New Kinetic Sculpture Exhibited at the Cafesjian Center for the Arts

December 08, 2011 A new kinetic sculpture has been added to In the Mind of the Collector exhibition at the Cafesjian Center for the Arts - Electric Advertising Automaton of a Baton-Twirling Girl, produced by the American company, Mechanical Man Inc.

While human interest in automata is quite ancient and dates back to Ancient Greece, the Golden Age of automata came in the late 19th-early 20th century, long before the sophisticated electronics and information technologies and approximately at the same time that the baton-twirling majorette dancers appeared. The majorette dancers accompanied the marching bands during parades twirling flags, light-up batons, and fire batons. The Automaton of a Baton-Twirling Girl exhibited at the Cafesjian Center for the Arts was originally used for advertising purposes and comes as a symbol of American advertising art of mid-20th century. 

In the Mind of the Collector is a permanent exhibition at Eagle Garden Gallery of the Cafesjian Center for the Arts. Throughout his life, Gerard L. Cafesjian has indulged a passion for collecting that encompasses areas lying outside the arena of contemporary art. His varied interests are on continuous display in an exhibition entitled In the Mind of the Collector. Although the objects on view are not always strictly definable as art, they are, without exception, aesthetically engaging, sometimes curious, and often amusing, lending insight into the man who collected them. On view is an eclectic collection ranging from a 28-foot model of a ship, on which Mr. Cafesjian served in the Pacific during World War II, to a rare 1906 Model N Ford Runabout, and a working model of a Wabash steam locomotive.