Breaking the Rules

Bucharest

Flew out to Romania on Friday to give a paper on exhibiting the avant garde at a conference on modernism and anti-modernism, organised by Roger Griffin Griffin. I get there late as the traffic from the airport is horrendous: the taxi takes two hours. One develops patience into a religious cult. Dump my bags at Novotel and decide I can make the last session in the hall "ten minutes away". I take a short cut and find the street is an impassable trench. I double back but still have to cross the trench - I don't understand the excavation as most services are wires in the air - a bit like Tokyo. Finally, I make it to the hall but the session has started earlier than scheduled because of the visit to the Palace at 7:30. One of the speakers attempts the record for the fastest paper ever delivered - one of the audience asks for it to be slower but they adjust the microphone for it to be louder. After the session I meet Pat and Mark from Duke University who are giving the other papers in my session and they introduce me to Maria from the Sorbonne who is a friend of theirs and we travel to the Palace together.

I'm still trying to make sense of what happened next. At the Palace they ask for ID - but I'm the only one who doesn't have any but they still let me in. We wait in an aula - an Egyptian vault-like space. The royal anthem is played from a recording and the prince and princess enter. There are formal speeches and an award ceremony, and then its Roumanian champagne and drinks and food. On the way out we write in the visitors' book. The coach takes us the restaurant which brews its own very good wheat beer. Maria, Pat, Mark and I leave early. We are all staying in the same hotel.

Our session is late on Saturday though Maria's paper is in earlier one. I lend her my memory stick to tranfer her slides to the laptop connected to the projector. She's talking about the First World War and the notion of apocalypse. Afterwards we head off to the People's Palace People's Palace and the Costume Museum. Then it's back to our session. I go first and it's OK - I'm conscious that I avoid the word modernism. Mark and Pat follow with fascinating discussion of the relationships between anarchism and vorticism (Gaudier Brzeska Gaudier Brzeska) and Kupka Kupka There are questions at the end and I have to field the question of how avant garde and modernism relate. I fall back on St Simon who described the avant garde as a military cadre of artists and writers preparing the way for his socialist utopia. Where modernism fits is uncertain: what is the art form for this utopia - modernsim (the Bauhaus answer), socialist realism (Stalin), abstract art (Kandinsky, Mondrian), constructivism (Rodchenko), the realism of Mass Observation or surrealism (Breton's answer)? I point out the slippage between modern, modernisation, modernity and modernism.

Wash-up time

Hello blog. It's some time since I did a posting. The week before last we had a meeting of the project board to discuss Breaking the Rules and prepare the final report - good and bad lessons. We had 123,358 visitors and 13,000 views of this blog. We had an 88% overall satisfaction rate but this was much higher for our target younger audience. We attracted a newer, younger audience - this had unexpected knock-ons: the catalogue/book did not sell as well as normally (1% below footfall ratio) but postcards exceeded expectations and more than made up for this. And the education programme had its best numbers excluding 'Sacred'.
The shop made £88K - postcards and books making the bulk, the shopping bag sold out but the tea towels were not a winner - is there such a thing as an avant-garde tea-towel? The exhibition also had additional consequences - offers of potential collection items, interviews with PhD students researching the avant garde and exhibition design. Last week an postgraduate student sent a questionnaire about museum blogs.

I still feel a sense of bereavement now the exhibition is down. I'm slowly getting back into circulation. Today at lunch time I went to John Marchant's Isis Gallery Isis gallery (Through John we secured the Jamie Reid gouache for Breaking the Rules.) He's showing the Bowery-based artist Ruth Marten's altered engravings - it's Goya meets Max Ernst. The gallery, in Hanwell Street (the scene of Inventory's "Golf Sale" intervention), is a converted tailor's shop with a glass roof - John tells me that he has found pins and needles under the wooden floor. We chat about SF - Zamyatin and Olaf Stapledon, and I tell him I still want to do my SF exhibition. Walking back to work I keep thinking about yesterday's visit to Christopher's houseboat party - the wind and rain as you walked along the mooring platform but the all-saturating light despite the clouds. There is something wonderful about the light at water-level, which I remember from my Oxford coxing days (is there an Isis sub-text here??). My desire to live on the river is starting to be overwhelming. Maybe it's some evolutionary memory of our ancestral home.

Over now?

Sunday was the last day - it must have been busy as we have passed the 100,000 visitors mark. Today and tomorrow the loans will be packed up and returned.
Email Alan and Janet to warn them that we need to be extra-careful in the dismantling as we may need the mounts if the exhibition tours - there are two possibilities, New York and Paris.
The rest of the day is a catch-up on a week's emails, and I discover that my slot on research publications from India and China at Executive Team has been brought forward to tomorrow, necessitating a quick revision of my Powerpoint slides and apologies to David for missing the first session in tomorrow's Arts & Humanities Council ICT workshop at the Wellcome Institute.
Start to map out mentally my talk on subversive artists' books for the V&A workshop for their 'Blood on Paper' exhibition, curated by Rowan.

A Review

Antoine sends the link to his review, first published in 'La Tribune de l'art': The Art Tribune He's coming back to London on Friday and hopes to have another look at the show.

Last Friday David brought in a party of his students from Sir John Cass who are working on an artist's book project, so my talk is slanted to that aspect. There are some interesting questions on that format in the Internet age.

Sunday: after my swim I go to madrigals in Nunhead. The trains from Victoria are not meant to be running but they are. I'm not in good voice but we do a passable pass of Monteverdi's 'Sestina'. The journey home is a nightmare - two long waits for a bus in the rain. On the second bus a passenger plays his rap music on a player without headphones - the rest of the us practice Buddhist techniques of blanking the world out. Then a frightening journey on the District Line where a drunken Chelsea fan picks on a series of passengers because he thinks they are staring at him. London Underground don't help us by delaying the train for 'operational reasons' at Earls Court for five very long minutes. I don't get home until after 11.00.

Monday: the figures for the exhibition have passed the 75,000 and there are plenty of visitors today. I notice for the first time (how observant am I?) the exhibition banners on the Euston Road side. I have a US Patents meeting, followed by Property Strategy, then a digital projects fundraising meeting with the Chair and CEO.

Get home before 6.00 and heat up the weekend's venison casserole for supper. And you can't have venison without a robust red wine...

Paris

Have to travel to Paris for the final meeting of the EU High Level Group on Public Private Partnerships. This is my first trip from St Pancras International by Eurostar - it's dark but it's mainly tunnel to Ebbsfleet International anyway. Get to Paris after nine and metro to my hotel. Next day I walk by the river all the way to the new Bibliotheque nationale de France site at Tolbiac. It's bright but cold. The meeting goes well despite discussing the controversial subject of copyright.
Afterwards we are shown around the L'Enfer exhibition - the French equivalent to the British Library's Private Case. It's interesting how the rise of printing and the publicly accessible library created these phenomena.

I meet the BnF head of exhibitions, Viviane, and I compliment her on the success of L'Enfer. She's keen on doing a version of Breaking the Rules there in 2010 and we discuss this and other ideas for exhibitions.

I walk back to the hotel and just have time to buy a bottle of wine to take to Mandy's. She now lives in the Belleville and is married with two children., 2 and 9. David is first off to bed, then Camille, after some piano exercises. Our supper is lentils and cod, salad, cheese and fruit. And of course some red wine.

Saturday, back in London. Another 100 lengths. I go to the Dove for a lunchtime pint of Fullers ESB and it's just warm enough to sit outside. Time to go home and work on my review, and then it's boudin blanc for supper.

The hard slog

We are up to 34,000 visitors and are now in what I would call the 'viral stage'. After most of the press coverage has happened, it's now word of mouth and returning visitors - there are around 6 hours of items - if you read every caption, every panel, listened to the 77 audio items and watched all the films. The exhibition is free, so it's ideal for those wanting to dip in and out.

It's an exhibition that British Library readers should be interested in but we are very reluctant to canvas them directly.

Yesterday, I talked to around 60 Camberwell Foundation students - the Foundation course is so much part of the Vhutemas/Bauhaus legacy that it surprises me that I have to explain what the avant garde means/meant. But they ask some interesting questions - what happened to the magazines: who bought them, kept them, and why have so many (relatively) have survived.

I fix up a session with Jo who wants to bring a party of Royal College of Arts printmakers - they have a publications project. And tomorrow I'm treble booked most of the day - one to ones, a meeting on the Arts & Humanities Strategy, two sessions with Chelsea graphic students in the exhibition, an Executive Team debrief, and then the Themerson film evening in the Conference Centre. Hope the Tubes are working tomorrow - unlike tonight.

Russian Ballet

Last night two talks to the Friends of the British Library: they have generously supported the exhibition guide and the acquisition of David Bomberg's 'Russian Ballet' (1919) inspired by Sergei Diaghilev's Russian ballet. We lost our copy in the bombing during the Second World War. And I show it them on the tour. On the second tour I'm asked why we haven't included Dali (there's a forthcoming show and the copy of the book I would still have shown lacks the print), and Proust etc. I have a memory flash of the last book of Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time' and how Madame Verdurin, whom the narrator has so far despised as vulgar and uncultured, turns out to have been a champion of Diaghilev.

This morning I can hardly get out of bed. And this week I have to be the Duty Officer on Saturday - so no swim. I start to feel fat and unfit. What does the ad man in Hitchcock's 'North by NorthWest' tell his secretary to remind him to put on his desk - a notice 'Think thin'. We could just about have included his 'Thirty-nine Steps' as an avant-garde film - it was certainly influenced by Eisenstein. I sometimes joke it should be called 'The Thirty-nine Steppes'.

Looking back

Looking back is almost the opposite of avant garde. This afternoon I meet up with Andrew, Phil and Kevin from aka, the designers of 'Breaking the Rules', some of their friends and potential clients. We walk around the exhibition and discuss the philosophy of the show and the challenges of the space, timeframe and budget. We replay the decisions we made - the simplification of the structure e.g. taking out the pre-history section (only Marey survives); the problems of intellectual property inherent in a 20th century show; and the challenge of converting a thesis into an enjoyable and exciting exhibition, which needs lots of interactivity. And the fact that the exhibition is more than just the gallery and objects. I find I have been talking or answering questions for an hour and a half, and we adjourn to the Conference Centre for food and drink. Phil has been asked to do a book on seminal exhibitions - and he asks us which one affected us the most. After some deliberation I suggest the Kabakovs' 'Palace of Projects' exhibition at the Roundhouse, London, in 1998 - an installation that perfectly filled intellectually as well as physically that strange Victorian railway structure. There is something - almost disturbingly - humane and generous about Kabakov's project. I recall seeing Peter Peter Brook's 'The Ik' at the Roundhouse in 1976 (?) - really theatre in the round: I was pleased to get seats in the front row, but as the cast spent most of the play vomiting, maybe these weren't the best seats in the house after all.

Monday morning

It's cold and wet. I bump into Heather leaving the tube at King's Cross - the Exhibitions team are off tomorow to investigate the Quai d'Orsay in Paris: why didn't I think of that. I have to give the welcoming address to the Polar Symposium in the Conference Centre organised by Katrina. I keep it short - and sneak in a plug for 'Breaking the Rules'. Hear the keynote speech by Denis Cosgrove. Then back to the office - and I have an email from John, who enabled the Jamie Reid loan : he's asking about copies of the book for the archive and tells me that he could have helped with the Germaine Krull loans. I take a look at the exhibition - there's about 50 people in it. The comments wall is again reassuring - though the 'Satisfaction' team have a complaint about lighting (this is a condition of loans and conservation) and the size of the captions - we do have large-scale captions available at the Information Desk and what captions we have in the exhibition exceed RNIB standards: the word limits at the moment are stringent enough, and to have fewer words would make them meaningless. I had enough trouble editing them down as it was. There are also over 70 sound extracts, and we've done our best to provide translations and on-screen abstracts for those with hearing difficulties.

Then it's the Public Web Group and we do a wash-up of the 'Breaking the Rules' efforts - podcasts have been done but won't be released all at once; we are adding comments to the events site, and we discuss how to use the comments wall in the exhibition on the Web. We discuss forthcoming activities and using flickr and myspace for other exhibitions. We look at the designs for the Online Gallery and Adrian does a presentation on Web strategy. I have to leave early to attend the Eccles Centre Advisory Board: the Canadian and USA embassies and the Fulbright are very supportive of what we are doing - and so are the Eccles Family.

I ring up John to return his voicemail. He may be in again next week - he really loves the exhibition, and may bring Jamie later. I talk to Matthew about a speaker on digital authenticity and he shows me the new Amazon e-book reader. Will this be the tipping point of the change from print to electronic? It's a sort of coda to the 'Breaking the Rules' thesis of the relationship of the avant garde to print: and curiously the image in the Newsweek report is close to the Petit Journal projection on to the girl's face in 'Photo-eye' (1929). Time to go home.

A Week On

Yesterday for some reason I was depressed about the show - I could only see its faults, errors and omissions; the sound installation that is the real transition from the white cube/gallery with the Schwitters collage to the visually noisy main space has still not been commissioned.

Today I have (theoretically) a free day and I almost came in wearing jeans. I finish off the descriptions of my collection areas - European, Americas, Maps, Music and Philatelic - that Michele needs for the Development Office for a new fundraising campaign. I then finish off the job profile and associated documentation - recruitment authorisation, structure chart, recruitment charter - and send to Nick. Then I get a call from Catriona in the Press Office: Hungarian TV want an interview in an hour's time - so there's no time to panic, and I'm thankful I am wearing a suit. The filming goes well - and my media training of 2002 still stands me in good stead - this is almost 'live', which is how I prefer things: I am not one for endless recordings. They are surprisingly interested in the whole exhibition and not just the Kassak or Moholy-Nagy. I bump into two art school friends who are looking (separately) at the show - David and Sarah: again it's re-assuring that they love it. Sarah is excited how dynamic the British Library now is compared to museums such as the Design Museum. And there's a good review in 'The Independent'. Feel a bit better about things.

Get back to my desk and answer some emails, and decide to go home. The Piccadilly platform is very full and I return up the escalators to change to the Hammersmith and City Line: the London Lite paper takes one stop to read, and I play at translating the text message column (the best bit) into Latin the rest of the journey.