Now Hanging: The Park East Museum & Information Center at the Sydney Hih
A historic building gets an artful revival
Found grafiti art from inside the Sydney Hih.
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When In:Site was first developing plans to create a temporary art installation in the Park East corridor, it issued a call for artists and community members to answer the question “What is the value of this land?” The seemingly attractive location where the Park East freeway spur once stood is, these days, home to many failed development plans, empty lots, and an almost iconic pile of rocks. So the questions are both simple and complex: What is the monetary value? What is the historic value? What is the aesthetic value? What is its function?
The artists who answered the question did so thoughtfully: Gary John Gresl’s faux archeological dig, Disinterment, is riddled with found objects and road signs and emphasizes the history of the area, while Annushka Peck’s Cede along Water Street maps out the corridor, as well as the now-dismantled freeway spur and the houses that were torn down to create it. Framing Place, by Chris Bach and Cat Pham—red rows of cutout frames scattered around the corridor—invite passersby to focus on specific scenes. In all, there are 10 temporary projects already in place between Juneau and Pleasant streets that explore and accent this slow-to-develop slice of land. The largest and most ambitious project—The Park East Museum And Information Center at the Sydney Hih building—ties it all together and runs Sunday through Aug. 30 from noon to 8 p.m. daily.
The Sydney Hih—long a bastion of creativity—has been closed for four years, and safety issues mean the upper floors are still off limits to the public. But, for this one week, rooms and halls on the first floor will be transformed by installations and gallery spaces. Neil Gasparka, curator of the Park East Museum And Information Center, sees the works—inside the Sydney Hih and out—as tied together as a celebration of ordinary things: “They all give extra recognition to the mundane."
Visitors walking into the spiffed-up building will find an information desk in the lobby; a visitor’s center on the left with clippings and stories (both written and audio) from the community about the history of the Sydney Hih and the corridor; and on the right, the office of the “Park East Corridor Property Company,” where they can buy mini-properties contained neatly in white boxes. Deeper inside are seven galleries, and all the works touch on the area and the building’s significance.
In one colorful space, a hallway displays graffiti art and other objects—a garland of flowers, somebody’s forgotten necktie, a Warped Tour poster—found inside the building. In another, things like a shoe and a stuffed bunny—still sooty and gray from time spent underground—have been dug up and placed behind museum glass. There’s a gallery of Park East photographs, abstract sculpture assembled from paint chips, and lots more. Anyone with a connection to the Sydney Hih will enjoy the nostalgia trip, but you don’t need to have rented a space or partied here in order to understand. Many of the artists involved have no such connection.
An especially fun project is the Park East Corridor Property Company inside the building, which explores the idea of land as product. It’s a make-believe real estate outfit created by MIAD students Molly Noyes and Natalie LeRoy, who will suit up and man their office throughout the week and accept bids on their properties. The properties are abstract models contained in 12-inch square bakery boxes, and the highest bidders will get to take them home. (In:Site gets a chunk of the proceeds.) Noyes and LeRoy have spared no detail: there’s a catalog, a website, and paper to fill out to make an offer.
Of course, outside of this installation, property is real, and it took a lot of legwork on the part of In:Site to get the landowners—both private and governmental—to agree. That’s not to say it was difficult; according to In:Site’s chair, Pegi Taylor/Christiansen, everyone involved—from county government to condo developers—was enthusiastic about the temporary art once they understood the concept. “People think you have to dumb down public art,” Taylor/Christiansen says. “But you don’t. People get it.” After all the recent public-art debacles in Milwaukee, that’s refreshing news.
