Second Reflection

Today I went with DJ to a meeting with the registrar and exhibitions director. They discussed the silent auction and benefit (held a couple weeks ago) and debriefed shortly. Then they moved on to discussing moCa's incident management protocols and policies. I learned that the museum has fine art insurance and so they also have to follow certain policies from that agreement which seems pretty complex. I also learned that certain pieces have certain policies based on who the lender of the work is. The team discussed security measures and what not, making sure they check all the insurance company's boxes, as this is quite important. The higher the value of the piece, the higher the security needs to be.  This may seem uninteresting to some, but to me this is all really exciting. I enjoy learning about all the behind the scenes work that goes into museums like moCa. In this meeting the team discussed their temperature and humidity systems as well, which have to be extremely specific to 1. follow the lender's and insurance's policies, and 2. to make sure all of the galleries are considered "treated spaces". This means that the temperature is 70 degrees plus or minus 5, and that the humidity is 50% plus or minus 5. 

The second part of today was a tour of the museum and lunch with an arts and culture specialist and professor at Cleveland State University Liz Maugans, DJ, and the president of moCa's board Stephen Sokany. Walking through the galleries and seeing the spaces with DJ was an amazing time because he knows everything, I mean everything, about the works, stories, and artists. It honestly felt like the closest experience to being with the actual artist. 

All in all, this was a success! I learned so much more about the artists showing now, and learned so much more about the Cleveland art scene!

This is a piece by Gala Porras-Kim. The way it works is that there is a humidifier that strategically dispenses moisture to create the black on the canvas below. 

This piece is a rock on which water is dropped every 10 minutes. The piece is meant to show erosion, and the piece will be complete when there is a hole through the rock. 

These are pieces of ancient ice cores from the earth dating back to 25,000 years ago. Some of the bags have rock in them. In the back there is a tray where they take out another piece of this ancient ice and it evaporates, leaving "ancient" air.