Your Museum Time: October 8, 2020

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Your Museum Time

Thanks for being part of the Your Museum Time program. For those of you who are new, each week you'll receive a prompt that offers an idea to use in your journal that week. The prompts will vary—a question, a looking technique, an insight related to new scholarship, a mindfulness exercise, a poetry form, or a sketching idea. You might even be asked some of the same questions the Museum staff is asking of themselves, as we work on action steps related to our commitment to racial justice.

If you ever want to look back at previous prompts, you can find an archive of past Your Museum Time emails on our website here.

And, if you have questions, or ideas for prompts, I'd love to hear from you. Email me at [email protected].

All the best,

Kris Bergquist

Mirken Curator of Education and Engagement

Prompt #5

When it's fall in Maine, it can be difficult to make the choice to spend time indoors. Luckily for us at Colby College, there are a number of wonderful outdoor sculptures located around the Museum that can bring art and the outdoors together.

Get comfortable on the Paul J. Schupf Sculpture Court, and contemplate two works of art in that space.

Richard Serra's work, three steel blocks weighing 30 tons each, is located near the museum's front door.

As you look carefully at it, can you come up with some theories as to why it's called 4-5-6?

Each work of art contains the dimensions—4 feet and 5 feet and 6 feet—but each one is arranged differently. For example, one block is 6 feet wide, another block is 6 feet tall, and another has a depth of 6 feet.

The variety of the dimensions ensures that each block appears different from each other, although they are very much the same in their weight and material.

Richard Serra has said that he sees his work as being more about its inherent properties of mass, weight, material, and gravity than about life experiences or metaphors.

But art has multiple meanings and can mean different things to each one of us. As you contemplate this work, what comes to your mind? Jot a few notes in your journal.

The work on the same wall as the Museum's front door is a site-specific installation titled The Museum is a School. The words on the wall seem to call out for the museum to be a place where artists and visitors learn from each other, and make connections to their own lives.

The artist, Luis Camnitzer, is known for his conceptual artworks that often use words to provoke thoughts and questions. He visited the college in 2017 to deliver a lecture, and an interview conducted during his time at Colby is available to read in The Lantern, the Museum's digital magazine.

How do you interpret the words written here? Are there connections that you have made between works of art and your own life at the Museum?

If you were the artist, placing words on the walls of an art museum—what would those words be? Sketch it out in your journal.

If you'd like, visit the Welcome Desk and pick up a

postcard that depicts this work of art; think of it as a

tangible memory of your experience today.

Artworks: Richard Serra, 4-5-6, 2000, forged weatherproof steel on concrete footings, 48 in. x 60 in. x 72 in. (121.92 cm x 152.4 cm x 182.88 cm), museum purchase from the Jere Abbott Acquisitions Fund. Accession Number: 2000.002;

Luis Camnitzer, The Museum is a School, 2011, site specific installation, dimensions variable, gift of Seth A. Thayer Jr. '89 and Gregory N. Tinder in honor of the staff of the Colby College Museum of Art. Accession Number: 2013.509

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Colby College Museum of Art

5600 Mayflower Hill

Waterville, ME 04901