Stuck at the Met

The Gotlands Museum in Sweden

We’re all familiar with the colorful freeform encrustations that grow on the walls, pipes, and any street furniture in close proximity to museums these days. I always smile at these organic accretions of discarded admission stickers. Their lively messiness provides the perfect counterpoint to the curated seriousness of the very institutions from which they originate.

So, in some way, I was kind of looking forward to seeing what the Met would roll out to replace their iconic and much-loved colored metal tabs which were recently retired after 42 years. Because if ever there was a high-profile occasion for an elegant or interesting design solution, this was surely it. Right?

The other day was my first visit to the museum since the changeover to paper admission stickers. At the exit, there used to be elegant acrylic receptacles filled with colored metal tabs. Now there are very ordinary stanchioned-mounted boards, the kind you might find at a convention informing you which plenary session is to take place in which ballroom. They are positioned to accept the exiting museumgoer’s blue and white rectangular sticker. That’s right, the stickers are, according to a guard I queried, always blue on white.

Too bad the Met, of all places, passed on the opportunity to create what might have been an interesting, or even inspired admissions interface. Instead they seem to have opted for the Staples method (just push the “easy button” and hop on the aesthetic blandwagon).

But let’s wait a while, there’s no telling what might become of those boring little stickers …

Board at the Met

Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki

The Sinebrychoff Taidemuseo, Helsinki

I was very excited to recognize the portraits on some the stickers as the ones photographed by Finnish artist Jorma Puranen!

Results of a Flickr search

The World According to Marimekko

Well, the world according to Marimekko, starting with Helsinki. The map features favorite haunts of the ever-creative team at Finland's most colorful company. You won't be using this quirkily hand-drawn city plan to find specific intersections, but there are plenty of tools for that already. Check out the interactive version online. In the works: a map of Tokyo ...

Jorma Puranen: Seeing the Light

Don’t you just hate it when you walk up to, say, a dark Rembrandt painting and instead of seeing, a work by the old master, you see a reflection of your old self?

Finnish photographer Jorma Puranen, not only doesn't mind reflection off a painted surface, he embraces it. Earlier this year at the Armory Show, I encountered his photographs of glare-frosted paintings, part of a series called "Shadows, Reflections, and All That Sort of Thing."  

Puranen photographs historic portraits as objects, emphasizing the reflective surfaces and aged paint. By obscuring the image, Puranen reveals a whole lot about how we see.

While looking at these ghostly apparitions it became clear how committed we are to our suspension of disbelief, when viewing traditional portraiture. Maintaining the illusion is so essential, that our brains automatically edit out any environmental factor that may interfere with our peering into the soul of the sitter. That is, the illusion of a sitter whose image our brain has allowed itself to be deceived into seeing.

All but the last two images here are from the website of the Helsinki School. The last two, are my photos of the pictures, from the Armory Show, where you'll see I had no choice but to embrace the glass.