♪ WHIMSICAL MUSIC (Mary) This week on State of the Arts, we explore museums.

A downtown Nogales museum focuses on community and one museum that's sparking memories for Alzheimer's patients.

Coming up on State of the Arts.

Welcome to this week's show.

I'm your host Mary Paul, and today we're taking a field trip to some special museums.

We begin here in Southern Arizona with a story of an unlikely friendship, backyard chats, a piano, and a crazy car that eventually led to a new museum in downtown Nogales.

Paula Whitner showcased her artwork right as the pandemic began, quarantining them along with herself.

Now those works live on Morley Avenue, the host of a growing arts district just steps away from the US-Mexico border.

[ TRAIN HORN ] (Evan) We just spent a lot of time imagining what this street could be, because we were seeing businesses close and it's just getting harder and harder.

We realized that maybe arts and culture was the answer.

♪ GENTLE MUSIC Around four years ago, we started a gallery called La Linea Art Studio, and that was really a group of artists that I met when I moved back that got together and made that project a reality.

We have shows that rotate around once a month.

It's amazing to see all the artists that have come forward with interest to show their work there.

It seems like it's focusing more and more on border artists, because they're very underrepresented too.

(Paula) Evan asked me if I wanted to have a show at La Linea, and I said yes.

(Evan) We met in Patagonia.

She invited me over to her studio, which is around the block.

And of course I went and I was just immediately blown away by the paintings, because they were so fresh and I hadn't seen anything like that.

(Paula) As it turned out, I had a big show across the line and it was only open for two days because the pandemic started.

(Evan) And everything shuts down and the paintings were in quarantine as well for 13 months.

And that's really where our friendship started.

And we started dreaming about what if we made something permanent, not just a one-time show.

(Paula) Through the pandemic, we would hang out in my backyard and brainstorm.

And he came up with the museum.

(Evan) Luckily our Santa Cruz County government created a nonprofit grant program and we applied and we got the grant to do the renovation of the space.

(Paula) Evan miraculously, in six months he renovated it into that palace.

We donated our piano to La Linea because no one was playing it.

So then Evan was like locked in there with the piano practicing and he liked playing with the paintings.

♪ PIANO MUSIC (Evan) As a musician, I'm a pianist.

We're always thinking about what is this music about?

What does it all mean?

So when you see the looks on their faces, sometimes they give you answers.

So I might be playing the piano behind me.

And as I'm playing, I see a face and realize, hey, that's what this is about.

So it's all about how the humanity within every person and everything they feel and how we relate to each other.

♪ PIANO MUSIC Paula paints her life experiences and the people she knows and that she's met.

And it's been very fascinating to witness her process because often a painting as she's working on it will evolve depending on what's going on in her life.

So all of the paintings have layers of symbolism and meaning and people find their own stories within them too.

♪ PIANO MUSIC [ CLAPPING ] (Paula) I found this stamp collector John Birkenbein in Tucson and we took my father's stamps there.

And in his driveway was this vehicle.

I'd never seen anything like it.

I didn't even, I couldn't like wrap my head around it what it was.

It just came out of my mouth.

I said, are you selling that?

This lawyer custom ordered it from the Philippines and my father was in the Philippines during the war.

And I don't know, it just connected me to my father.

[ CAR HORN MELODY ] (Evan) The paintings all talk to each other and relate to each other.

So that's really a universe that she's created within her palette, her colors, the people she paints, the faces and it's for me and I think she would agree it's all about the expressions on their faces and to create those from memory is quite astounding.

(Paula) There's a painting at my house of my mother that I could never draw or paint her when she was alive but after she died, I did a painting of her from memory and the computer recognized her.

(Evan) Everyone could agree that yes, we need, we need the arts and we need more, more to enrich our lives and quality of life here.

(Paula) I want Morley Street to be revitalized and be just a vibrant arts district.

(Evan) It is frustrating to see what the national narrative is and the way people talk about the border with never having even visited or seen it for themselves.

I think that eventually we will redefine what the border is as we outreach and let people know what we're about.

Like this project here with the museum, with Paula's artwork, it's a way also for young people to be proud of their home and that's always very, very important I think because then it inspires them to do something and to create the home that they wanna see.

♪ INSPIRATIONAL MUSIC (Mary) The American Alliance of Museums conducted a nationwide survey to assess the impact of COVID-19 on museums across the United States.

The findings reveal the profound and far reaching damage the pandemic inflicted on these cultural institutions, casting a long shadow over their recovery.

Motivated by these sobering results, AZPM set out to understand how our local museums in Arizona weathered the storm.

♪ SOFT MUSIC (Christine) Our museum was hitting a stride for getting ready for our centennial and part of that was the construction of a new wing.

We were looking forward to building a new addition to the property for our Latin American art collection.

We were moving forward with a full exhibition schedule and then when COVID hit all of that went on pause.

(Morgan) So before COVID we did a lot of youth-based programming, so field trips, after-school programs, partnerships, those kinds of things as well as access programs.

So we had worked with the Alzheimer's Association as well as the VA and doing tours for the visually impaired for the VA and those all came to a stop when COVID hit.

(Olivia) Like most other institutions, we closed quite abruptly.

We were able to take advantage of that closing time to get a lot of maintenance done.

The staff did a really great job as best as they could.

The word pivot became a common word in their vocabulary.

(Marianna) We thought a lot about how could we be a resource to our community?

We were fortunate where we had a grant and a couple of grant projects that had us looking at community-based initiatives within our work.

And so when COVID happened, we were able to double down, really refocus on what it meant to be a community resource, what it meant to serve our audiences, how could we be relevant and provide a space?

(Morgan) About a month after we came back, we decided to take the chance and offer summer camp in person.

There was definitely a need for those people who needed daycare during that time.

So we still saw about an average of 20 to 30 kids a week.

We ran camp actually for 11 weeks straight until kids went back to school.

We tried to offer a drop-in aftercare program during the school year, which wasn't as successful, but we saw about 10 kids there.

We didn't see a field trips, of course, those all went away.

But all of our other programming, such as our family programming, we did like virtually.

So we would send an email every month and we would do a virtual family day.

So that would be like a storytelling or an art making activity, all virtual.

(Olivia) With the exhibitions that we had on view, we ended up taking 360 camera views of those exhibitions.

So in a sense, we converted all of those exhibitions into virtual ones.

We started new programming.

We did artist talks on Zoom.

We did monthly art trivia happy hour.

So once a month on a Thursday at five o'clock, we do a one hour trivia session.

We've been doing that almost every single month, going on almost five years now.

(Morgan) Actually, we've seen a lot of programs change post COVID.

It took us a few years to really begin to bounce back as far as our attendance.

(Marianna) COVID gave us the opportunity to really think local, to like be hyper local in our resource and our activities.

(Christine) We had a lot of space so that you really could walk around without getting in touch with people and being too close.

So I think that was a benefit.

(Morgan) We've also seen that people's interests have sort of changed.

People are more interested in like active learning experiences.

We've seen a big decline in school field trips.

However, we have seen a huge increase in like day camps and summer camps.

Before COVID hit, we never sold out of summer camp.

Post COVID, we sell out and we sell it early.

We'd be better prepared now than we would have ever been as far as outreach and engaging with communities.

We've learned to do a lot of things virtually as far as programming and working with our partners.

(Marianna) I think we're better at like elastic thinking, right?

So thinking about how we can pivot, adapt.

That is a learned skill set out of necessity, right?

From a time of COVID, which hopefully we can think about how to continue to work on because it is like a really magical thing, right?

To be able to realize, well, this isn't working and we should just adapt it.

(Olivia) Well, hopefully it never happens again, but if it does, hopefully it will be less dramatic a pivot than it was before.

(Christine) So I think in the future, if something were to happen again that we would be able to kind of bounce back quickly because we've been through it before.

(Mary) Alzheimer's disease is the sixth leading cause of death in America today.

It's a devastating diagnosis for both patient and loved ones.

While art cannot reverse the course of the condition, it is playing a powerful role in bringing those with the disease together.

Three major art institutions and the Alzheimer's Association of Greater Cincinnati have been collaborating to stimulate minds and spark memories in the museum.

(David) In early 2015, I noticed that Hannah was having some memory issues and it concerned me because she's been my go-to person for remembering things all of our married life.

(Joan) If you look at three seniors that are over 65, one of those individuals will eventually have dementia.

Alzheimer's is also the sixth leading cause of death.

It's greater than breast cancer and prostate cancer put together.

(Stephanie) There's just something not right, something not connecting and just, she relied on my father like tremendously just to even get through an afternoon or a conversation.

You know, just, it was just very different.

So I didn't really know how to connect with her at that time.

(Jaime) So about 5.7 million people in the US currently have Alzheimer's disease and this population is often not catered to within museum situations.

There is a special need for that group to have abilities and opportunities beyond the traditional visitor walking in.

So the CAC as well as the Taft and the Cincinnati Art Museum and of course, Greater Cincinnati's Alzheimer's Association.

I realized a program was needed for them.

(Sara) The Memories in the Museum program is an initiative to welcome people with Alzheimer's as well as their caregivers into the museum and to create a positive space for them to engage with the art, engage with each other and to make something.

(Lisa) It's a program that really addresses the needs of both the caregiver for a kind of moment of respite and also it really engages the person with memory loss, really being in the moment with that person.

(Tour guide) But she does a lot of things with symmetry so that it's like a mirror on those sides.

(Sara) We have specially trained docents that lead this program each month.

We go through a training with Alzheimer's Association each year and they really teach us the best practices in how to talk and engage with our visitors with memory loss.

(Lisa) We start with a kind of social time.

We greet our visitors as they come in and we sit down and have sort of a coffee half hour with them and get chatting with them and get in a really kind of comfortable position.

(Sara) After that we break up into groups and go to the galleries to learn about the art.

We have about three stops at each program and at each stop we have interactive activities.

It could be learning and engaging through the art through music or through sense.

Sometimes we have touchable materials.

(Jaime) After we have this experience, everyone, including the docents who have led the tour, come together to make art.

(Tour guide) I think whatever you like, so you can take and you have something where you're ready to go.

(David) It's our understanding that the art and music function of your mind is one of the last things to go.

She used to be the president of the Ohio Valley Quilt Guild but she struggles now with coming up with the right words when she starts to say something and she, (Hannah) That's tough.

(David) You know, she just, the word's gone and that really frustrates her.

I mean, if you can see it when it happens, it just gets really difficult.

But she's always been very artsy.

I never really got into it until we retired and I got into woodturning.

Personally, I spend more time in the museums now than I ever would have if this had not come about.

(Stephanie) I teach pilates in Columbus, Ohio and I come down to Cincinnati as much as possible to care for my mom who has Alzheimer's and being supportive to my father who is her primary caregiver.

So I've been going to the Memories in the Museum with her, I think three to four months now.

It's hugely beneficial.

Some people don't have anything to look forward to except for memories in the museum.

They're isolated, they have lost their social contacts, their friends and everything and so it's like their one time to connect and feel that community and also do something special and enjoy art and get some sort of positive experience and just to have a better day.

(Patient) There happy up there.

(Sara) Art is healing just in general.

There's no wrong answers about the artwork and we're just having a conversation together about what they see, what they interpret and how that might relate to them.

(Hannah) I'm amazed every time we have one of these times together and how much help that is to people.

(Jaime) Sometimes the participants don't talk.

Other times you get miraculous moments where you get to experience someone speaking for the first time in a week and be with them in their caretaker to have that moment of joy which there's nothing to compare whatsoever.

(David) It provides a support structure.

The people that are going through the same thing know what you're going through.

You can talk to them and you don't have to explain.

(Stephanie) It breaks my dad into a more social man.

He's sort of on the stoic side and I see him becoming more connected with other people.

My dad didn't even know my mom could paint, I don't think, except for maybe walls in their homes growing up.

So these things triggered him and I think that it's connected them more deeply.

(Joan) For many people, especially the caregivers, they haven't participated in creating art for maybe many years.

But they all seem to really enjoy that part of it as well.

You have to say that it's not art therapy, but it is therapeutic.

(Stephanie) One of the Museum Memory events that we really enjoyed, the Fabrics of India, absolutely beautiful and it really sparked my mom.

She was just, wow.

It wasn't even associated with her sewing group, but it triggered her on the beautiful things she's created.

When we got home from the event, she started talking about how she sewed her own wedding dress.

She remembers things from a long time ago really well.

So we found her old wedding dress and then my prom dress was in there that I didn't even know she had kept, but she handmade that.

And I thought, this woman is so gifted, it's amazing.

She could create her wedding dress, my prom dress, she still kept them.

And then she said to me, she's like, please make sure I'm buried in this, her wedding dress.

Powerful.

(Sara) This program serves an underserved community.

It's a fairly unique situation.

We don't get to work with the CAC or the TAFT as much as we'd like to, but we do enjoy programming with them.

And it's a unique situation where we all get to benefit and work together on something for the greater good.

(Tour guide) You a dancer, too, aren't you Rose?

Yes.

Oh, yeah, spin, careful.

Want me to dip you?

Woah!

There we go.

(Jaime) It's not only for the folks who have memory loss, it's for the 16 million people in the country who are their caregivers.

It's a place for everyone to come together and find a home within the art museum or arts institutions.

(Joan) This allows people to see, yes, we can still be in the community, we can still be recognized as being important people, we can use our imaginations, our creativity.

(Lisa) Attendance at the program has been something that is really amazing.

It has become so popular that we've had to double our programs.

There is a real need for this and a real excitement in it.

(David) Yeah, keep doing it, because it's helping make me a better person as well as giving her activities that keep her mind stimulated.

(Stephanie) There's no words to fully capture.

It's just an experience that you feel when you're around at the museum with the group.

You just feel the connection and you just feel people absorbing things and processing things and just connecting.

They all have so much still inside them that these art programs bring out, art moves people from within.

And to wrap up this week's stories, we meet Rob Berk, who loves pinball machines, so much so that he has the largest collection in the world.

We meet this Guinness World Record holder and visit the Past Times Arcade in Ohio, where visitors can play on some of the machines in his collection.

♪ FUNKY MUSIC (Rob) Over a thousand games in my collection.

We cover every era from the 30s all the way up to today's modern game.

(Machine) Ladies and gentlemen, this is a special report.

(Rob) We have here around 640 games between pinball and video games.

And there's an additional double that in storage.

Pinball's for the family, man.

It's a family deal.

Pinball is fun for everybody.

Probably the first members of pinball was growing up as a young guy, maybe five or six years old, and going in the basement of my home, parents' home, and seeing this contraption down there.

Not knowing what it was, it was a pinball machine.

We're talking about the early 1960s, but there was a machine there and it was set for free play, so everyone's thought I'd play it, intrigued by it.

Didn't know how it worked or anything, but as it got older and older, I liked it, it was a fun entertainment.

The ball has a mind of its own.

No two games are the same.

Artwork was fun, the themes were fun, and that really got me intrigued by pinball to the point when I started reading about it, learning more about it, and learning about the players behind the industry.

I started collecting in the mid to late 70s, so I had the warehouse for the company, for the family business, and that's where I was storing the machines.

So I knew sooner or later, I had to find another place to store the games, and over time, I came upon this grocery store, and it had been a viable grocery store for years, but then they closed down for whatever reason, and at the time, the price was right, so I figured maybe I'll buy it, store my games in there, thinking to myself, this is such a crazy thinking.

I'll put the games in there, I'll have a key, maybe once a week I'll come here and play a couple games and turn the lights off and go home.

So my wife said, "You know, it's crazy.

If you're gonna build this place, why don't you build it for the general public to come enjoy?"

♪ RAGTIME MUSIC Well, the games of the 30s, among historians, the very first game was a game called Whiffle, which was produced right here in Youngston, Ohio, so I have the game here.

Very simple game, very simplistic, no electricity, no flippers, and actually it fits on the countertop, maybe two feet wide by three foot long, not much to it, but it was the beginning of pinballs, we know it.

It was called Humpty Dumpty, made in 1947.

It was created by a guy by the name of Harry Mabs, and he came up with a spot, this idea of these flippers, and when he put that on the game, it just turned the industry upside down because all of a sudden you can keep a ball alive, longer, a game play, and a lot of other people start copying the flippers.

♪ PINBALL MUSIC There's arcades all over the US coast to coast, but none of them have the breadth of variety we do, not only that, but the international presence.

There's a whole aisle here, about 40 games that were made in Spain and Italy.

So this row here is all the games from Spain and Italy.

This is my heart and soul right here.

We've got 40 games here made in Europe for the European market, and you're seeing them right here, and these games are very unique, the artists are unique, the play field design is unique, but that's what makes this hobby to me so interesting, is those oddball games you just don't see everywhere, and this is a good example of what we have here in this row here.

So when we celebrated our one year anniversary here about a month ago, my daughter says, "Hold off for a second, I wanna give my dad something."

And she hands me a package and I open up and hear, it's a certificate from the Guinness Book of Records, recognizing me and honoring me, we're having the largest single collection of pinball machines.

So that was a great honor, a great surprise, and it's one of the few times that it's a cut me off guard.

The community has been very, very supportive.

They didn't really know, I mean this building was empty at such a long time.

So for someone to come here and bring it back to life again, they were very excited about that, but the more the people come here, they're just awestruck by it.

They really didn't know what to expect, but once they see it, they're just enthralled like this is unbelievable.

So you gotta see to believe it.

(Mary) And this has been State of the Arts.

I'm your host, Mary Paul.

Thanks for watching.