Coloring Room
An interactive exhibition and Museum Educator Graduate Scholars project at The Art Institute of Chicago. How can sensory focused experiences expand visitors’ sense of belonging and participation in an art institution? My objective was to build a methodology for creating interactive, unfacilitated, informal learning environments in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Interactive Gallery. “Coloring Room” was the third in a series of pop-up exhibitions designed for multi-modal and collaborative play between both families and strangers. Museum educators used the pop-up exhibitions as platforms to evaluate the visitor engagement with art concepts, the museum’s collection, and interpersonal skills in the museum. Evaluations were a self-reflective practice on how the museum serves its audience. In light of this, I looked to Katherine Kuh, an AIC educator and curator between 1944-1959, and her interactions with pedagogically minded artists and architects such as Mies Van der Rohe and Josef Albers. Alber’s text Interaction of Colors became the basis for Coloring Room activities and underlying principles. Broadly, color theory acted as a conceit to generate qualities of difference via perception and social interaction. Thank you to Mary Erbach, Robin Schnur, Nenette Luarca-Shoaf, Kerri Callahan, and Juneer Kibria Illustration of “Coloring Room” by visitor Clementine Luarca – Shoaf, age five Gallery of Art Interpretation Katherine Kuh Exhibitions “Explaining Abstract Art” and “Line, Shape, and Form” Addressing Accessibility Coloring Room: a social story A social story is a narrative device used for autistic visitors to help anticipate their visit. However, a social story works for anyone. Included in the following guide is a visual checklist, and other materials into a guide for “Coloring Room. Cognitive “pre-play” as studied in neurology shows that it’s a common occurrence for brains to make a “horizon of expectations” before an event. Managing expectations is a strategy taken up by the museum at large through messaging from departments spanning across the institution – from education to development. The goal is for museum-goers to find practical access and emotional belonging to concepts, histories, artworks, spaces, and communities that the museum gathers. Click to read the social story.
MAKING OUT
Studio Pedagogy Writing Studio Pedagogy Writing Making Out October 2017 SITE Sharp, 37 S Wabash, Chicago IL Press Release MAKING OUT turns the SITE gallery into a space of playful resistance. The work will center around a large installation of bleachers that suggest a high school football field — the kind of bleachers that provide a refuge for clandestine kissing. Making Out fosters radical imagination by constructing a particular, touchable, sometimes functional site for envisioning tenderness. This show is a collaboration by a group of artists known as HIVE. The work is a site of negotiation between power and intimacy. It aims to clarify the question of whether tenderness can resist and alter systemic power structures. This work encourages and explores the practice of making out in the context of institutional subjugation. HIVE intends to remain hopeful via this exploration. HIVE intends, at every step, to acknowledge the possibility that if we keep kissing, we may alter the conditions of our subjugation. At the same time, paradoxically, we humbly acknowledge our helplessness in the face of power: we make out all the same. Several programs and happenings will take place as we explore these ideas with the gallery’s visitors. Some programs take place under the refuge of the bleachers. Some will be available to stream online, as this show is both local and dispersed. In addition to the bleachers, this show includes interactive sound and touch installations, as well as a limited quantity of free zines. Making Out is the first exhibition in SITE Galleries by students in SAIC’s Low-Residency MFA program, which was established in 2014. It is a joint effort by HIVE, a group comprised of class of 2018 Low-Residency students Maggie Wong, Nancy Murphy-Spicer, Morris Fox, Morgan Green, Brendan Getz, and C Alex Clark. We are grateful to the faculty, loved-ones, and remote collaborators who join us in this work. Program OCTOBER 11 — Kissin’ and Kiss-in 4:00 PM Kiss-In We encourage those who are curious about affectionate touch as a form of resistance to attend this event. We will model methods of consent before practicing them through kissing. Participants can kiss in whatever way they are comfortable: on the hand, on the cheek, or more intimately. Here we actively support careful touch, tenderness and communication. Participants may also choose at any time to watch, rather than participate. This action is a sincere and hopeful attempt to evaluate the gallery’s potential as a space of resistance, of inclusion rather than exclusion. It looks to the 90s kiss-ins staged by ACT UP, an AIDS direct action advocacy group. These kiss-ins were meant to combat homophobia and subsequent apathy towards the AIDS crisis. They challenged repressive conventions by publicly affirming queer feeling and desire. Our action takes these tactics, which have been historically effective in the street, and enacts them in the space of the gallery — in the shelter we have built there. We are using these tactics in this case to build notions of empowerment through intimacy, and to fortify tools of consent. We hope that this action serves both as a way to try something new and as a way to honor history. *** Due to the institution’s concerns with health and safety, Hive respectfully altered the program to eliminate participatory kissing. Instead, we modeled our forms of consent that we planned and facilitated a discussion around consent with the event attendees. We feel that the alteration still does not completely fulfill the mission of the intended KIss-In and are looking to see it through in another setting. 5:00 PM, We Won’t Get Bored Kissing Because Time Will Be a Mobius Strip In this lecture, Morgan Green will seriously consider alternative conceptions of time as tools of resistance. She will draw from queer theory and popular media as she clumsily attempts to simulate (pedagogically) the experience of making out forever. A supplementary zine will distributed after the talk. OCTOBER 18 — Digitally Intimate Maggie Wong, MC 4:00 PM Bedsheet Poetry Readings A series of video-cast poetry readings curated by C Alex Clark, who will Skype in to introduce poets, Katie Johnson (Sante Fe, NM) and Bailey Schaumberg (St. Louis, MO). 5:00 PM Drive-In / Kiss-In Movie 1. High School (1968) – Frederick Wisemanfrom min 1:01:49 – 1:10:102. Confrontation: Paris, 1968 – Seymour Drescher min 31:53 to end3. Act Up Chicago “Kiss In” April 1990 (2 min)4. Fast Trip, Long Drop, Greg Bordowitz until min 7:19 “I’m fired up I am kissing everybody!”5. Thumb War – A.K. Burns, 3 min6. Touch Parade – A.K Burns, 9 minAll films are in the public domain and screened via You Tube, Ubu Web, and Vimeo. OCTOBER 25 — Artist Talk with Sarah Schulman For this lunch time talk Hive and the School of the Art Institute’s Visiting Artist Program, and SITE hosted artist, writer, and activist Sarah Schulman under the bleachers. Facilitated by Maggie Wong, the conversation focused on the question “What does having a Kiss-In mean today?” and discussed the ideas of safety, institutional responsibilities, and urgency/radical actions.
Work-in-progress
Maggie Wong makes art, writes about art, writes art, reads art, shares art, mentors artists, and is mentored by artists. She studies. Maggie Wong holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she now works as a lecturer. Additionally, she is the Associate Director of Iceberg Projects in Rogers Park. Maggie Wong is from Oakland, CA, and now resides in Chicago. Maggie Wong will have images and more text for you soon. 2021-2006 (a fly by)