Jenny Magnus is available. For conversation, for consultation, for any kind of exchanged discourse possible during her 60 minute Open Doors: Office Hours. At MCA’s invitation and deepening our commitment to collaborations by artists in Chicago and abroad, Jenny Magnus is creating a large-scale interdisciplinary work for The Curious Theatre Branch, the company she cofounded with Beau O’Reilly in 1988, for premiere in the fall of 2011. Open Doors: Office Hours is one aspect of the developmental residency, seeking to recontextualize the way institutions think about the interaction between audiences and artists.

Open Doors: Office Hours, takes place with Jenny Magnus seated at a table in different locations in the museum, both galleries and lobbies. In the spirit of Lucy’s booth in Charles Schulz’ Peanuts, Magnus is available to MCA staff and museum visitors. The Artist is In.

Germane topics to the development of her new work include:

• the notion of the theater as a place of work, not only physical but intellectual as well
• a sustained ecology of art making, staying in the process over a lifetime, and “retarding decay”
• the sculpting of attention, and how an artist can compose attention on a stage
• the stress between parenting and being an artist, and how being a “good enough” parent and a “good enough” artist can work
• the ensemble as tribe and clan, and how to maintain generational working relationships

But she will gladly talk about whatever you want to talk about.

Check jennymagnus.com and mcachicago.org for information about reservations. Or just stop by…..

Dates Tuesdays-Fridays, 12p to 1p

19 October-19 November 2010 (ask at desk for location)

Price free with museum admission (museum is free on Tuesdays)