Thomas Tirino

Bad roommate days.

Isabella Tianzi Cai
H72.3049 The Culture of Archives, Museums, and Libraries
Professor Howard Besser
February 22, 2010


Observational Study at Guggenheim Museum and Brooklyn Central Library


“This place really inspired me!”
– A visitor at Guggenheim Museum


“I just want to say ‘thank you.’ This is such a great program!”
– A user at Brooklyn Central Library


Of all the bits and pieces of conversations that I have eavesdropped at Guggenheim Museum on Saturday, February 20, 2010 and at Brooklyn Central Library on Sunday, February 21, 2010, I picked the most positive ones for this assignment. I think that they accurately reflect what most people want to get out of their visiting experiences at these public institutions. Of course, they do so because these public facilities allow them to.


Most of my expectations of what I would encounter at Guggenheim were met. Like any Saturdays (in fact I was told by an intern there, not just Saturday, but any day), Guggenheim was packed with people from all over the world. I arrived there at about 2:20 PM. There were over 80 people lining outside the museum. On average, they waited 10 to 15 minutes to get in. I used a special entrance for members; the wait time for me was zero.


The main thing that was holding the line up was the limited number of ticket counters. Guggenheim hardly has a lobby for visitors, so if the ticket sellers have not finished servicing the visitors at hand, the next visitors have to wait outside the museum. I think that this is a brilliant architectural design because passers-by easily get the impression that this is a popular place of interest.


Brooklyn Central Library does not give the same kind of impression. In a sense, crowdedness makes a public library less popular. I arrived just before it opened at 1:00 PM on Sunday. Just like at Guggenheim, there were people waiting to get in. However, they were not in a line. Some were eager and waited right outside the entrance, but majority were loitering around, idly chatting with friends and families.


Both Guggenheim and Brooklyn Central Library had exhibitions on their first floors. Interestingly, Guggenheim did not feature inanimate objects but a kissing couple. It was the first time in the museum history that the entire first floor was cleared of all other art objects for this kind of human exhibition. Visitors politely stood at fifteen feet away to look. Their gaze usually lasted for no more than two minutes. However, towards the end of the day, I saw brave little kids venturing ever closer to the kissing couple and imitating their movements on the floor. They made people laugh, but the performers tried to be as professional as they could, so they remained nonchalant. At Brooklyn Central Library, the lobby exhibition was on Sesame Street. There were illustrations from various publishing houses. They attracted library users of all ages.


Virtually no one took out a camera and photographed in the lobby of Brooklyn Central Library despite the exhibition, but many visitors did so at Guggenheim. The guards at Guggenheim had to constantly go up to the visitors to remind them that photography and videotaping were not allowed. This rule was implemented rather haphazardly because visitors outnumbered museum guards so much that it was clearly impossible for the guards to keep a vigilant eye at everyone. I saw many who took pictures from above, since the design of the building allowed such abundant viewpoints. There were free audio tours for visitors in six different languages. If anyone is interested in retaining the information they have heard in the audio tour and seen by looking at the artwork, he or she is welcomed to go to the gift shop by a book on Guggenheim’s collections. Otherwise, the information is not to be circulated freely.


Similarly, Brooklyn Central Library stopped library users from photographing and videotaping when it held public performances and film screenings too. At 1:30 PM, it played two short films under the title “American Pioneers.” Both featured important African Americans in black history as part of an ongoing program on black cultural history. At 4:00 PM, pianist Thomas Tirino, the leading interpreter of Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona, performed Lecuona’s music at the library’s lower-level hall. Before and during the start of each of these events, the program director, Jay Kaplan, kindly reminded the audience to respect the rights of the films and the artist and not to record and reproduce these works in any way.


While Guggenheim attracted visitors from a diverse background, Brooklyn Central Library catered to the needs of the local residents. At Guggenheim, I constantly ran into people who spoke foreign languages: French, German, Mandarin (of different accents), Korean, Spanish, etc. English was heard in different accents too. Demographically, there were fewer Asians, but even fewer blacks. I only encountered one black for the entirety of my stay, which lasted four hours. At Brooklyn Central Library, there were people of different colors, but percentage of blacks compared there compared to Guggenheim was significantly higher. Nearly one third to a half of the library users were blacks. One librarian who gave out pamphlets near the entrance of the library avoided me when I passed her by. She only gave me one after I asked for it. While she was telling the black patrons where to go for the free screenings, I had to approach her in person a second time to ask for such information. I did not conclude that I was not welcomed to see the films—one was on Willa Brown, the first female African American pilot, the other was on one of the first desegregated schools in Nashville, Tennessee in 1957—but I sensed that the program was targeted to black audience to educate them about their cultural history and perhaps to inspire them too.


Earlier I mentioned that most of my expectations of Guggenheim were met; however, they were challenged too. Walking up the spiral ramp, I was accosted by a little boy about ten years old. He introduced himself to me first and then started asking me questions while we kept walking up the ramp. “What is progress?” He asked. I told him that progress was from zero to one and from one to zero, and it was a gain and loss. He passed me to a young man of about my age when we reached a certain height, and the young man kept the conversation going. “What did you recently lose and gain?” He asked me. This rely race kept me going to the highest point of the ramp, and by the time I reached there, I had talked to the two that I mentioned just now, a woman in her 30s, and an old man in his 60s. There was not enough time for the old man to convince me that women needed men but men did not need women, and romantic love was a very recent invention because I disagreed with him at too many points. He ended the conversation rather abruptly from the perspective of the conversation, but I was not too disappointed because we also reached the top of the ramp.


This interactive experience at Guggenheim changed my view of a museum being a place where visitors passively absorb information or passively being inspired by artwork. Talking to strangers in a museum setting somehow let us trust them with a piece of our private thoughts and feelings. Later I found out that artist Tino Sehgal came up with this “Work in Progress” project. I think his is a very innovative idea, and I believe for those who have been approached like me, the visiting experience at Guggenheim left a special mark on their psyche too.


At Brooklyn Central Library, attendees at the piano concert were free to talk to Thomas Tirino after the show. I lined up for his autograph. While in the line, I heard people speaking to him in Spanish, saying “thank you.” The library was supposed to be closed at 5:00 PM. But the concert lasted longer than an hour. Tirino played one more piece, which was not on the performance but he wanted to dedicate it to a “her” who had passed away. In the end, we were guided to a special exit to leave the library. Everyone around me had a smile on his or her face.


Both Guggenheim and Brooklyn Central Library had their upcoming programs online, and whoever who is interested in knowing more and knowing in advance can sign up their Email newsletters. On location, there are flyers and pamphlets to be picked up too. Brooklyn Central Library has diverse programs for many different social groups. There is one class in March that will address the effects of domestic violence on perinatal health, one on drug assistance, one on suicide prevention and postvention, computer classes in French and Spanish, and various family events. On the flyer that I got at Guggenheim, upcoming performances and shows are listed chronologically.


At the Café in Brooklyn Central Library, I sat next to a woman in her fifties. She was making Pom Poms, and we started chatting quite naturally. A black girl joined our conversation. At first both the girl and I were interested in how to make Pom Poms. After a while, the conversation started to drift in different directions. The black girl told us that she came to the library every day. She attended a knitting class in the library. She came to watch a movie every one and then. Basically, she seemed like that she knew almost everything that was going on in the library. A little later, she also mentioned that she had 27 siblings and she was the fourth youngest in the family. The woman inquired a little about me and told me earnestly that it would be hard for me to get a job once I graduated. She was well-meaning, so I listened and nodded. Sitting around us were all kinds of people, talking. I finally left to use the Internet. As I was gathering my stuff to go, I suddenly realized how great a public facility like a public library was. It catered to different people and their different needs, but all in one space, in harmony.