Summary: SFMOMA Artcasts: January 2009 focuses on the museum as a place of democracy and explores how works of art can be changed through interaction, interpretation, collaboration, and reinvention. First, we check in about the exhibition "The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now." Brooklyn-based collaborative duo MTAA explains their vote-based project "Automatic for the People: ()," and recent exhibition visitors react to their own participatory experiences and reflect on what it means to touch and change a work of art in a museum. Next, senior curator of painting and sculpture Gary Garrels explains the concept and process of Sol Lewitt’s wall drawings and shares his personal feelings about the painting-over of the pair that, until recently, distinguished the museum’s atrium. Finally, Paulo Yumal, a student from 826 Valencia’s "Writing About Art" series shares a short story inspired by Charles Sheeler’s painting "Aerial Gyrations" (1953), from SFMOMA’s permanent collection.
