Sunday 19 June 2011

Late night at the museum, and advice for a royal visit

Last night was Art Night in Venice. All the civic museums had free entry and were open until midnight. Well, in theory anyway. In reality many of them still closed at the normal hour.
Led by our new Biennale friends Arnell and Svesteslava, we joined a musical tour of the Museo Correr. In each gallery, as well as their being being a brief talk (in Italian) about the room and it's display, a group of musicians would play/sing/chant a piece of music composed in response to the setting.


Julian Schnabel was accompanied by a flautist and flamenco guitar, grecian marbles with Fluxus artists huffing into megaphones.
Really it dragged on a bit, but it was a pretty fun way to visit the Venice art world outside the Biennale.





In other news, the Danish Pavilion has been notified that Queen Paola of Belgium will be paying us a visit on Wednesday morning.
I will have to come to work early.
I will have to find something nice to wear.
I will have to choose something poignant to put on display.

The most royalty-related thing we have in the boxes is Thing 001412 (Respect M.E.) - a t-shirt and a belt from Missy Elliott's Adidas merchandise.


Deemed by the Danish royal family to be too similar to Queen Margrethe's own monogram. (And subsequently removed from sale in Denmark by Missy Elliott and Adidas, before any legal action was taken.)


Maybe Queen Paola of Belgium will want her monogram made into a t-shirt, it'd be pretty great.



So I've got a bit of ironing to do, and I should really paint my toenails, but any advice people out there have for royal visitations, now's the time to speak up.
I imagine I'll probably be locked out of the pavilion along with the rest of the plebs, but just in case she is visiting specifically to see the installation by her subject (Kobe being Belgian) and she requests an invocation, I should really be prepared.


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Well, she came. For all of about 5 minutes. If that.

She had an assistant to tell her about each artist's work in the pavilion, and maybe a couple of other assistants. And they were surrounded by security. And then that pack was surrounded by press. A couple of the press guys snuck through behind the shelving to get some shots through, but that was as close as any of them came to my Missy Elliott display.
The assistant doing the talking did give a brief explanation of Kobe's installation to the queen, and she even pulled out a box for a quick peek, but all from the other side of the shelving unit. So no picture moments of me invoking Missy for Queen Paola, I'm afraid.



Despite all my curtsey practice...


I just got these sneak peeks through the boxes.


That's her in the cream. Yep, pretty unexciting. And I can confirm that she did indeed keep her sunglasses on throughout.




19 June 2011

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