Arte en la Charreria

And now we go from a huge success story to the kind of story where everything behind the scenes goes wrong but, thankfully the show turned out well:  Arte en la Charreria.  Check out the Saddle Up entry to read all about the fun at the border.  To expand upon what was happening during that time, especially towards the end, with every email we had to find something to laugh at because it was getting to the point that if we didn’t laugh we would cry.  It’s amazing what you can find funny, maybe inappropriately, in a situation.

Eventually the exhibit did arrive, the Wednesday before the Thursday opening.  Saddle Up had take shape and looked like a planned show so we decided to wait on the setup of Charreria.  Looking at our calendars, we had Staked Plains coming up in a couple weeks.  If you’ve read earlier entries you’ll remember that Staked Plains is when we bring in 2,000 second graders in 2 days to teach them about life on the Llano Estacado.  It’s a pretty big deal and we didn’t want to be messing with Charreria and saddles when we had planning and setup to do for that.  So we left Charreria in its crates and left the crates in the chuckwagon room with an explination of what had happened and what we were doing.

We moved saddles after Staked Plains (they were placed throughout the Museum), began setting up Charreria on September 15, 2014 and had a soft opening on September 18, 2014.  The crates themselves were in fair condition.  Getting into the crates, however, proved to be a challenge.  The last person to close the crates bent, broke, and/or stripped at least half of the screws, which made the crates very difficult to open.  Once we were in the crates, the state of the boxes and items inside was appalling.  Crates were labeled as empty and yet held mannequin parts.  Pieces and balls of tape were thrown into crates to rummage around with artifacts.  Pieces of foam that at one point were stuck to the top of boxes were moving around in the crates with still-sticky adhesives on one side.  Boxes inside the crates were broken, smashed, and/or collapsed in on each other.  We were honestly surprised that none of the hats were destroyed.  Items on the crate list were not always in the crates they were supposed to be.  Many times we would open a crate to find an empty garment bag with clothes, bows, and accessories strewn about within the box.  Matching unnumbered items became an un-amusing, never-ending puzzle.  Two outfits, at least, were in the wrong garment bags which we didn’t realize until they were on the mannequins.  Many of the other items, rebozos and sarapes, were rolled or folded with the wrong number attached.  In addition, some were noted as coming as a dressed torso in a garment bag.  The torso was not dressed when it arrived.

We had many extra mannequins/parts after assembling each form but no extra stands.  We stored the extra parts until we packed the exhibit to ship out.  Here are some of the challenges with the mannequins:

• #19 has no hands.  The hands were difficult to attach and instead of fighting with it we decided he was fine without hands.  The hands are stored.
• #21 has no arms.  He didn’t have any arms included with the shipment.
• #24 has no arms.  His jacket was so tight and, once again, instead of fighting with it we simply left them off.  His arms are stored.
• #29 is displayed on our dress form (Dorfman museum-quality form).  The dress was a challenge to get onto the mannequin and seemed too tight.  Instead of stretching or accidentally ripping we decided to use our form.  Her mannequin pieces are stored.
• #34 has no arms.  Her one arm would not come down into a natural pose and instead of stressing the dress we decided she was fine without arms.  Her arms are stored.

Needless to say, this exhibit was an overall challenge.  I was sad that the challenge continued into the unpacking of the crates and setup of the exhibit but it seems par for the course.  Thankfully nothing was extremely damaged, but, keeping that in mind, I think we are very lucky that nothing was damaged.

Despite all the behind the scenes trouble the exhibit itself was really nice.  We had very large responses for our family fun days and a lot of traffic through the exhibit.  We even had some school tours, which is surprising since it was a fall show.  We heard many comments about how nice it was to have something different and something depicting another culture.  Since we opened later than planned they allowed us to extend the closing date which allowed us to host a really fun Day of the Dead event.  It was nice to hear the good comments from the patrons because, honestly, from a staff perspective it was hard to see.  But it really was a nice exhibit.

International Arts & Artists asked us to repack everything according to the packing lists.  As much as we wanted to just throw everything back in crates the way they came to us we knew that wasn’t the proper, ethical thing to do.  Stephanie and I took great pains to match everything up the way it was supposed to be.  Somehow we still ended up with extra mannequin parts…rather we had extra crates.  There were some that were labeled as empty which the border had a hard time with and on the list they were supposed to hold mannequins.  But these extra crates were a huge waste of space and therefore money!  We could have easily and safely condensed all the mannequin parts into just a few crates.  Instead, we had a large crate with one arm, or a large crate with a leg.  Again, we had to laugh or we might cry.  We replaced the stripped and broken screws and were ready to go.  Just to finish out this nightmare, the outgoing shipping truck was also questioning when they could pick it up.  No.  Just no.  It had to go.  I hate to say that we were extremely happy to see that exhibit leave.