Mattress Factory, a museum in Pittsburgh

I ran across a really great museum on the internet recently: The Mattress Factory, which describes itself:

"The Mattress Factory is a museum of contemporary art that presents art you can get into — room-sized environments, created by in-residence artists. Located in the historic Mexican War Streets of Pittsburgh’s North Side since 1977, the Mattress Factory is one of few museums of its kind anywhere."

This piece by Sarah Oppenheimer is called 610-3356 and is an actual hole in the floor of one of the galleries.  It connects to a window in a gallery below, providing a view out that window.

The Mattress Factory also has a permanent exhibition of its own visitors called MF iConfess, a "confessional-like" structure in the museum lobby where visitors answer the question "What does the Mattress Factory mean to you?" (and other things!). 

One of the current exhibitions is called Sites of Passage which documents the performance artist Tavia La Follette's participation in an Artists Residency program in Egypt in the summer 2010.  

During her residency, she started a project called Firefly Tunnels, which she describes as "metaphorical passageways for the exchange of ideas through the language of Performance Art."   The multimedia collaboration project involves artists from Egypt and the United States and includes some fascinating images.

Library Science: The Art Exhibit!

Artspace, an independent visual arts venue in New Haven, Connecticut, has announced a new exhibition called Library Science, which will be on view through January 28, 2012.  The exhibition features the works of 17 international artists, exploring their intellectual and physical relationships to the library.

Chris Coffin: Hurricanes 551.55 D (2003)

One of the artists, Reynard Loki, visually presents his own classification system of his personal library, based on the first and last lines of his books.  Madeleine Djerejian's photographic portraits were taken at "the Grolier Club in New York, the nation’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles and graphic arts enthusiasts."

Philippe Gronon: Catalog de manuscrits, Bibliothèque Vaticane, Rome (one of 5 panels), 1995

Creusot-Monceau Ecomuseum

Model of a steam engine by William Murdock, 1784

I ran across a really interesting museum collection focusing on industrial machinery in the nineteenth and early twentieth century in France.


They have a gigantic model built over twenty years starting in the 1890s that includes 38 automatons and replicates industrial activities throughout the whole plant in Franche-Comte.

Francois Bonhomme (1864): Forge in Creusot

You can  read a bit about the idea behind this community museum in this article in MuseumCommunities.