Movie Museum News

Latest news from around the movie museum world.

• There are rumours of a move for the Wizard of Oz museum so that it won't be in Kansas anymore. 
• It is believed that the Cool Hand Luke museum is due to close because of its failure to communicate. 
• The owner of the White Heat museum has fulfilled his mother's dying wish to build it in the Himalayas and was heard to say, "Made it Ma! Top of the World!" 
• The new method to get donations at the free to enter the Jerry Maguire museum has the docents pursuing visitors around the displays shouting, "Show me the money" 
• Sadly the Few Good Men museum has closed, the owner believes it is because the general public couldn't handle the truth. 
• In order for the Jaws museum to expand its visitor numbers, its going to need a bigger boat. 
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre museum has abandoned its membership badge policy. As the Chair of the Friends Group so eloquently put it, "Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!" 
• I can confirm the new Graduate museum will be made entirely out of plastics 
• The headline review of the Beyond the Forest museum - WHAT A DUMP! 
• At last the new displays at the Poltergeist museum - they're here! 
• In news from the HLF funded 1940s British Films museum, recent complaints about the Genevieve displays has made the curator wonder about the new visitors, "Are they Americans?" Furthermore, the I Know Where I'm Going section's concentration on growing a male only audience means they, "...haven't heard any intelligent female nonsense in months."
• Plans to extend the British Swinging Sixties Museum ended in disaster when they were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off.
• And finally, after the recent withdrawal of financial support for the Modern British Animation museum it is being forced to relocate. The director said, "Cheese! We'll go somewhere where there's cheese! Everybody knows the moon is made of cheese."

Life is Art. Art is Life. I am Art. Art am I

The demand to provide a temporary art exhibition at the Museum of Unreason has inspired a debate on art. I naturally assume that anyone who works in a museum is open to the beauty that the world offers us, but our thinking seems limited. The staff came up with local art group/school competition/public curation of the art in storage. Ludicrous ideas all. What about hanging everything upside down and pretending to be Australian? Or smashing up several artworks in the gallery to represent the fragmentary nature of memory (not my idea - but a brilliant one). In the end I have decided to curate a special art exhibition called, 'ME' to tell the a day in the life of ME.

Morning

The Unmade Bed, Imogen Cunningham 1957 Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Regular Day at the Museum

Work, Ford Maddox Brown, 1863, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

Lunch

Joel Penkman, 2011

which merges into Afternoon Tea

Tea Time (Woman with a Teaspoon), Jean Metzinger, 1911

closely followed by the Pub

Cranbrook Arms, Rob Adam 2011 (http://www.treeshark.com/treeblog/?p=335)

Home at last???

Switch, 1994, Rachael Whiteread

Lights  - eventually

Two Candles, 1982, Gerhard Richter

Oops left the gas on

 Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View,1991, Cornelia Parker

Resulting in

Piss Flowers (5) 1991-1992, Helen Chadwick

What have we learned from this? Live life, experience life, record it in whatever way you want and celebrate it. In my view, if Helen Chadwick can take plaster casts of urination to create things of exquisite beauty then the only thing that is limiting us is our imaginations. Oh and also most of the imaginative art is being done by women - just think what could have been produced had we given them the vote 5 years earlier.

Have you come across a great idea in a cultural venue? Let me know so the Museum can copy it and I can claim it as my idea -because nobody will let me borrow these paintings...boo. 

Museum Phobias

As promised last week, this week is phobia week. A straw pole at the Museum of Unreason revealed the following top ten phobias that museum staff and volunteers suffer from. I cannot claim this to reflect museums as a whole, but do you recognise yourself here?

There was a strong case to be made for Walloonphobia (fear of the Walloons) at the Museum of Unreason, but I think that is due to a works charabanc outing to Liege two years ago that went horribly wrong. If it is a general phobia in UK museums I would be rather surprised  - but does it actually explain the dearth of interpretation for Belgian visitors in our museums?

10. Polyphobia- Fear of many things.

The staff are scared, in the words of the receptionist, "Where do you want to start?" When you last visited a museum, did you notice the member of staff twitch and cower slightly as you approached them? Could you actually find a member of staff? In honour of the current coalition government I propose we rename this phobia Cameroclegaphobia

9. Metathesiophobia- Fear of changes.

The management of change is difficult for any organisation, to do so in museums is practically impossible so give  up and take pride in cultural stasis.

8. Ponophobia- Fear of overworking. 

The staff seem to suffer terribly from this, however hard I drive them. Although they do have a point, so I make sure I leave work at 3pm every day.

7. Ideophobia- Fear of ideas.

Excerpt from my latest meeting with the Chair of Trustees

"What shall the new display be on?" "I have no idea." 

"How do we pay for it?" "I have no idea." 

"What is your job?" "I have no idea."

This phobia explains an awful lot.

6. Chrometophobia - Fear of money.

Is this the true reason for so many volunteers in the heritage sector? I bet if you offered a volunteer money he/she would run away screaming. Certainly when any volunteer asks me for travel expenses I run away screaming, is that the same thing?

5. Ephebiphobia- Fear of teenagers.

It is no coincidence that the lowest museum visitor demographic is the 16-24 age group. 

4. Kainolophobia - Fear of anything new, novelty.

My hilarious handshake buzzer appeared to expose this phobia amongst the museum staff.

3. Zemmiphobia- Fear of the great mole rat.
Many museums have mice, some employ cats to solve the problem. Unfortunately our rodent infestation ate our cat and volunteers seem to be disappearing rapidly. NEVER go into the stores unarmed - or perhaps its just my Zemmiphobia?

2. Plutophobia- Fear of wealth.

We complain about cuts, poor wages but we wouldn't have it any other way. We don't want to be bankers. We have integrity, we have cultural capital and in our world a bonus is a pound coin found down the back of the sofa. Anything else just scares us.

1. Disposophobia- Fear of throwing stuff out

It had to be. The Museums Association is trying to force us to rationalise our collections. Don't they realise they are dealing with ill people. Would you make an agoraphobe stand in a field? No, so don't make me ethically dispose of my unnecessary objects.

Pictures of Cats With Funny Expressions on their Faces

Last week during my blog I discovered the secret of life. Somewhat surprisingly I found it in a car park in Louisville, Kentucky. It is strange the links that are made in life that eventually lead to self actualisation, but there it is. Alas rumour has it that this will now form the plot for Dan Brown's next novel. So I can only apologise to the car park users as I expect the lot to be full with tourists from now on (once they find it).

Anyway, this week I promised pictures of cats with funny expressions on their faces.

This is my cat Lulu, named after the diminutive Scottish teen pop singer from the 60s. Why? I suppose you haven't heard my cat sing.

Happy Lulu

Serious Lulu

Reflective Lulu

Angry Lulu

Lulu in love

Can I go now?

Taking cat photos was not as easy as I expected. Just google 'cat' and millions of cute felines suddenly appear - how is that possible? I follow my cat for days taking photographs and nothing cute happens. Although I did rip my trousers falling out of a tree in the local park, and the old lady I fell on didn't find the experience cute at all. It was only when the policeman examined the boring cat images on the camera was I allowed to leave the station - 4 hours later.

Frustrated, I took action. When I attempted to put a clown's nose on Lulu, she objected. It wasn't a fair fight. She was young, quick, angry and well armed and I wasn't. I beat a hasty retreat as I didn't want to go into work with mysterious marks on my face again. So I ended up with these photos - and from this moment on let it be known that all other cat pictures on the internet have been Photoshopped - do not believe them.

This incident confirmed what I had always suspected - I had a small dose of ailurophobia*, but also made me realise I had a big dose of amychophobia**. This got me thinking about phobias. It is well known that Alfred Mosher Butts invented Scrabble to overcome his hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia***. I'm not sure I've spelt that correctly because my word processor's angry caterpillar immediately underlined it. I then realised it was set at U.S. English so took out any unnecessary 'u's and swapped the 's's for 'z's - that didn't help at all - the caterpillar just got angrier. So I set my spellchecker to 'English' English and ignored the caterpillar confident in the knowledge that machines don't know everything.

Anyway, all this got me thinking about phobias. Then it got me thinking about phobias in museums. It is thought that the director of a certain farming museum is an agoraphobe****, and rumour has it that the Visitor Services Manager at the People's History Museum is an alektorophobe*****.

So this week I will be conducting a survey at the Museum of Unreason to discover and then report on the ten most common phobias in the heritage world  - watch this space (unless, of course, you are an astrophobe).

* fear of cats
** fear of being scratched
*** fear of long words
**** fear of tractors - probably
***** fear of chickens