Museum visitors connect the dots
Stickers give tunnel walls an artistic twist
The artists: Museum visitors Where: Glassell School of Art Why: Maybe those long, plywood walls were just too much of an invitation. Or maybe our impulse to create — or at least decorate — is just this strong.
Almost from the first day the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s new parking garage opened underneath the Glassell School of Art construction site, visitors traversing the makeshift tunnel to the Noguchi Sculpture Garden have been building their own sprawling masterpiece.
Their material: The little round stickers visitors receive when they’re admitted into the MFAH, applied one at a time. Now there seem to be thousands of them.
Because I visit often, I’ve watched this totally unscripted “installation” unfold since May. It started with a few random dots. By late June, some of the clusters reminded me of notes on a musical scale.
By mid-August, a few elaborate designs had taken shape — a hand, a couple of baroque-inspired “vases.” My favorite is the long, snaking and now nearly unbroken line that traverses the length of the tunnel. Stickers are different colors on different days, so the long sections of yellow, blue, brown and red also document the passage of time through the tunnel.
See it soon — or better yet, get yourself a sticker and add to the conversation. The building is nearing completion. The new egress to ground level from the parking lot could be dramatic, but it’s kind of a shame that the tunnel will have to go.