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Subject:
From:
"James H. Haynes" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Museum discussion list <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 14 Apr 1997 21:58:25 -0700
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In addition to the topic that we have been seeing (traveling exhibits to
show in shopping malls) there is the topic of mini-museums located in
shopping mall store spaces.  And of displays in shopping malls in general.

For instance the Vallco shopping mall in Cupertino, CA has a small museum,
a branch of the Santa Clara County museum, in a store space.  I don't know
anything about it other than having seen it.  I would assume the mall
management is making the space available for free at a time when they have
some vacancies and would rather have the museum there than have another
empty store.  The same mall formerly had a display of electronics artifacts
around an escalator well.  This was removed some years ago in a remodeling;
and again I don't know if the mall wanted it out or if the electronics museum
there wanted the stuff back - I'm assuming the items were on loan from the
electronics museum.

Airports are a somewhat similar venue.  If I remember correctly the
San Jose airport has had some displays related to Silicon Valley.
(Is there anywhere outside Silicon Valley that you see roadside billboards
extolling the features of some integrated circuit chip set?)

We could talk about shopping mall art.  Hillsdale in San Mateo has (I guess
they still have - been a few years since I've been there) a collection of
animal sculptures by the late Beniamino Bufano, a San Francisco artist and
sculptor of considerable fame.  These are wonderfully appropriate for the
setting, because they are art, yet Bufano's style is to make them very smooth
and entirely suitable for children to climb all over.  Solano Mall in
Fairfield has four hanging sculptures in the form of whimsical flying
machines, apropos the Air Force base in the vicinity.  The last time I saw
them they were much in need of cleaning.  Northwest Arkansas Mall has
overhead in the corridors wood strips arranged in the motif of Fay Jones
architecture.  (Fay Jones lives in that area.)  I haven't decided whether
it's good that they are celebrating the great local architect, or whether
it's evil that they are using in a purely decorative way a design that is
structurally essential in Fay Jones buildings.  (Or whether one person
in a thousand even notices the overhead and recognizes the Fay Jones
motif.)

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