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This week\u2019s 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 \u201cSurf Craft: Design and the Culture of Board Riding\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPeople 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\u2019s new exhibition devoted to surfboards built from the late 1940s to the present day.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u2013Richard Kenvin, curator and surf historian (from my hometown)<\/span><\/p>\n The exhibit was a perfect fit for the museum, which was named after the Japanese word mingei<\/i>, 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\u2019t get me wrong, the \u201cmuseum effect\u201d 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\u2019 conclusion that \u201cmuseums 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week\u2019s 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 … Continue reading “W2 \u2013 Surf Craft & The Museum Effect”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}