwashed masses, but BAM has democratized the experience. Even though I only bought a $31 ticket in the balcony, my opinion matters. They are blatantly cultivating my patronage and I love it.

BAM, I'll be back soon. Thanks for listening and for being so gracious about my informed dislike of the production. This is the start of a sustained interest in you as an institution and your productions. I'm looking forward to forming my second impression of you.

As You Like It

On Thursday, Annette and I went to see BAM's As You Like It. We were pretty excited since we had both worked on it in college; I had directed and Annette had been my stage manager. We love the text and had high expectations for this production. They were quickly dashed. The director Sam Mendes squeezed everything joyous and lovely out of the script. It was cold, dark, and depressing.

Actually, it shared quite a lot in common with Sir Peter Hall's production, which I had seen in Boston my junior year, and which was equally as disappointing. Both Hall and Mendes's versions embraced the cold elements of the play--emphasizing the harshness of the world and man's precarious place in it. Both featured snow covered stages and modern-slob dress. Both downplayed Rosalind, making her almost an appendage to the male characters, who they clearly found more interesting. Frankly, it made me yearn for a professional production by a woman director.

To me, the play has always been a study in artifice. A play which sets a cast of characters in a court where they must use their wits and smarts to survive. Rosalind must be an exemplary, tough as nails woman who does not show the psychic damage of being the daughter of a banished duke. Outside of the court she must pass herself off as a man in order to protect her physical safety. Orlando is a youngest son forced to hide his light under a bushel so as not to provoke the rage of an eldest brother who is not as intrinsically good as he. Touchstone and Jaques may place themselves in the positions of fools, but they are the cleverest and most clear sighted of the bunch. Ultimately, it is the vividness and truthfulness of Rosalind and Orlando's characters that forces them beyond artifice to embrace who they truly are and restore peace to Arden.

Americana Week

At my first auction, I fell asleep. The room was warm; I was exhausted from a week of forced marches through New York to see as many antiques and museums as possible; there weren't any chairs and I was sitting propped up against a wall. But really, those are just excuses. I fell asleep because I was bored out of my mind.

At first, there was sort of an ironic fun in watching poorly-dressed people bid on objects for thousands of dollars (one had to suppose their discretionary funds were entirely devoted to their antiquing mania). It was kind of intriguing to watch Sotheby's employees sitting at the phone banks intently whisper-narrating the auction floor to a bidder. It was even mildly exciting to watch people raise their paddles on the floor and be recognized by the auctioneer--"150,000 to the gentleman standing in the back. 160,000 to the lady seated to the left." But that was the first 15 minutes. Then it became a sort of monotonous litany that accompanied a slideshow that seemed to loop every 20 minutes or so. Oops, there's another side chair. Wait, didn't we see that card table before. I know I saw that folk art painting of a child just a few minutes ago. In any event, I didn't have a real desire to ever attend another auction.

Imagine my own surprise then when I found myself accompanying Patty to Sotheby's this morning. She was meeting Katie there to watch the "Important Americana" auction and I promised to meet Sarah (a 2nd year Winterthur fellow and a dear friend from college) there in the afternoon to get some lunch. I figured I might as well just go see the auction too; maybe, I'd like it better this time. Again, the people watching was pretty good for the first 15 minutes. There were even a couple of on the floor battles, and I got to observe Leslie Keno at length. I think I've found the new brand-face for Energizer batteries--I have never seen someone look so perpetually engaged and excited for quite so long. But even Leslie couldn't detract from the fact, that it was the same schtick over and over--"20,000. Fair warning, selling for $20,000. Peer intently around the room. Sold. Sharply rap the rapper thingie.... 40,000. Fair warning, selling for $40,000. Peer like a bird of prey for a rival bid. Sold."

Luckily, I didn't have to be bored the entire time. I had brought along We Two: Victoria and Albert-Rulers, Partners, Rivals--an intriguing biography that examines both monarchs' childhoods and the power dynamics that drove their relationship. I picked it up after seeing the movie Young Victoria with Emily Blunt. I couldn't quite believe that the movie accurately reflected her character or her relationship with her husband. It just seemed too modern. It turns out I was largely right. The book "complicates our historical understanding" (to borrow a phrase from the pedants) of the relationship and shows how the social mores of the age even constricted the life of the Queen of England, the most powerful person in the land. In any event, Patty told me later she was relieved I had brought the book. She said I acted the part of the dutiful boyfriend on a shopping trip. To which, I should reply: Just doing what I can. Some people's furniture is another girl's shoe shopping.

A Weekend Spent Largely at the Met

Skipping out of order: on Sunday, Sal and I ventured up to 190th St. to visit the Cloisters, the Met branch dedicated to medieval art and architecture. Sal joked that we had ventured so far from Brooklyn that we were likely to see unicorns roaming the streets. Little did he realize that we actually had entered the land of unicorns. The Cloisters are home to the "Unicorn Tapestries," an incredible collection of 16th century tapestries that depict the hunting of unicorns.

Though I had some inkling of what to expect, nothing quite prepared me for the splendor of seeing these tapestries in person. They are beautiful, whimsical, and heart-rending. There is a vivid aliveness to their representation, as if the men marching through the forest will step out of the tapestry and into the gallery themselves. In The Unicorn is Killed and Brought to the Castle one can almost hear the men on castle's ramparts whispering to one another.

We explored the rest of the Cloisters too, but nothing is quite as breathtaking as those mind-boggling tapestries. I doubt if Athena's tapestry of the gods at play on Mt. Olympus could have rivaled these. How on earth could someone have woven, by hand, these intricate, detailed images. How does thread become an rabbit's eye that twinkles with such rabbity good humor?

On Friday night, Patty and I had the pleasure of taking a private tour of American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life at the Met. Our friend Katie is a curatorial assistant in the

American Wing and has spent the last year working on the exhibition. She also authors the exhibition's blog (make sure to check it out). On our tour, she regaled us with stories of how the show came together--from choosing the paint colors on the gallery walls to writing labels to make sure the color correction in the catalogue was correct. We particularly enjoyed this shop talk because Patty and I had our own small part in the exhibitions' behind the scenes. On a road trip in the Berkshires, we drove Katie to the Smith College Museum of Art so she could look at the sky in a Lily Martin Spencer painting in person. Happily, it really was blue and not the yellow the museum's slide indicated it was.

But about the show: it was pretty great. It sweepingly showed how America perceived and conceived it's nationhood from the time of the Revolution to the start of WWI. It's only open until the 24th, so head over to the Met soon. It's unlikely that such an impressive grouping of American paintings will be seen together anytime soon.

The New York Transit Museum

Like most New Yorkers, I take the subway everyday and I take it for granted. Unless the train is running slowly, I never stop to think about how the subway runs, how it was built, or even how metrocard revenue is collected and counted. My visit to the New York Transit Museum today was informative and, more importantly, fun.

To enter the museum, visitors (appropriately) descend down the stairs of a decommissioned subway station at Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street. A friendly staff members sells tickets from a historic ticket booth (I wish they still made them with beautifully varnished, turned wood bars). The museum's first gallery is a passage with a low burlap cloth ceiling, which evokes the feeling of being in an early, unfinished subway tunnel. The passage is papered in historic images that show the construction of the city's first subway. There's also great clips from newspapers of the day that feature quotes from workers who survived freak accidents, the city officials who celebrated the new initiative, and critics who lauded the city's technological advancement. And I was surprised to learn that the subway began as a private enterprise and was not a civic amenity until well into the 20th century.

One of my favorite displays in the museum illustrated the evolution of the subway's fare system, from paper tickets to tokens to today's metrocards. The best part were the examples of fake tokens that people had passed off as the real thing, including a quarter that someone had taken the pains to punch a "Y" out the middle of, just like a real token from the '70s. The board of fakes perfectly illustrated a conversation Sal and I had on our way to the museum. As he tells it, there was a coin in Costa Rica that was the exact size, shape, and weight as the MTA subway token. Illegal vendors on the street would sell a bag of the coins for a few dollars to fare evaders. Still, even the metrocard introduced in 1994 and fully phased in by 2004 experienced evasion kinks when it started. Someone discovered if you creased the magnetic strip just so, the computers in the turnstiles would think a valueless card still had enough value on it for a ride.

In the same gallery as the subway tokens are old station turnstiles. The first turnstiles had heavy wooden arms and were operated by an attendant who pushed a footlever which allowed a passenger to turn the arm and enter the station. It's a far cry from the sleek, polished stainless steel, computer operated turnstiles the MTA uses today. We even learned why the sides of the today's turnstile are slanted and the barred passage is so narrow. The slanted slides keep people from getting a purchase on top, so they can't jump over the arm. The narrow entrance dissuades people from crouching and going underneath the arm. Given that challenge and the opportunity (we wouldn't be arrested for fare evasion in the museum), we took turns sneaking through the turnstile. We also tested the other historic turnstyles and loved that the museum allowed us to interact with and touch the artifacts (after withstanding millions of people year after year, what's a few thousand more at the museum?).

The lowest level of the museum is the decommissioned station's platform, where 19 subway cars dating from 1904 to the present are lined up on the downtown and uptown tracks. Down the center of the platform are interpretative boards with detailed descriptions of the subway's evolution. Outside each subway car is a label telling the car's length of service and context of use. Interesting fact: subway cars were wooden until an accident shattered one and killed 93 people in 1918 After that cars were made of metal. Another interesting fact: subway revenue used to be collected at the stations at night and then taken by specially guarded subway cars on dedicated tracks to a carefully concealed money room in Brooklyn (since 2006, it's taken by armored car to Queens).

The subway cars are open and people are free to wander in and out, sit on the seats, and hang on the straps. In the cars, we spent a lot of time looking at the old maps--graphic design has come a long way--and the old advertisements, which have been around since the very beginning. As we were traveling back to Park Slope, we looked around at the ads in our car and realized that the ads have evolved a lot. There are fewer of them and they're longer and horizontally oriented. Even up until the 1970s, there were more and they were smaller, with a more vertical orientation. Our ads push services , sell tourist experiences, or are sponsored by the MTA to make you feel good about the transit authority. The historic ads sold goods.

I really can't gush about the museum enough (I'm just going to ignore the exhibit on Robert Moses, which I thought had confusing explanations and illustrations of the Triborough Bridge) because I left so energized. I love when I go to a museum and it dynamically teaches me about a segment of the world I interact with everyday. I love that the museum allowed me to explore and touch the artifacts. I liked that my experience interacting with the museum objects was informed by and now informs how I relate to my everyday environment.