MJJ Erin Vickers
Erin Vickers
Mary Jane Jacob lecture
October 2, 2005
Between the bus schedule and marching band I was only able to attend about 35 minutes of the lecture, so I’ll do the best I can with the assignment.
While working as a curator in museums during her time as a graduate student, Mary Jane Jacob became frustrated with the way museums presented artwork and realized that while museums are open to the public, they are actually very private places. In museums, people are not comfortable with their reactions to the art and feel inadequate to understand art. Jacob was drawn to art about life, not art for art’s sake. She began to curate projects in public places, where there was a more open and comfortable atmosphere for all viewers. Sometimes, the public was invited to help with a project, amplifying their experience of the artwork. Before beginning each project, Jacob and her colleagues listen to what people in the area they want to work in are saying to see what the place was like in the past and what the times are like now, then they decide what the project should be. One of the projects in Charleston, SC inspired the imagination of a local man to put up a door where an old house had once been to show others that the house used to be there and how important the memory of that house was to him. He also uses it to remind others to respect the past. Each of the projects Mary Jane Jacob curates causes the public to think about the message and how the work affects them because of their openness to casual viewing.
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