Now on Twitter!

I just started a Twitter account: @StevenOBanion.

INCCA-NA Tony Smith Wiki Project

Nick Kaplan and I just received free t-shirts for participating in INCCA-NA's Tony Smith Wiki Project.  The project encourages people to photograph, document, research, and geolocate the more than 100 public artworks made by Smith currently on view around the globe. Rather than print this information, INCCA-NA is asking everyone around the world (The Crowd) to work together and complete the project by using Wikipedia and Flickr. If you want a t-shirt, contribute to a Wiki article about a Tony Smith sculpture near you!:
http://incca-na.org/programs/artist-research-project/tony-smith-wiki/

3D Scanning of Bruce Nauman's "From Hand to Mouth"

I was part of a collaborative project at the Smithsonian to document Bruce Nauman's From Hand to Mouth.  You can read about it on the Hirshhorn's Webpage.

Conservation of Modern and Contemporary Outdoor Sculpture

The National Gallery of Art's Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts held a colloquy on the conservation of modern and contemporary outdoor sculpture.  I was fortunate to be invited to attend.  The first day was focused on the NGA's outdoor sculpture garden.  Molly Donovan (Associate Curator of the Department of Modern Art, NGA) and NGA conservators Shelley Sturman and Katy May presented.  We then braved the snowy cold weather and discussed the sculptures in the garden.  We began the second day in front of Tony Smith's She Who Must Be Obeyed, which is sited outside the Department of Labor at 3rd St NW between C and D Sts NW.  William Caine, from the US General Services Administration's Art in Architecture Program, and Kathy Erickson, from the Fine Arts Program, discussed the work's site-specific commission and the challenges of caring for the work.  We then headed to the Smithsonian American Art Museum where Helen Ingalls and Hugh Schockey, both objects conservators at the Lunder Conservation Center, discussed their treatments of Luis Jimenez' Vaquero and Alexander Calder's Nenuphar.  We caught a shuttle to the National Museum of American History to discuss Calder's Gwenfritz, which is about to be treated and relocated.  I suggest visiting Gwenfritz now, as I'm sure you will be in awe of the before-and-after transformation.  The colloquy concluded with discussions of Henry Moore's monumental Knife Edge Mirror Two Piece, which welcomes guests into the NGA's East Building.  The two days were full of energetic discussions among participants, who were emerging curators and conservators from across the country (and Glasgow).  

New Mission

Now that I have completed my graduate degree, this blog will no longer be following my experiences as a conservation student.  Instead, I plan on using www.whensupergluewontdo.com as a way to disseminate information I gather from conferences, seminars, and workshops that I attend.  Be sure to check in from time to time!

Starting a New Chapter

Much has changed since my last post.  My internship with the Museum of Modern Art has come to an end.  I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to work with excellent mentors and an unparalleled collection.  Also, I returned to Winterthur Museum and Garden Estate to give my final presentation and complete my oral exam.  I have successfully completed my MS from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation.  Currently, I am beginning a Smithsonian Fellowship in Conservation with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.  The focus of my fellowship will be instituting an artist interview program at the museum.  I’m excited for the challenges, opportunities, and new experiences that this project will bring!

This blog was started as a means to chronicle my experiences as a conservation student.  Now that I have graduated, I will be taking a hiatus while I determine a new focus for www.whensupergluewontdo.com.  I encourage new readers to delve into the blog archive at the right of the screen. 

Marina Abramović the Artist is Present

Marina Abramović is often referred to as the “grandmother of performance art” due to her enduring career that began in the early 1970s.  In 2010, MoMA held a retrospective of Abramović’s career, which featured about fifty works created over four decades.  In addition to her early interventions, video works, installations, photographs, solo performances, and collaborative performances made with Ulay, the show featured a new work in which Abramović sat across from visitors all day, every day, for three months in the museum’s atrium.  MoMA hosted a preview showing for staff of a documentary that followed Abramović as she prepared for and performed during her retrospective.  I had attended the retrospective two years ago;  however, only after watching the documentary, did I have a full realization of how physically and emotionally demanding the work had been for her.  I was particularly excited that Abramović and the filmmakers attended the showing and spoke about creating the film and how they went about cutting the footage acquired over a year down to just 106 minutes.