One of the exhibits currently on display at the ASU Art Museum, called Cu29: Mining for You, is a fun mix of interaction, information and sentiment. The exhibit is a collaboration between Arizona artist Matthey Moore and London artist Clare Patey, and focuses on the issue of copper’s endangerment and our continued dependency on it.
There’s tons of information presented in the exhibit, but I’ll let you figure that out when you visit and in the meantime entice you with all the cool stuff you can do and see there.
The first thing I did at the exhibit was watch the small video they had playing on an individual television screen with two sets of headphones. The screen was playing a song that named elements, and though the museum forbids photos, you can probably find the video here.
The next thing to draw my attention was a bunch of pennies on the wall and I thought that made sense because you know, pennies . . . copper. The pattern seemed like nonsense at first, but then I realized there was a little order to the chaos, the kind of order that comes from allowing people to do their own thing in a museum. Initials, words, hearts and whatnot. The instructions on the wall told patrons to leave their pennies on the wall using the glue dots provided from the scroll underneath the instructions. I couldn’t help but follow suit and leave the last two pennies in my wallet.
The penny wall also had a few good facts about the declining price of copper (clever right?), such as “pre-1982, the value of the copper in 1,000 pennies was $25. Today it is 64¢.”
Close to the penny wall was a large periodic table of elements. Again, the museum forbids photos, but you can assume it looked like this:
The exhibit also featured two benches from which patrons could admire the art. The cool part? The benches were the periodic table.In another section of the display were somewhere around 20 pieces from ASU Art Museum’s collection that contain copper, with the disclaimer-of-sorts, “Bronze is a mixture of copper and tin. Brass is a mixture of copper and zinc.”
The sentiment of the exhibit came in the section where people could donate copper-containing-objects to display with stories or small messages on tags attached them.
I have admittedly laughed aloud at a shameful amount of Chemistry Cat memes. Yeah Mr. White! Yeah science!In the other section of the gallery was where most of the interaction could take place. There was a small office space set up and a sign encouraged patrons to use the office space (laptop and research material included) to find cool facts about copper and put them onto the chalk wall across the way.
Said chalk wall was filled with facts as well as some puns and copper jokes, naturally. My favorite pun came in the form of a printed out Chemistry Cat meme.
Now if that isn’t enough to convince you that you pretty much need to go see this exhibit, I’ll have you know that there are a few other things in the exhibit that I didn’t tell you about as well as an awesome gift shop and another (smaller, but just as important) exhibit going on as well. The exhibit will be up until May 11, so you’ve got plenty of time to get on over there.
Enjoy one last copper fact provided by the exhibit: “The Statue of Liberty contains 179,000 pounds of copper.”
If you’d like to reach me with comments, concerns or suggestions you can email me at anconrad13@gmail.com or tweet me @alliectersely.
