The Grimm Forest Open-Air Museum

 

Introduction, pg. i-iv (foldout, words in large print)

Audio tours are available at the front desk free of charge.

Some stories are meant to be heard and not seen. Some stories are unspeakable.

Please stay on the path. The management can make no guarantees for your safety should you stray.

Note: This exhibition is made possible with a grant from the Gold Egg Foundation and the generosity of museum patrons, like and not at all like yourself.

 

Wunderkind Sculpture Garden, pg. 3-6

Room full of bones from brothers, broken
stories pieced together. In retelling,
sometimes brothers conspire against
brothers, sometimes sisters fragment.

 

Set of Rooms Demonstrating Cartographic Features, pg. 7

Islands may accrue over time, gathering meaning and mass, but story keeps shifting, maybe composed of magma, something too hot to delve into. A shoe half formed from molten glass, a forehead grows from slow moving lava. Scientists observe from a safe distance the cooling shore forming beneath the rumpled surface, consider what new lands might crop up.

Burial mounds are best left alone. Ill-advised core samples may reveal rocks piled in such a way to suggest reverence, or may trigger traps, disturb sleeping curses.

Forests: Where are the forests of childhood? Golden and green, innocent rustlings produce rabbits from shaded pockets, giants kneel to scoop more pleasant paths for a brook.

Forests, again: Spanish moss can be applied easily, tangled poison ivy and moths-waiting-to-hatch will decimate what might have been the frame for a soft green panel.

Rivers and Streams: The ice held her. The ice grew ornamented. The ice dangled bulbs above the unfrozen rush.

Lakes: Scattered so far that nobody notices how they can be puzzle-fitted back together. Look at the shores, how they try to write in cursive. Look at the inlets, shallows form a sign.

 

Wall of Diagnosed Malaises, pg. 8

Sleeping Beauty, hemopheliac
Faints, a false sleep, loses too much blood,
even one drop is enough.

Snow White, anemic
Should have eaten more red meat.
The heart of the doe would
go a long way.

Little Boy Blue, situational depression
Has not picked up his instrument
for weeks, nor dressed in blue,
nor confided in friends.

Thumbelina, cecropia
Her rags could be mistaken
for night flight, her size for her might.

Frog Prince, webbed fingers
Wishes he could wear gloves, always
sucks a mint, fears his wife will
leave him for an ornamental koi.

Gretl, anorexic, bulimic
Nothing to do with mirrors.
Once she and her brother
went hungry to leave a trail,
and although it didn’t work,
even now she thinks
if she were thinner, she
could slip the bars.

 

Wall of Undiagnosed Malaises, pg. 9

Toads or diamonds disgorged when speaking
Uncontrollable sprouting of feathers
Tendency to be not only beautiful but good
Tendency to expect wishes will be granted
Tendency to have wishes granted
Tendency to look for what’s deserved

 

Hands-on Activity Room, pg. 10

Tie the bedsheets,
escape the avid in-
laws, Jump through
similar hoops to
ones set by
a mother for
prospective daughter-
in-laws. Fairy feels real.
Press your palm
into the dewed grass.

Leave the print
to set for a decade.
Return to dismantle
a tower with your roots.
Play the ivy. Tear down stones,
grasping fingers in every hold,
refuse to take cement for an answer.

See how centuries-
old houses crumble,
the futile words hurled
after the gone away,
the empty ever after.

 

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Art Information

• "Bone" © Terje Asphaug; Creative Commons license (image has been modified).