News and Updates
COMPOSERS COLLABORATE WITH MUSEUMS AND THEIR COMMUNITIES
THROUGH MUSEUM LOAN NETWORK INITIATIVE
Partnership with the American Composers Forum Brings New Perspective to Museum Exhibitions
(Cambridge, MA) August 8, 2001 – A new initiative, in which composers have been invited to collaborate with museum curators, art historians, archaeologists, and cultural historians to contribute to the exhibition development and enrich the museum experience, was announced today by the Museum Loan Network (MLN) in partnership with the American Composers Forum (ACF). As museums continue to become more community-based, rather than strictly object-based, this collaboration will enable institutions to relate to their communities in new and different ways. With this pilot project, the MLN further expands the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of its grant programs.
For the past five years, the Museum Loan Network has facilitated the long-term loan of art and objects of cultural heritage, served as a matchmaker between institutions of differing size and discipline, and acted as an information and planning network for museum professionals. The MLN’s collaboration with the American Composers Forum will further encourage these interdisciplinary relationships and the sharing of expertise.
During the planning of museums’ exhibitions, composers will be a part of the curatorial research teams visiting potential lending institutions. The composers will add a unique dimension to the process and help illuminate the connections between different artistic disciplines, by looking at both objects and music as valid and important cultural artifacts. In addition to their contribution to object loan selection, composers will take part in residency programs. The composers will work with museums and their communities to create original pieces of work relating to the museum installation.
Through an MLN grant, the Western Heritage Center, Billings, MT, will present an exhibition about its hometown’s namesakes, Frederick Billings and his son Parmly, offering visitors an in-depth and personal perspective on a particular time period in America’s past. As part of this exhibition, the Western Heritage Center is working with composer/violinist Jim Cockey who will organize the re-recording by local musicians of a variety of folk music and hymns that were significant to the Billings family. Inspired by letters between father and son, Cockey plans to create an original composition evoking a historical picture of late 19th century Montana and Vermont.
Another institution, the Mobile Museum of Art, AL, was recently awarded a grant to travel to several institutions to research the loan of American sculpture, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, DC, The New York Historical Society, NY, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. The Mobile Museum’s curatorial team was accompanied by composer William Banfield who participated in the object selection process. Banfield, a W. E. B. Dubois Fellow, believes that “music can bring a sense of life to something that is sitting behind glass.”
The American Composers Forum (ACF)’s mission is to link communities with composers and performers, encouraging the making, playing, and enjoyment of new music. Building two-way relationships between artists and the public, the ACF develops programs that educate audiences, energize composers’ careers, stimulate entrepreneurship and collaboration, and serve as models of effective support for the arts. For more information on the ACF please visit their Web site at www.composersforum.org.