The following walk was devised by Chloë Bass for the [Robert Moses] Walk Project. It was first presented in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, on 31 July, 2010.
[Gallery Walk] #1: Sunset Park Pool Tour
PREP
Menu
Upon arrival: white wine + cheese cubes
First stop: pretzels + nuts
Second stop: veggies + dip
Third stop: some kind of miniature food
Fourth stop: grapes, strawberries + cookies
Non-alcoholic drink option: sparkling cider
Budget: $60
Wine = $15
To Bring
Paper Plates – in the bag
White Wine – in the bag
Plastic Cups – in the bag
Bags for carrying food through the picnic – full of things
Picnic Blanket – in the bag
Corkscrew – in the bag
Knife (just in case) – in the bag
Clipboard – in the bag
To Wear
White Dress
Heels
Flat sandals (for prep time)
Part One: Meet @ the Sunset Park Poolhouse
To Eat: Wine & Cheese
To Do: Check everyone in. Get into character.
SCRIPT
Welcome! Are you here for the tour?
Good. It seems as though we’re all here, so let’s begin.
Good afternoon, uh . . . Everyone? Good afternoon. My name is Chloë Bass, and I’d like to welcome all of you to Sunset Park. I’ll be your guide today as we explore the park, its history, and its collection. This is the special members tour group – I hope you’re all in the right place. As you know, admission to the tour includes refreshments and a reception afterwards.
Membership, you know, plays a vitally important role in the life of any institution. Many members indicate that they joined because the perceive it to be an institution of the highest quality, one of the world’s great repositories of civilization. They see it as a place apart from the mundane demands of reality where an individual can fortify his or her linkage with the creative forces of the world, old and new.
Of course we’ll only be able to visit a small portion of the Park on our tour today. Its over 24 acres contain art objects spanning ethnic and temporal classifications. But, just to give you a general idea, uh, to help orient yourself, this may be your first visit to the park today – welcome again.
This is the Sunset Park Pool and Play Center: a remarkable asset in our permanent collection. While no doubt many of you are familiar with the basic look and feel of the place, today I hope to delve deeper into its powerful and ongoing status as a work of functional art.
The Sunset Park Pool and Play Center was opened in 1936 as part of a massive Works Progress Administration (WPA) capital construction program. Sunset Pool was one of eleven outdoor public pools that opened throughout New York City in one summer. The pools were among the most remarkable public recreational facilities in the country; they represented the forefront of design and technology. The influence of the pools extended throughout entire communities, attracting aspiring athletes and neighborhood children and changing the way millions of New Yorkers spent their leisure time.
The pool is open every day from 7:30 AM to 7 PM, with an hour of closure for maintenance between 3 and 4 PM. We hoped to allow access for members during this time, but unfortunately were not able to acquire permissions.
Let’s move on, shall we?
Part Two: Lamppost & Condos
To Eat: Pretzels & Nuts
To Do: Tree Activity (while transitioning out)
This is Sunset Park’s 44th Street exit – the top right corner of the park when considering the landscape from a downhill, or western, perspective. Of course as I’m certain you all know, the compass directions in New York City are slightly to significantly removed from their true orientation – a mark of individuality, no doubt taken on to inspire the city’s millions of creative hobbyists and professionals. Nevertheless, it is perhaps better to utilize such directional cues as “right” and “left” rather than North, East, South, or West.
Let’s examine the lamppost. Lamppost, a word dating back to 1790, is a post supporting a usually outdoor lamp or lantern. Perhaps the most famous lamppost was the brainchild of C.S. Lewis. This lamppost is the landmark that reminds the children how to return to their home world. As a result of its prominence in this story, a lamppost has a whimsical look. Drawing a lamppost is a moderately easy task.
The Lamp-post was a major landmark in the country of Narnia, located in the northern unpopulated area, which was named Lantern Waste after it. Resembling a London streetlamp it stood in the middle of the forest and shone day and night. It was at the lamp-post that Lucy Pevensie first met Mr. Tumnus.
The Lamp-post originated in the first few days of Narnia's creation, from a bar of iron which Queen Jadis had torn from a London lamppost and thrown at Aslan. Aslan at the time was creating the living things of Narnia by his song, which made the ground of Narnia magically fertile and gave birth to the animals and plants of the world. The iron bar fell to the ground and, under the influence of Aslan's song, gave birth to a new lamppost, which grew from a few feet high to a full sized streetlight in a few hours.
The Lamp-post's ability to burn continuously without fuel (streetlamps run on gas) may have been due to the fact that it is an organic living thing, not a manufactured artifact as other streetlamps are.
Just beyond the lamppost, you may notice another iconic piece: Surprisingly Affordable Condos, circa 2009. A condominium, or condo, is the form of housing tenure and other real property where a specified part of a piece of real estate (usually of an apartment house) is individually owned while use of and access to common facilities in the piece such as hallways, heating system, elevators, exterior areas is executed under legal rights associated with the individual ownership and controlled by the association of owners that jointly represent ownership of the whole piece.
Sunset Park’s history is marked by the construction of the Gowanus Expressway in 1941. The expressway effectively cut the neighborhood off from the harbor, which wounded the area, in a fashion often associated with the expressway's builder: power-broker Robert Moses.
The condominium advertisement reflects a particular time in this neighborhood’s history, when the largely Chinese and Mexican revitalization of the area was met head on by a general economic depression. One wonders, perhaps, what the “surprise” is in “surprisingly affordable condos” – as well one might.
TREE ACTIVITY
Let’s explore and compare the basic elements of art—shape, line, color, texture, and material—through works in our collection. For those of you interested in still lifes, sculpture, materials, and other related topics, here’s a chance to examine everyday objects and extraordinary objects.
First, I’d like everyone to select a partner. If you arrived on the tour with a friend or family member, find a stranger. It’s important to get to know one another, don’t you think? After all, the primary function of institutions like this one is to serve as a social space – but we’ll have more on that later. Please select a partner. Everyone paired off? Very good.
Select one work of art in the museum's collection for the focus of this lesson. Today we’re going to focus on this particular gallery – the 44th street trees. As you observe the artworks, keep in mind the elements of art. The elements of art are components or parts of a work of art that can be isolated and defined. They are the building blocks used to create a work of art.
Composition
The arrangement of elements in a work of art. All works of art have an order determined by the artist. Composition creates a hierarchy within the work, which tells the viewer the relative importance of the imagery and elements included. Compositions are generally classified as symmetrical or asymmetrical.
Line
A line is an identifiable path created by a point moving in space. It is one-dimensional and can vary in width, direction, and length. Lines often define the edges of a form. Lines can be horizontal, vertical, or diagonal, straight or curved, thick or thin. They lead your eye around the composition and can communicate information through their character and direction.
When we consider lines, we generally classify as follows: horizontal, vertical, diagonal, or curve. When repeated, lines can create a pattern. In this example, the artist repeated different kinds of lines across the composition to create various patterns. Patterned lines also give the image rhythm.
Shape and form
Shape and form define objects in space. Shapes have two dimensions—height and width—and are usually defined by lines. Forms exist in three dimensions, with height, width, and depth.
Space
Real space is three-dimensional. Space in a work of art refers to a feeling of depth or three dimensions. It can also refer to the artist's use of the area within the picture plane. The area around the primary objects in a work of art is known as negative space, while the space occupied by the primary objects is known as positive space.
Color
Light reflected off objects. Color has three main characteristics: hue (red, green, blue, etc.), value (how light or dark it is), and intensity (how bright or dull it is). Colors can be described as warm (red, yellow) or cool (blue, gray), depending on which end of the color spectrum they fall.
Texture
The surface quality of an object that we sense through touch. All objects have a physical texture. Artists can also convey texture visually in two dimensions. In a two-dimensional work of art, texture gives a visual sense of how an object depicted would feel in real life if touched: hard, soft, rough, smooth, hairy, leathery, sharp, etc. In three-dimensional works, artists use actual texture to add a tactile quality to the work.
With your partner, examine a tree. Take five minutes to learn about the tree, using the elements of art. At the end of this exercise, I hope that you will be able to discuss an artist's use of the elements of art in a work of art, as well as explain the difference between looking at a reproduction of a work of art and looking at the original.
We’ll reconvene in 5 minutes to enjoy each other’s discoveries.
For those in need of a comfort station, there’s one just beyond the gallery, straight ahead.
[Ad lib through getting to the poolhouse filtration center doorway.]
Part Three: Pool Backdoor
To Do: Smell Meditation (2 minutes)
Just beyond this door is the filtration center for the pool. The filtration center occupies a basement and sub-basement of the Sunset Park Poolhouse building.
Pedro, the manger of the filtration center, has been working here for twenty-one years. This is his second job – he is also a driver for the MTA. He drives the B41 bus route, which was originally a streetcar line. The Flatbush Avenue Line is a public transit line in Brooklyn, New York City, United States, running along Flatbush Avenue between downtown Brooklyn and Marine Park. While the B41 often suffers from delays, the line was not specifically affected by recent MTA cuts to Brooklyn bus service. The B41 runs from Downtown Brooklyn to alternating terminals: the Kings Plaza Shopping Center, and Bergen Beach – and vice versa.
Pedro was instrumental in encouraging the New York City Parks and Recreation Department to replace the concrete in the filtration center with fiberglass, after ongoing problems with concrete cracking. Fiberglass is material made from extremely fine fibers of glass. It is used as a reinforcing agent for many polymer products; the resulting composite material, properly known as fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) or glass-reinforced plastic (GRP), is called "fiberglass" in popular usage. Uses for regular fiberglass include mats, thermal insulation, electrical insulation,sound insulation , reinforcement of various materials, tent poles, sound absorption, heat- and corrosion-resistant fabrics, high-strength fabrics, pole vault poles, arrows, bows and crossbows, translucent roofing panels, automobile bodies, hockey sticks, surfboards, boat hulls, and paper honeycomb. It has been used for medical purposes in casts. Fiberglass is extensively used for making FRP tanks and vessels. Fiberglass is also used in the design of Irish stepdance shoes.
In his duties as the poolhouse filtration manager, Pedro tends to the filtration system, 71 gallon tubs of chlorine, 5 gallon back-up supplies of chlorine and other pool chemicals, and the charcoal filters that have been in use since 1936. The water is directly pumped from resevoirs in Upstate New York – which may be of some concern when we consider pending plans to institute natural gas drilling in New York State. If threatening our drinking water is not enough, please take a moment of silence to ponder threats to the natural, healthy, and accessible recreation of swimming.
Today, enrich your day by lingering for a few seconds here and there with delightful smells and tastes. Just stay there for a few seconds longer, and absorb that mystical something we get from interacting with nature through smell.
Let’s do a smell meditation. Find something to smell at hand, and hold it fairly close to your nose and enjoy the smell. Do a breathing meditation with that smell as your focus – "feel" the smell coming in and registering in your nose, your throat, even down to your belly. The whole body responds, says, "Yes!!" when you enjoy breathing in the smell.
Think of nothing else except the smell of the item. If the mind wanders, simply bring it back to the scent you are experiencing. What kind of a response does the scent bring? How does this scent make you feel? Do any of that scents remind you of anything special? After smelling each scent, take a few freshening breaths of air before moving on to the next aroma.
If your mind wanders and will not stay focused on smell, be curious as to what is going on. You will read the newspaper for an hour, or a paperback book for hours, or watch other people on TV or in the movies enjoying their lives. What stops you from truly enjoying your own life? Simply notice.
[Let a minute pass.]
How do you feel?
Let it go! Let’s move on.
[Ad lib through getting to the sprinkler area.]
Part Four: Sprinkler Picnic
To Eat: Veggies & Dip
To Do: Spread the picnic blanket
Sunset Pool received an extensive $5 million restoration in 1984, including reconstruction of the pool, bathhouse, and comfort station, and installation of a new filtration system. The playground was expanded in 1988 with new play equipment such as the sunburst spray fountain and kindergarten swings. Several benches were added to the perimeter of the play area. Students from school district 15 designed and painted the murals inside the bathhouse to portray their park, their neighborhood, and their city.
This area – the sunburst spray fountain – is home to the water fairies, circa July 2010.
It is from here that we get perhaps the most evocative view of the architecture of the pool house. Architect Aymar Embury II created a neo-classical/Art Deco design for Sunset Pool. The vertical columns and diamond-motif brickwork were typical of many park buildings of the WPA era. Yet the modern day Parks Department logo now marks the building’s poolside façade, indicating a movement away from the era of Moses and into the time of Bloomberg. A recent obsession with marking has resulted, in fact, in Bloomberg’s removing Moses’ name from many city parks on which he had profound influence. Moses’ name is being replaced by Bloomberg’s own.
Note, especially, the facing wall: evocative of Ad Reinhardt and Agnes Martin, the stark colors (blue and black) pave the way for our eyes to enter the natural coolness of water, the surrounding aroma of chlorine. The painting is defined by an emphasis upon line, grids, and fields of extremely subtle color. We are asked, suddenly, not to think of the painting as a window onto another world (as Vermeer or Rembrandt did), but rather as a wall.
[Time for people to eat. When it looks like everyone is just starting to feel either very comfortable or very uncomfortable, orchestrate a move to clear up the eating things, fold the blanket, and move on. Walk very quickly.]
Part Five: Walking Downhill (& Looping)
[Ad lib.]
[While looping.] Note the tiles depicting carousel horses. Sunset Park was initially the site of one of Brooklyn’s famous carousels – this one is, alas, no longer. Carousels enjoyed their fair share of popularity in the Victorian Era, but remain in use today. Famous carousel designers include Charles I.D. Looff, whom I had never heard of, but perhaps you have.
Carousels, most importantly, indicate the importance of a space both for children and adults in which to play. The absence of the carousel indicates a shift away from play space to the more formally designated “social space” – an important classification in the context of modern developments in online social networking, neurology, psychology, and so on.
The drive to become a "'social space,' in and of itself, is more of a fetish" right now, said Tom Eccles, chair of the department for curatorial studies at Bard College. "'Social space' feels more like a cover for the need for mass audiences in museums."
What's a "social space" to some is becoming simply chaos to others. "I don't think a museum should be a social space," said Richard Feigen, an art dealer who has sold works to the Modern as well as most of the other major museums in the country. "I don't feel a museum's mission ought to be, in my view, a nightclub, which-in my view- [the institution] has become. It's a mob scene, a trend scene."
Alanna Heiss, the founder of P.S.1, MoMA's sister museum in Queens, believes an artistic emphasis on the crowds is the antidote for the problems they create, namely rushing through exhibitions. "People including myself spent endless hours lolling around there. [Sunset Park] has offered this unbelievable array of ways to misspend your youth. I have every reason to expect this is all going to go forward," she said.
"Museums of modern art are a kind of inherently unstable space," Mr. Lowry said. "If you're going to follow the flow of contemporary art, you have to constantly tweak and adjust. You can't lock it down and say this is what it should be for the next 10 years. Artists are moving much faster than that."
Does an institution need a social network?
A social networking site is one in which users connect with one another. Most social networking sites give each user a unique user profile, along with a personal "home base" where you can always find your content, your contacts, and your interests. Some of the most popular are LinkedIn (a professional network), Facebook (social and professional), and MySpace (anything goes). Many museums have been experimenting in these spaces by creating institutional profiles, museum affinity groups, and connecting with visitors and other museum professionals individually. There are huge positives to tapping into these networks (which we've discussed here before), including connecting with visitors "where they are" and co-opting easy-to-customize applications for museum purposes.
Part Six: Hospitality (Hexagon Area)
To Eat: Small Foods
To Do: Questions for your partner (while transitioning out)
Any questions?
If there are no further questions for me, I’d like to propose to you a simple final activity on our tour today. Please select a partner. No, not the one you came with – and not the one you selected earlier, either.
As you walk with your partner towards the next destination, please ask each other the following questions. These will help you to situate yourself as a work of art in today’s collection – a fleeting, yet significant moment in time, enriched all the more by your presence.
What is your title?
Who created you?
Where were you created?
When?
Where are you now?
Who owns you?
What are your dimensions?
Then consider your surroundings.
What is the mood of the installation?
What is your initial reaction to the installation around you?
What does the installation “say” to you personally?
What is the function of this work of art?
How does the work of art reflect the social, political, aesthetic, psychological, or cultural ideas of its time?
How do others react to this work? How do they interpret it?
Part Seven: Concluding Picnic
To Eat: Berries & Cookies
To Do: Spread the picnic blanket. Sit. Talk. Rest awhile.
Informed Judgement - this is a culminating and reflecting activity. You need to come to some conclusions about the artwork based on all the information you have gathered and on your interpretations.
Consider the impact of the year of the swimming pool: 1936. Consider the WPA, making art (and artists) work for America. Consider the changing face of our urban environment. Consider yourself.
Well, that’s the end of our tour for today. You can remain here, enjoying the pool exhibit, through Labor Day. The permanent collection remains on view throughout the year. Enjoy the sweeping vistas of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Statue of Liberty from the park's highest point. The view is served best with berries.
Thank you for joining me and have a nice day.