Author: alcinacortez

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Let us go with the flow and find out where it takes us

 Soundscapes is a temporary exhibition that has gone on display at the National Gallery in London from 8 July to 6 September 2015. It seeks to encourage visitors to experience paintings not only through what they see but also through what they hear. This being the case, the museum has commissioned six renowned musicians and sound artists to choose a painting from the museum’s collection that has some resonance for them and to create a sound installation in response to it.

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What if we use sound to see with?

My posts usually discuss an exhibition or a museum that focuses on music themes or that innovatively displays music within a museum setting. Here, however, I want to take a slightly different tack. Although it was my visit to the Alexander Graham Bell museum in Canada that has prompted this post, my aim is rather to draw the reader’s attention to the significance of Bell’s work in the development of the sonification of our lives. Indeed, from the museum studies point of view, the Bell museum is in need of updating, which means that there is no particular approach of this museum that I would like to highlight beyond that of celebrating Bell’s extraordinary contributions to our lives and of exhibiting a collection of artifacts donated in 1955 by the Bell family[1].

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When sound seeks to see

Before my trip to New York, I had noticed that the Bjork exhibition at MoMA was being severely criticised. As I really wanted my own perceptions to remain uncontaminated, I decided not to read any of the reviews so that I could come to my own conclusions. I believe this was a good position to take as I later found that the critics did not leave much room for manoeuvre of opinion about the exhibition. In fact, I actually found some things to dislike but also some noteworthy aspects to like.

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A tribute band or an Immaterial Heritage Live Museum

I consider myself a real fan of Genesis’ music and I have been ever since I was 15 years old. In fact, it was the album Selling England By the Pound that actually made me a fan of music in general. After I had heard it for the first time, I could not stop myself buying records; always with the hope, I then became to realize, to somehow recapture such an aesthetic, intellectual and emotional pleasures their music had given me for such a long time.

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Is music universal?

Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Bonn is having a new permanent exhibition titled People in Their Worlds – the museum has moved to a new building four years ago and this has made a good opportunity to reformulate the exhibition.
Its anthropological collection encompasses 7,000 objects from Africa, Asia, The Islands of Southeast, Oceania, and America, which might seem fairly conventional. Nevertheless, the approach that is being now presented is truly innovative: instead of offering a view of the objects of the different cultures in their specific habitats, it delivers a comparative cultural approach. The visitor is invited to engage by taking several issues that are debated in Western society and these are then putted into perspective near several other cultures. (more…)

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‘David Bowie is’ in the words of someone else

David Bowie Is is a touring exhibition/retrospective of David Bowie’s career, which is currently on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London until August 11th, 2013.

As I find that there are several aspects of the exhibition that can significantly add to the discussions on how to effectively address music themes in museums, I am very grateful that I had the opportunity to visit it.

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