 Hello, good evening. Thank you for being here with us in celebration of Rebecca Mendes selects the 17th installment in this series in which designers artists Architects and public figures are invited to guest curate an exhibition from their vision And if you have ever seen a selects exhibition here before you'll know that every iteration is different And Rebecca really took This show I think in a direction that we've never seen before so today. We'll talk a bit about Rebecca as a designer as an artist as a curator as a teacher and We'll also talk about The process of putting together a show which for many people the process of doing an exhibition at any museum is very difficult quite multifaceted and and it takes a village as I like to say and Rebecca was a true champ in navigating our system and It was such an honor to work with her. I Joined Cooper Hewitt two years ago. This was my first exhibition project. I didn't know Rebecca Rebecca surely didn't know me and When we first talked about well when I first invited her The first thing she said to me was Yes I'm terrified and I'm scared, but I'm so excited and I can't wait to start and She brought that enthusiasm In every step of the process. So I'll just start a bit with Introduction to Rebecca a few lines about her Rebecca Mendez was born in Mexico City in 1996 She founded Rebecca Mendez design a multi-disciplinary design studio in Los Angeles Her design research and practice is in brand strategy and design architectural immersive spaces experience design and book design Currently she is a professor in the Department of Design Media and Arts and the director of the counterforce lab at UCLA And many of her students are here, too Who are great fans of her? In 2012 she was the recipient of the National Design Award for communications here at Cooper Hewitt And she also received the Medal of AI GA but Rebecca is also a prolific artist and filmmaker and so we want to start really by having Her speak a bit about her process and and how this work really helped inform Rebecca Mendez selects Thank You Christina. That is such a beautiful introduction and I you are also The an amazing person that everything that I would recommend or say or propose You also immediately would say yes, and so I think that these Could could have been quite dangerous because I think that will tell you about where we went and yeah Two yeses together are pretty much exponential. So that was it was a pleasure to work with you So one of the things that I wanted to start with was in order to contextualize a little bit is What is it that motivates me and my work and and again? Why is it that I ended up doing something in relation to in the show of our conflicted relationship to animals? So I will start But just going into what Matters to me in terms of the natural world So I was born and raised in Mexico City as Christina said to Parents trained as chemical engineers who are right now in front and I have my niece also an environmental engineer Look at this. This is my family which I love And so When you know, they definitely Put a lot of energy into in the travels that we had and expeditions that you will hear a little bit about But it was more that they instilled in me the Love for the natural world but more importantly the nature of matter of its composition Organization its system cycles. So in a way, they taught me how to see the world from its design This is the way in which I then began kind of like as if that was all along inside in me And then in my first Series the at any given moment series. It was what I began to explore this kind of looking at the ways in which nature if you if you see one blade of grass in a You know multiplicity like tons of blades of grass that have been that are affected by wind and by light differently They almost become something else for me is as if I'm looking at this but it also I'm looking at The ocean so there was a kind of Motion within the natural environment that was in constant becoming for me So there was a I mean, I may I say the word transmutation perhaps that goes from grass to water, maybe So this is the way that the series I like exhibiting at architectural scale. This is at any given moment to fall one I should with 16 millimeter camera I want to bring the materiality of the Of the celluloid into You know the work. I do think that there is a difference in which the how the image is Inscribed into the material, but it also I feel that even just slowing it down at 60 frames per second It changes the way that we see matter. I Exhibited in Again architectural scale and I wanted to be an embodied experience. So this is at the Williamson gallery I think I can go through a few. I know that we are Short in time, so I'll move fast So another thing that why I wanted to shoot with 16 millimeter is because then the apparatus and I were like co-authors I don't control everything and I love Chance that happens every time that I shoot and every time that I you know, also I'm working with new technologies This is Piedras negras. Yo keep in Guatemala. This was You can see Chuck the god of Think that's a pointer there got the rain and We used to as a family we used to camp for sometimes a month in the jungle and I would be surrounded by the oscillating sound of the cicadas by the holler monkeys and by these Multiplicity of life. There was something about this vibrant matter that was just the way that we grew up And in these expeditions my father would use as a guide the text and the books by Lloyd Stevens John Lloyd Stevens an American Diplomatic Explorer and then Catherine would Catherine would a British architect and he began to create this most beautiful drawings of the Of the sites for ecological sites So my father would follow that and and again like we couldn't fit this one in our cabinet So it ended up being x'd but that was an important one Also, I was taught about photography and how these were done by utilizing the camera lucida So this experiences of living in the jungle and taking you know Carbon from our campground and making rubbings It began to make me be fascinated with also the symbolic system that was left behind by our ancestors and Here we are only two weeks ago three weeks ago with my dad We are in Chicana, which 45 years ago. We camped exactly right there It would take us like three days to go through the jungle to get there now. It's two hours still in a dirt road But there my dad was looking at exactly where Mom and dad had their camping tent looking through the gate of the serpent Chicana means gate of the serpent. It's in the reserve of Calakmul Which then brings me brings me to why then I love this exploration and artistic field work so far I have Arrived at that what I love doing the most and what fascinates me the most is artistic field work What it is is that you know just the same way that you go into a scientist For example can be in the lab or can be in the field an artist can be in the studio and can be in the field and The chance that happens when you are actually exposed to the elements. It is amazing. I love being there I love having that presence and what I like about the artistic field work is that then you and I think that this one we could be going to Yes another expedition in the Arctic. This is in Svalbard in the in Moffen Island the Arctic Circle expedition, but it's that Artistic field work borrows from various disciplines. It could be from, you know environmental science geography graphic design literature and You end up creating like having that The research that the scientific research that seems quite objective. It is somehow then combined with the flexibility and fluidity of the artistic practice and then your artifacts can be from a film to a book A brand to whatever it is. It's necessary for you to tell your story. So that is what I love the most doing Sometimes I keep very detailed sketchbooks of The expeditions. This is my equipment list. This is where we were and I didn't mean to change it and I changed it But that's okay. I think that we are in a hurry. So I think that's maybe okay So anyway, I think that the idea of When I was in this expedition, I was reading gender in ice and it was about the Exploration to the North Pole and the conquest of the North Pole To me that also speaks a lot about the issues of Imperialism in our current time as well. So this was in the last Site that we went in the sailboat around Svalbard. This is called abandoned and I thought well Why don't I conquer the North Pole for Mexico? Right. It's like what can be more absurd than that? And at the same time it was when I'm thinking a lot about it was in 2007 that a member of Parliament a Russian member of Parliament Takes a goes into with the Serb submarine and goes underneath the ice cap now that it is melting due to climate change Everybody's beginning to claim what it is underneath And so he goes and plants a flag a Russian flag to claim the land for them. So this is my response to that and I do come back and And I mean we might accelerate but anyway what this did is that it gave me also a sense of Understanding that what I love to do is being there present. So it is this is like the journey as a medium in itself walking as a way of being able to relate to my environment and Just be able to again create sometimes actions and and address issues of again for me in this case colonialism I Thought also about the way in which the dream of the migrants of Going to the north for a better life and then the realities of being very very complex is much more There's an ambivalence there. And so I was also looking at this ambivalence that one goes with a glorious desire to own control and It doesn't always happen So I think that that to me just shows truly that kind of ambivalence of Conquer of conquest But then again more of the artistic field were walking for example became a piece This is a piece that will I will continue to do as long as I can walk Until I die maybe even but I want to be able to have this, you know, I call it walking the earth and it's Walking is analogous to speech to the speech act. There is a sense of syntax There is a like you're articulating with how you're encountering the earth. So that was something that to me was a I want to be doing that for ever So it's your console or is a project about migration Inter-specificity and extinction and that really mean that inter species relationships inter species friendships so I So come solar is born from my love for the Arctic turn which is a small seabird that weighs less than your iPhone or your phone and That has the longest migration Recorded of any creature it goes from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back again every year It is it's about 90,000 kilometers 60,000 miles they do a solo flight and they made for life So they come back again They live about 35 years and so for me there was something so powerful about The the termination of this Arctic turn This was the first time that I encountered the Arctic turn in Iceland in 2006 It wasn't until about maybe six years ago eight years ago that they were able to put geolocators in the in the birds and they were so tiny that they couldn't really transmit information but they had they had to catch them back again to understand the Voyage the the the journey of the Arctic turn It goes from the Arctic to the Antarctic here. It is its trajectory We I think that downstairs is the poster you can actually read the text there So that I will speed up through this but it is just incredible that they are primarily Pelagic go through the center, but that's that's what they were able to find and recent research has I Was working with the in 2012 Dr. Fredy's The figures dotir figures dotir right that was right Icelandic or to neatologist arrived to the Her research showed that 90% of the chicks are dying out of a starvation That is true to all see old seabirds No matter what you where you look at the seabirds are the cannery in the coal mine of the effects of climate change. I followed a couple of chicks and They because of the waters around the Arctic they have warmed about one degree the mackerel and other fish come sooner And they eat the sand eel which is what puffins eat the Arctic turn eats the chicks have such tiny beaks So they cannot eat anything else so I Guess to me the interest of doing this work is being able to understand the determination of this bird and Because I feel that humanity has lost its clarity of how to survive as a species So I am with this work entering into truly becoming with and Becoming with another species and here is the making kin very much done a harrow way kind of idea of Making kin with another species. So I'll continue to find this little creature and this was exhibited The video this video of 26 minute video at glow in 2013 at Los Angeles and brings me here. So When Rebecca the first phone call I had with her with Rebecca. She says I Wanted you something focused on animals and extinction And I said, oh, this is great every it was it was a meeting a Conference call with the Cooper Hewitt team. Everyone was so excited about this theme that Rebecca Had honed in on and then I didn't hear from Rebecca for four months and I would send Rebecca emails and it was just silence and And then this was late late in 2017 so going into the beginning of 2018 I write Rebecca and I say Rebecca if I don't hear from you I'm not sure if this is gonna be the show that you wanted to be and then that got her to respond but what I want to say is really that Rebecca takes on every project Very much like the field work that she does she's all in so if she's Concentrated on one project. She she really cannot be She's not distract. She doesn't allow herself to be distracted by other things Which is a really interesting and a lovely way to work because when we spent our time together She was so hyper focused on the work that we were doing and it really helped us move The narrative along of the show in a way that I certainly didn't expect That we were able to sort of you know tighten it up as quickly as as we did Putting a show together as I mentioned is is quite demanding And not only was it is it demanding for someone who's never Worked in a museum or with the collection. We had decided very early on that we would Do an exhibition that had specimens from the National Museum of Natural History and that for us was Really what would distinguish this show from others But Smithsonian is quite large It's base. It's a the biggest research institution in the world. It has multiple units I had You know barely made a year working at Cooper Hewitt. I had no idea who to contact and and our first conversation really started with Martha, I didn't know that Rebecca had been working on this project on Martha the passenger pigeon The passenger pigeon is an extinct species of bird the last passenger pigeon Passed away at the Cincinnati Museum and interestingly was immediately put in a 300 pound block of ice Put on a train and shipped to Smithsonian and This was going to be the star of Rebecca's show the last passenger pigeon on earth And I didn't know at the time, but she was working on a project. Do you want to talk a bit about this project? Yeah, yeah So for the Cincinnati University Direct Center, I had designed some murals in 2006 and it was time for the murals to get like a you know rejuvenation and They wanted me they were either going to completely get rid of them or for some addition to be Put to that so it was it was a strange thing But at the same time I felt, you know, let's make after researching so many things I found out about Martha who died at the zoo and then alone by herself who's single species Imagine that you're the last human You died that you could put into a pack of eyes, right? but and so I made this homage to Martha and so I Felt that I could continue then with this project on extinction and get the thylacine get the Dodo yes, so Rebecca responds to my email and with this It's just give me those Can we get these species? and Endangered extinct and endangered that's Martha. They are perched and you can find her at Natural history just like that and these are images snapshots from the natural history installation now and You know it actually took me Three weeks to just get a contact at natural history. So imagine once I got that contact Asking for these birds and the the collections manager Answered with one line. There's no way you are getting those animals They never leave the Smithsonian. They know And Not even a sincerely so sorry just like that's it and So I I call Rebecca and I said well those aren't a go what is plan B and she Talks to me about this story that she had just read and why don't you talk a little bit about it because I was really moved by This plan B, which I thought was going to be something Maybe more simple or not as complex and I found it to be even more profound than the initial idea Yeah, definitely. So for me, I've been reading author Barry Lopez a lot and I love in his crossing open ground book There was this passage and I really need to honestly need to read this because it's such an important one that It put in a place. It put me in it from My background so he writes the image I carry of Cortez setting fire to the aviaries in Mexico City That June day of 1521 is an image. I cannot read myself off It stands in my mind for a fundamental lapse of wisdom in the European conquests of America an underlying trouble in which political conquest personal greed revenge and National pride outweigh what is innocent beautiful serene and defenseless the birds The incineration of these creatures 450 years ago is not something that can be rectified today Indeed one could argue the same Oblivious irreverence is still with us Among those who would ravage and poison the earth to sustain the economic growth of Western societies But Cortez's act can be rectified can be transcended It is possible to fix in the mind that heatless violence the hysterical cries of the birds The stench of death to look it square in the face and say that there is more to us than this This will not forever distinguish us among other cultures It is possible to imagine that on the far side of Renaissance and the Enlightenment we can recover the threads of an earlier wisdom So this was the moment of what we're he's talking about is when Hernán Cortez comes to Tenochtitlan and It is written in the Bernal Diaz del Castillo, right that they had seen the most beautiful cities of his tapalapa and Tenochtitlan that the synergy which with they lived and the connection to the wildlife was unparalleled and and The moment that muktizuma realized the dubious intentions of Cortez just kicks him out and they come back 11 months later to destroy the entire city and of course Muktizuma collected had had aviaries thousands of birds of all the continent and they were very very important for the civilization and Yeah, they were burned alive and the screeches are described in in the document. So I felt that moment were to Cultures collide and that we continue to live primarily focused on the one continue to be the Extractivist kind of culture then it just shows that again. We have not learned much from our ancestors in that way and from a curatorial's perspective it was interesting that she This was her Sort of plan B because I I joined Cooper Hewitt two years ago as the curator of Latino design so I'm charged with helping to build a collection focused on US Latino and Latin American designers and historically and up to the present and You know, we don't have a collection really We're working on it and it's going to take us a long time to get there and what this exhibition Process showed us was that we could tell these stories that were unique to the region unique to Latin American history to Latino history without necessarily having objects made by By people from that area not to say that I don't want those objects because I do but that we could venture out and Tell those stories to our public in a way that was all-encompassing that was complex multifaceted and so when she first You know told me of this of this second plan. I said let's go for it and and we did and part of thinking about this was obviously Grounding the show in the story of of dinner she's long and Erna and Cortez but also talking a bit about the Aztec Empire and the importance of birds To and featherworks to the culture So we tried to do that if you spend some time in the show we tried to do that By centering those those documents and those objects at the center of literally at the center of the room And this is just an excerpt of the brochure that Rebecca designed which with which has a few Pages from codices which shows the elaborate Aztec featherworks That would have been worn and then this is the first published map of Then she's lying in 1524 which gets published in New or in Nuremberg To accompany the first Latin translation of a non cortez's letters to the Spanish crown describing Mexico at length and And what's so interesting about this map is that it does this is a map and It does clearly show where the birds would have lived in the city that important Cover so much of the of the city so this was our starting point for the exhibition and I said, okay We've got a plan and then the follow-up email was this I want this Drawers or dead birds. Yeah, and that's what Rebecca kept repeating to me I just I want drawers and drawers of dead birds, and I want them to look dead. I don't want them to look romanticize nothing dead Imagine saying that to a design curator. I'm saying, okay and but we did it and It took this image here. I think it's a great one because when we first Started we saw this image and I knew it was from Smithsonian storage Smithsonian has one of the largest bird study collections in the world and This image is part of a series that really looked at Storage at the Natural History Museum But what's so interesting about this is at the center is Roxy Leiborne And she was an ornithologist at Smithsonian for 50 years the first female ornithologist and there she is surrounded by the collection literally engulfed in it and We thought about Roxy and and this image and we thought how can we sort of Bring that to life, but not quite bring it to life and It took some time First we started with the checklist. I I sent Rebecca three books about the collection And she would send me these updates. I'd say how's it going? And she'd say oh, it's going great. She she cut out Images and started to create this sort of visual board. There's her cat there About how she wanted to organize the show She took pictures of it and then this is the this is this was her checklist if anyone here has ever worked on an exhibition And you receive this as a checklist I didn't even know where to start I printed it out on this huge piece of paper and we got on the phone And I remember this the conversation lasted two Hours and Rebecca said, okay, we're gonna start here Have you found this point and then we literally went through it almost as if we were reading a map and that was you know our initial start to Especially for me to understand What Rebecca was thinking? What did she want? How did she want to organize the show? part of working with on exhibitions with a living artist is is Listening and understanding you really need to understand What they want what their vision is because if you're not on the same page? It just doesn't work so I spent a lot of time just listening to Rebecca and She's so eloquent and captivating. It was really easy for me to say yes And very hard for me to say no to her While we were doing the show From from this I made this which was more pared down thinking about Sections and and then finally we we made a plan for Rebecca to come to New York about 50 people were involved in making this show happen in that one intimate room 50 people were involved at least So it really did take the effort of so many departments and one of the first things we did was go to the library and I told the librarians We're doing the show We're interested in seeing some some rare books that have some bird illustrations and the library and said oh Yes, I think I have a few options And it was I don't know a 20 foot Table full filled with With books and we spent a whole morning Just look and you can see how excited we were everyone was just taking pictures of all of these beautifully illustrated books and Then obviously looking at objects We really what I took out the most elaborate bird cages that we had in storage The Hewitt sisters who are who are the founders of the Cooper Hewitt collection Loved bird cages. We have quite the collection. I brought out this very elaborate bird cage for Rebecca Who quickly said this is not the bird cage? And then obviously other objects that we saw and and Considered this is a very beautiful Frederick Edwin Church Drawing that he made while he was in Ecuador. I really wanted this for for the show. It didn't make the cut Others did this pastel Which I wasn't even sure for Becca was going to be interested in it. It's a 17th century pastel by a female Italian artist named Rosalba Carrera and it depicts the Americas as a female bare-breasted indigenous woman full of feathers full of feathers and We have been discussing this idea of showing Images of the personification of of the Americas which was part of An allegorical series that was very popular in the 18th century Which depicted the four continents the Americas Europe Asia and Africa and so I Had sent this to Rebecca and she said maybe and she saw it in person. She said yes Something was just so it represented everything in relation to how one exodicized Someone but also beautifully made right so it was that ambivalence of you know the cliches of what the You know new continent People would look like yeah and a lot of our Collection lives off-site in New York, New Jersey. We took a day to go to Newark and again a team of people pulling objects for us some things that we Absolutely loved Such as this textile that obviously made it into the show Others that we thought were fun, but you know, maybe not so much for for the exhibition a Few examples of objects that we saw again that didn't make the cut but But that we loved looking at and thought would at first make great editions and When we saw this piece, we also pulled a few of Rebecca's works that we have in the collection And this was one that we pulled and immediately we thought Wow, this juxtapose with The pastel drawing was was so powerful. Do you want to talk a bit about this piece? Yeah this piece was done in 1992 for a collection of posters in Mexico it was a biennial and the subject to To work with was America now 500 years later So for me this poster was the the first time that I was Confronted with having to have a voice a political voice or a social voice in that I Was really wanting to say something and it was difficult because for me for example, one of the things that I see is that Identity right colonialism. It is felt in the body and when I came here. I was immediately kind of wanting to be It's like are you? Chicana hispana Latina Chilanga is like whatever I need it to be but it's just somehow that I needed to be categorized so I Pretty much the focus on the way in which wallpaper right is meant to be covered to cover something undesirable with something nice and So my identity who I was was not something that was nice. It needed to be refined it needed to be covered with as a Cliche of what as a Mexican I'm supposed to be so Anyway for me that was an important moment of having to express what I felt about an excessive identity and an excessive categorization and Together with that one that again, it's the body that it is ex ex s sized Again with our cutouts So we you know, we spent the entire day essentially trying to figure out our sections. What do we want to leave? What do we want to take out? This is us at the end of our our day? our curatorial assistant taking this picture of us so exhausted poor Rebecca I thought she was gonna fall down from So many hours and then the next day we make it to natural history. I finally got that contact at the division of birds and their collections manager Chris Milenski spent the entire day with us essentially bringing to life that Roxy labor and photograph for us we had no idea what to expect and As soon as he opened up their drawers all of us went They're really dead Interesting thing about this is that for me the reason why it was important to see them as This taxidermy to animals this skins is Because that is the way that we for centuries have learned about the natural world. It is through killing it It is through VV section rather than through observation And so more and more we're learning that of course we learned so much more about a creature about animal in relation and alive Audubon had to you know shot everything killed everything and then made those beautiful beautiful depictions But so I wanted to make sure that in the show we again show that ambivalence of yes, we are looking at cadavers Little dead bodies, but you know this male formaldehyde or whatever chemicals it was every drawer It was just it was it was powerful. It was it was in being in the morgue And so as we're looking at these study skin, so Something that we didn't know, you know, we sort of went in there a bit not a bit much very naive and very much novices and you know Chris really helped guide us not just through the selection of the birds that we would have For the exhibition but really understanding Why does the museum collect these animals? How are they used today? What is the difference between this and what you see in? exhibitions and natural history museums where the birds look alive, you know, they're taxidermy they're mounted and It was so interesting because the the entire time we were thinking or our pitch to the museum was Remelding design and science. Um, but what we found was that it was true, which was the funny thing So much of This work is about design. It's it takes a true artistry A talent to create these study specimens And what we saw was that there were ornithologists who were very very skilled in creating and Stuffing the bird and and creating the specimen and then there were ornithologists that were really really bad No, they was one. There were some that looked like the shuffled tackles It's just like they just looked awful and then others like rich white Perfect, I mean just beautiful shape in that either was a beautiful craft to this and there was each ornithologists had you know a signature move and in creating these specimens and so as we're We're looking at these, you know, we would open up a drawer and depending on the size of the bird we could see anywhere from 10 examples to 50 examples and the collections manager, you know blindly could say oh This is you know, this was prepared by such and such ornithologists and sort of by the end of the day We were able to tell who were you know The ornithologists who had prepared some of these specimens But these are really meant for study. They're never meant to be on view. They're they're still used today a lot of these specimens is what has helped scientists in conservation efforts so in using these sorts of These sorts of specimens in the show we had to talk about this tension between The collecting of these sorts of birds how that collect the The process of collecting has been Has changed in the 20th century And the sorts of rules and regulations and ethics that have now been put in place as opposed to sort of the mass Collecting and killing that was going on in the 19th century and we have a combination of both We certainly have objects or birds such as the Quetzal which dates back to 1895 and then we have other object other birds that were collected as early as You know the 1990s Or as presently as the 1990s and now the way those specimens come into the collection is varied Sometimes they die from natural causes. Sometimes they do go on expeditions to collect but certainly not in the way that they used to But this was all things that we that we learned while we spent the day there and Then each bird as you as you probably saw in the exhibition has these tags that essentially identify This is something that you put on the bird Immediately after it's been collected and has been prepared like for example, we're here They're seeing the Oropendola that comes from Tabasco and from La Venta Which was something that also I was looking at specifically for some that would be of the region of where you know the Birds of Moctezuma would have been from right and this is just a Few images. This is the Arctic turn here This is Wing you can see the wing span of a golden eagle a bald eagle there are our very last Idea for a specimen was to include a bald eagle bald eagles and the golden eagle Live in Mexico and in the United States and they move freely through the borders and in the end Actually, we hatched this plan on the train over to DC We thought wouldn't it be so poetic to use those two work birds as a representation of Rebecca and We were unsure if they would be willing to to do that, but I wrote a very convincing letter For every loan that we have in any museum you have to write something called a loan letter And these are essentially love letters to whoever owns the objects convincing them that You need to let us have these objects on view and I had to write a very extensive love letter to natural history partly because they were concerned that we would use the specimens as curiosities and the first question they asked was Why do you need to have the actual specimen and why can't you just show a picture of it and We had to really think about it and we really had to Think about what was the purpose of having every single specimen and the And then in multiples because it just wasn't one as you see it's it's multiple And and it was hard. I mean we really had to be thoughtful about it and And then you know it was a sort of back-and-forth. I I joked with Rebecca that I sent the letter And I remember I wrote a few lines That I thought this is a little too art speak And I don't know if they're gonna understand that and sure enough they highlighted it in bold yellow and said The scientists don't understand what you mean by this. Can you explain further? So even the process of of speaking to the ornithologist And another discipline was was also a learning curve for for us. I think Rebecca was was much more Elegant in it because she had done so much work on birds already I was really coming at it from, you know, nowhere. I was really new to this But really I mean those letters should be framed and they should be there because they really are this Incredible extension and justification of why is it that this matter? We had to think because one is the story and the impulse and then the other one is well If I want three or four or five or six of something What is it that this multiples multiplicity of them gives me that is not just one and We began to then see the different patterns in the even within one species of how the design had variations So it just it was a beautiful way to have to think in terms of design about, you know, the bird specimens We're we're running out of time, but here's Martha. Here's Martha before we left to get on the train before To head back to New York. We we ran down quickly. We must have asked a hundred guards. Where is Martha? It is exactly which is we really admit And and I and I got this the shot of Rebecca gazing at Martha And then this just gives you a little bit of a sense of, you know, how we go about Designing an exhibition Rebecca's in LA. I'm obviously in New York. So We communicated in in these funny ways where I would send her plans and then sometimes I would make a video explaining those Explaining the plans and that's how we would communicate so that it was very clear But you know it it took many tries even making the the mound for the Ketzal Was a whole process. That's how they arrived right in there. That's how they're stored They took them out to measure And this was this drawing that they made for the case and then even shooting the birds we had to shoot the birds for Many of these birds had never been photographed They're just in a database and you know if a scientist needs it just open up a draw and Pick it up but we needed to have them photographed for our website for the brochure and And this one did have being such a funny situation where all of the cure pretty much the entire museum stop Was it where we're there kind of like I want to see but no, I don't want to see and then We realize that because this is a mounted bird We need it Metal thing here Shooting this one bird And then maybe we'll end with this and then open it up for questions and then yes I wanted to speak just very quickly of the Erasmus So these went to me was a very difficult piece to see first, you know There was you have half the body of a hummingbird of just beautifully mounted of course But that is with a ruby right in the eye So it's the way in which you know We used to have and display the dead animal on you and feel that that was a status symbol And I think that right now what is More and more there's still some idiots that would actually still do that and wear it But more and more we are realizing that that's not any more ethical that we could just not cannot display such this regard for life And I'll just add this is part of a set with matching earrings. I know exactly I'm for sure that was beautifully designed by Rebecca as well Oh, I love and just very quickly to me that important piece over there is that The Pantone color system Comes from it is kind of evolves from rich ways Color system of the unit or neatologies were basically taking every naming every red However, they wanted so there was no unification of how to speak about the colors of the birds So then he and his wife came up with this incredible Robert Ridgway was a Smithsonian ornithologist and as Rebecca said he was Incensed by the fact that other ornithologists were using so many different words to describe Color of bird feathers. So he created this system It never took off His wife pasted every single color color block on every single page and It was a flop, but it really was the president of what we know now as the Pantone system You know imagine for birds and then we'll I'll skip forward to that. Yes So this is a very interesting document that and it was our last entry into the exhibition and it is a document that It depicts It's a legal case of that dispense three centuries and that it is the Again legal case for an encomienda Which is the you know giving land and from the conquest so it gives giving land and indigenous people and other goods from you know by the crown to people that came to the And to the into Spanish colonizers. Yes. So what is interesting about this document is that it also is This last document is written to the chief general of the country then who happens to be my grand my grand-grandfather and who eras muestrada is the document is is for senor estrada and It and its descendants. So Years 320 years later the first document begins in 1610 and the last one is 1930 and the The last descendant of the estrada don eras muestrada. It was my great-grand Uncle so both within the family there is this connection down to Ernan Cortez to the crown and These document is the ways in which even just the idea again of the colonialism in terms of the encomienda that would be given but My father and I and my mom were trying to decipher What it was said and each one of the documents and you're really looking at the history that goes from the crown and the seals from the crown and then it moves to the seals of Mexico and You know from calligraphy all the way to Machine, you know the typewriter what was interesting about this document was that Rebecca first told me about it on the train ride to DC And she says I'd really love to have these documents in the show. I said, oh, yeah I that's really interesting too, but um, how do we relate it to the show? and and we sort of talked about it a lot and passing until the summer and And during the summer Rebecca says Oh my god, I am related to the man to the to the Estrada family of which these legal documents pertain to and Just to give a bit of a background in terms of the encomienda system part of the way the Spanish got You know people to move to the New World was by Promising them land and promise and part of the land Came indigenous people and so some people were granted this land and once you had the land You had it for life So your descendants had it and you it would just continue through the family But other people never got it. So perhaps you were promised an encomenda, but you never and this was a case where It was not granted it was not granted and it's in the area of Tenan single and one can trace back the Estrada family to the Letters of Cortez and that the legal case begins and it just never ever is granted So it really is you know, and they talk about the usurped land and the usurped So if right now it's basically we up as an art Intervention I will continue the case and I want it's basically like if I Would be claiming Chicago, right? It was a great way to sort of In a way connect the what became the genesis of the show to you know, the completion of it Through genetics You had no idea Couldn't believe it really So should we open it up for that would be wonderful. Yes Questions we're ready for questions anything. I think that we are at a point where we are yeah Needing to wrap up Hi So I'm very curious you showed us a few runners up so to speak that didn't make it to the final round Could you speak a little bit about? Getting closer to the end. What was the hard? Criteria what was Was there a checklist that said it has to be these three things and it doesn't quite fit that or Clearly, there's a whole narrative that we've you've told us about the story But what what we're I'm curious to see what was no, it's to this and that therefore can't be an interesting thing because there are definitely pieces that They had to be there because they felt like they were anchors to storytelling and if you see for example, we have them named as symbolized objectified Feathered so that was the kind of terminology that I thought that would be able to join and to make this feel like it's a Nominus through nomenclature a lot of times. It's a great system to unify something so There were pieces for example, we had many other kinds of like the idea of the egg, right? That was one that Even though it felt that it was a nice thing to have the eggs of the birds They weren't as important in terms of the story. So therefore Those were ones that began to kind of you know go away It was a mixture of as Rebecca said what what really could be anchors and Hold up to the to the point of a certain section sometimes it was as Simple as it wasn't in great condition space Space became you know at the end of space and and I remember I told Rebecca We needed to cut a few objects and every time we needed to cut an object for Becca would say not another one of my babies It was hard it was very difficult because I had kind of fallen in love with it with the Flow and the relationship of one object to another and how they entered into dialogue one of the things that for me was very hard to cut were Books of like for example cut there would that that for me would would connect with link They didn't fit What else was I like really devastated? I'm right now. I don't remember well. I told her you'll forget about it And that's part of the curatorial process is is making hard decisions and thinking about What is going to hold up to the point that you're trying to make And that the visitor will understand and we were telling a really Multifaceted story and so that's something that we asked ourselves a lot Will the bit will this help the visitor understand this point or this section of the installation? Remember that we were trying to also get some featherworks like the skirt of feathers I mean those were things that it was just devastating not to get it right It was really the connection between the bird and the the the object and We didn't have enough time. Well, we hadn't given enough lead time to the institution coming from the National Museum of American Indian Yeah, so that was devastating because it was like a beautiful Headpiece that would connect it very closely with the benachos and so that was that was tough to to lose Yeah, I was really starting to think what we could hang from the ceiling Until our exhibitions director said nothing We don't drill into this building Yeah Hi I was curious you mentioned the words and can you say more about like when did the words come through the process? Were you choosing things? I mean, I know how it could be back and forth, but I just wondered where in your practice where the words came from You know what? I think that the words came when we were doing the publication So those words you mean of that that categorize them Yes, we needed to organize them for publication for the brochure and I we felt that in the exhibition there were They were kind of like just almost like floating a little bit But the moment that we came up with those names for the catalog it made so much sense for them Yeah in the exhibition as well. So we have created sections Just to help organize ourselves. So we had an America section a feather section, but they were Just working terms essentially But it was when we were making the brochure that I I Said to Rebecca. Well, I think you really need to create Titles or headings for these sections and and actually I think she did it in such a poetic way Which was almost Anti curatorial in many ways. It was it was such an extension of her her artistic practice Yeah, and that was an exciting thing to be able to say, you know, it's just like feathered symbolized objectified I Think we have one more time for one more, okay Extraordinary exhibit, thank you so much As I know that you know that the tail feathers of the ketzal were worth more than gold in Mexico, America. Yeah, and You could have gone in that direction and contrasted the values of the Spaniards with their obsession with gold versus Maktasuma's aviary but you didn't do that and What you did do was in a sense bring out the difference in values My Maktasuma had this aviary in Cortez Berndtisch But my guess my question is is rather What you omitted? since why did you decide on that particular way of Staying those things. Yeah. Yeah, so for example in the headdresses of Maktasuma The emperor was the only one that could actually wear the ketzal and They never killed the bird They pluck one feather only and So that is something that that's why it was scarce and that's why it was gold because you couldn't kill the bird so I find that Indeed, I could have told that story I think that maybe we forgot but I know that for me was an important thing of being able to say well Of course, you know, there were we all Everybody's kind of waiting for me to tell the story of the human sacrifice and the blood and all of that But at the same time I think that there was to me was much more the connection They had with the earth when with the land the fact that they were the waters were purified through plants and that they had the System of purifying their dark waters or black waters. I don't know how you call them through lilies, right through passages so that kind of Connection that it wasn't the European way that you just threw your excrement down the street, right? I think that there was really something that was so incredibly Synergetic in terms of the natural world So I am sure I'm omitting things like, you know the sacrifices and stuff, but I feel that that's uninteresting Right. I think that that's the story that I don't care to tell There are many stereotype stories about Yeah, our culture that it's perhaps they're a little tired and for me I tried to look for alternative stories that might actually help us understand more the complexity of a culture And so I hope that But I do I would have loved to perhaps tell that story of the kids sales feathers. That would have been a nice one It was in there. I forgot about the plucking just one feather. We did. Okay. Good, but we didn't yay We didn't talk about It's value. Yes. Yes, exactly with gold. Yeah, yeah, yeah and other currency Yeah Feathers skins jade Honey and salt So but the feathers was very important Commerce that came from the Southwest into the highlands of Mexico, which is the nose So so that trade was the devastation and what we are Looking in your Exposition is the destruction of the environment the instruction environment to kill the Birds and not only the birds but all the animals that are suffering This destruction that we are doing is the same one that Cortez Bay at the time That for gold You kill everything else, right for like the gold that didn't have much value I mean he had value for the Aztecs, but not as much as value as life and as the beauty in us that Yeah, the feathers But thank you for that question that was really good Okay, thank you so much. We have to wrap up. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you Rebecca