Last Tuesday I interviewed for a volunteer docent position at MOMA in San Francisco. How I got the interview is another story. After introductions and an explanation of the docent training and responsibilities, I was paired with the manager of the docent program to take a walk into the gallery. When we entered on of the galleries, she said, "pick out a painting and a sculpture and tell me about it". Well, being an expert on the work of German artist Anselm Kiefer, it was no problem - Hah!
After discussing a very large, dark, gloomy, and obscure work of art on the wall, she pointed to a large sculpture of a lead airplane/jet bomber with a glass tetrahedron positioned on the wing and said, "...tell me about that". What would you have said?
http://www.herreros.com.ar/melanco/kiefer.htm
After I stumbled around trying to come up with some sense of it, she said it was based or inspired by Albrecht Durer's 1513 print called "Melencolia 1", which made everything clear - Hah again!
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/43.106.1
Who knows if I passed the test or not. They are interviewing about 60 people for 17 open positions and will decide by next week. If I do make the cut, it would be a commitment to six months of training and art history courses and then a two year commitment to lead docent tours. We'll see.
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