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Historic Broad Street Museum Building Named Ross Building

Often, just at a moment when you are forging into the future, you find yourself reflecting on your past. As the Columbus Museum of Art enters a new era, we honor our past by proudly announcing that our newly renovated historic 480 East Broad Street building will now by known as the Elizabeth M. And Richard M. Ross Building.

The Ross family has been an integral force in transforming the Columbus Museum of Art into a major cultural institution. In the 1960s, Elizabeth Ross led the Board of Managers, who ran the day-to-day affairs of the Museum, before joining the Board of Trustees in 1965, and becoming the first woman president of the Board in 1975. She is also one of our longest serving trustees as well as a founding member of our Women's Board auxiliary. The family, inspired by Richard Ross's love of photography, gave CMA its first significant body of photography holdings and supported the Museum's acquisition of the Photo League Collection. Their generosity also includes gifts of works of art such as Henry Moore's monumental bronze sculpture Three Piece Reclining Figure: Draped, which graces the lawn of the Broad Street entrance and has become an iconic image forever associated with the Museum.

Richard and Elizabeth Ross generously provided the leadership gift to the Museum's Campaign for Enduring Excellence in 1983. That campaign led to the acquisition of the Sirak Collection, which significantly increased the Museum's holding in Impressionism and German Expressionism and includes works by artists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, and Edgar Degas. In honor of this leadership gift, the Museum wing built in 1974 was renamed the Ross Wing. Over the decades, the Ross Wing housed acclaimed and internationally recognized exhibitions. The Ross Wing will be retired when CMA begins construction of a new addition.

"Only rarely does one have the privilege of receiving the kind of sustained support that Elizabeth and Richard Ross have given to the Museum," said Executive Director Nannette Maciejunes.  "In recognition of their unfaltering dedication, we thought it a fitting tribute to name our historic building in their honor."

Brooklyn Museum

Last Thursday, the New York Times ran an interesting article about the Brooklyn Museum. I was struck by several things when reading the story, but one of the things that stood out was that while on the surface CMA has nothing at all in common with Brooklyn, we have a lot in common with Brooklyn.

Museums fall into roughly two very broad categories. Those that are in destination cities and draw their audience from national and international tourism, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and those whose primary audience is their local community. The second group may also  draw from a regional audience.

This group, to which both CMA and Brooklyn belong, is challenged with finding ways to excite and motivate their audience in hopes that they will return. For them, the experience they provide their visitors is just as important as their collection.

Brooklyn is in the unenviable position, as Graham W. J. Beal of the Detroit Institute for the Art points out in his comments, of being right across the way from two of the most prestigious museums in the country, the Met and MOMA.

The question for them has become, "How do you position yourself in a way that differentiates you from these organizations and speaks to the community you serve?"

The reality is that there is no single way to accomplish this and people disagree on how to do it. I think it was wonderful that the article included several different perspectives on this topic, from artists, to museum directors and business leaders.

Brooklyn has one of the greatest collections in the country and is working to find ways to serve their community.  CMA is constantly looking for ways to better serve our community as well. We're thinking differently about our programming and increasingly thinking about "experiences" as something for everyone.

In years past, museums thought about experiences as they related to children. There was very little thought given to how adults experience museums. Displaying the collection was enough for adults. Now, that thought process is changing.

As Peter C. Marzio said int he article, "The Brooklyn Museum is pioneering a new path that many older encyclopedic museums will have to follow if they want to survive."

"By looking closely at Brooklyn, by exploring the ideals and values of its citizens, the museum is opening a dialogue that is creating a sense of community ownership," continues Marzio. "Will the museum survive following this path? I will bet that not only will it survive these difficult economic times, but it will also mutate into a new type of museum that will grow beyond anyone's imagination."

CMA, much like Brooklyn, is looking for ways to make our collection relevant to our community. An article in the Sunday Times talked about the recession and its effects on consumers. People have become less invested in acquiring "things" to make them happy. The focus has become experiences.

Our mission is to create great experiences with great art for everyone. It's a statement that we try to live daily and one that I believe will serve our community well into the future.

Art Speaks. Join the Conversation.

Nannette Maciejunes
CMA Executive Director

World’s Largest Digital Photo Image

Up until recently, the largest digital photo was a 45-gigapixel image of Dubai.  Well, now Gadling.com has an article up on their site highlighting the latest in the world record seekers for the largest digital photo in the world. 70-gigapixels!

Consider your camera, what size is it? Probably 8-Megapixels, perhaps 10?  Now consider that one Gigapixel is 1,000 Megapixels. This picture is that large! The weighs in at 200GB of space. That's larger than most laptop hard drives.

The group used a 25-Megapixel camera with a robotic tripod over two days to complete this work. Check out the article here and follow their link to the original site. There are many "easter eggs" to see where you can zoom in super far to see amazing detail.

Southward Expansion

Yes, Southward, not Westward this time. Our computer network at the CMA is growing!  Many of you know the main building that was built in 1931 is under renovation right now. Well, along with that, we'll need computer operations throughout the building.

For those of you who don't know about or don't care about networks, we have  a main room where everything is kept and then we have closets in other locations to expand the network since there are limitations on how long cable can be.  The picture to the right (click to see it larger) is the top of the network racks. There is massive amounts of conduit through the building and here is the central location where these wires run. It's a mess right now because we're still installing, but this is exciting for any computer geek such as myself.

From here you can see the massive amounts of wire that are used throughout the building and they are collecting here. There's Cat-6 network cabling, Fiber and Coaxial cable for television service. And yes, it's all labeled so we know where they are going on the other end!

Lastly, you can see a closer picture of the conduit that runs into this room. Each one goes to a different location in the bulding to supply those areas. The engineering involved with this is truly amazing. I admire the men and women involved with planning all this, running conduit and pulling all these wires. In some cases doing these things while crawling through damp dark crawl spaces. Great job everyone!

All this cabling will help to supply you, the visitor, with great experiences with great art. Whether it be the people at the front desk taking your membership card, watching a video or presentation in the Cardinal Health Auditorium, or sitting in a gallery with your laptop surfing the internet. This cabling work here is like the nerve center of the museum reaching all the corners making the little things happen to make your experience that much better.  It's all worth it.

~Thomas Deliduka
Director of Information Technology

The Creativity Crisis

The July 10 Newsweek article, The Creativity Crisis http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html outlined clearly whatt many of us in education/the arts knew was inevitable.  In essence, the Torrance Creativity Test—the gold standard in creativity assessment and taken by millions worldwide—is showing that since 1990, American creativity scores have been falling.  Intelligence (IQ) and creativity scores had kept pace with each other in America for generations, but in the last 20 years, creativity scores have fallen off track while intelligence scores continue to increase.  This decline is especially significant for K-6 grade children, for whom the results are interpreted as “most serious.”

Why is this catastrophic?  The authors of the article do a spectacular job of drawing us a picture of the impact, and I encourage you to read the full text.

When I read the article, I was struck by the statement that the arts don’t “own” creativity.  I absolutely agree with this.  No one discipline owns creativity!  But on the flip side, those of us in the arts must communicate the ways that quality art education CAN generate creative thinkers.

All of us, including those in the arts are also guilty of not INSISTING on the skills necessary for creativity within our schools, businesses and families.  We can no longer blame TV and video games that suck our children away from creative activities nor can we sit back and watch our schools systematically move further and further away from the creative development of our students.

On a good note, Ohio has the potential to change the way creativity is fostered throughout Ohio’s schools.  Last June in State House Bill 1, two provisions were passed that make way creative developments in our schools. http://bit.ly/cnqeUZ. One provision, the Harmon Commission, will recognize creative learning environments. The other provision will bring about the development of a Center for Creativity and Innovation in the State Department of Education. Ohio is the only state to include creativity in current legislation.

But the schools cannot accomplish this alone.  Informal learning environments, like the Columbus Museum of Art, must play a critical role in fostering and championing creativity. To do so…

1. We must shift public opinion away from narrow stereotypes of creativity. Artists embody a way of thinking that needs to be nurtured in all children and adults.
2. The CMA will celebrate and reward the unconventional teachers and schools that despite challenges continue to foster risk taking, questioning, curiosity and imagination in their schools.
3. Museum programs will model creative learning for our families and schools. We must communicate how we think about imagination, critical thinking and innovation in everything we do.

The Columbus Museum of Art values creativity (it is one of our 5 Core Values.)  In January of 2011 the museum will open an 18,000 square foot Center for Creativity to address the bullets above.  We believe one institution can make a difference. We must.

Cindy Meyers Foley
Director of Education