National Czech and Slovak Museum
Intern by day and blogger by night, Melina Testin will be completing both remote and in-person work for the Smithsonian-Affiliated National Czech and Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids, IA. This is her second year working at the NCSML. Weekly posts will focus on work with the exhibit Artists as Activists.
Final Essay: Docent as Activist
The drawing and blogging skills honed in my Public History course last semester proved useful for my internship at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. My internship last summer with the NCSML was an artist residency to work on a replica Berlin Wall public art project, and while my…
Sweet, Home, Czechoslovakia
My internship at the NCSML ended last week, as did my hopes of returning to campus this fall. However, even rotten situations can have sweet silver linings as spending the end of August in Cedar Rapids means I will be here for the fall kolach bake. Kolaches are donut-sized sweet rolls with a thumbprint of…
A Century of Robots: Czechs and Collins Aerospace
Collins Aerospace, part of Raytheon Technologies, is one of the largest employers in Cedar Rapids. My dad worked at Collins for a number of years, my brother works at Collins, albeit in Massachusetts, and I had an internship with Collins for a summer! I was asked to write the short article that follows to advertise…
Seeing Slowly, Michael Findlay: ★★★☆☆3/5 thought provoking, but stubborn
I spent the past week reading Seeing Slowly by art dealer Michael Findlay, a book recommended to me by Sarah Henderson, the Associate Director of Lifelong Learning at the NCSML with whom I worked on the Berlin Wall exhibit last summer. In his book, Findlay suggests various methods for seeing, as opposed to merely looking at, contemporary art in order…
Juanma García: La ciudad contiene dentro de sí al artista
[Juanma García: The city contains within it the artist] I am back at the NCSML this week to write about the final artist whose work appears in Artists as Activists: Cuban painter and sculptor Juanma García. With a portfolio comprised of colored pencil sketches, acrylic paintings, and wooden sculptures, García is the most ‘traditional’ artist…
Boston Balance
I have been staying with my brother in Boston for the past week, trading contemporary art for colonial history. I have chosen four of the best things I have seen and sketched in the city to highlight in this post. 1. Samuel Eliot Morison Statue – Back Bay On a walk through Commonwealth Mall I…
Malik Sajad: “The historians were certainly cruel for not adding a few pages of happy ending to Kashmir’s story”
One of the most ubiquitous forms of protest art is the political cartoon. Cartoons have been a part of my life for many years, and I was even invited to give a presentation on their importance at the 2018 National High School Journalism Convention in Chicago. One of the unique aspects I highlighted was the…
jc lenochan: “We can speak things into existence”
The NCSML is finally open to the public! After a slower members-only week, the galleries began to fill up with regular summer crowds on Monday. It has been exciting to see the actual works of art my blog posts have covered, and it is equally as interesting to see the way visitors react to various…
Ai Weiwei: “Everything is art. Everything is politics.”
“Everything is art. Everything is politics.” This quote from renowned artist, architect, documentarian, writer, musician, and international celebrity Ai Weiwei sums up the work of several Chicago artists Dr. Mooney-Melvin brought to my attention this week. All artwork has meaning, and the larger-scale and more public the work, the more controversial, efficacious, and thought-provoking the message.…
Emily Jacir: “I feel choked by the silence”
In my trip around the world via contemporary art, my next stop was Palestine. Emily Jacir is an artist and filmmaker who was born in Bethlehem but grew up in Saudi Arabia, Italy, and finally the United States where she studied at the Memphis College of Art. In 2001, Jacir ran an interactive public art…
Hong Hao: “Reality continues to inspire our desires”
This week, I focused on Chinese photographer Hong Hao. Hao studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and spent a decade printmaking before discovering a new passion for photography in 1999. Hao enjoys working in series, taking time to master a medium before moving to the next. His first series, Selected Scriptures, is an…
Tania Bruguera: “Art is useful”
I continued my research on the creatives featured in the Artists as Activists exhibit this week with Cuban-born performance artist Tania Bruguera. Bruguera’s most notorious work, and the piece that will be shown as a video at the NCSML, is Tatlin’s Whisper #6 – Havana Version. Tatlin’s Whisper was a free speech performance during the Havana Biennial…
David Černý: “I just enjoy pissing people off”
This week I began my second summer working at the National Czech and Slovak Museum, albeit from home. For the weeks leading up to the museum’s reopening, I will be researching into the lives of the artists featured in the NCSML’s Artists as Activists exhibit. The first artist on my list is Czech multimedia sculptor…
Nights at the Museum 