The idea of a popup gallery isn't a new one – unless you're a graffiti artist. Banksy started the tradition of the Santa's Ghetto: Christmastime popup galleries that featured Banksy's work printed on canvas. The exhibits were held in venues like warehouses and pubs and were of very duration – three days or so. They started small – in neighborhoods in and around London and once even in Palestine – but within three years the shows were nearly selling out. During a 2003 exhibition, Banksy entered the north London warehouse housing a Santa's Ghetto, only to see police asking one of the exhibition's staff if Banksy was there. "'I'm sorry I can't help, I don't know who Banksy is,' the staff member lied. 'But just as I was saying this I saw Banksy stroll into the exhibition. He must have seen the police at that moment, because he moved along quite quickly as though he was looking at the paintings and then very calmly walked out again.'"
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
