The
New England Museum Association (NEMA)
Conference will be taking place next week in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In addition to
POW! being one of this year's Conference Sponsors, I'm also really looking forward to being a session presenter. Follow my
Twitter feed (
@museum_exhibits) for live updates from the conference!
I'll be part of a spirited session called
" Pulling Back the Curtain: Sharing Exhibit Development Choices with Our Visitors" taking place from 8:45 – 10:15 am on Friday, November 21st. I'm fortunate to be presenting alongside three exemplary museum professionals: Sari Boren, Kate Marciniec, and Christina Ferwerda. Given that, I thought now would be an excellent time to post an "encore" version of the interview I did with Christina last year. Enjoy!
Christina Ferwerda
is an independent professional who bridges the worlds of museums,
education, and movement. Her practice drawing from museum experiences,
and moving (dance, yoga) has been
an important part of her development as a teacher and a learner.
Working
in Museum Education for over 10 years fueled Christina's desire to make
varied cultural
spaces more user-friendly for people of all ages, and led her to start
working in Exhibition Development. She currently works with partners in
New York City (her home base) and North America as well as on projects
abroad.
I was excited and pleased that Christina was able to provide this interview for ExhibiTricks!
What’s your educational background?
Well, I had a really hard time deciding what I wanted to do - I think
as you grow up, there is a certain pressure to know what you want to
"be" when you get older. I started college as a journalism major, but
found the field so cutthroat and competitive: it was a real turnoff.
Therefore, my undergrad degree became a mishmash of a variety of fields -
journalism, art history, studio art, and theater. I was surprised that
Marquette University
let me graduate! Now that I work on exhibit development, I can see how
all of those fields fit together, but at the time I just wanted to
finish, and felt like that combination of fields represented a path of
some kind.
After I finished undergrad, I moved to Paris (by accident! I went for
vacation and didn't return for 2 years). While there, I studied French
history and culture at
La Sorbonne. And when I moved to New York, all of these experiences came together with a graduate degree at
Bank Street College of Education. It became clear that my skills could be used to create education programs and exhibits for everyone to enjoy.
What got you interested in Museums?
I grew up in a very small town in New Hampshire, and therefore
museum-going didn't really figure into my young life - I spent most of
my time finding bird feathers in the woods with my sister. However, in
college I started to notice how much imagery and art helped me
understand and express myself. When I went to Europe for the first time
in 1998, I went to basically every museum I could find. And the true,
transformative experience came when I found a late Picasso painting "The
Matador and the Nude" (1970). I sat in front of that painting for about
2 hours, just thinking about the various shapes, lines, emotions and
experiences that must have informed its making. After that, I was
hooked. Today I go to tons of museums, as well as performances of
various kinds.
Why Yoga AND Exhibits? Great
question - so many people ask me about that, and are curious about how I
can make a living doing both. So many of the experiences that museums
provide center around providing a very concrete bit of information in a
creative way - as institutions strive to help the public understand
complex ideas and opinions. The goals of a regular yoga practice are
very similar, however the ideas that are being communicated are often
very philosophical and internal. What interests me is the intersection
of the two - the very generalized idea and the personal embodiment.
Making physical shapes that are connected to things we see and concepts
we understand bring a more developed grasp of the information.
A very simple example that I use very often in teaching yoga is to cue
my students to imagine that they are in a comic book, as Superman, and
that their foot or hand is being accompanied by the word "POW" in the
jagged text box. The visual informs a very physical and concrete
movement and a sensation of energy in that part of the body, and the
movement of the body brings a real visceral understanding of the image.
Tell us a little bit about how your “non-museum” skills/activities inform your exhibit design work?
I think the most important connection for my personal work is through
yoga. I really learned about having a "practice" - coming back to the
same ideas and goals, but constantly trying to explore and be inventive
with them to find new and interesting approaches. Very often when I'm
working on complex projects, I'll find a related movement goal and try
to push the two forward together. This past winter, when we were working
on the
first children's museum in Bulgaria
together, I was struggling with language and the language barrier.
Therefore, I chose a complex yoga pose that is highly connected to
creativity and expression (the famed Scorpion pose). Of course, as you
practice, you embody and think about those goals. I found a great method
of communication that worked for the project and moved it forward.
What are some of your favorite online (or
offline!) resources for people interested in finding out about the
intersection between movement and museums. Of course, there
are quite a few resources online to learn about the latest in movement
research and museums. However, I tend to try and go to as many things as
I can in person - performances, exhibits, and especially performances
or movement classes
AT museums. The two fields are starting to
intersect and overlap more and more, as the divide between performance
and art becomes blurred into performance art. I also find it incredibly
important to watch the way people travel and move within an exhibition -
are they comfortable getting on the floor, or attaining a different
view of an object, and is that posture available to them? I learn quite a
bit that way.
I've recently been a bit disappointed in yoga classes that are offered
in museums and cultural institutions - its such a rare opportunity to
draw from the surroundings, and I haven't often found classes or
teachers that make reference to the artwork or setting that surrounds
them. I'm hoping to see a more conscientious connection between the two
in years to come.
What are some of your favorite museums or exhibitions? I'm a huge fan of
Olafur Eliasson
- I will go and find his exhibits whenever and wherever I can. His work
has a really nice physical and visceral quality. I saw him speak, and
he discussed striving for his work to have a "wow" moment, followed by
an "aha" moment - one gets excited and hooked, but that curiosity fuels a
revelation. That goal shines through his work and is something that I
try to keep in mind when I'm thinking about yoga classes or museum
experiences - that the experience should be physically and mentally
exciting, and that the experience will feel more complete if there can
be an educational realization tucked in there somewhre. I think the
museum I've been to the most is
MoMA,
I like the way that sightlines and divisions of space create little
"surprise" moments with art. To me it feels very personal, like I'm
getting a special showing of the artwork.
Can you talk a little about some of your current projects? Well, I'm about to head to New Orleans to install
Moviehouse NOLA,
a small social history and contemporary art exhibit. It's been a very
challenging and rewarding process, building an exhibit about movie
theater history there. I'm also continuing to work on a children's
discovery room for the
Florida Museum of Natural History and of course, continued work on
Muzeiko, a children's museum in Bulgaria. They are all at different stages of development, so it definitely keeps me on my toes!
I'm also continuing to work on bringing movement to spaces infused with
meaning - I just taught at a Zen monastery, and will be leading another
retreat there in July. The movements are based on Zen philosophies and
the life of the Buddha, and I'm working with an amazing co-teacher
Kristen Mangione.
If money were no object, what would your “dream” exhibit project be?
Ha, this changes every day for me! Recently, though, I've been thinking
a lot about "the walking man" - a concept that Bill T. Jones used in
exploring his last piece "
A Rite."
Walking is so mundane, yet we rarely think about it. I'm sure there is
some amazing research about culture, body language and walking . . . .
Thanks, Christina for sharing your thoughts and insights! You can find out more about
Christina Ferwerda and her work moving minds and bodies via her
website or Twitter feed (
@rationallunatic).
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