Paloma Saco-Vértiz | Electra Street

What’s on Your Bookshelf: Glenn Wharton

Paloma Saco-Vértiz | Dec 2014 | Interviews, Literature and Creative Writing |

WHAT’S ON YOUR BOOKSHELF

Glenn Wharton

December 2014

Glenn Wharton is an art conservator and a professor of Museum Studies at NYU New York, specializing in conservation and the study of modern and contemporary art collections. From 2007-2013, Wharton served as time-based media conservator at the Museum Of Modern Art (MoMA), where he cared for the video, performance, and electronic collections.

What are you currently reading?

I like to read fiction and very well-written historical narratives about where I am living. What I wanted to do when I got here was find out about the region and get some good books for my shelf. I just read Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands,, which was a really rich, almost ethnographic piece of writing about his adventures in the Arabian desert in the 1930s and ’40s. That was really a wonderful introduction. I’ve been thinking of reading T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom … but it’s so long. I’m not sure I would get through it. The other book that’s on my shelf here is From Rags to Riches by Mohammed Al Fahim.

Discussing the conservation of a Nam June Paik piece at MoMA in 2013.

Photo Credit: moma.org

Where do you buy your books, and how do you select them? Do you have any specific criteria?

I buy books in many ways. I often get recommendations from people, but I also like to ask other people what books they’ve read they have really liked. This is aside from the professional books that I read for my research and writing. I like to browse book shops. But to be honest, I don’t have a lot of time for that. So when I do stumble into a book shop in the evening, I just really love to look around at fiction and historical fiction. But where I really buy them, more often than not it’s through Amazon.

What is the earliest book you remember reading?

We were big readers in our household, from age two, probably. The earliest ones I remember are Alice in Wonderland, Charlotte’s Web, and some of the other children’s fantasy books of the time. I probably read books like this about 100 times. Some of the books that I really loved as an adolescent, were science fiction. Also Tolkien, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Are there any books that you read over and over again?

One of the things I’ve done as an adult, probably starting about age 40, is re-read the great books, or the Norton [editions] of books in English literature. Going through them and reading them again, has been enriching as an adult. Including Alice in Wonderland. Because I wanted to see if the way I processed them, and the way I thought about them, the writing and the narratives, would be different. And it really has been. It’s been very interesting, to go back and read Tolkien and Alice in Wonderland, and some other books I’d read as a kid. And I now have a better sense of what the author was up to, so now I can read them at a different level. Among these books that came to mind are Moby-Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Picture of Dorian Gray, The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, On the Road, Tin Drum, To Kill a Mockingbird, 100 Years of Solitude, Heart of Darkness, and Frankenstein. Quite a range. And then not all of them are English language books.

Glenn Wharton

Photo Credit: moma.org

What is the last truly great book you read?

Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie. A very interesting Nigerian-American author, who writes about her experience in the U.S., and then her experience in her return to Nigeria. A really beautiful piece of writing.

Is there any book you would suggest to someone to read before coming here?

I would recommend the two that I’ve already mentioned, which are Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands and Mohammed al Fahim’s From Rags to Riches.

Can you name any books that have stayed with you, in some way?

Good fiction stays with me: A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White; The Kite Runner; Mrs. Dalloway; Catcher in the Rye; To Kill a Mockingbird; One Hundred Years of Solitude; The World According to Garp, to name a few.

Do you have any book currently on your wait list?

I sometimes go on jags of reading important literature, as I said, or historical fiction, or historical narratives, wherever I’m living. But sometimes i go on author jags as well, like with John Irving. When I read The World According to Garp, I just had to read everything he wrote. And Orhan Pamuk is on my list. I’ve read some of his works. Snow, and The Museum of Innocence is on my nightstand right now.

An interesting author in this regard is Virginia Woolf. For a long time I was afraid of Virginia Woolf. No matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t penetrate. A friend of mine recommended that I watch the movie Mrs. Dalloway, then read The Hours by Michael Cunningham, which is a contemporary rethinking of Mrs. Dalloway in downtown New York in the 1990s. And only then go read Mrs. Dalloway. Which I did, in that order. After that I was able to read Mrs. Dalloway because I had so much in my head to base it on. That was an interesting process for me. And after reading that, I was then able to read To the Lighthouse and other works that she’s written. It was a real education to me, the fact that sometimes watching the film and reading other things around a book that you want to approach is a good way into it.

You are in the field of conservation of contemporary art. Is there any book in particular that you find helped you or inspired you to go into this field, or that you think that interested in it people should read?

To get into the romance of museums, there’s a number of books about illicit trade, archeology, and the conservation profession. The Monuments Men is one that’s recently written, or The Rape of Europa, which are both about the Holocaust and the theft of artworks from Jewish collectors in Western Europe, and then the recovery of much of that work following the Second World War. Or Chasing Aphrodite, The Medici Conspiracy, or Loot, which are all about forgers. Those are books of broad interest that can draw you into museum work.

Of course there are many books that I recommend to people interested in the disposition of contemporary art in museums. To name a few, The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art (Buskirk) and Mortality Immortality? The Legacy of 20^th-Century Art (Corzo).

Glenn Wharton online: [Personal Website] [Tumblr] [NYU Profile]

Reflections on a Sri Lankan Adventure

Paloma Saco-Vértiz | Nov 2014 | Anthropology, Archive, Feature Articles, Travel |

Finally! The torch works again. The others seem to gain confidence despite the rain beating down on their faces and keep climbing ahead. Me? I’m falling behind. Like always. This is what you get while trying to climb a mountain during a storm. Who thought this was a good idea again? Watch out! The steps are going down now. Good. This should not be too difficult, but careful there, you might slide …

… and I’ve twisted my ankle. Fantastic.

Now that I take the time to think about things more clearly as I sit here in agony … did I really want to climb? I want the pictures, sure, but I can do without the torture. Well, all the others will get there eventually and take pictures for me. At least now I won’t be the one keeping people back.

But why should that matter? You know what?! I can walk it off. Wipe off those tears! — I’m good, I’m good. Yes, I know it’s basically 6 hours up and down stairs. No, I am not going back to the hotel. I’m already 30 minutes away, soaking wet and wide awake at 2:30 in the morning. I might as well just keep going. It’s cold enough to keep my ankle cool. Yes, I know I will regret it in the morning. At this point, I don’t really care. Who knows? Maybe it will stop raining, and the climb to this temple will turn into something other than torture.

One of the most remarkable things I experienced in my short visit to Sri Lanka — well, at least remarkable for me, coming from the dominantly Catholic Peru, and having moved to the predominantly Muslim UAE — is the apparent harmony in which so many major religions coexist. Although 70% of the population is Buddhist, there are also visible Hindu, Muslim, and Christian presences in the region. While there are particular regions dominated by each religion, it is not atypical to see in a single block a Hindu temple, a Buddhist Temple, a Mosque, and a Church, which have sat beside each other for decades or even hundreds of years. Outside, you will find vendors catering to the devotees with offerings for diverse rituals, and pilgrims greeting each other as they exit and enter different temples. Of course, this has not always been the case, as the civil war that ended in 2003 demonstrates. Harmony is an ongoing commitment, and people need to work, revise and edit, like in any great work.

As an international NYUAD student, I am not really surprised by this harmony. We are after all one of the most diverse and functional petri-dishes in the world. However, as an agnostic-raised individual, trying to discover my own faith and spirituality, the small occurrences that other people may see as normal or even quaint fill me with wonder, and hope. Back home in Lima, I never met anyone who wasn’t either Christian or, like me, trying to find sense in between agnosticism and atheism. There are no other alternatives. Yet throughout our visit in the “Shining Island” we visited countless temples, met pilgrims from diverse faiths and got acquainted with their different philosophies, and how their different communities compromise in order to keep the harmony amongst them.

Not only do these various religions exist peacefully alongside one another in Sri Lanka, but, incredibly, many of them share sites of devotion and inspiration. Sri Pada (“sacred footprint”), also known as Adam’s Peak, is one such site. According to Buddhists, the footprint-shaped indentation found at the top of this mountain corresponds to Buddha’s foot, left after he visited Sri Lanka. For Hindus, the footprint is from Lord Shiva, and the mountain itself stands in representation of Ravana’s lair from the Ramayana stories. For Muslims and Christians, the footstep is of Adam, left behind when he was evicted from Eden. All of this spirituality is guarded inside a small Buddhist monastery, erected to protect this sacred footprint. Thousands of pilgrims climb to the top of the conical mountain every year, from where, supposedly, on a clear day you can see not only the most spectacular sunrise, but also cities hours away.

Sadly, I wouldn’t really know from experience. Because of the Eid holiday timing, our trip took place off-season. Specifically, during monsoon season. During regular pilgrimage months, December to May, the pathway up the mountain, with over 6000 stone steps, is supposedly lit with colorful lanterns to enable pilgrims to climb the mountain to admire dawn. There are also regular stops where climbers can rest and have refreshments. For us off-season tourists on the other hand, 2:30am had us out in our raincoats leaving the warmth of our hotel for the dark jungle, stepping into a storm that had lasted for hours, and would last for several more. In the light of the lanterns maybe I would not have minded the climb. I might have even grown to enjoy the burn in my legs as I climbed up those endless stairs that stretched into the heavens. It would have been quite a pleasant adventure. Instead, it was more of a terrifying blind scramble up and down a weathered staircase that seemed to resemble a potentially fatal waterfall more often than not. Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it.

But an unforgettable experience? That it was. And, without meaning it to be, quite a spiritual one at that. Of course, on my way up, wet and heavy as a drenched alley cat and desperately holding an old torch possessed by dark sense of humor, my experience was far from spiritual. Well, in any aspect other than comparing myself to Dante coming up Purgatory Mountain that is. Throughout the climb my only positive thoughts were about the fact that I was not particularly thirsty in the rain.

Finally getting to the top and finding the temple closed for another hour until dawn was also not fun, particularly when we realized we were not going to have a very spectacular sunrise, since the storm was still raging on in all its glory. By that point in my journey the weather started to get less chilly, meaning my ankle was beginning to realize it had been tricked. Having lost the cover of the jungle, unprotected now from the storm and the winds (not exactly the deep connection with nature I was expecting) I might have looked up at the sky and thought, “Well that was almost worth it. Although I imagine this would be a really cool place in different weather. Pity I’m not staying to find out.” To my regret, the consensus of the group at the time was that the storm made everything not quite worth the wait. Breakfast, baths and beds just sounded so much more appealing. So no, I did not stay to see the gates open, and no, I did not get to see the sacred footprint. I guess I’ll have to go back (this time under better conditions and hopefully wearing appropriate hiking trousers), and say hi to Buddha, Shiva and Adam another time.

Surfing my way back down waterfall stairs while simultaneously cursing and praying to several deities probably did not get me many spiritual points or clean my karma account. However, once the rain stopped mid-way on my climb down, so did my curses.

It is amazing how being able to finally see your own tumbling feet and to know, rather than guess, where you need to put them can have a calming effect on one. My eternal gratitude to that ancient, faulty torch which waited until I could actually see the steps to give up. Once the fear and the adrenaline were gone, I could begin to think about the last five blurry hours. I, with the physical resistance of someone who doesn’t feel very guilty about not going to the gym had climbed that mountain. In the dark. During a storm. On a twisted ankle, which by now resembled a very nicely colored round plum. I had done it by myself, since I walked alone through most of it, but most importantly, I had done it for myself. Not to prove to my friends that I could do it, but to prove to myself that I could. I mean, what kind of excuses can I make now? If you could climb that, you have no excuses left for not doing anything else. When you are searching for spirituality, faith begins by believing in yourself.

As I admired the now visible valley, limping my way down the mountain through endless fields of tea leaves and mesmerizing waterfalls that had before been masked by the storm, I had a curious feeling that others might call “inner peace.” Yes, I was in acute pain, yes, I was soaked to the bone, and yes, I had entered into most inappropriate relationship with some leeches in my trousers (that is a story for next time). But I was at peace with myself and my efforts. Since I had the time and the freedom, I had a very nice chat with parts of me normally dormant, the kind that makes you question your entire existence and such. We agreed that I would talk to them more often and try to address their complaints, and in return they would stop keeping me awake at night, specifically before exams and important presentations. After months and months of struggle, I had won. And, it felt good.

Reaching the bottom of the mountain was not very difficult after that. I mean, I only got lost twice and had to ask 4 different people for directions trying to get to the hotel. All was good. What was stopping me from going back to Abu Dhabi and facing the mountain of pending work on my desk? Apart from the fact that I wouldn’t be able to walk properly for the next week … absolutely nothing.

[Photo Credits: Top: Sri Pada by Harshini Karunaratne; Bottom: 6000 Steps by Paloma Saco-Vértiz.]