This week’s readings reminded me of my experience at the Mingei International Museum at Balboa Park, San Diego. About a year ago I visited the museum for an exhibit entitled “Surf Craft: Design and the Culture of Board Riding” with some friends. I was really excited because I had never been to a surfboard exhibition before and, like most surfers, shared a fascination for surfboards as a craft object.
“People have made surfboards for centuries. Standing alone, these boards are often striking examples of functional design. Together, they tell a compelling story about the evolution of an important American art form. Traditional craft, cutting-edge engineering and minimalist art converge in the Museum’s new exhibition devoted to surfboards built from the late 1940s to the present day.”
–Richard Kenvin, curator and surf historian (from my hometown)
The exhibit was a perfect fit for the museum, which was named after the Japanese word mingei, meaning art of the people. This craft-focused art museum setting afforded a more approachable relationship between museum goer and object. Someone with no knowledge of surfing or surf culture could appreciate the diversity of shapes and forms and stop to appreciate a board with of high visual interest, while a more knowledgable visitor could take note of the functional variants across time and space or research a particular shaper. Don’t get me wrong, the “museum effect” certainly changed my viewing relations with the surfboards, but not as much as I had expected considering their origin as functional, everyday objects. I guess in this way, the exhibition supports Svetlana Alpers’ conclusion that “museums provide a place where our eyes are exercised and where we are invited to find both unexpected as well as expected crafted objects to be of visual interest to us.”
I find “the museum effect” to be a helpful concept, too. It helps me to put words to something I hadn’t been able to name before. It’s sort of interesting to think that a lot of the projects we’ve been talking about — like iPads in galleries and the like — seem as though they would detract from the museum effect.
This is pretty cool — it can be forgotten that museums are to serve the people, especially when the historical artifacts presented seem so detached from us in the present day. You’ve created an interesting discussion on this “attendee-object” relationship: how more current objects (such as surfing) have the potential to be more inviting to viewers than artworks that some wouldn’t connect as well with.
This is pretty cool — it can be forgotten that museums are to serve the people, especially when the historical artifacts presented seem so detached from us in the present day. You’ve created an interesting discussion on this “attendee-object” relationship: how more current objects (such as surfing) have the potential to be more inviting to viewers than artworks that some wouldn’t connect as well with.
I actually randomly heard about this exhibit from my uncle who has been shaping surfboards for almost thirty years. The emphasis on the craftsmanship you noted in the exhibit reminds me of the Bennett article which referenced how museums were once much more process focused rather than product based. I think that surfboards are an interesting example as you said of a functional object also acting as art, in that they are visually compelling. In class last week we discussed the issue of taking functional objects and presenting them as pieces of art or artifacts, which is often problematic, but with surfing instead it seems to reflect an appreciation for the craftsmanship that goes into each board.