Trees & Other Ramifications: Branches in Nature and Culture (original) (raw)

It is in the tree that we sense life's seasons. The warm wood helps us survive the pulses of the cold, dormant months. We animate with the buds of spring; boast the green canopy of summer; let the fiery-red leaves burn away in the fall. I enjoy working in a museum that acts like a tree-reaching for the light, changing with the seasons and building ring upon ring of memory and progress. It allows devotees, thinkers, and adventurers to nest and build in its branches. The Spencer welcomes detractors and disciples with the same exuberance. A tree is a worthy model for a university art museum in its historical, metaphorical, and contemporary significance. May museums be more tree-like: shelter and protect, mark a place, change a life, extend a limb for a playful purpose, thrust a branch or even lean an entire system toward a patch of sun-reach for a new idea. The museum's new branches grow beyond our rooted trunk. They draw us onto the larger public square that demands universal reflection and responsibility. Museum as tree bends with the wind now, grows deep and abiding roots for the future, buds new and errant leaves, shades our community, and sheds its protective leaves to expose the beautiful and vulnerable structures and contradictions hidden within the human experience.