Jerry Beck, founder of Lowell's Revolving Museum, will give a short slide-show talk on the role of artist-youth public art collaborations in community building and urban planning. This is part of Lexington ArtWalk 2008's fundraiser at the Lexington Depot this Saturday (5-7 PM). See MunroeCenter.org/ArtWalk for more information or call (781) 862-6040.
The Revolving Museum's urban art making…conveys the conviction that public art can be transformational and should be made directly from the community and injected back into it.
--Ann Wilson Lloyd, Art In America
Serving Youth: The Beginnings of the Revolving Museum
In the mid-1980s, Jerry Beck (School of the Museum of Fine Arts, MFA '91) and fellow artists staged an art show in twelve derelict railroad cars on the South Boston waterfront. The Revolving Museum was born. "It was magical," Beck says. "Some of us slept in the cars. One night we had storytelling, and every kind of person you can imagine was shoulder to shoulder: artists, children, people in their eighties, homeless people. It cemented my idea of what I wanted the Revolving Museum to feel like."
What began as a nomadic experiment in public art "revolved" from one site-specific installation to another. The Revolving Museum dedicated itself to creating large youth-artist collaborations to teach youth about art and community service.
In 1988, for example, the Museum led youth from Lower Roxbury and the South End to design interactive exhibits inspired by an abandoned baseball field that included a 200 foot-long batting cage, where targets represented racism, homelessness, drugs, violence and pollution. In 1992, The Revolving Museum created a series of diversity-themed “Wonders of the World” public art festivals involving over 1000 youth and artists working together to create interactive games, sculptural rides, billboard-sized murals, and performance art.
Transforming Community: The Revolving Museum Revitalizes Lowell
In March 2002, at the invitation of the City of Lowell, The Revolving Museum relocated to the historic 1859 Lowell Gas and Light building. It has acted there as a consultant for the city's master planning efforts and media campaigns and has helped to shape Lowell's community identity and space, address social inequality, and create cultural and educational opportunities
In 2003, The Revolving Museum received an NEA grant for “LocalMotive”--interactive public art and events that reclaimed the inactive railroad tracks and alleyways in historic downtown Lowell.. In 2004, local artists and teenagers collaborated to address the cultural and economic revitalization of Lowell, resulting in “Creative Canoe Tours, Inc.,” a youth-run, summer-long business featuring artistically transformed canoes giving paid tours of historic Lowell canals.
“The Revolving Museum has become deeply rooted in the city's community life,” reads a prestigious Massachusetts Cultural Council award given the museum in 2007. “The Revolving Museum has furthered its mission in Lowell to foster dialogue about the role that creativity and community plays in people's everyday lives….The Revolving Museum has positioned itself at the center of Lowell's revitalization efforts providing a renaissance of community celebration; [it] has created a home for Lowell's young people where they can explore and appreciate art, and develop their talents and potential.”
Jerry has been a community arts advisor with cultural and educational institutions such as RISD, Very Special Arts International, Brown University, and National Organization of Artist's Space. He has exhibited at the ICA in Boston, Artist Space in NYC, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Mass MOCA, and The RISD Museum. He has been recognized with grants and fellowships from the NEA, the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Arts International Grant Initiative, the Pew Charitable Trust, and the Mass Cultural Council PLUS and he has been published and reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, Art Forum, and The Boston Globe.
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