The Garden City Telegram
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New exhibit takes flight at museum
Published 3/23/2009 in Local News
By STEPHANIE FARLEY
MONTEZUMA — Kim Legleiter, director for Montezuma's Stauth Memorial Museum, had an exhibit cancellation and was trying to find a replacement.
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Stephanie Farley/Telegram — A flying dragon kite now is on display with other kites as part of Stauth Memorial MuseumÕs new exhibit, Art on a String. The exhibit can be seen at the museum, 111 N. Aztec, in Montezuma, until May 3.
A postcard from Blair-Murrah Exhibitions came promoting the exhibit "Art on a String," which includes unusual kites collected in Asia that were created for a variety of uses. Once Legleiter saw the photos of the kites, she was hooked, she said Sunday, the first day of Art on a String.
The exhibit will be on display through May 3 at the museum, 111 N. Aztec, in Montezuma. Hours are 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated to help support museum operations.
Legleiter said all of the exhibit's kites either have flown or are replicas of ones that have flown. If they haven't been flown before, she said, they're capable of flight. She said she thought the exhibit would be perfect for spring.
"These are not like any kites we fly here in the United States," Legleiter said.
Some of the kites are hundreds of years old and very intricate and detailed, she said. And there are kite flying and fighting competitions that are more heavily attended than U.S. football games, she said. Even the replicas are made with the same painstaking detail as their predecessors, she said.
According to the museum, the Chinese appear to have been the first to apply their observations of soaring birds to kite design, and to camber, or bend or curve, the wings of their kites to make an airfoil. The tradition is in contrast to that of Europeans, who tried to simulate the movement of the wings in their early attempts to emulate the flight of birds. The kite's invention is attributed in various ancient texts to Mo Ti, founder of the Mohist school, and to his contemporary Kungshu Phan, the famous engineer of the state of Lu.
The museum states kites were flown in China and India as early as the seventh or eighth centuries. Early priests used them as religious tokens, and military leaders used them to transport supplies and occasionally soldiers across rivers. In the eighteenth century, Japanese merchants hung kites as signs to advertise their wares.
Traditional Chinese kites resemble not only birds but other natural objects, including butterflies and flowers. The museum states most of the kites have complex bamboo frames covered with fine paper or silk, and some have papier-mache features. Many are hand-painted with elaborate decorations more suitable for display than flight, but all of the designs are based on "sound aeronautical principles."
The walls and ceiling of the museum's traveling exhibit gallery are filled with the kites.
"I don't know how many I hung," Legleiter said. "I lost track."
Legleiter, who was up late Saturday making sure the exhibit was ready for Sunday's opening, said there were so many kites with the exhibit she ended up not having enough wall or ceiling space. And the kites didn't come with instructions, Legleiter said with a laugh, explaining museum staff worked to figure out how the kite pieces and parts fit together. Legleiter described the task as being similar to assembling a jigsaw puzzle. There also was a lot of climbing on and off a ladder to hang the kites, she said, and determine how to light the kites properly.
"Hopefully, people will come and enjoy it," Legleiter said.
Legleiter also hopes schools and students will come enjoy the exhibit, saying it's a good lesson in how Asia has worked to keep some of its traditions alive even though kite making had died out for awhile. But the countries thought it was important enough to revive the tradition, she said, explaining the exhibit's not only educational but also visually stunning.
The exhibit also includes fighter kites. According to the exhibit, "throughout Asia, kite fighting is a way of life and not just a pastime. The object of each fight is to cut away the opponent's kite with one's own line. Not regarded as kid's stuff by adults or teenagers, kite fighting features single-line stunt kites designed for the combative skies. Organized kite fights attract thousands of people, and the sky becomes a sea of kites."
For more information or to schedule a tour, call (620) 846-2527, or visit www.stauthmemorialmuseum.org.
Have you seen the exhibit? Give your feedback in the Travel forum on Southwest Kansas Talk.
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