Topic: Ramblings
Memorial Day I headed for Denver. I had left a lot of time to just kick back without a lot of special plans. Of course, I had to visit Caboose Hobbies. Doesn't every model railroader when in Denver? But my reason was because I used to work there part time and wanted to check in on old acquaintances. An additional place I wanted to visit was the new Art Museum building. This radical piece of architecture demands the attention of anyone heading into downtown on 13th Avenue. It looks more like a sculpture than a building. Maybe that's the point! This is a new building since I lived in Denver and I wanted to check it out. Inside the walls jut away from you at radical angles and the central stairwell can challenge those of us with vertigo. Finding a way to display works of art in such a space also presents challenges. You don't just hang a painting on a tilted wall. The combination of art shown was just as unusual as the building. Everything from the most modern to ancient Japanese art.
So what does all of this have to do with model railroading or with trains? I hadn't expected that it would have anything to do with them. That is part of what a vacation is for, to get away from your everyday life. But strangely enough, the visit to the museum did bring me back to a debate sometimes heard about model railroading. Is it art?
Contemporary art certainly questions our traditional assumptions about what art is. Everyday materials and tools which are not commonly associated with art and artists have found their way into art museums. These changes, of course, have been hotly debated and there are plenty of doubters, especially among the public.
I have been over the years very reluctant to say model railroading is art. I am more inclined to call it a "craft". But as I walked through the museum that morning and across the plaza outside I began to think maybe I have be wrong. Other events have also raised the question for me. There are many artists in and around Augusta. So it is not usual they might come into the Station. But when one with a national reputation who has works in museums and private collections around the country brings into the Station another artist visiting from out of town just to show him the layout, I can't help but wonder if he has brought his friend because he thinks of it as art. And when still another artist asks to take photos of a scene on the layout to use as a reference to help him with a painting he is working on, does he consider model railroading to be capable of being art?
While standing on the plaza outside the buildings of the Denver Art Museum and the Denver Public Library and deciding architecture also can be art, I concluded that building a model railroad can be creating an object of art too.
