ExhibiTricks: The Museum Exhibit Design Blog: Christina Ferwerda is an independent professional who bridges the worlds of museums, education, and movement. Her practice drawing from museum experiences, and moving (dance, yoga) has been an important part of her development as a teacher and a learner. Working in Museum Education for over 10 years fueled Christina's desire to make varied cultural spaces more user-friendly for people of all ages, and led her to start working in Exhibition Development. She currently works with partners in New York City (her home base) and North America as well as on projects abroad.
4 comments:
This woman's work is particularly interesting because when we think of museums, the word movement is hardly the first thing that comes to mind. I like that Ferwerda's unique background and combination of professions show the importance of cross-disciplinary endeavors. It is clear that her experience with Yoga influences greatly her approach to creating museum exhibits, which is a very positive thing. I think that in the world of performance, we sometimes are too involved with our own theater background and mindset to step back and take advantage of disciplines that may be wildly different but would benefit our work greatly.
I like the idea of how she creates experiences for people by physically and mentally moving them. A part of this article did make me think about other things though. She said that yoga brings her back to the same ideas and goals, but she is always finding new approaches for them. I think it is great to experiment new ways in approaching something, but it makes me wonder, for how long do we need to look "back" on our ideas and goals. Should we ever forget the past and look "forward?" Most of the time, when I look at artists' portfolios, I see the same image, the same style, and the same idea, and I always think, why do we limit ourselves to the same ideas and goals? Yes, there is much undiscovered territory within our ideas and goals, but that doesn't mean we close our minds to other ideas and goals. I think Christina is doing really interesting experiments with the human body and mind, but I hope she doesn't limit herself to only this idea.
What interested me about this article is the interaction of yoga and art it seems to me that by moving our bodies through space and changing the way we do so, we are able to understand the space of art more. I think it was interesting that she does a great deal of work for museums yet she did didn't speak about much before contemporary and modern art. I think this is important to show how much more important space is in modern and contemporary art.
This article was really intriguing to me because too often people visit museums and simply sit in front of the art, experiencing it in a very static way. I think Christina really challenges what it means to be a viewer of art and how we can experience visual arts. By including movement into exhibits Christina introduces a new sense and bodily requirement. She really transforms the viewing process into something exciting and rewarding. I would love to participate in one of her exhibits.
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