These are particularly interesting questions given where they're asked: In the main hall of a building that is at the center of a furor over the very definition of accurate historic preservation.
That building is the Missoula Art Museum, which this week celebrates the one-year anniversary of its reopening in the one-time Carnegie Library building - now renovated and expanded for its new purpose in a new century - at the corner of Pattee and Pine streets in downtown Missoula.
As readers of the Missoulian are aware, the MAM was recently denied $400,000 in federal funds for the renovation project that were previously promised through the National Park Service's Save America's Treasures program. At issue is whether the renovation and expansion undermined the historic character of the Carnegie Library building.
The MAM, in coordination with the city of Missoula and other local and state supporters, is working toward an appeal of the funding denial.
That conflict wasn't even on the horizon when MAM staffers had the idea of bringing "Crash. Pause. Rewind." to the MAM. In fact, despite the local connections that include multiple artistic references to Ted Kaczynski, the show wasn't originally made with Montana in mind.
It was instead put together by Eric Fredericksen, director of Western Bridge, a gallery space in Seattle. A nonprofit gallery founded by the Seattle collectors Bill and Ruth True, Western Bridge has made a name for producing cutting-edge contemporary programming that often features nontraditional fare such as video, performance art, and interactive programming.
According to Fredericksen, the show that's on view at the MAM had its foundations several years ago, when Western Bridge solicited works from several artists around the theme of ruins and artifacts.
"The show originally came out of my interest in the history of people's fascination with ruins," said Fredericksen in a telephone interview last week. "The general concept for the show was seeing how we consume images of destruction today, and trying to relate that back to the 18th-century interest in ancient ruins. ... It was about looking at familiar media imagery as a modern form of ruins."
That's where Ted Kaczynski comes in, for reasons that are initially quite obvious: No other modern person is better-known for the place where he lived. His Montana cabin is, in a very real sense, a ruin with considerable cultural significance.
"The Unabomber's cabin is a great metaphor for how buildings become symbols for events and for people," said Fredericksen.
The cabin appears in works by no fewer than three artists in the show.
The cabin is most literally presented in two, side-by-side photographs by artist Richard Barnes. One photo shows the cabin's original location in the woods outside Lincoln, shot after the cabin was removed; the space is nothing but unkempt grass and weeds, framed in menacingly by a high, barbed-wire fence. The second photo shows the cabin in its current location: inside a large, gray government warehouse.
"It's interesting in its relation to art, this object that's removed from its original context and placed into a different setting," said Fredericksen. "It's almost like the federal government's version of a museum."
The cabin also appears in the largest and most seemingly absurd piece in the show, Chris Larson's "Pause (the Dukes of Hazzard '69 Charger and Ted Kaczynski's Montana Refuge)." The enormous piece takes up nearly a quarter of the main gallery at the MAM, and features an elaborately detailed, 3/4-scale wooden model of the famed hotrod from the television series "The Dukes of Hazzard," crashing into a similarly scaled model of Kaczynski's cabin.
Despite the bizarre humor of the piece, there are interesting ideas to ponder in relation to it. By literally smashing together the fictional with the real, Larson focuses on two very different visions of lawlessness.
"The Dukes were doing good in the world while working outside the law, and the people enforcing the law were the bad guys," said Fredericksen. "Ted Kaczynski was also working by his own personal moral code, and he also thought that other people were the ones who were corrupt. But obviously there's a big difference between the way our culture views the Dukes of Hazzard and Ted Kaczynski."
Different views very much come into play in Jon Haddock's "Screenshot Series." Haddock took 20 images that stuck in his mind from his past - 16 from actual events, four from movies - and re-envisioned them as scenes from a videogame. In so doing, he changed the angle of view, depicting each of the scenes from overhead, at an angle common to video games.
The effect of this treatment is disconcerting. The image of Kim Phuc running down the street outside her bombed town, the aftermath of Princess Diana's fatal limousine accident, and the famed photograph of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald seem serene, less immediate, perhaps even insignificant through Haddock's treatment.
"By transforming these images into a different medium, I think (Haddock) suggests that they become trivialized from overuse and over-familiarity," said Fredericksen.
"You see these images that have become fixed in our culture as something that's moving, that could be interpreted differently."
That theme of fixed ideas made fluid, which lurks behind many of the works in "Crash. Pause. Rewind.," could just as easily be applied to the transformations at the MAM in recent years, where a solid old building has been turned into a hub of new ideas and activity for years to come. It's worth checking out the show, not just to see art, but to think about the value of this new Missoula institution as it celebrates its first birthday.
Reach Joe Nickell at 523-5358 or at jnickell@missoulian.com.
PREVIEW
"Crash. Pause. Rewind." continues at the Missoula Art Museum through Nov. 24. Several events take place this week to celebrate the MAM's one-year anniversary since moving into its newly expanded facility at 335 N. Pattee St. This evening, Sept. 20, from 5:30-9 p.m., the MAM hosts its monthly Artini event, featuring a gallery talk by Rafael Chacon and music by Frank Joseph. On Friday, Sept. 21, from 5-7 p.m., the museum hosts a Business Member Reception, followed by a 7 p.m. screening of the Best of the Northwest Film and Video Festival. The screening costs $6, $5 for members. On Saturday, Sept. 22, from 10 a.m.-noon, Molly Murphy presents a class on Parfleche Design. Fee is $5. The Best of the Northwest Film and Video Festival is then screened again Saturday night; same time and cost.
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