The Museum Project

Conversation with Chat as I reflect on this legacy.

I would like to start with the museum project. An outgrowth of the economics major, the awareness that themodel itself was a part of the current problem, and then an awareness that patriarchy and hierarcy were also a part of the current problem, and seeing the institution of art, with its own roles of critic as priest, and the museum the holy houses deciding who can enter, I realized a part of my role was to take the power back of the creative expression in all life, and I sensed that the hierarchy of art and its history of patronage was a part of the very system that created the wounds. In the first project I created a costume like a museum guard, and installed an ipad with images on my back, and installed myself, first at the Belvedere, with fellow adventurers there to participate in a festival project, SB-ADaPT, thought I would be kicked out in 30 seconds, but no, they let it happen, and I am told people took pictures of me there simply standing, looking at the art, I did it also at the Lourve, then the Norton Simon, and when I began to be a peer support to my sibling, I began to install her with her art, at the Norton Simon, at LACMA. At Lacma she was installed with her family also participating and we archived this with photos which later became a part of installations. Then we began to install our work together with other people helping us. AT MOMA, two people stood in front of my sister's favorite artist, Van Gogh, and they held one of y drawings, and one of her paintings. AT the Denver Art museum, a friend of my sister who had recently passed took photos for me. It was guerilla performance, uninvited and it was a healthy expressin of my rage against the societal structures that harm earth, harm kids, harm people.

Above: Museum Project 2.0, after exhibiting my own work, exhibiting my work with my sisterʻs work.  Museum visitors offering to install the work in front of Van Goghʻs work, my sisterʻs favorite artist.

The Museum Project was a project spanning, gosh, Iʻm not sure how many years. Museums became my own little guerilla style playground where I installed myself, and art, in museums, and/or, creatively reacted with art in movement.

It was a part of this profound calling to work at tearing at the frame of art with a feeling in my gut that art belonged to communit, to the medicine and experience of the common man, that while the mausoleums of famous artists who had passed were important, and those deemed important of the times, there was an awareness that the visionaries often times were not understood in their own times.

I can now say the work has been exhibited in the Lourve, the Belvedere, the Norton Simon, MOMA, LACMA, and the Denver Art Museum, and Iʻve also installed my sisterʻs art as well. 

Very playful, very fun, and I would love to see this happen with an artist from every country, living artists of all ages, abilities, styles, and degee of growth descend on museums and install themselves, together.

My dance maker name, Misa, was derived from a favorite experience, living in Paris in my youth, for a year. On Sundays, my go to was the Lourve, which was much less crowded in those days. I could literally be the first in line at the wooden doors and walk/run to the Mona Lisa to be with her alone, in silence, so golden, I could hear a pin drop, and commune, alone, before the other tourists arrived. My partner loved this story, and gave me the name Misa, short for Mona Lisa, which I adopted when I went to Cal Arts to do the work to earn an MFA. When I graduated from this career, I retired the name, although my family uses this, and it remains my legal name. My birth name is Annette Marie Puʻu.

See CV page for dates  and places of the museum project.