It’s been a while since our last post, but it doesn’t mean we’ve been slacking off. We’re just over a week away from the opening of MOCRA’s next exhibition, Good Friday.

Coming Soon!
The exhibition opens on Sunday, February 15, with a free public reception from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. If you are in the St. Louis area, please stop by.
More information about the exhibition, include sample images, is available on MOCRA’s website.
It’s been busy behind the scenes as we undertake the various tasks related to a new exhibition: publicity, building out parts of the gallery, deciding on where each work will hang, writing the texts for the wall labels and didactics, and myriad other details.

Juan Gonzalez' "Don't Mourn, Consecrate" ... installation in progress
For instance, this exhibition involves recreating a couple of works that haven’t been installed for some years. One by the late artist Juan González, titled Don’t Mourn, Consecrate, originally hung in the street-level windows of New York University’s Grey Art Gallery. It was last shown in MOCRA’s 1994-95 exhibition Consecrations: The Spiritual in Art in the Time of AIDS. The photo at right demonstrates one of the many uses for bubble-wrap, here serving to help us visualize the size and position of the stats of AIDS-related deaths that will hang to the right of the image.

Rejected clocks.
Sometimes exhibition installations can send us on unexpected shopping expeditions. One work by the late artist Adrian Kellard includes a small kitchen wall clock. However, when the work arrived at MOCRA several years ago the clock did not make the journey. All we have to go on is a picture of the work in the artist’s studio. How difficult, you might ask, is it to find a clock of suitable size, style, and (significantly for the work), sound?
It turns out to be surprisingly difficult, involving rummaging around local resale shops, calling stores in the Yellow Pages, and searching on E-bay and numerous other websites. In the end, though, after a few disappointments, we found one that fit the bill.

The clock in situ.
Over the next week (in theater it’s called “Hell Week,” and that is apt for museums as well) I’ll see if I can’t get a few of the other staff members to pause long enough to share their observations and anecdotes.
In the meantime, please check out the MOCRA website for more information on Good Friday, and come by on February 15.
–David Brinker, Assistant Director
Bob the Blogger
MOCRA is one of a number of arts organizations located in St. Louis’ Grand Center district. Over the past few years, we’ve been working together with the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and the Sheldon Art Galleries (all in Grand Center), along with the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Kemper Art Museum, Laumeier Sculpture Park, White Flag Projects, and Boots Contemporary Art Space, to promote awareness of and participation in the visual arts community in St. Louis.
One recent result of this collaboration is the Saint Louis Art Map blog. Here’s the current mission statement:
This collaborative blog aims to fill a void in the online art world by becoming a place for information and critical discussion about the non-profit visual fine arts in St. Louis. Topics are focused on art and institutions with a national and international emphasis, and places them within the local context of St. Louis’ thriving and diverse visual arts community. Through partnerships with guest bloggers, as well as behind-the-scenes posts from institution curators, directors, staff members, visiting artists, etc., the combination of first-party and third-party sources provides information from a wide range of viewpoints.
In a world where cultural coverage continues to shrink, this collaborative blog hopes to inform visitors – both in and out of town – of our activities and to foster discussion in and about our city.
It’s a work in progress, to be sure–take a look and give us your feedback.
Meanwhile, you can also read a blog post by our Museum Assistant, Bob Sullivan, reflecting on the resonances between the current exhibitions at MOCRA and the Pulitzer. It’s on the Pulitzer’s blog (2Buildings1Blog), which also features posts from the Contemporary.
– David Brinker, Assistant Director