DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park

I'm staying with my friend Jamie for most of this trip (see first post). She just got her Masters from Tufts in Museum Education and even though she has a full-time job at another institution, she still works part-time at DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, located in Lincoln, MA. It was founded in 1950 by the will of a Boston-area businessman named Julian DeCordova, who was an avid art collector. The museum is his former home with a modernist glass entryway, and is surrounded by 35 acres filled with artwork.

This piece, entitled The Musical Fence, created in 1980 by New York City born artist Paul Matisse is fascinating to be around. People naturally want to interact and make sounds with the work, which to this musician is more than fine. It's also interesting to me that it's a linear work, at least along one axis, which to me reflects music. Anyone can write down notes, or play them, but when laid out a certain way and you follow it along one axis, it's Beethoven' Seventh Symphony. Or your daughter's piano recital.



Jamie wanted to go this particular night especially, because it was the opening of their new show The Old, Weird America, which is, in their words, 'the first museum exhibition to explore the widespread resurgence of folk imagery and mythic history in recent art from the United States.' Furthermore...

The exhibition borrows its inspiration and title—with the author's blessing—from music and cultural critic Greil Marcus' 1997 book of the same title that examines the influence of folk music on Bob Dylan and The Band's seminal album, The Basement Tapes.

Due to the open bar portion of the evening (not to mention the summer sausage and Minute Men re-enactors), I didn't see the whole show. What I did see was funny and surreal (Greta Pratt's Nineteen Lincolns), vaguely unsettling (Aaron Morse's works, like The Good Hunt) and extremely disturbing (Kara Walker's 8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, a Moving Picture). All were probing and moving, none more than Walker's work.

I hope you enjoy some of the sculpture park artwork that I took photos of. Nothing does the place justice, so try to make it a priority to visit the DeCordova in your travels. This is one tableau, though, that you might not see when you're there...