Of Art and Architecture

The Akron Art Museum was not as crowded as I had expected for a free-admission Thursday evening. A handful of people strolled through the quiet rooms of the permanent collection; another half dozen or so roamed the open spaces of “Beauty Reigns,” the current modern installation of pieces by a variety of international artists. 

My husband and two of my school friends had joined my three most reliable conversation class attendees at the library before crossing High Street to enter the museum. Luz Alba also brought a friend, Santos, a Mexican doctor here to study medical hypnosis. His limited English vocabulary did not keep him from attempting to engage in lengthy explanations of his history, the education he was gleaning in Ohio, and his love of particular paintings in the permanent collection that reminded him of his home in the hills of Mexico. 

After donning paper bracelets at the front desk, we moved as a group into the Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation Gallery to experience “Living with Art,” a presentation of artwork in settings that mimic a home: three bright, geometric prints grouped behind a dining table and chairs; a frenetic scribble of fuschia across white canvas above a sleek, modern sofa; tastefully matted and framed photos of bygone local businesses above a mod credenza, complete with magazines and an ersatz stereo system.

A small metal bird fashioned from spoons and resting on a night-stand next to a bed made up with fresh-looking linens caught everyone’s attention. Its assemblage was ingenious: the business end of old silver spoons were turned upside-down to form the bird’s head and wings; spoon handles fanned together to create tail feathers. We were all impressed with the ingenuity and creativity involved. Luz Alba picked it up and turned it over and over in her hands, trying to fathom its construction. 

This was probably the wrong gallery to being our visit, as it set a dangerous precedent for us. We leafed through magazines from end tables, picked up a wooden bowl to examine its construction, ran our hands over prints and fabrics to inspect their textures. We felt ourselves quite at home.

The quiet, warm rooms of the permanent collection, where a sample of works from 1850 to 1950 illustrates the changing sensibilities of a volatile century, tested the feeling of propriety we had garnered in the Corbin Gallery.

My friend from school, Rachel, and I were admiring an impressionistic landscape and discussing the texture in the artist’s brushstrokes. Rachel calmly extended her hand and ran a finger over the paint.

My heart skipped a beat, and I looked around quickly to see if any of the museum workers had seen this. No one else was in the room, so I kept my calm.

“We are not allowed to touch the paintings in here,” I whispered with a smile, hoping I didn’t sound too alarmed.

“We’re not?” Rachel asked, eyes wide with guilt.

“No,” I replied. “In that other room it was okay, but generally we are not allowed to touch any of the art in here.”

“Okay,” Rachel replied, contritely looking down at her cell phone.

I had been admonished by museum guards in the past for touching artwork, and I wanted to save Rachel from that intense feeling of guilt and shame that can accompany a harsh word from someone in an official uniform with an ID tag dangling from a lanyard and a walkie-talkie clipped to a belt-loop. My most recent infraction was at the fashion museum at Kent State University, where the rich fabrics of antique dresses and coats constantly tempt me with their siren call of tactile pleasures. I go there often with my mom and her friends; the short, bald guard there recognizes me and rarely lets us out of his sight anymore.

Fortunately, I seemed to have nipped Rachel’s similar compulsion in the bud. There were no other instances of illicit touching that I knew of in this museum visit.

After thoroughly inspecting the impressionists and early modern realists of the permanent collection, our motley group backtracked across the main lobby, taking note of the late evening light filtering through the wall of glass that makes up the front of this newest section of the museum.

When the construction of this addition was completed in 2007, Akron residents had strong, conflicting opinions about its aesthetics. Many thought the ultramodern, glass-and-chrome addition that surrounds the original red-brick building, once the town’s post office, was too much. Some said it looked like a space ship landing on the old building; some felt the trapezoidal, cantilevered metallic contraption on the roof was simply ugly. 

I love the new structure. I find the integration of the solid old building with the new, light-filled glass atrium to be a beautiful metaphor for Akron: we are constantly taking our old, tarnished city and finding ways to polish it, bring it new life, launch it into a future we can only just barely imagine. I love the startling originality this museum’s architecture brings to our skyline. It makes me feel like I can reinvent myself at will, as Akron has done time and time again.

We climbed the cement stairs in the center of the atrium and pushed through tall, glass doors. White plastic tendrils of laciness draped invisible wires hanging from the ceiling in the center of a wide open space before us. This ephemeral chandelier was the first of many oddly juxtaposed modern pieces that would challenge us in this wing of the museum. 

Our group dispersed, and we made our way individually and in pairs around bright and murky paintings, jagged and smooth sculptures, funny and disturbing installations. 

In one anteroom, ladies’ shoes had been tucked into niches that were then closed off by yellowed animal skin sewn roughly right into the plaster of the walls. The artist, Doris Salcedo, created the piece to memorialize part of her native country’s violent history. In the statement accompanying her artwork, the artist mentions the hundreds of thousands of victims of ongoing drug wars in Columbia, and says that families of some of these victims had asked her to make art to help commemorate their loss: 

“Salcedo learned that most families could only determine the identity of those in mass graves by recognizing their shoes.  Each niche contains one or two shoes, most still bearing footprints and scuffs.”

I’ve seen this particular piece many times. Every time I visit the museum, I am compelled to enter this tiny room and pay my respects to these reliquaries. I feel more powerfully the weight of loss and history amid these humble remains than I do in most cathedrals or cemeteries. I have difficulty tearing myself away from the quiet stillness in that room. The rawness of the black stitches, the opacity of the skins, the simplicity of shoes as a relic of human life: these overwhelm me every time.

Our group met up again after marveling at colors, shapes, textures, and symbols too innumerable to articulate. Everyone looked a little dazed. We moved into the museum’s cafe to share a drink and recover from the experience.

Our conversation turned to language and current events. I think we were all too overwhelmed to discuss the artwork right away. The sights and sounds of it all needed to settle a bit first; we needed time to make sense of our experience.

“I want you to do some homework,” I said to the group. 

Van cringed a little. “I hope it’s not writing,” she said.

“Yes, it is writing,” I replied with a smile. Van is a math teacher at the university, and she does not like to write.

“I want you to choose one thing you saw today, “ I said, “something you had a strong reaction to, something you either really loved or completely hated. Then write a paragraph or so to describe the piece and why you had that reaction.”

Van was laughing in that mischievous way she has.

“That means more than one sentence, Van,” I said, using my best teacherly tone.

“A paragraph can be three sentences,” she replied with a grin. “I read that somewhere."

We all laughed. 

“Santos, will you join us again next week?” This was his first time with us, and I hoped he would come back. His unique perspective as a professional would add a lot to our little group.

“Yes, I will,’ he said.

We finished our drinks as our discussion turned to thoughts about pending legislation to legalize marijuana in Ohio. Then we parted ways.

As my husband and I walked the few blocks to our car, I felt a little buzzed. It wasn’t just from the Labrador Lager I had consumed, either. 

I felt truly full in mind and body. My spirit seemed larger than when we had left the library to cross High Street and push open the doors under a slanting glass atrium. My mind hummed with images of color and light and shadow, of beauty and grotesquery, of human suffering and human triumph, of tradition and innovation, of progress and regression and the constant movement of life, itself. 

I hope my students felt the same overwhelming joy and weight of the museum experience. I’ll find out next week when we share what we have written. In the meantime, the Akron Art Museum will guard decades of human experience under sheltering walls of brick and glass, and the unfiltered light of variable Ohio skies.