ICI PERSPECTIVESIN CURATING NO.1

Thinking Contemporary Curating

Terry Smith

INDEPENDENT CURATORSINTERNATIONAL

.-.....t Thinking Contemporary Curating is the first Series Editor in a new publication series developed by Kate Fowle Independent Curators International (ICI) Table of entitled Perspectives in Curating which offers Copyeditor timely reflections by curators, artists, critics, Audrey Walen and art historians on emergent debates in Contents curatorial practice around the world. Designer Scott Panik This publication was made possible, in part, by grants from the Elizabeth Firestone Publication Coordinator Graham Foundation and the Robert Sterling Chelsea Haines Clark Foundation. Additional support for this publication was received from the Researcher ICI Perspectives in Curating 7 ICI International Forum Patrons Melva Jessica Gogan Kate Fowle Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy, Haro and Bilge Cumbusyan, Carol and Arthur Printer Goldberg, Belinda Kielland, Patricia and The Prolific Group, Winnipeg, Canada Acknowledgments 15 Charles Selden, Younghee Kim-Wait, Georgia Welles, and Elizabeth Erdreich White. Library of Congress Control Number: 2012939896 The Lure 17 Published by Independent Curators 27 International, New York. 1. What is Contemporary Curatorial Thought? Independent Curators International ISBN 978-0-916365-86-8 2. Shifting the Exhibitionary Complex 57 401 Broadway, Suite 1620 New York, NY 10013 3. Artists as Curators/Curators as Artists 101 Tel: 212-254-8200 4. Curating Contemporaneity 141 Fax: 212-477-4781 www.curatorsintl.org 5. Curatorial Practice Now 177 The Infrastructural 249 Copyright ©2012 Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may Illustration Credits 261 be reproduced or otherwise transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from Author Biography 265 the publisher.

Texts copyright ©2012 the author. ICI Perspectives in Curating

Kate Fowle

The starting point for Thinking Contemporary Curating occurred on March 11, 2011-day one of The Now Museum conference that Independent Curators International (ICI) produced in collaboration with The Graduate Center, CUNY and the New Museum in New York. Involving artists, art historians, curators, and museum directors in a series of panel discussions and conversations, the three-day event looked at the diversification of the notion of the "museum of contemporary art," providing intergenerational perspectives on recent developments across Mrica, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

While topics in the spotlight included the reconsideration of historical narratives (or their abandonment), recent alternative models to traditional museum infrastructures, and burgeoning international collaborations, the subtext to the whole event was a revelation of the various positions the speakers held in relation to the contemporary museum as a place and/or concept. What became evident was a slightly uneasy breakdown in communication among speakers (and at times audience members)-in

7 KATE FOWLE ICI PERSPECTIVES IN CURATING

particular between curators and art historians­ Smith did not totally agree with my reasoning, who, even when talking about the same thing, but concurred that there was something in the frequently could not tell that this was the case, "glitch," particularly as a result of the increasingly causing a slippage in establishing what was at multifarious production modes of curators. stake, let alone any cooperative game plan in While it is widely accepted that the role has been moving ideas forward. professionalized and given independence from bureaucratic mandates, with a "coming of age" The breakdown became palpable on the occurring in the 1990s, we are still fumbling to afternoon of the first day, during the discussion pinpoint what really constitutes contemporary "Contemporanizing History/Historicizing the curating. If the curatorial position remained Contemporary," led by Claire Bishop (Associate fixed, as it was historically-behind the scenes, Professor, PhD Program in Art History, The pragmatic, and ostensibly service oriented-this Graduate Center, CUNY) with panelists belaboring of specifics and terminologies would Okwui Enwezor (Director, Haus der Kunst), be unnecessary, but as the curatorial imperative Annie Fletcher (Curator, Van Abbemuseum), gains momentum around the world, its form Massimiliano Gioni (Associate Director and is mutating and becoming untethered from its Director of Exhibitions, New Museum), and Terry modern precedent. Furthermore, the notion of Smith. It continued as a fascinating glitch in the a language around curating is still nascent, or proceedings of the many sessions that followed. at best tentative, as evidenced by the anecdotal fallback position so often used by practitioners. A month or so later, over dinner, I brought up Mter much back and forth and a few glitches in this slippage to Terry Smith, asking him what he our own conversation, by the end of the night we thought lay at the root of it. I suggested perhaps were left with yet another question, though one it was a difference in style and use of language. that was pertinent to getting to the bottom of Art historians are trained (and expected) to the first: What is distinctive about contemporary propose a unique observation (no matter how curatorial thought? minutely different) on any given topic, outline the facts and problems that pertain to its specificities, And so Thinking Contemporary Curating and present their solutions before providing a became the first book-length text to lay the conclusion that proves they are right. Curators, groundwork for articulating specificities in on the other hand, take a far more speculative (and this still-forming field. As described in his often meandering) approach, outlining the issues acknowledgments, Smith has actively (and I at stake from personal experience, describing a would add generously and thoroughly) engaged project and various artists' practices that test ways with numerous exhibitions, conversations, to understand key points, then making an open­ and projects around the world-often as they ended proposition for consideration with the are occurring-and gained an overview of conclusion that research is ongoing. both emerging and established curator's ideas, l 8 9 KATE FOWLE ICI PERSPECTIVES IN CURATING practices, and outcomes, with one pivotal closed­ provides a flexible format for sharing infor11 l door group discussion between professionals and ideas-in-progress; and The Curatorial tD triggering the form of the text in front of us Intensive-a short-term program for workin! n now. Divided into five chapters that loosely professionals from around the world held twi .... define five facets or operatives, Smith considers annually in New York and in collaboration wi c what contemporaneity means for curating, and institutional partners internationally-enable~ .l the exchange of knowledge and expertise whit dl examines the curator's position in relation to the Ul artist, the public, the exhibition, the institution, developing a new project with all-too-rare pee and the expanded infrastructure that constitutes 1 feedback. While each of these programs, toget the art world within global social, political, and with conference and fellowship initiatives, offe cultural frameworks. Recognizing the drive for curators the opportunity to test ideas, think ou contemporary curatorial practices to destabilize loud, and develop an international network, th, common assumptions or positions, as well as imperative for the book series is to take researc rethink geographic and political representations, to a deeper level. By dedicating resources and Smith also weaves case studies of key exhibitions, attention to a single topic in each volume and debates, and propositions in recent history that building the issues explored over time, Perspecti1. have set precedents from which we can build. in Curating is intended to be responsive to the rapid developments in the field while recognizirJ This is the first book in a series entitled the need to slow down in understanding what is Perspectivesin Curating that will be published at stake in the questions we ask of the practice. by Independent Curators International (ICI) Although a new initiative, the precedent for m to provide sustained analysis on topics that are X) Thinking Contemporary Curating was established pressing for curators now. This initiative follows ~• a number of others that ICI has established in 2001, when ICI published its first book on m ~ since 2010 to support curatorial research and · curatorial practice, Words of Wisdom: A Curator's ::;; Vade Mecum on Contemporary Art. Markedly 2' development in various forms: The Curator's ::J Perspective-a talks series in New York that different in its approach, the book included (Q periodically travels across the U.S.-provides a short texts offering advice to a new generation platform for curators from around the world to of curators from sixty professionals who were present their observations on social and political playing a crucial role in shaping the field. (These situations that are impacting their practice, the included Lynne Cook, Bice Curiger, Thelma Golden, Hou Hanru, Vasif Kortun, Lucy R. projects they understand to be important to ;QJ.

I~":.>.:::::~·::..:::~ curatorial developments, and the artists who are Lippard, Maria Lind, Jean-Hubert Martin, making them think; DISPATCH-a quarterly Gerardo Mosquera, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Seth online journal with each issue guest-produced Siegelaub, and Harald Szeemann.) It's hard to by a different curator around a topic of their imagine today, but just over ten years ago there i-'· choice that relates to where they live and work- was only one Curatorial Studies Masters program Ul

10 11 Acknowledgments

These essays were initially developed as talking points for the "Contemporary Art: World Currents," seminar with Terry Smith, held at Indep.endent Curators International, New York, October 20, 2011. Following discussion during the seminar, and later reflections, they have been revised and considerably expanded. Many thanks ~I m.,: to the seminar participants: Leeza Ahmady, Kalia Brooks, Doryun Chong, Sarah Demeuse, Ruba Katrib, Olga Kopenkina, Diana Nawi, and Sofia Olascoaga. Thanks to Jessica Gogan for deeply informed and careful research assistance with both the text and images. I am grateful to Robert Bailey, Brianne Cohen, lzabel Galliera, Boris Groys, Peter S. Myer, Nicole Pollentier, Mari Carmen Ramfrez,Joao Ribas, and Hilary i Robinson for their comments on the draft text, J and my curatorial colleagues in Pittsburgh, :I Sydney, New York and elsewhere for useful informal discussions. I thank, too, everyone at ICI, especially Chelsea Haines, who have worked tirelessly on this publication. Most thanks go to Kate Fowle for her inspirational work at ICI and for our ongoing dialogue on matters curatorial.

To Okwui

15 l The Lure

When it comes to showing art, do curators think in ways that are unique to their profession? Can curatorial thought be distinguished from the thinking processes within the myriad of closely related practices-especially art criticism, art history, and art making-and from curating within other kinds of museum or display spaces, public and private? Every exhibition demonstrates that curators reflect on circumstance, wrestle with ideas, develop research programs, and spark insights. Yet the discourse of art curators about curating-curatorial talk-while passionate and committed, seems routinely satisfied with rhetorical gestures, knowing asides, and ostensive Nick Water! ow. A Curator's Last Will and Testament, 2009. Video still from A Curator's Last Will and Testament, demonstrations. For a profession driven by 2012. Juliet Darling in collaboration with Father Steve Sinn S.J., DVD or Blu-ray, 11.5 min., continuous loop the desire to communicate with art's publics, its enabling dialogue is surprisingly inner­ directed. Why is the substance of curatorial thinking so rarely articulated? It seems to me that this question has surfaced (become public) within a vast, rapid, and quickening change in the conditions within which curating is now undertaken. These changes require a different kind of thinking than that which served during modern times. They lead to a key question, to the exploration of which these essays are devoted: What is contemporary curatorial thought?

I raise this question at a time when curating is everywhere being extended, encompassing every kind of organizing of any body of images or set of actions. The title of curator is assumed by anyone who has a more than minimal role in bringing

17 THE LURE TERRY SMITH

about a situation in which something creative celebrated international artistic directors of might be done, who manages the possibility of biennials and mega-exhibitions (most of whom invention, or even organizes opportunities for the have at least one part-time institutional base) consumption of created objects or orchestrates to do-anything interns whose actual working art-like occasions. Google invites us to curate our conditions make them foot soldiers in globalized profile, Picasa our very own image gallery. Certain capitalism's outsourced armies of cultural restaurants proudly display menus curated by a producers in whose ranks the thrill of being seen food expert. A leading department store boastfully to be doing something cool stands in for the slim advertizes the name of its curator of jewelry. A prospect of being paid, sometime, for their labors. gallery proudly acknowledges the designer of its elaborate opening event as its curator. On the Although museums have not been abandoned, front cover of a brochure, the Whitney Museum art curating is no longer necessarily tied to them, encourages members to curate their own 2012 except by conservative definitions that draw a Biennial by planning their attendance at the distinction between the curator devoted above all events constituting the exhibition. The underlying to the care and conservation of collections and thrust of these usages is made explicit in projects the exhibition maker who does only, or mostly, 2 such as net entrepreneur Steven Rosenbaum's 2 A distinction drawn, for what the name suggests. Instead, curating now example, by Robert Storr in encompasses not only exhibition making but also Curationnation.org, which is devoted to advising his essay "Show and Tell," in businesses on "How to Win in a World Where Paula Marincola, ed., What programming at many kinds of alternative venues, Consumers are Creators," curation being Makes a Great Exhibition? and is often adjunct to even the most experimental (Philadelphia: Philadelphia art space. A recent issue of the online magazine understood as aggregating "manageable, inviting, Exhibitions Initiative, 2006), 14. Museum-based exhibition On-Curating.org, for example, focuses on "aspects online experience" from within the "chaos of makers looking for an 1 of the public sphere, public space, and public art 1 Steven Rosenbaum, digital noise." introductory compendium of Curation Nation: How to Win sound advice about how to in seven different metropolises around the world," in a World Where Consumers conduct their profession in from Zurich through Istanbul to Shanghai and are Creators (New York: Within the art world, the title "curator" has an honorable fashion will find McGraw Hill, 2010), http:// for some time expanded beyond the confines this an extraordinarily useful Mexico City, with not even a passing mention of curationnation.org/pages/ essay, as are the contributions museums. 3 The entire schedule of performance aboutthebook. of those who care for collections and stage by Carlos Basualdo, Lynne exhibitions in art museums to include those in Cooke, and others to this art events constituting Performa 11 was, of museums who curate what are now regarded anthology. course, curated by director RoseLee Goldberg, as core programs, such as education. Museums 3 On-Curating.org 11, no. while nearly every event was itself curated by routinely name guest or adjunct curators who 11, "Public Issues," n.d., someone other than the performer. There were http://www.on-curating. fifty-five curators in all. Brooklyn-based artist organize exhibitions on invitation. This practice org/documents/oncurating_ and the myriad activities associated with it has issue_111l.pdf. William Powhida, scathing critic of the financial become itself a professional subfield under the domination of the contemporary art world, title "independent curator." An increasing number described his sensationalizing manipulation of of practitioners seek shelter under its bright­ decadent stereotypes to draw attention to his 2010 yet-fragile umbrella. These range from the few show at Marlborough Gallery, Chelsea, in these

18 19 TERRY SMITH THE LURE

terms: "Part of the goal was to use the press to about its suitability, "contemporary art" has 4 Cited in Carolina M. curate hype."4 If it is done in a certain way and been taken on as the generic name for the Miranda, "Biting the Hand that Feeds Them," Art News 10, according to a certain spirit, it seems that even post-postmodern art that began to emerge in no. 11 (December 2011): 89. the critical interrogation of curatorship itself can the 1990s, but that is only now receiving the be curated: for example, activist, performance serious and sustained attention that it demands artist, and academic Lissette Olivares was listed if it is to be taken as a critical, rather than a 5 as curator of "A Symposium of Curatorial 5 Avanessian and Skrebowski, merely journalistic or curatorial, category. Interventions," held at the Gallatin School of "Introduction," in Armen Avanessian and Luke Individualized Study, New York University, on Skrebowski, eds., Aesthetics Notice the instinctive distinctions drawn in November 17, 2011. and Contemporary Art (Berlin: this otherwise quite accurate remark about the Sternberg Press, 2011). My grumble about the time-lag use of the term "contemporary" for today's art Which way and in which spirit? A current remark is occasioned by the and the less accurate remark about the time and widely shared answer goes along these lines: fact that some of us have been attempting to theorize lag in critical discourse getting around to treating "Curating is caring for the culture, above all contemporaneity critically the contempqrary critically. Curators reading by enabling its artistic or creative transformers since the 1990s-in my case, in publications since 2001. this passage may find themselves appalled, to pursue their work. This facilitation is done, It is true, however, that this as I was, by its implication that their thought preferably, with empathy and insight, effort has only been taken up amounts to something equivalent to journalism more widely in the past two effectively, and with some style." Such an or three years. and that it cannot by categorical definition ever answer might serve as a job description within become critical. the Omigod, iwaslike whirl of getting on with the exigencies of this project while looking for In fact, the elements of contemporary the next one, but it does not identify the curatorial thinking can be readily identified. distinctive elements of contemporary curatorship Curators regularly speak about them, reflect and it does not qualify as a definition of on them, and share them with others. They contemporary curatorial thought. amount to a concrete mix of principles, values, ideas, rules of thumb, and ethical necessities. Some seem to doubt that curators are capable The seven points that English-born Australian of critical thought. curator Nick Waterlow, director of a number of Sydney Biennales, wrote in his notebook shortly Given the ageing of postmodernism as before his untimely death in November 2009 are a critical category, but also the absence a particularly poignant instance. Entitled, with of any plausible replacement for it, the dreadful prescience, "A Curator's Last Will and contemporary has become the default cultural Testament," they read: periodization for the artistically current. It is, however, notoriously difficult to specify 1. Passion; 2. An eye of discernment; 3. An the contemporaneity of contemporary art. empty vessel; 4. An ability to be uncertain; 5. Nevertheless, notwithstanding reservations Belief in the necessity of art and artists; 6. A

20 21 TERRY SMITH THE LURE

medium-bringing a passionate and informed understanding of works of art to an audience in ways that will stimulate, inspire, question; 6 A film by Waterlow's 7. Making possible the altering of perception. 6 partner, Julie Darling, entitled A Curator's Last Will and Testament, was screened in Values such as these resonate within more Sydney in April2012. programmatic efforts by curators to reimagine (See page 16) museums; write the history of curating; innovate within exhibition formats; extend curating into educational activity; and, in some cases, commit to activist curating in venues beyond the art world. These impulses are reshaping modern curatorial thinking. They are crucial to its efforts to become contemporary. Less obvious in the discourse as yet, but equally important for the future, are issues such as rethinking spectatorship, engaging viewers as co-curators, and the challenge of curating contemporaneity itself-in its present, past, and future forms.

What follows are five essayistic tracks into this volatile territory-each drawing freely on adventures in the art world during the past year as I responded to ideas, events, and encounters as they occurred to me-leavened with occasional retrospective diversions and with some attention to the burgeoning literature on curating. To get the flavor of what I am attempting, imagine "Thinking Contemporary Curating" as three words in Bruce Nauman's 100 Live and Die (1984), centerpiece of the Benesse House Museum on N aoshima island, in the Inland Sea of Japan, in which rows of sets of words on either side

of "and" flash on and off randomly in brightly Bruce Nauman, 100 Live and Die, 1984. Neon, 299.7 x 335.6 x 53.3 em. Collection Benesse Holdings, Inc, Japan colored neon. Think of the terms of my title as three ideas that flash independently, in bold isolation, but then combine into a number of

22 23 TERRY SMITH THE LURE

almost sentences, seemingly located at levels from Australia, courtesy of local donors, mainly below and more basic than those allowed by the artists. The images that had attracted me on that surfaces of spoken and written language, through stairwell were drawn from the gallery's unmatched which they often, these days with accelerating collection of William Blake's illustrations to insistence, break. Dante's Divine Comedy and its set of Blake's etchings of the Book of Job. Years later, Dr. I do not write as a curator by profession, Ursula Hoff, Curator of Prints and Drawings, having been involved in making just a few told me that she placed them there in the hope 7 My curatorial record exhibitions.? I am, rather, an art historian, critic, that they would do for the youth of the city is modest and has always 8 been undertaken as part of theorist, and teacher who is a professional 8 On Dr. Ursula Hoff, see exactly what they did for me. This is curating as productive collaborations: visitor to exhibitions and an amateur enthusiast Sheridan Palmer, Center of laying out the lure. The Situation Now: Object or about them. I have, over many years, learned the Periphery: Three European Post-Object Art?, inaugural Art Historians in Melbourne exhibition, Contemporary Art an enormous amount from the efforts of (Melbourne: Australian In these essays, I think alongside the thoughts Society Gallery, Sydney, July curators-from the most collection oriented to Scholarly Publishing, 2008). 16-August 6, 1971 (with Tony about curating expressed by a number of McGillick); Dreams, Fears, and those who would never think of setting foot in curators, looking for traces of the constituents of Desires: Aspects ofAustralian a museum. These reflections are a respectful contemporary curatorial thought, such as those Figurative Painting 194 2-62, S. H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, attempt to offer something in return. I owe my listed a few paragraphs back. These essays are Newcastle Regional Gallery, first glimpse of art to a curator. Coming from also a set of provocations. They urge curators to and Monash University Art Gallery, Fifth Biennale of a family for whom original art was out of the complicate thinking about "the contemporary" Sydney and Power Institute question, and going to primary schools where it and to grapple with the challenges of curating of Fine Arts, University of existed, unremarked, as reproduced decoration, I Sydney, 1984 (with Christine contemporaneity. Dixon and Virginia Spate); discovered art by what I thought was an accident. consultant curator, along At the age of nine, my father took me to visit with eight others, Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, the Museum of Natural History, Melbourne, to Queens Museum of Art, New see the dinosaurs and the effigy of Phar Lap, a York, 1999; and consultant to The Achievement ofAlbert great racehorse, when I noticed in a cabinet at Kahn, University of Michigan the bottom of some stairs what I thought were Art Gallery, Ann Arbor, 200 1. I have also served on colored sketches for comic books of the kind I the boards of the Museum of was making at home. Climbing up to the landing, Contemporary Art, Sydney, another cabinet housed fine line drawings of 1989-2000, the Australian Centre for Photography, extraordinary intensity. When I reached the Sydney, 1996-2000, and top of the stairs, looking for more, a wonderful the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, since 2002. vista opened in both directions: vigorous battle scenes, lustrous figures, and dreamy landscapes. This was the National Gallery of Victoria, then as now stocked with a major collection of art from Europe, courtesy of the Felton Bequest, and

24 25 n ~n§ ~~M 0 1-1 ('D ~ ~ ~ ~ s ~ • crqo~ M ~ ~- 0 1--'. M ~ 1-1 rJJ ·v ~ ~ ~ TERRY SMITH WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY CURATORIAL THOUGHT?

In a recent essay, "The State of Art History: Is it possible to be as concise about what Contemporary Art," I track the usage of the term contemporaneity-our current condition-is "contemporary" in art discourse during modernity asking of art curatorship? Perhaps it is. If so, and propose an art-historical hypothesis about the first step is to recognize that the object of contemporary art. I try to set out a framework contemporary curating is much larger than in which we might identify the precise shape of contemporary art. It must encompass all other the act of thought-the affective insight-that art: art from any and every past, current art that is contemporary life requires of its art, of the not contemporary, as well as projective, future art. criticism of that art, and of the history of that (Some artists, in fact many, envisage art that is not art: the (necessary, but never sufficient) kernel subject to this past-present-future triad. Curators from which, via many vicissitudes, art must be will follow; some are already on this trail.) Like made and criticism and history written. All kinds contemporary art, contemporary curating is of inherited inspirations, medium constraints embroiled in time, but not bound by it; entangled and possibilities, and many still-vital artistic with periodizing urges, but not enslaved to them; trajectories remain relevant to such making committed to space, but of many kinds, actual and writing. Nevertheless, our experience of and virtual; anxious about place, yet thrilled by contemporaneity-of the multiple, various ways dispersion's roller-coaster ride. It does not follow of being in time today, contemporaneously-is a set of rules; rather, it adopts an approach arising disposing art, criticism, and history in different from an emergent set of attitudes. Can we say that ways, and is requiring fresh concepts, mediums, the purpose of curating today is something like and languages. This is my conclusion: this: To exhibit (in the broad sense of show, offer, enable the experience of) contemporary presence Place making, world picturing, and and the currency that is contemporaneity as connectivity are the most common these are manifest in art present, past, and concerns of artists these days because multitemporal, even atemporal? It follows they are the substance of contemporary that what is understood in the art world as being. Increasingly, they override residual "Contemporary Art," while it does in fact inspire distinctions based on style, mode, medium, contemporary curating of all kinds, including and ideology. They are present in all art exhibitions of art from previous periods, does not that is truly contemporary. Distinguishing, bind curators to its time-bound imperatives. precisely, this presence in each artwork is the most important challenge to an art criticism By art, to put it at its minimum, I mean any that would be adequate to the demands intentionally created existent that, following of contemporaneity. Tracing the currency processes of searching self-reflection and 1 Terry Smith, "The State of of each artwork within the larger forces including consideration of previous and other Art History: Contemporary Art," Art Bulletin 112, no. 4 that are shaping this present is the task of imaginable art, embodies its being and establishes (December 2010): 380. contemporary art history. 1 its relationships with its anticipated viewers,

28 29 WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY CURATORIAL THOUGHT? TERRY SMITH

primarily through visual means. To exhibit of capturing it in writing for publication in the is-again following such processes-to bring a case of criticism and history. I am assuming that selection of such existents (along, perhaps, with exhibiting artistic meaning is the main task of the other relevant kinds), or newly created works of contemporary curator, to which all other roles are art, into a shared space (which may be a room, a subservient. site, a publication, a web portal, or an app) with the aim of demonstrating, primarily through the Yet while this might bring us to the same experiential accumulation of visual connections, kernel of meaning that I got to (I hope) for a particular constellation of meaning that cannot contemporary art criticism and history writing, be made known by any other means. Of course, it does not fully distinguish what is unique to such meaning may be parsed in terms other than curatorial thinking. To do so would be to identify strictly exhibitionary: art critical, art historical; the kind of act of thought, the sort of affective literary, philosophical, cultural; personal or insight, that contemporary life requires of curating in a way that it asks it of nothing else. 2 This is a more specific idiosyncratic; ideological or programmatic-the meaning than the "exhibition is is What, then, is contemporary curatorial thought? value" that Walter Benjamin list long. But exhibitionary meaning quite ascribed to all works of art specific because it is established and experienced that, as distinct from cult in the space of an exhibition, actual or virtual THINKING CONTEMPORARY ART objects within ritual settings, 2 are shown as art, and, since (virtual includes memory). The parsings, the early twentieth century, therefore, are translations from curatorial into In the Art Bulletin article, as well as in What is have been reproduced as Contemporary Art?, there is a crucial step in my widely disseminated images, other expository and interpretative languages. especially as photographs argument where I set out, under the headings and film. See his essay "The It follows from what I have said thus far 4 Terry Smith, What is "Curators in Contention" and "Curators Stage the Work of Art in the Age of Its Contemporary Art? (Chicago: Debate," the ways in which, in the years around Technical Reproducability," that, broadly speaking, contemporary curating University of Chicago Press, in Walter Benjamin, The aims to display some aspect of the individual 2009), 259-64. For classic 2000, Kirk Varnedoe, Okwui Enwezor, and Work ofArt in the Age of Its statements of each of these Nicolas Bourriaud offered competing perspectives Technical Reproducability and and collective experience of what it is, or was, positions, see Kirk Varnedoe, 4 Other Writings on Media, ed. or might be, to be contemporary. Thus there Modern Contemporary: on the prevailing direction of contemporary art. Michael WJennings, Brigid Art at MOMA since 1980 Their insistence, respectively, on a continuity of Doherty, and Thomas Y. is a spatial and phenomenological horizon for (New York: Museum of modernist values within contemporary art, the Levin (New Haven: Harvard contemporaneity within the exhibition: it is a Modern Art, 2000); Okwui University Press, 2008), 25ff. discursive, epistemological, and dramaturgical Enwezor, "The Postcolonial arrival of a worldwide postcolonial constellation, Constellation," in Nancy and the small scale yet portentous emergence of 3 This phrasing owes much space in which various kinds of temporality may Condee, Okwui Enwezor, to a comment by Joao Ribas, be produced or shown to coexist. 3 Enabling and Terry Smith, eds., a relational aesthetics, are examples of the kind who recalls in this context Antinomies ofArt and Culture: of curatorial insight into contemporary art that Le Corbusier's 1939 design viewers to experience contemporaneity in an Modernity, Postmodernity, and for a Museum of Unlimited exhibition setting (taking "exhibition" in the broad Contemporaneity (Durham, I am talking about. Note that these are different Growth, a maze-like structure N.C.: Duke University Press, kinds of ideas: the continuity of modernism is an developed from the spiral of a sense mentioned, and "setting" to mean any 2008), 207-34; and Nicolas seashell. A recent realization appropriate situated context) would, through this Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics idea about the current profile of art's autonomous of this concept would be (1998; Dijon: Les Presses du evolution (how art develops by persisting through SAANAS twenty-first century reading, be the curatorial equivalent of making Reel, 2002). museum at Kanazawa,Japan. contemporaneity visible in the case of art and all the non-art forces that act upon it); the

30 31 TERRY SMITH WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY CURATORIAL THOUGHT?

postcolonial constellation is an idea about the reading would have been impossible without the current overall shape of human history, to which insightfulness of curators such as these. Their artistic developments are assumed to be subject; thoughts became crucial elements in a broader while relational aesthetics is an art world tag, argument that I will now briefly summarize. a term for an emergent, imperfectly grasped, It begins from the realization that, during the but nonetheless interesting way of making art, 1980s and 1990s, art had come to seem markedly tossed around between artists, which after a while different from what it had been during the modern surfaces as one among a plethora of others to era: it seemed, above all, and before anything become a critical descriptor, and is then adopted else, contemporary. In art contexts, during the by a curator who believes that curating is a past century or so, these two terms were used practice of working closely with artists to enable interchangeably, usually with "contemporary" them to manifest their intentions in exhibitions in as the default, secondary reference to "modern." the optimal possible form. Recently, however, usage has nearly equalized 5 5 Searches through www. and the buzz is with "contemporary." I asked These three curators already knew, or quickly worldcat.org and other myself what kind of change was this: Illusory or databases conducted around recognized, that each of these tendencies­ 2000 showed interesting actual, singular or multiple? \Vhy did it happen? although vastly different in scale, ambition, and moments of prominence How deep does it go? \Vhy is it at once so easy but not priority for impact-required a distinct kind of exhibition "contemporary": the 1920s in yet also strange to itself, so estranged from itself? making, respectively understood as: expand the Europe, the 1960s throughout How come it had, so soon, a history or, already, white cube, decolonize the biennial, domesticate the world. A recent Google ngram search run by Joao many histories? In What is Contemporary Art? the gallery space. Taken together, in their very Ribas for the occurrence of and Contemporary Art: World Currents I offer an contention, these tendencies, along with the the terms "modern art" and "contemporary art" since integrated set of arguments in response to these ongoing evolution from institutional critique to 1900 across books in Google questions, each of them identifying a different Books shows the trend critical institutionality-to which I will return­ kind of contemporaneity w~thinthe totality of the in recent decades toward 6 shaped debate about what was happening in the quantitative near convergence world's art. years around 2 000 more than any other set of in recent years. ideas coming from art criticism, history, or theory 6 Terry Smith, Contemporary Here are these arguments, in a nutshell. A at the time, more even than the unthink that Art: World Currents (London: worldwide shift from modern to contemporary sustained the art market then and does so still. Laurence King; Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Prentice­ art was prefigured in the major movements in Hall, 2011). late modern art of the 1950s and 1960s, was At that time I understood these curatorial unmistakable by the 1980s, and continues to ideas as key indicators (among a plethora unfold through the present, thus shaping art's of others) of a larger art critical-and, I imaginable futures. These changes occurred and soon realized, art historical-idea: the continue to unfold in different and distinctive contemporaneousness of three powerful currents ways in each cultural region and in each art­ that, I believe, surge through the bewildering, producing locality around the world, the specific beguiling variety of contemporary art. My histories of which should be acknowledged,

32 33 TERRY SMITH WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY CURATORIAL THOUGHT? valued, and carefully tracked alongside insights into a cluster of values, practices, and recognition of their interaction with other local effects that were definitive ten or fifteen years and regional tendencies and with dominant art­ ago. For me, as a historian of contemporary art, producing centers. This diversity has fed into a my ongoing questions are these: How have the worldly (not global or world) contemporary art, currents I identified in 2000 unfolded since? within which, I suggest, three currents may be How have they changed relative to each other? discerned. Remodernist, retro-sensationalist, and What other kinds of art and art-like practices spectacularist tendencies fuse into one current, have emerged, and how do they impact on these which continues to predominate in Euro­ currents or suggest the growth of others? I American and other modernizing art worlds present my ideas in my teaching, in public talks, and markets with widespread effect both inside and in essays and books. Critical thought about and outside those constituencies. Against these, these phenomena demonstrated by inventive art created according to nationalist, identarian, curators (those already mentioned, as well and critical priorities has emerged, especially as Dan Cameron, Catherine David, Charles from previously colonized cultures. It came into Esche, Hou Hanru, Maria Lind, Hans Ulrich prominence on international circuits such as Obrist and many others) builds on their insights biennials and traveling temporary exhibitions: into the current state of art in order, above all, this is the art of transnational transitionality. to present them in the format of an extended, The third current cannot be named as a style, a expanded exhibition of some type. Exhibiting period, or a tendency. It proliferates below the might range from rehanging part of a permanent radar of generalization. It results from the great collection through various kinds of temporary increase in the number of artists worldwide and exhibition to the staging of an event, the creation the opportunities offered by new informational of a sequence of sites, or the orchestration of a and communicative technologies to millions discursive interaction, such as a public dialogue. of users. These changes have led to the viral The exhibition-in this expanded, extended spread of small-scale, interactive, DIY art (and sense-works, above all, to shape its spectator's art-like output) that is concerned less with high experience and take its visitor through a journey art style or confrontational politics and more of understanding that unfolds as a guided yet with tentative explorations of temporality, place, open-weave pattern of affective insights, each affiliation, and affect-the ever-more-uncertain triggered by looking, that accumulates until the conditions of living within contemporaneity on a viewer has understood the curator's insight and, fragile planet. hopefully, arrived at insights previously unthought by both. Continuing modernism, the postcolonial constellation, and relational aesthetics-the If we can say that a historian, critic, or signature ideas of the curators mentioned above­ theorist searches for a conceptualization (usually are labels for complex and subtle curatorial a mental image) that encapsulates the apparently

34 35 TERRY SMITH WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY CURATORIAL THOUGHT?

disparate elements of his or her analysis into a Questions of Practice places its emphasis definable "shape," a discursive figure that holds on and asserts the value of how concepts up when explicated (thought through, written surrounding curating are filtered through out, contested in dialogue, measured against lessons derived from repeated performance, the works) in detail, then the equivalent kind from thinking and doing, or, perhaps more of curatorial insight might be one that gathers accurately, thinking based on doing. It is all of the elements under consideration into a in practice that a priori theories and closely previsualized exhibition or, more explicitly, into argued theories meet with the resistance of a projective imagining of the viewer's journey the empirical and the contingent. Various through such an exhibition, or of the participant's factors, many beyond the curator's control­ likely accumulative experience if it is an event. insufficient budgets, recalcitrant lenders, While many curators still envisage one (ideal?) space constraints, competing institutional viewer's pathway, others prioritize a number of imperatives and priorities, ancillary resources possible routes for that viewer, or the passaging or the lack of them, to name a few-defy of numbers of viewers, moving in parallel or in the most carefully cherished ideas and concert. And of course these projective imaginings ideals. Curatorial intelligence, invention, are modified in the planning, in the mounting, in improvisation, and inspiration are developed response to the exigencies of available elements, and refined by effectively engaging and to the limits, but also the potentialities, of the reconciling these constraints as the inevitable time, space, and persons involved. The how limitations that accompany most exhibition 7 of selecting the artworks and other materials 7 Paula Marincola, ed., Ulhat making. and of mounting the exhibition as an arena of Makes a Great Exhibition? (Philadelphia: Philadelphia experience is as crucial as what it is for and why it Exhibitions Initiative, 2006), Every point made here is absolutely true. is consequential. 10. Another useful anthology As an ensemble of statements, however, this is Helen Kouris and Steven Rand, eds., Cautionary Tales: implicitly identifies curatorial thought with the To many curators, it is precisely the necessity Critical Curating (New York: conditions in which it is exercis~d.It is as if to of having to forge an exhibition in the crucible Apexart, 2007). "think and do" within such constraints is unique of practical contingencies that distinguishes what to curators. Yet the metaphorical comparisons for they do from the empathetic insight required of 8 Paula Marincola, "A List which Marincola and others reach suggest that of Questions Leading to the critic, the speculative bent of the theorist, More Questions and Some the same holds for many other kinds of cultural and the historian's commitment to arm's-length Answers," insert in Ulhat producer and interpreter. She cites Walter Hopps Makes a Great Exhibition? See research into art that is becoming consequential. also David Levi-Strauss, "The as saying, "The closest analogy to installing a (Let us leave aside for the moment that critics, Bias of the World: Curating museum exhibition is conducting a symphony theorists, and historians have their different, After Szeemann and Hopps," 8 but Brooklyn Rail, December orchestra." For his best analogy to exhibition equally demanding, pragmatic crucibles; thus this 2006-January 2007, http:/ making, Robert Storr cites the film director when distinction is poorly conceived.) In What Makes a brooklynrail.org/2006112/ it comes to ultimate responsibility (he or she art/. Great Exhibition? Paula Marincola argues that: who controls "the final cut"), while the process,

36 37 TERRY SMITH WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY CURATORIAL THOUGHT?

for him, is closest to that of "the literary editor Perhaps, if we take a historical perspective who negotiates with publishers and writers on on the Performa project, we will find it to be behalf of the 'best' version of the work that an interesting disagreement about what counts 9 Robert Storr, "Show and can be obtained."9 While these are suggestive as "visual art performance." Since 2005 these Tell," in Marincola, What biennials have consistently pursued and expanded Makes a Great Exhibition?, 14. analogies they do not, in themselves, isolate the unique features of curatorial thought. They are, Goldberg's conviction about the centrality of however, helpful in pointing to one of its essential performance art to the history of modernist avant­ (necessary, but not sufficient) qualities: whatever gardism and have sought to revivify the flagging else curatorial thinking is, it is always deeply energies of this tradition. She has done this embedded in the practice of actually mounting through deliberate commissions, thus infusing the exhibition. On analogy to the thinking within performance art as a category of practice with the a medium that artists must do in order to create a visual intelligence, production values, plentitude, work, it is praxiological. and embracing affect so evident in the works of certain instaHation artists, such as Shirin Neshat ART CRITICAL, CURATORIAL, AND and Isaac Julien, who have absorbed cinematic. HISTORICAL THINKING COMPARED poesis. Each iteration of Performa has sought to advance this quest by testing it against one or In her review of Performa 11, "So Big, Performa more of the other arts adjacent to performance Now Misses the Point," New York Times critic and by reviving a relevant historical connection: Roberta Smith chastises RoseLee Goldberg for contemporary dance and Happenings in 2007, not pushing hard enough at programming events architecture and Futurism in 2009, and theater that, in contrast to those that blur the boundaries itself in 2 0 11. As with any experimental event, between theater and the visual arts in some vague especially those that are festive in character, there or haphazard manner, fully exemplify and at is overreach, confusion, and failure. However, the same time push at the boundaries of "visual the interesting outcome, still emergent, is a art performance." This is an art critic holding compelling hybrid form, a kind of performative a curator to account, demanding explicitly that installation, the shifting shapes of which we can her exhibition be "a kind of argument about glimpse in William Kentridge's I Am Not Me, the what is and what is not performance art or, more Horse Is Not Mine, Mike Kelley and Mark Beasley's specifically, what constitutes a particular kind A Fantastic World Superimposed on Reality, both of performance art that is implied by the term from 2 009, or Ragnar Kjartansson's Bliss from 10 Roberta Smith, "So Big, 'visual art performance."'10 Is this a fair comment 2011, the 12-hour-long performance of repeats of Performa Now Misses the the last act, two minutes in duration, of Mozart's Point," New York Times, on a real shortfall within an enterprise that is November 26, 2011, C1 and essentially shared by both curator and critic or an The Marriage of Figaro. Is Smith sensing a project C11. example of an art critic missing a curatorial point? that, however successful at its best, is hitting up against the limits of its initial conception? Or must art-critical priorities always undervalue

38 39 TERRY SMITH WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY CURATORIAL THOUGHT?

the instinct within performance to exceed its own terms, an achievement of theatricality only possible if performance contrives to court failure? Has this instinct, so fundamental to theatrical performance, but questioned in favor of the neutral or the natural in late modern experimental performance art, returned to color contemporary performative installations?

What do examples such as these suggest for our quest to distinguish the qualities that are distinctive about curatorial thought? Provisionally and schematically, we might posit that art­ historical thinking typically seeks to identify the concerns, techniques, and meanings that shape works of art made during the time and in the place under consideration and that connect these works to the social character of their time and William Kentridge, I am Not Me, the Horse is Not Mine, 2010. Image from performance at the Museum of Modern place (how they come from it, what they return to Art, New York it). Taking an art-historical perspective also means constantly assessing the significance of each work or grouping of works in comparison to those made before and after in order to identify the same elements that preoccupy art historians profile of that time through its major and minor and critics, but differs in its relationship to the forms, styles, and tendencies. We might then say, elements. Above all, curating seeks to encourage again too schematically, that art-critical thinking or enable the public visibility of works by artists seeks to register the ways form is figured into either by assembling a selection of existing works meaning in individual works of art at the moment for exhibition or by commissioning works for that they are first seen by the critic, to compare display so that they may be seen by a disinterested these immediate impressions with memories of audience for the first time or be seen differently elements in works that the same artist has made to by such an audience because of the ways the works date, in others made recently by other artists, and, are presented. In this ideal, imaginary model, if relevant, those made earlier. If these reductive curatingfollows the response to a new work of art characterizations are (provisionally) acceptable, by the artist's immediate circle, and in many cases then perhaps we could go on to say that curatorial by those interested in making it available for sale thinking about the art of our time, or another or wishing to buy it (thus the word "disinterested" time, is also devoted to making manifest the in the previous sentence), but curating precedes art-

40 41 TERRY SMITH WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY CURATORIAL THOU critical response, audience appreciation, and the an interesting challenge for eventual assessment of art-historical significance. past the invitation to assist in immediation of consumerized Of course, each of these practices is deeply now offers (the much -cele dependent on the other. If we can say that from that Slavoj Zizek correctly cauc~ the 1940s to the 1960s critics such as Clement "interpassivity") and to curate Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg gradually which subjects exercise the kind.~ moved from working within what was essentially required by their contemnor a literary genre-a belle lettrist writing of essays, commenting on events, and reviewing of books-to providing regular re~ponsesto the shows presented (we would now say, softly, curated) by the art dealers shaping the emergent handmaiden not necessarily to commercial gallery scene in New York, then we an artwork (although that is be~uuu might also say that the height of Robert Hughes's often the case) but certainly to its art writing was achieved as he grappled with the beyond a narrow circle, to its blockbusters staged by the major public galleries world, its reaching (in recent time!!rd in the city during the 1970s and 1980s, notably audiences for art, and thus its circtrtiri those presented by curators such as William world at large. In this comparisoncaa Rubin, Walter Hopps and Henry Geldzahler. likely to be more tentative, more Critics active since then who seek to place their about their ideas of what is mean~t.~~.-. immediate responses within larger, unfolding the work than art historians and, • frameworks have focused on the biennials and still appreciable degree, more~;..,_ the internationalization of contemporary art (that specifying the significance of art can, and should, include readings of regional and They will certainly have a strong local creativity against these broader horizons). work is meaningful, albeit in TTT ..... ~~ Many other art writers have been content to defined. Storr puts it this way: serve as mouthpieces of the spectacularization promoted by the auction house-led art market. Unfortunately, this kind of writing prevails today in most art publications. Fortunately, it is being assailed on all sides: by a growing awareness of the historical resonances within contemporary art and by a dispersion of interest in art and visual creativity that spreads across social media. view-not to mention the While criticality drives the first of these, it is have been included, but were a rare, occasional spark in the second. Here is seen from a variety of pprc;:nP~~

42 43 TERRY SMITH WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY CURATORIAL THOUGHT? critical response, audience appreciation, and the an interesting challenge for curators: to think eventual assessment of art-historical significance. past the invitation to assist in the uncritical immediation of consumerized subjects that capital Of course, each of these practices is deeply now offers (rhe much-celebrated interactivity dependent on the other. If we can say that from that Slavoj Zizek correctly caricatures as the 1940s to the 1960s critics such as Clement "interpassivity") and to curate experiences in Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg gradually which subjects exercise the kinds of creatiyity moved from working within what was essentially required by their contemporaneity. a literary genre-a belle lettrist writing of essays, commenting on events, and reviewing In this context, the exhibition is a selective of books-to providing regular responses to offering of art to an audience, to art's future, and the shows presented (we would now say, softly, to the world to come. The curator is a crucial curated) by the art dealers shaping the emergent handmaiden not necessarily to the creation of commercial gallery scene in New York, then we an artwork (although that is becoming more might also say that the height of Robert Hughes's often the case) but certainly to its becoming public art writing was achieved as he grappled with the beyond a narrow circle, to its entering the art blockbusters staged by the major public galleries world, its reaching (in recent times) the expanding in the city during the 1970s and 1980s, notably audiences for art, and thus its circulation to the those presented by curators such as William world at large. In this comparison, curators are Rubin, Walter Hopps and Henry Geldzahler. likely to be more tentative, more provisional Critics active since then who seek to place their about their ideas of what is meaningful about immediate responses within larger, unfolding the work than art historians and, to a lesser, but frameworks have focused on the biennials and still appreciable degree, more circumspect about the internationalization of contemporary art (that specifying the significance of art than art critics. can, and should, include readings of regional and They will certainly have a strong sense that the local creativity against these broader horizons). work is meaningful, albeit in ways yet to be fully Many other art writers have been content to defined. Storr puts it this way: serve as mouthpieces of the spectacularization promoted by the auction house-led art market. A good exhibition is never the last word Unfortunately, this kind of writing prevails today on its subject. Instead it should be an in most art publications. Fortunately, it is being intelligently conceived and scrupulously assailed on all sides: by a growing awareness of realized interpretation of the works selected, the historical resonances within contemporary one which acknowledges by its organization art and by a dispersion of interest in art and and installation that even the material on visual creativity that spreads across social media. view-not to mention the things that might While criticality drives the first of these, it is have been included, but were not-may be a rare, occasional spark in the second. Here is seen from a variety of perspectives, and that

42 43 TERRY SMITH WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY CURATORIAL THOUGHT?

this will sooner or later happen to the benefit as a second order of knowledge awaiting the of other possible understandings of the art in viewer who is imagined standing in front of the question. In short, good exhibitions have a work in the context of an exhibition staged by the definite, but not definitive, point of view that curator or as a participant in the work enabled by invites serious analysis and critique, not only the curator, if that is its form. Within the space of of the art but also of the particular weights the exhibition itself, the curator's interpretation and measures used in its evaluation by the remains unstated, implicit. In its explicit form, it 11 Storr, "Show and Tell," 20. exhibition maker. 11 usually becomes available to the viewer later-in the catalogue, for example-as a supplement to Critics and historians, in comparison, the understanding that he or she already arrived at seek stronger, more definite statements about while taking in the exhibition. the nature and the significance of the art they encounter and study. Curators do everything While this sequence of events may benefit the necessary to bring works up to the point where exhibition visitor, it could be seen to disadvantage they may become subject to critical and historical the curator. As many curators say, the preparation judgment. They exercise a very similar repertoire for an exhibition is governed by two deadlines: of skills and competencies and are moved by a 12 It is disappointing that that of the catalogue being sent to the printer and closely similar set of passions and commitments, there is so scant a record of that of the opening night. The gap between these audience responses to art but curators, on this reading, are appraisers, exhibitions. Curators talk dates can run to many months. This schedule not judges. Nor are they mainly chroniclers, about it all the time as the deprives the curator of the chance to learn from holy grail of their profession, as art historians must be (even of the present but do very little beyond the exhibition itself and to share that knowledge and especially of the immediate past). Curators filing press responses and with the visitor. No matter how well the curator taking record photographs certainly may leap to attempt both judgment to actually examine it in knows the work that is to be shown, no matter and claims of significance, but will do so with a depth and detail. This is how suggestive the model, however experienced left to the education and he or she may be, when writing in the catalogue conscious sense of how provisional their proposals press people. Spectatorship must be. seems a notional, not an the curator can state only a belief about the subject actual, repository of value. of the exhibition. No claim to be able to share The real thrill seems to have What is being emphasized from these remained with conceiving and its exhibitionary content can plausibly be made. In perspectives is curating as a profession, one installing an exhibition. Is practice, most curators write as if this gap did not there a parallel to architects' that proffers art and offers fresh work or a fresh taste for photographs of their exist. To others, it is a root cause of the reticence presentation of known work. To whom? To buildings made just after the that pervades their texts. It is extraordinary that moment of completion and what? Making the work available to appreciation, before their intended users, a widely shared solution to this problem has not understanding, interpretation, and impact. A who are, at least ostensibly, yet evolved. 12 the primary motivators of the What is the role of wall texts within this corollary is holding back from articulating any design, occupy them? The of these things at the time of presentation and equivalent for curators is the model of curating? Modernist conceptions of the being reticent about doing so in the place of folio of generalized shots of autonomy of the art object, expressionist theories room installations, the major presentation. Interpretation remains in the wings, information value of which of instinctive, unmediated empathy, and the more

44 45 TERRY SMITH WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY CURATORIAL THOUGHT? is to record which artwork general reluctance among curators to, as it was on the mobile devices that increasing numbers of hung where. It is telling that often put, "interpose themselves between the no practice of photography visitors bring to galleries, which deeply mediate has evolved to capture the artwork and the viewer's direct experience of it" viewers' reactions to the work on display. Making actual experience of walking led to decades during which exhibitions received through an exhibition. The exhibitions will more and more become an activity closest thing to that ideal no more than the most minimal title (and then conducted at least in part online. Viewers will might be the virtual tours a purely descriptive one) and nothing more was expect a variety of voices in the exhibition, as they offered by various galleries and by services in some cities to be found inside a gallery than wall labels with do in most contexts outside of it: there will be (which tend to be short-lived). the name of the artist, title of the work, its date fewer divisions-territories, hierarchies-within The Google Art Project, and Vernissage T\1, are interesting of making, and perhaps its medium, always in the consumption of culture. This will diversify the attempts to offer online access plain, nine point type. With the recent boom in curator's role and spread laterally his or her voice. to quite different aspects of audiences (the majority of which are unfamiliar the exhibitionary complex, but remain rather limited with art) and the increasing display of art that is The same will be true for art critics and art relative to actual experience. unfamiliar even to knowledgeable visitors, the My text editor suggests that historians. So far, I have been writing as if there e-publishing might eventually provision of information within exhibitions has were basic, core, ongoing tasks for all art world create a space that could become essential. Even when the work of the players and that these tasks, however intimately address this issue. Perhaps so, when the time comes exhibited artist or group of artists is well known, interdependent, are also to an important degree that most relationships have most exhibitions open with a general statement as distinctive in each case. I have concentrated become e-relations, including exhibiting visual art (at that to the main content and relevance of this exhibit. on curators, critics, and historians, but similar point mostly a matter of If, as we have already established, the curator is a comments could be made about the roles of image-exchange, with objects creative producer of exhibitions, it is a deception remembered as holographic artists, gallerists, agents, collectors, auctioneers, specters). to pretend to be absent. museum directors, arts administrators, and so on. Our challenge is to identify what is ongoing Therefore, this raises a question about and what is contemporary about each of these the second-person voice used in nearly all tasks-that is, what remains and what has changed introductory texts, an issue that can only during the shift from modern to contemporary be resolved in the circumstances specific to art. Given the drift of exhibitionary venues toward each exhibition. In general, the challenge is more and more experimental, open, virtual, to calibrate the information precisely to that and temporary forms, and the constant, even needed for each stage of the experience: thus accelerating switching of roles between players the general introductory text, the room text from every node, we know that these efforts to or those related to a cluster of works, the wall identify core concerns and distinct competences labels beside individual works, and, sometimes, a for each player are doomed to become outdated take-out reflection. Many of these tasks are now as soon as they are identified. Nonetheless, they migrating to rentable audio devices, where they are actualities, and we must see them straight if are supplemented by the voice of the curator (or we are to find answers when we ask: Is this or often the director, but sometimes, regrettably, that change, however inevitable it might seem, a the collector). They are also appearing, via apps, change for the better?

46 47 TERRY SMITH WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY CURATORIAL THOUGHT?

THE GRAMMAR OF THE EXHIBITION (it.presumes reflexive movement through that setting). Thus each particular exhibition would When Storr wants to specify "the basics" of be an array of speech acts; the exhibition is, in exhibition making, he is led to this merging this analogy, a conversational setting. A more of terms: accurate metaphor would call up the semantics of the exhibition, that is, how it generates meaning Now to the basics. The primary means by the relationships between its parts. This for "explaining" an artist's work is to let obviates the elaborations necessary to keep alive it reveal itself. Showing is telling. Space the metaphorical connection between languages is the medium in which ideas are visually and exhibitions, one that almost no one pursues phrased. Installation is both presentation anyway. From this perspective, the most useful and commentary, documentation and essay in this issue is Mary Anne Staniszewski's interpretation. Galleries are paragraphs, the Installation view, Reactions, account of the curatorial thought underlying walls and formal subdivisions of the floors are Exit Art, New York, 2002. Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo's exhibitions Curators: Jeanette lngberman sentences, clusters of works are the clauses, and Papo Colo at Exit Art since the early 1980s. and individual works, in varying degrees, operate as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, Putting it this way (as philosopher and critic and often as more than one of these functions Peter Osborne does in his opposition to the very 13 Storr, "Show and Tell," 23. according to their context. 13 idea, expressed in the same issue of Manifesta) moves us away from the tendency toward rule­ He does not pursue this metaphor any further. bound formalism that is ip1plicit in most appeals A recent issue of Manifesta Journal attempts to to systematic structures such as grammar, and do so by devoting itself to "The Grammar of instead toward a critical curatorial tendency 14 "The Grammar of the the Exhibition."14 It features not only a variety that is closer to the spirit of Maria Lind's original Exhibition," Manifesto Journal, no. 7 (2009/10). of ideas about what the underlying structures of proposition. exhibition making might be but also some quite antithetical perspectives concerning whether Is there something we can call "the anything approximating a grammar is possible. curatorial"? Something that manifests itself in Efforts to define a grammar are attempts to the activities of a curator, whether employed discern whether there is a set of rules (syntax) that or independent, trained as an artist or an art works on the raw material (art practice, or some historian? It is clear that curating is much aspect of the world, seen as a generative base) to more than making exhibitions: it involves shape the language of the exhibition (on analogy commissioning new work and working to written or spoken language). Of course, for beyond the walls of an institution, as well as curatorship every aspect of these operations what are traditionally called programming is spatial (it presumes a setting-physical, and education. But can we speak of "the mental, imagined, affective) and then temporal curatorial" beyond "curating in the expanded

48 49 TERRY SMITH WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY CURATORIAL THOUGHT?

field": as a multidimensional role that includes of engaged public education is sought instead. 15 Maria Lind, "The critique, editing, education, and fundraising? 15 The critical aspect of her concept comes out more Curatorial," Artforum 68, distinctly in a recent formulation: no. 2 (October 2009): 103. Reprinted in Brian Kuan The changed conditions within which Wood, ed., Selected Maria Lind curators practice is evoked here, but this does I mean a practice that goes beyond curating, Writing (Berlin: Sternberg as Press, 2010), 63. little more than name as curating a number which I see the technical modality of of activities that have been to date considered making art go public in various ways. subsidiary, feeder, educational, or publicity- "Curating" is "business as usual" in terms of putting together an exhibition, organizing roles that may or may not be carried out by . . . . the curator, depending on time, inclination, a commission, programming a screening and the availability of others to take them on. series, etcetera. "The curatorial" goes Acknowledging the inspiration of site-specific further, implying a methodology that takes practices, context-sensitive art, and institutional art as its starting point, but then situates it critique, Lind goes on to evoke the importance of in relation to specific contexts, times, and Maria Lind at the panel consciously "curating" these activities in order to questions in order to challenge the status discussion "Extending quo. And it does so from various positions, Infrastrutures, Part 1: link "objects, images, processes, people, locations, Platforms & Networks," histories, and discourse in physical space like such as that of curator, an editor, an educator, March 12, 2011, The Now a communications person, and so on. This Museum conference, March an active catalyst, generating twists, turns, and 10-13, 2011, presented by the tensions." This description could apply to populist means that the curatorial can be employed, or PhD Program in Art History programming, such as the Mixed Taste series at performed, by people in a number of different at the CUNY Graduate 16 Center, Independent Curators the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, but capacities in the ecosystem of art. For me, International, and the New Lind has something more serious in mind: there is a qualitative difference between Museum, New York curating and the curatorial. The latter, Rather than being the product of the curator's like Chantal Mouffe's notion of the political labor per se, curating is the result of a network in relation to politics, carries a potential 18 16 See Carol Kino, "Puppies, of agents' labor. The outcome should have 18 Lind, in Jens Hoffmann for change. Paintings, and Philosophers," the disturbing quality smooth surfaces and Maria Lind, "To Show New York Times, March 4, of or Not to Show," Mousse 2012, AR23. being stirred-a specific, multilayered means Magazine, no. 31 (November lrit Rogoff offers a more deconstructive 2011), http://www: version, one that moves the idea more firmly of answering back in a given context. Rather moussemagazine.it/articolo. than representing, "the curatorial" involves mm?id=759#top. beyond its efforts to first recognize, then presenting-it performs something in the "unbound," the various art world roles: here and now instead of merely mapping it 17 Lind, "The Curatorial," 65. from there and then. 17 In a sense "the curatorial" is thought, and critical thought at that, that does not rush to A distinction between curatorial and art­ embody itself, does not rush to concrete itself, historical thinking is being suggested here. A but allows us to stay with the questions until closeness to artistic creativity and perhaps to that they point us in some direction that we might

50 51 TERRY SMITH WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY CURATORIAL THOUGHT?

not have been able to predict .... Moving Here is another recent example of such to "the curatorial," then, is an opportunity thinking: to "unbound" the work from all of those categories and practices that limit its ability to Among the more puzzling preoccupations explore that which we do not yet know or that of dialogues around art during the past 19 Irit Rogoff, "Smuggling: 19 which is not yet a subject in the world. Irit Rogoff at the panel five years has been "the contemporary," a An Embodied Criticality," discussion "From Discursive http://eipcp.net/ seemingly self-evident description that, to Practices to the Pedagogical transversal/0806/rogoff1/ These formulations have achieved some Turn," April29, 2010, date, has operated largely in reverse-that en. This is very close to her currency among curators-rightly so, because Deschooling Society as description of turning, and has been put forward, in other words, a conference, April29-30, 2010, of contemporaneity. See they pick up on major shifts in art practice, in meaningful denomination and subject presented by the Serpentine of "Turning," e-flux journal 0 art institutions, and in the constantly changing Gallery and the Hayward inquiry in advance of any actual, deductive (November 2008), http:// Gallery/Southbank Centre, www.e-flux.com/journal/ conditions of those who work within them and in relationship to the surrounding world. London turning/. relation to them. The hope, it would seem, is that the term employed by itself and evocatively will help "What would it be like to stay with the tease out some general understanding of the questions, as Rogoff suggests, and to follow them conditions for art making and its reception 20 Joao Ribas, "What to Do as far as they can go? Perhaps it would enable today. Yet, unlikely as this might seem, the With the Contemporary?," 3110, Ten Fundamental us to be a little more exact as to how we might impulse is easy enough to fathom: artists, art Questions of Curating, ed. define the kind of curatorial insight needed historians, curators, and critics alike wish to ]ens Hof&nann (Milan: now. This is what I will attempt to do in these find historical trajectories in art today where Contrappunto S.R.L., 2(H 1). Elena Filipovic's excellent essays. I believe that something like this is what none immediately announce themselves; contribution is full of exact Joao Ribas is seeking in his essay ""What to Do a disorienting air of atemporality prevails formulations that share much 20 with the approach taken in With the Contemporary?" He is alert to the instead. Indeed, the imperative for historical these notes. See "What is variety of ways of being in time that constitute precedence or distinction becomes only more an Exhibition?," 6/10, Ten Fundamental Questions of contemporaneity as I have described it. He urgent in light of the speculative obsessions Curating, ed.]ens Hof&nann ends up, as many others do, with Agamben's with the "new" in a radically expanded art (Milan: Contrappunto S.R.L., 2011). (and Zizek's, but first Nietzsche's) paradox that system whose borders have become so porous the most contemporary person is he who is as to erode the very ideation of art. If there 21 Giorgio Agamben, "What most out of joint with his time.21 Archiving this is the Contemporary?," in is a substantive sense of "the contemporary" "What is an Apparatus?" and contemporaneity from a position alert to its to be employed here, it is likely to be the Other Essays (Stanford, Calif.: darknesses is Ribas's recommendation. To me, "out-of-jointness" that philosopher Giorgio Stanford University Press, 2009), 39-54. Agamben's paradox marks both the strength Agamben ascribed to the term: Something and the limit of the most advanced thinking on is contemporary when it occupies time these matters. disjunctively, seeming always at once "too soon" or "too late," or, more accurately in 22 Tim Griffin, "Out of terms of art now, seeming to contain the seeds Time," Artforum 50, no. 1 22 (September 2011): 288-89. of its own anachronism.

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These remarks open Tim Griffin's review of curating is merely the provision of "reflections"­ the 2011 Venice Biennale, from which he goes on more acutely, see-through mirrors-of "the to contrast the "quietness" with which Central times." This is not what is meant by curating Pavilion curator Bice Curiger displays this contemporaneity. condition to the urgency with which Francesco Bonami presented it in 2003: "The volatile Ribas notes the practice of a number of symptoms of Bonami's exhibition have by now artists who are concerned with tracking the settled into general conditions. Like so much "modalities of the past in the present," and that art today, each individual work might reflect the some recent exhibitions-Formalismus at the cultural moment, but one asks whether reflection Hamburger Kunstverein (2004), Modernism as is enough, or whether there is some other job left a Ruin at the Generali Foundation (2009), and 23 Ibid., 289. to do."23 Modernologies at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2009)-amount to "an ongoing 25 Asking about "some other job" is, I believe, 25 Ribas, "What to Do With process of archiving the contemporary." He more challenging than retreating into Agamben's the Contemporary?," 90. takes these artists and philosophers, such as paradox, which is limited by its being an evocation Agamben, as raising a challenge to curators: "It of the affective experience of an intellectual's is a fundamental necessity of curating to situate experience of contemporary conditions that, itself within those contemporaneities that remain 26 however poetic and accurate, has little to say 26 Ibid., 91. in darkness, untheorized and unlived." This gets about many other ways of world making and us closer to one of the key imperatives driving unmaking that are in play today. The philosopher curatorial thought in contemporary conditions. Its is, however, absolutely right about the world boldness and grit expresses much about the kind condition that has thrown down this kind of of attitude needed now. But Griffin's comment challenge to (European and U.S.) intellectuals: reminds us that, while the darkness is, necessarily, a component of the deep dwelling of such The fall of the Soviet Communist Party thought, it is not its only one, nor its end point. and the unconcealed rule of the capitalist­ democratic state on a planetary scale have This brief review of some of the key ideas cleared the field of the two main ideological behind current talk about curating indicates the obstacles hindering the resumption of a vitality of the discourse, its close engagement with political philosophy worthy of our time .... art practice, and its willingness to grapple with Thought thus finds itself, for the first time, changes in contemporary life. It also suggests facing its own task without any illusion and that the ground of what it is to be a curator in 24 Giorgio Agamben, "Notes without any possible alibi. 24 contemporary conditions is shifting, a fact that on Politics," in Means Without Ends (Minneapolis: University is glimpsed in the discourse, but remains dimly of Minnesota Press, 2000), Griffin's question is one for artists, certainly. understood. We need to push a little harder at this 109. It is also a question for curators, otherwise darkness and see what light might flash within.

54 55 2. Shifting the Exhibitionary Complex

Can we ever get beyond the essential conservatism of displaying works of art in conventional, dedicated spaces?

-Paula Marincola, What Makes a Great Exhibition?, 2006 TERRY SMITH SHIFTING THE EXHIBITIONARY COMPLEX

Sites of exhibition are the most visible elements arts projects in their apartment and the courtyard of the infrastructure within which art curating of a building in the Galata section of Istanbul, is practiced today. We might set them out as a continuing their work since then in more mobile spectrum, an array, ranging from the traditional and virtual formats, as well as pursuing projects (in the minimal sense of having been around in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin. Since 2003 in the longest) to the most recent, and from those Yangon, Myanmar, Networking and Initiatives thoroughly invested in landmark and location in Culture and the Arts (NICA), founded by two to those that presume mobility and transience. artists, Jay Koh and Chu Yuan, has nurtured a At one end, there is the Metropolitan Museum variety of local possibilities and international .,;ttl,.· '!ilr, ·\_,;, of Art, New York: a mother-ship among connections for Burmese artists and spun off megamuseums that-like its few comparators, other independent arts spaces. Meanwhile, in such as the British Museum, London, and -~a~, East Liberty, Pittsburgh, the Waffle Shop is ;:.~· ...... ltjl'·#i!i;/ilo'iliil. the Louvre, Paris-has recently included a community building, consciousness raising contemporary art within its treasure troves, location, performance space, TV studio, and blog Fa~adewith banners, detail of main entrance and steps, The appointed a specialist curator of twentieth Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski, site, conceived and run by artists associated with Metropolitan Museum of Art, and twenty-first century art (Sheena Wagstaff, Conflict Kitchen, Pittsburgh, New York, 2006 Carnegie Mellon University, that also offers a full who arrived from the Tate Modern), oriented Pennsylvania, 201 0-present menu of edible waffles. A related project, the its collection rooms toward making vivid the take-out restaurant, Conflict Kitchen, only sells contemporary circumstances surrounding food from nations with which the United States 1 the creation of at least some of the items, and 1 Oda Projesi's website http:// is in conflict. heralded, where appropriate, the continuing odaprojesi.blogspot.com. See also Claire Bishop, "The So­ vitality of cultures that had previously been cial Turn: Collaboration and What are the exhibitionary venues that fill out regarded as having reached their aesthetic Its Discontents," in Mischa the infrastructural spectrum between these two Rakier and Margriet Schave­ highpoints at some time in the past. We could maker, eds., Right About Now: ends? Having begun with the universal history place at the other end of the spectrum venues Art and Theory Since the 1990s of the art museum that holds pride of cultural that focus on the work of one artist or even, as (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2007), 58-68. On NICA, see Grant place in most metropolitan centers, we soon shift is the case with The Artist Institute, New York, Kester, The One and the Many: our gaze to the huge variety of more specialized a slowly changing program of exhibitions of Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context (Durham, collections-the period museum, the national just one work of art at a time. Yet the real other N.C.: Duke University collection, the geopolitical area or civilization is not concentrated versions of the same thing Press, 2011), 145-5,3. Kester museum, the city museum, the university gallery, discusses a number of similar but the proliferation of open-ended curated projects. On the Waffle Shop the art school gallery, the private collection Oda Projesi (Room Project) projects, short and longer term, that seek to and Conflict Kitchen, see museum, the museum of modern art, the single collective (Gunes Savas, Secil http://waffieshop.org/; and Yersel, and Erden Kosova), work from within the creativity already present http://www.conflictkitchen. artist museum, the museum of contemporary art, October 2005 in the everyday life of small, but constrained, org/. the one-medium museum, and spaces dedicated communities. Between 2000 and 2005 Oda to large-scale commissioned installations. Projesi (Room Project), a collective formed by Continuous with these, in well served cities, are three women artists, staged thirty community various venues that do not have collections as

58 59 TERRY SMITH SHIFTING THE EXHIBITIONARY COMPLEX their basis but are devoted above all to changing these shows sometimes include among the works exhibitions: Kunsthalles, alternative spaces, for sale a number of not-for-sale works borrowed, artist-operated initiatives, satellite spaces, and or loaned for a fee, from museums. In their Miami the exhibition venues of art foundations (some location, Mera and Don Rubell regularly present of which have collections). Finally, we visit theme shows drawn from their collection: their institutes of various kinds that include exhibitions focus, since 2000, on young artists from Los as one part of their research, publication, and Angeles helped propel that city to its current educational activities, and check out temporary return to prominence as an art center. Certain and online sites. With these last, and with many private collectors have always known that they can emergent quasi-institutions, the focus shifts from influence the development of art itself, not just physical location and on-site continuity as the the direction of the market, simply by the weight literal grounding to situations in which the event of their attention: Charles Saatchi is merely the and the image prevail over place and duration. most notorious recent example of the collector Each of these venues or operations has distinct become museum director. There are many features and purposes, and they often spring up precedents, going back to the first large-scale in response to perceived shortcomings of already private collections made available to select circles existing institutions. At the same time, traffic of invited viewers that were assembled during the in ideas, objects, and people has always flowed seventeenth century by certain Italian cardinals between them. These days it is becoming very and German princes. Closer to our times, and dense indeed. still very influential, are public museums oriented around the values of the original collector, such as To this long-and, it must be said, the Menil Collection and the associated Rothko impressive list (how many other arts spin off Chapel, Houston, which are constantly curated to new infrastructure so often, and so variously?)­ promote relationships between "Art, Spirituality, we should add the growing interest of many Human Rights," so dear to the founders, John and commercial galleries, collector museums, and Dominique de Menil. art fairs in certain kinds of public-oriented, "art historical" exhibitions. This has not displaced Some collectors are beginning to see that their basic commercial orientation, nor is it they can become not only museum directors likely to, given the seemingly endless boom (at and de facto curators but artists as well. Toronto least at the top of the market), especially for foundation directorY dessa Hendeles curates contemporary art. With a narrower set of costs 2 Ydessa Hendeles, cited exhibitions aimed at creating "an experience in Robert Fulford, "On the that precludes words" by establishing "new and far greater financial resources than most neurological path through public museums, Gagosian Galleries has taken to Ydessa Hendeles's museum," metaphorical connections" between artworks presenting "museum-quality" shows of artists such Globe and Mail, November 16, that she collects for this purpose.2 Since 2001 she 1999, http://www.robertful­ as Piero Manzoni, Yayoi Kasuma, Pablo Picasso, ford.com/Ydessa.html. has worked on Partners (The Teddy Bear Project), and Lucio Fontana. Staged by in-house curators, a vast accumulation of found photographs that

60 61 TERRY SMITH SHIFTING THE EXHIBITIONARY COMPLEX

include teddy bears, usually from family albums compiled between 1900 and 1940. In the versions ..... shown at the Haus der Kunst, Munich (2003), ·,.,"'' .: and the Gwangju Biennale (2010), the multilevel ~,'i~ '~ ·- central rooms were filled with thousands of these Ydessa Hendeles, Partners images. Installation style, they were preceded by (The Teddy Bear Project), 2002. smaller rooms that displayed a range of vernacular Installation view, Haus der Kunst, Munich, November 7, artifacts including a 19 5Os Minnie Mouse doll and 2003-February 1, 2004 artworks such as a small Diane Arbus self-portrait taken in 1945, and were followed by a room that included one item that the viewer approached from behind: Maurizio Cattelan's Him (2001), a child-sized figure, on its knees praying, with the unmistakable features of the adult Adolf Hitler. In this installation, one of Cattelan's typical visual one-liners suddenly resonated with multiple, 3 Among many reviews, most 3 darkly explicit meaning. Ydessa Hendeles, The Wedding (The Walker Evans Polaroid Project) with Roni Horn. Installation view, Andrea Rosen evocative is John Bentley Gallery, New York, December 10, 2011-February 4, 2012 Mays, "That Century: Notes on Partners," Canadian Art In 2011 Hendeles was invited to curate an online, May 2, 2004, http:// exhibition in the Chelsea space of the dealer www.canadianart.ca/art/ features/2004/05/02/195/. Andrea Rosen. The only stipulation was that the affective distance between this imposing she include at least one of the Polaroid images environment and the modest Polaroids through that Walker Evans shot in the last year of his selections that laid out a set of affinities. life (1973-74), which the gallery was licensed to sell. The result was The Wedding (The In the first room visitors were greeted by a Walker Evans Polaroid Project), shown between model of a cooper's workshop crafted in France December 2011 and February 2012. Subtitled in the nineteenth century set on a child's table A curatorial composition by Ydessa Hendeles, she manufactured by Gustav Stickley around 1904. used certain items from her own collection and The center of the main space was dominated by a borrowed others from museums and dealers: the monumental birdhouse made in England in 187 5 final installation included eighty-three Evans from mahogany and wire, around which w€re Polaroids, including some from the Metropolitan arrayed, pew-like, wooden child's settles based Museum of Art. The Rosen Gallery consists of on a design by Stickley. The Polaroids lined each a narrow entrance area that opens on to a large wall of the main space, their subdued grays, blues, central space topped by an impressive skylight and greens offering mute witness to the existence mounted on a wooden frame and supported elsewhere of the buildings or architectural details by steel beams. Hendeles cleverly negotiated that Evans recorded. Imitation architecture

62 63 TERRY SMITH SHIFTING THE EXHIBITIONARY COMPLEX squared off against reproductions of absent disparate elements. These elements are in architecture, leaving an emotional gulf no way aligned art historically, and I regard between them. each as a fundamental component of the composition that bears no substitution, not The gap was filled by imagery of movement, 4 Ydessa Hendeles, "Protha­ even from the same body of work. 4 lamium," The Wedding (The of living things, albeit elusive ones. The cardinal Walker Evans Polaroid Project), points of the main room were marked by four A curatorial compositionby A clearer statement of the contemporary pairs of images from Roni Horn's Bird series Ydessa Hendeles (New York: convergence of artistic and curatorial impulses Andrea Rosen Gallery, 2011), shot between 1998 and 2007 that show close-ups 2. See also her "Curatorial and constraints is difficult to imagine. Every key of birds seen from behind, their folded wings Compositions," The Exhibi­ artistic idea since conceptualism and minimalism tionist, no. 5 Oanuary 2012): betraying no signs of their identity, except as 47-52. is amalgamated into a seamless, pure, J. K. singular, and singularly beautiful, creatures. We Rowling-kind of "curatorial composition." That now understand why the first room contained this statement comes from a collector who sees two photographs: Eadweard Muybridge's 1887 no boundaries between any place on the spectrum record of the running flight of the adjutant bird is typical of our times. Nor is it a surprise that and Eugene Atget's photograph, taken around Hendeles's projects excite the interest of young 1900, of a shop front, an old boutique on the Quai curators more than most other models out there. Bourbon, Paris. In the doorway of the latter we glimpse the blurred shadow of a young girl. Is it THE EXHIBITIONARY COMPLEX she who has imagined these spaces? Is it her house of memory, her dream world, into which we have How does this Houdini-like identity-swapping been invited? of roles across the spectrum relate to the idea of "the exhibitionary complex"-as described by In the explanatory booklet (designed Bennett, historicized by Lorente, and theorized somewhat like a child's notebook), Hendeles is by Duncan and Wallach, among many others­ quite explicit about her process: that undergirded the growth of modern art, linked it to the modernizing city, provoked the avant­ In my practice, my approach is to develop a garde into existence, and subsequently sustained site-specific work, conceiving and executing 5 See Tony Bennett, The Birth modernism for many decades? 5 These authors of the Museum: History, Theory, identified the system that was initiated most each show as an artistic embodiment of the Politics (London: Routledge, particular exhibition space. I start with the 1995), esp. chap. 6, and his influentially for Europe and its cultural colonies context and search for ways to develop a important chap., "The by the addition, in 1818, of an annual showing Exhibitionary Complex," relationship with it that is expressed through in Bruce W Ferguson, of new works to ongoing displays of works from layered metaphorical connections. I use Reesa Greenberg, and the permanent collection at the Luxembourg Sandy Nairne, eds., Thinking an artistic process to create a site-specific About Exhibitions (London: Palace, Paris. Entrants to the Museum of Living curatorial composition that interweaves Routledge, 1996); J. Pedro Artists were chosen by members of the Academy, narratives from disparate discourses using Lorente, Cathedrals of Urban a professional organization led by artists that

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Modernity, The First Museums operated under the patronage of the Emperor to change, tends, like all institutional structures, of Contemporary Art, 1800- and later the state. Works deemed worthy of 1930 (Aldershot, U.K.: Ash­ to prioritize self-perpetuation, slow down time, gate, 1998). See also Emma entering the national collection were passed and incline toward the securities of repetition, are Barker, ed., Contemporary Cul­ on to the Louvre Museum ten years after the tures of Display (New Haven, sets of practices, such as those that Lind labels Conn.: Yale University Press, artist's death, while others went to provincial "the curatorial," examples of emergent, more 1999); and Carol Duncan and museums, to storage, or were returned to the Alan Wallach, "The Universal inventive, and more critical alternatives? Or are Survey Museum," Art History artist's estate. Artists sold works from these annual they the latest supplement to a structure quite 3,no.4(1980):448-69.See exhibitions or direct from their studios. By the capable of generating its own transformations-as also Carol Duncan, Civiliz­ mid-eighteenth century in England a number ing Rituals: Inside Public Art of it has done in the past, is doing now, and will do Museums (London: Routledge, independent auction houses had been established for the foreseeable future? 1995); and Alan Wallach, Ex­ and commercial galleries began appearing hibiting Contradiction: Essays on the Art Museum in the United throughout Europe in the 1890s. This apparently A third, pivotal element pushes itself into States (Amherst: Univer- competitive, but mostly cooperative system is the sity of Massachusetts Press, this mix: the repeated mega-exhibition, or 1998). A similarly skeptical core of the multimuseum and gallery spectrum biennial, now so widespread as to have become spirit informs Shaked's useful that we have inherited. Role swapping has been survey of ethical questions an institutional form in itself. We may situate in museums, especially in endemic since the beginning, especially as the it, logically, in between concrete institutions, the U.S.: Nizan Shaked, system was adopted in city after city throughout such as museums, and supplementary ones, "Something out of Nothing: is as Marcia Tucker, Jeffrey Deitch, the modern world. This still occurring, new such as Kunsthalles and online sites. Indeed, and the De-regulation of art distribution centers are created; China during biennials have evolved into internally diverse the Contemporary-Museum the 2000s is a striking example, with the Arab Model," Art and Education, displays that occasionally, but regularly, spread April 7, 2012, http://www. states in the Middle East the most recent. themselves out across the range of exhibitionary artandeducation.net/paper/ something-out-of- nothing­ venues of the city that hosts them, occupying marcia-tucker-jeffrey-dei tch­ Yet the framework is changing, leading each site, making each site different from what and-the-de-regulation-of­ us to ask why, and what would change for the the-contemporary-museum­ it normally is, while also connecting them, at modeV. better look like? If French artists in the early least for the duration. Biennials, therefore, may nineteenth century faced the problem of how be considered structural-they have become to effectively distribute their work and solved it fundamental to the display of contemporary art. by institutionalizing, proliferating, and varying For historical art, the parallel is the blockbuster. the venues for doing so, artists in the Middle Since Treasures ofTutankhamun, which toured East today are small players in local art worlds England, Europe, Japan, and the U.S. between that seem primarily dedicated to selling works 1972 and 1979, attracting millions, blockbuster drawn from all over the world to targeted buyers exhibitions have become so regular a part of from their region and to anchoring large-scale museum programming that they, too, may be real estate projects. In the longer-established art considered structural. The major museums centers, the issue for curators is rather different. seem to be incorporating the mega-exhibition If the selecting, collecting, and exhibitionary into themselves: they have become so large, so ensemble, however chameleon-like in its capacity internally various, so full of attractions, and so

66 67 TERRY SMITH SHIFTING THE EXHIBITIONARY COMPLEX crowded that we might regard these institutions issues while continuing to ask: What kinds of themselves as megamuseums. contemporary curatorial thought are in play in each instance? Our galleria-like infrastructural array might, therefore, be seen as concentrating its energies THE EXPERIENCE MUSEUM into three realms: the institutional, the alternative (or the supplement), and the link. These are the In recent times the status of the museum as forms taken by its urge to territorialize. At the a site of permanent collection is gradually same time, as we have shown, there is an incessant shifting to one of the museum as theater for urge on the part of each type of venue and each large-scale traveling exhibitions organized exhibition format to imitate the vital practices by international curators and large-scale of the others, to absorb some of their enabling installations organized by individual artists. energies (in the case of institutions), to counter Every exhibition or installation of this kind is them with previously unimagined activity (in the made with the intention of designing a new case of the alternatives), and to embody projective order of histo~icalmemories, of proposing versions of both (in the case of the biennial). Stasis new criteria for collecting by reconstructing is always vitiated by change; storms are vital to the history. These traveling exhibitions and regular patterning of the weather. To fully grasp installations are temporal museums that the settings in which curating is done, we need 6 Boris Grays, "On the New," openly display their temporality.6 to keep in mind the interplay between the art in Art Power (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008), 40. system's slow moving yet constant regeneration Boris Grays's remarks in his book Art Power of structures and its fast moving proliferation of highlight the modern transformation of the art artworks and exhibitionary ideas. museum from that of repository of a collection to site of exhibition, its transmogrification from In this section, I will reflect further on this a place that held history in stasis, presenting it as interplay by thinking first about museums, then a stilled panorama, to one in which everything­ about biennials. What has been happening to including the collection rooms-has the status of both, and what do the changes mean for curating? an event in the process of happening. As he goes We have come to a pass in which the museum on to say, contemporary art may be distinguished seems no longer to be the limit setter, perhaps from that which prevailed during the modern not even the default, for contemporary art and era precisely in its core commitment to radical contemporary curating. Biennials have become temporality: it makes every element in the the major vehicles of contemporary art, yet their situation utterly and only temporary. very success has brought problems for curators, their primary custodians, not least the challenge In the modernist tradition, the art context of constant reinvention. Are these the indicators was regarded as relatively stable-it was the of infrastructural shift? I will explore these idealized context of the universal museum.

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Innovation consists in putting a new form, a new thing, into this stable context. In our time context is seen as changing and unstable. So the strategy of contemporary art consists in creating a specific context that can make a certain form or thing look other, new, and interesting-even if this form has already been collected. Traditional art worked on the level of form. Contemporary art works on the level of context, framework, background, or of 7 7 Ibid., 40. a new theoretical interpretation.

This is an acute description of key aspects of the situation-not least because in late modern and contemporary circumstances, and in line with a history I will sketch in the next essay, when it comes to the radical renovation of exhibition forms, curators have mostly followed artists.

Museums everywhere use these strategies to "contemporize" their offerings. A spectacular instance is Tate Modern's framing, since 2000, of its collections of modern art with both spectacular (in the Turbine Hall) and less in-your-face, but still agenda-setting works of contemporary art (in the entrance and exit rooms of each of the themed floors). On a quite different scale, and far away, the idea of the temporary exhibition is recast in projects such as One Day Sculpture. Curated by David Cross and Claire Doherty, it consisted of twenty installations, performances, events, or demonstrations, each mounted for twenty-four hours, in twenty different places Olafur Eliasson, The Weather Project, 2003. Monofrequency lights, projection foil, haze machine, mirror foil, across the two islands of Aotearoa New Zealand, aluminum, and scaffolding, 26.7 x 22.3 x 155.4 m. Installation view, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London during an eight-month period from August 2008. This was an innovative way of splitting the difference between a place-bound medium

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and a cultural setting saturated by multiple and Chelsea, London, and Pinault at the Palazzo fragile temporalities. No surprise that productive Grassi and the Customs House, Venice), or by tensions between these two factors shaped each of carving out art parks in the jungle (Bernardo Paz 8 I explore Tate Modern's the twenty exhibits. 8 at Instituto Inhotim, Minas Gerais, Brazil). contemporizing strategy in What is Contemporary Art?, chap. 4. See David Cross and In my description of the three currents that The second current, which I call the Claire Doherty, eds., One Day predominate within contemporary art, I highlight Sculpture (Bielefeld: Kerber, transnational transition, has found its ideal vehicle 9 2009). how each was hatched within, latched onto, or 9 "Transnational" is a term in the biennial. Local-international exchange coevolved with the disseminative forms most adopted by all sides of these is built into the biennial form, as is the regular equations: it is, for example, suited to its needs. Thus remodernism prevails favored by the Guggenheim repetition of the temporary survey exhibition. Thus at universal art history survey museums when for its Abu Dhabi project. the biennial has suited Western institutions that they address contemporary art and it drives the wish to sample art from everywhere else, yet not desire of museums of modern art to remain necessarily collect it: Venice, Sao Paulo, Sydney, contemporary, as it does those museums of the list goes on. (Pittsburgh, beginning in 1896 and contemporary art (the majority) that see their role thus the second biennial, has consistently collected as updating audiences on the continuous output from its Carnegie Internationals.) In mirror of art (rather than grappling with the challenges reversal, it suits artists from elsewhere who wish of contemporaneity). Retro-sensationalism is the to sample art from the West, but not necessarily preferred mode for the private museums of those reproduce it. Havana, beginning in 1984, remains collectors who identify with its maverick-in-the­ the leading instance of this (unaligned, Third citadel attitude-famously Charles Saatchi, Eli World) perspective. As well, the biennial offers Broad, and Franc;ois Pinault. Their enterprise international standard models for art producing is echoed, on a smaller scale, by many of those locales that wish to build and maintain permanent newly arrived to riches in Russia, China, the infrastructure. At the same time, it substitutes for Middle East, and elsewhere. For example, the the grand exhibition in locales that either do not Museum of Old and New Art(MONA) that wish or are unable to present them as a matter of opened in Hobart, Tasmania, in 2010, to house course. This has been a winning combination for the collection and present the lifestyle of gambler the global trafficking in art. David Walsh. Emergent during the wealth concentration enabled since the 1980s by the Museums are not the preferred disseminative widespread embrace of neoliberal economics, the modes for the under-the-radar proliferators new collectors have been drawn to spectacular whose activities constitute the third current in art and to high-profile public presentations of contemporary art. Nor are biennials. Preferences their collections, whether as part of well-known are for the Internet, direct interactivity, alternative museums (Broad at the Los Angeles County spaces, and temporary settings-all constantly Museum), grand renovations of older structures changing, all entirely experimental. Museums (Saatchi at the Duke of York's Headquarters, of any kind are OK, if they are interesting for

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whatever immediate purpose, but are not special of cultural administrators and museum directors, in the sense that helping to shore up their perhaps more so than that of curators. But these continuity has any priority. While they remain, in roles are shifting now, especially as a generation the public mind at least, the singular gatekeepers of curators who have found their vocations within for what counts as art, they seem increasingly the shape-shifting spectrum that I have been openhanded-at times, frantic-about what they describing take on higher positions within arts will encourage into their portals. Meanwhile, institutions. third current prosumers care less about their output being labeled as "art" and more about One extremely popular response has been whether it is of interest to their peers. Some to turn museums into centers of culturtainment curators, consciously turning away from the art (ugly w~rd,awful phenomenon). Carsten Holler world's fawning dependence on the 1%, actively pinpoints the context: seek to add artistic energies to social changes that are occurring in new contexts, such as the We're in the middle of the "rule of populism." 10 These phrases invoke Occupy movements. Most curators working today All the big museums all over the word are famous essays by, respectively, are aware that the most interesting, rapid, and showing contemporary art. Contemporary Duncan F. Cameron, "The Museum, a Temple, or the perhaps the most profound kinds of change in art galleries are opening everywhere and Forum," Curator: The Mu­ their field of practice are happening inside the becoming larger. In the 1970s contemporary seum Journal in 1971 and in art was a specialist many people UNESCO's Journal of World three currents I have identified and along the fault domain-not History in 1972, reprinted in lines between them. were interested in it. Now it's impossible to Gail Anderson, ed., Reinvent­ open a lifestyle magazine that does not contain ing the Museum: Historical and Visitor to Carsten Holler, Contemporary Perspectiveson THE MUSEUM QUESTION Experience, New Museum, something on contemporary art. Today, the Paradigm Shift (New York: New York, October 26, though, it's necessary to go out of the museum, Altamira Press, 2008); and 2011-January 15, 2012. to avoid the mainstream to produce new, Stephen Weil, "From being Taking these changes together-they are, after Posted on New Museum about something to being for all, occurring contemporaneously-we might wiki, http://experiencewiki­ more radical concepts. The museum has done someone: The ongoing trans­ newmuseum. tumblr.com/ its job, and~as ·an artist, the benefit you get formation of the American ask: Are they threatening to make ruins out of post/16820185024 Ganuary museum," Daedalus 128, no. 3 all kinds of museums and exhibition spaces, no 2012) from making more and more museum shows (Summer 1999): 229-58, re­ printed in Lois Silverman, ed., matter where they fall within the spectrum? If is decreasing. It's not possible to make things The Social Work of Museums so, is the best response one of defiant resistance, in a museum that are radical enough to have (New York: Routledge, 2010). a powerful influence, because the important For an analysis of the mis­ total acceptance, or calibrated change mixed sion statements of sixty U.S. with carefully chosen continuity? If the latter, things have already been done. And that's not museums, see Andras Szanto, only pertinent to art shows and museums. It's "Sixty Museums in search of precisely which elements should go into the blend a purpose," Art Basel Miami and how should they be blended? Has the move something you see in many domains in society, Beach daily edition, December from "temple" to "forum," from being "about 11 Carsten Holler, "Art and including science, where all the big discoveries 1, 2011, http://www.theart­ Entertainment: Forum," have already been made. 11 newspaper.com/articles/Sixty+ something" to being "for somebody," gone too Australian and New Zealand museums+in+search+of+a+pur far, or nowhere near far enough? 10 Putting these Journal ofArt 11 (2011): 74. pose/25146. questions in this way is to deploy the language

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He should know. Along with others, such as more popular than ever before, but most of them Maurizio Cattelan, he is an expert supplier of are more banal than ever before." (There are, of contemporary art as entertainment-it was the course, many kinds of banality: for example, that of entire object of his New Museum exhibition in the lowest common denominator of taste and that late 2011, as it was of Cattelan's contemporaneous of the conformist parrot of high fashion.) Borja­ show uptown at the Guggenheim. He is wrong, Villel traced a three-stage history, or evolution, however, about there being nothing "big" left to from the exclusivist modern museum (which used discover. We are just beginning to grasp the depth white cube transparency and immediacy to display of complexity within contemporaneity and how to a linear art history to a specialist and a generalized live with it. public), through the inclusive postmodem museum (which mixed styles, mediums, and chronologies Holler paints a picture of the triumph of the and used marketing to sell multiculturalism as a conformist contemporary-a nightmare scenario. product to audiences), until now, at a moment of Of course, it is extremely pleasant for most of crisis for societies and museums, when there is a those involved, as seductive as the "death rooms" need to rethink the presumptions about property in THX 1138 (1971), George Lucas's first, and and patrimony embodied in collections and to in many ways best, film. This mood is captured treat them instead as an "archive of the commons." in Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska's This archive should be displayed, he believes, as video Museum Futures: Distributed (2008), which a repository of other narratives, from oral ones to features an interview between an archivist and multiple modernities, as stories of belonging, i~ -- the director of the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 13 For videos of The Now with works of art treated as relational objects, that Museum presentations, go to is, objects to which people can relate in a variety set in 2058, the centenary year of the museum. http:/I curatorsintl.org/events/ 13 Neil Cummings and Marysia Their exchange reviews a "history" of the Museet the_now_museum. In Spain, ofways. Lewandowska, Museum up to that time, with the years between now these issues were raised in the 1995 exhibition Ellimits Futures: distributed, 2008. In a setting as vast and varied as the Reina Video still. HD video, 32 min. and then imagined as a struggle between open del museu (The End(s) of the inventiveness and managerialism during which the Museum) curated by John G. Sofia, itself a minicity, one already experiences Hanhard and Thomas Keenan museum is put partially into the marketplace to at the Fundaci6 Antoni something like this incessant interplay between become a quasi-private, quasi-public institution. Tapies, Barcelona. They are deinstitutionalization and reinstitutionalization. elaborated in Franciso Baena, One becomes gradually aware that the managers Manuel Borja-Villel, Chema More broadly, for the past thirty years, unevenly have absorbed institutional critique into their Gonzalez, and Yolanda across art worlds around the globe, we have been Romero, eds., 10,000 francs experiencing the contemporaneity of the three official language while never having become at reward (The Contemporary Art all critical. It is as if a time-transported Andrea Museum, dead or alive), confer­ types of museum that Borja-Ville! outlines. These ence proceedings (Barcelona: 12 The text of the interview Fraser is interviewing her double. 12 exhibitionary venues register the three currents in Ministry of Culture, State opens the centenary volume, art that I have distinguished. Museums across the Anna Tellgren, ed., The Corporation for Spanish Cultural Action Abroad and History Book (Gottingen, At The Now Museum conference, held in spectrum busily strive to adapt to the unfolding of International University of Germany: Steidl; Stockholm: New York in May 2011, Reina Sofia director each current, while also showcasing instances of Moderna Museet, 2008). Andalusia, 2009). Manuel Borja-Ville! remarked, "Museums are the complex interactions between them.

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At the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 12:00-3 P.M., except Fridays: 4:00-7:00 in recent years, a quite different approach P.M., Rirkrit Tiravanija has been attempted. Updated in 2010, its (clay, wood, wire, styrofoam, plastic, cast Mission Statement declares its primary goal as iron, fabric, aluminum, synthetic polymer remaining "the foremost museum of modern paint, ink, paper, and brass wire) Bleekmen, ·art in the world," but then goes on to add Huma Bhabha "and contemporary" to every subsequent use (plywood, shoes, animal fiber, thread, and of "modern" in the more specific bullet points sheepskin) Atrabilious, Doris Salcedo 14 CollectionsManagement about how it will remain at the forefront. 14 In its Policy, The Museum of Modern public advertising, MaMA pitches itself, in every Art, October 5, 2010. www. In other words: This is what you can expect moma.org/docs/ explore/Col­ respect except for its brand name, as a museum to see when you come to the museum now. And: lectionsMgmtPolicyMoMA_ of contemporary art. An advertisement in the Octl O.pdf+Museum+of+Mod How more contemporary can you expect us to ern+Art+New+ York+ Mission+ New York Times (November 18, 2011, C27) has be? Subtext: Do you really want us to be more Statement. this header: "MaMA Contemporary Galleries contemporary than this? 1980-NOW Over two hundred new works in all mediums ALWAYS NEW ALWAYS ON VIEW" Elsewhere, I have tracked, month by month These messages overlaid or bordered an image of from its reopening in November 2004, MaMA's picture frames in which the titles of these works struggles with its core wish to continue to be were giVen: the defining museum of modern art in the world while at the same time remaining open to, even (16mm film transferred to video [black and being at the forefront, but not quite at the cutting white, silent]) Deadpan, Steve McQueen edge, of collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting 15 (pantyhose and sand) R. S. V.P.l, Senga N egudi 15 In What is Contemporary contemporary art. I identified some of the (video [color, sound]) Histoire(s) du Cinema Art?, chap. 1, I pay particular factors preventing the successful performance of attention to the succession of (Chapters JA and JB); Jean-Luc Godard exhibitions in the second floor this double act: the presumption that the only (candies, individually wrapped in silver "contemporary" galleries. contemporary art worthy of consideration was cellophane [endless supply]) Untitled that which evidently extended the innovations of (Placebo), Felix Gonzalez-Torres twentieth century modernism, the token inclusion (glass, painted steel, distilled water, plastic, of a small number of artists outside the modernist .,. and three basketballs) Three Ball 50150 mainstream and from cultures outside of Europe Tank (Two Dr. J. Silver Series, One Wilson Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled and the U.S., the territoriality of departments 1992 (Free), 1992/2007. Silvershot), Jeff Koons based on traditional artistic mediums, the Refrigerator, tables, chairs, (refrigerator, table, chairs, wood, drywall, infrequent showing of art using new and digital wood, drywall, food, dimensions variable curry, and lots of people) Untitled (Freel media, the constant foregrounding of the Still), an interactive installation of museum's own history, and incessant curatorial vegetarian Thai curry served free of deference to precedence and institutional charge in a gallery, Nov 17-Feb 8, sanction.

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one hopes inevitably, these galleries are shedding their modernist residues, gradually becoming contemporary spaces. (At least in the first rooms: to date, this sense is rarely sustained around the entire suite of galleries.)

The Saatchi Gallery, London, for all of its fast-schedule exhibiting of current art, its clever educational programming, and sexy website, remains a profoundly conservative operation, a kind of museum of retro-sensationalism in frenzied (yet in effect freeze-frame) motion. Its founder, Charles Saatchi, recently announced that he was fed up with the self-aggrandizing, pig­ ignorant, money-grubbing spectacularization of the international art world, which has become, in his words, "the sport of the Eurotrashy, hedge­ fundy Hamptonites; of trendy oligarchs and oiligarchs; and of art dealers with a masturbatory Contemporary: Inaugural Installation, Museum of Modern Art, New York, November 20, 2004-July 11, 2005 level of self-regard." Any reader of The Art Newspaper can fill in the names. Most would include his among them. Saatchi's view ofcurators Since then it has been fascinating to watch betrays one basic reason for the conservatism of the museum wrestle with these self-imposed and his gallery: increasingly anachronistic limitations and find ways of modifying them, with varying degrees of For professional curators, selecting specific success. There is support for research, archiving, paintings for an exhibition is a daunting and publication involving aspects of the art of prospect, far too revealing a demonstration other regions: Eastern Europe, China, Japan, of their lack of what we in the trade call an Venezuela, and Argentina, to date. This has taken "eye." They prefer to exhibit videos, and those the form of a series of anthologies of documents, incomprehensible, postconceptual installations though rarely, as yet, exhibitions. A brace of and photo-text panels, for the approval of 16 contemporary curators have been appointed in 16 Charles Saatchi, "Charles their equally insecure and myopic peers. recent years. Their impact can be seen in some Saatchi: The hideousness of the art world," The Guardian, of the temporary exhibitions and in the changing December 2, 2011, http:// Presumably he does not see as curatorship installations of the collection shown in the www.guardian.eo.uk/com­ his personal approval of every purchase added mentisfree/2011/dec/02/ second-floor galleries. Slowly, spasmodically, but saatchi-hideousness-art-world. to the collection, his firm policy settings for the

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exhibition programs of his galleries, his walk­ past might be understood, its future imagined. around review of the hangings, or his oversight of (That would be an ethnographic museum, one publicity. For him, the wealthy amateur-inspired that offered, from some point in the future, by a genuine love of art and possessed of a pure and inevitably shaped by its own anxieties, an "eye"-transcends the callow collectivism of archaeological profile of this present.) The professionals. "exhibitionary complex" of most cities with any degree of art infrastructure already does The New Museum, New York, founded something like. this-implicitly, in a prefigurative in 1977 as a gallery devoted entirely to way. Better that contemporaneity is experienced contemporary art-in explicit contrast to spatially and contingently, rather than give the MoMA-has, since moving into its new building mystifying illusion that it is accessible, in its on the Bowery in 2007, tended toward showing entirety, at one site. If it were, would it not, in mainly work from the first and third currents, such a place, at such a moment, instantly freeze with isolated elements of the second thrown up, become past history? Does such a modernist in. It often does so in three layers-historical, fear still haunt contemporary conditions? contemporary, and online-usually presented on three separate floors. I celebrate its Museum as I share Borja-Villel's hope that. big public Hub initiative, which, while it might seem to the art museums are evolving in the direction that fleeting visitor like just another floor, is a clearly he.indicates, toward open-hearted archives of delineated space devoted to the museum's strong the commons, but we also have to recognize the commitment to connecting itself to art spaces powers of recuperation, spectacle, and recursion around the world. Begun in 2006, it explores that Holler identifies when it comes to museums possibilities for new art, events, and exhibitions of such scale. As well, we need to be aware of via residences and exchange programs between the powerful persistence of national cultural the museum and a small number of partners in elites and acknowledge that, in many parts of the Seoul, Mexico City, Cairo, and Eindhoven. It is world, "the commons" is itself a highly contested no accident that the museum's second Triennial, space. In some repressive situations, it exists only The Ungovernables, was curated by Eungie Joo, as a dream; in others, such as the Middle East, director and curator of education and public it is turning into transformatory action (and programs, who also directed the Museum as Hub, provoking extreme reactions). Throughout South which was the catalyst for the Art Spaces Directory, America today people's movements are becoming a resource that profiles four hundred art spaces in governments, rather than taking government­ 17 with, so far, less extremely repressive reactions 17 See EungieJoo and Ethan ninety-six countries. Swan, Art Spaces Directory than those that followed the Cuban Revolution (New York: New Museum/ of 1959. Even in the United States, where ArtAsiaPacific, 2012). On the I am not advocating a three-floor museum, Museum as Hub, see http:/I each level tracking how one of the currents consumerist comfort squares off in an uneasy www.newmuseum.org/learnl alliance with fearful citizenship, spontaneous museum_as_hub. i~unfolding through the present and how its

82 83 TERRY SMITH SHIFTING THE EXHIBITIONARY COMPLEX combustion is proving more and more possible­ as we have seen as the Occupy movements have spread throughout the country.

A sidebar of the transnational transition is the current convergence between art and ethnography museums. For some of the latter, in Europe especially, as the West surrenders its presumptions of superiority, contemporary art has become the one best hope for their continuation. In Cologne early in 2011 one could visitAfropolis at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum (of Ethnography), an engrossing exhibition in which displays of daily life in six African cities were anchored, and, in fact, dominated, by specially commissioned installations by artists from each city. In comparison, an exhibition Slum-TV in collaboration with Hawa Essuman, Sam Hopkins, Chris King, Charles Matathia, Upgradation, 2010. of Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art at Mixed media, dimensions variable. Installation view, Afropolis, Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museums, Cologne the nearby Wallraff-Richharz Museum (of Art) seemed aestheticized by being presented almost entirely without context, despite its promising title, Remembering Forward. Both kinds of museum were subjecting themselves to certain modes of aesthetic deinstitutionalization while at the same time using traditional display frameworks to try to tame the cuckoo that they had invited into their nests. Meanwhile, at the Kolumba Museum in Cologne, Peter Zumthor's superb renovation of the St. Columba church site enables a display that mixes, with considerable elegance and restraint, modernist and contemporary art with religious artifacts to create spaces that, while resonant with an unspecific, rather amorphous spirituality, are constantly interrupted by aesthetically arresting artworks. (Those more spiritually or religiously inclined will of course have different experiences Infinity Space Expands, Room 13, Kolumba Museum, Cologne, September 2007-August 2008. Left, Untitled, St Michael of Bavaria, or Suabia, c. 1620-30. Limewood. Center, Joseph Maroni, Yelluw Painting, 1982. in such spaces.) Acrylic on canvas

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In such situations we can see the operations endeavors. Enwezor's and Bonami's shows of institutionalization, deinstitutionalization, seemed to confirm that the biennial, with and reinstitutionalization that is the "natural" its global reach and its comparative freedom life, the breathing in and out, of any institution from institutional red tape and historical or system. In orthodox managerial terms of baggage, provided a unique opportunity reference, it is up to directors, boards, and to experiment freely with curatorial managers at all levels to decide on the balance arrangements (international teams, shows between these forces, one that ensures the growth within shows, artist-curated shows) and (or at least survival) of the institution by enabling exhibition structure (geographically dispersed a comforting degree of continuity, while inviting satellite programs; conferences, symposia, and in calibrated doses of disruption, which is then publications), and to seek out practices that incorporated into a narrative of reinvigoration, museums were too provincial or cautious to adaptation, and regrowth. All of this would be embrace .... The idea that these biennials were easy to manage if the social locus of the museum constituting an alternative public sphere, one and the pattern of change in society at large were in which visual culture offered compelling relatively constant. But they are not; they are propositions for a world in disarray, imbued becoming less so, everywhere. In Cologne, for the exhibitions with an energizing sense that 18 example, the programs of the three museums just 18 Claire Bishop, "Safety in the stakes were high. mentioned are markers in an ongoing ideological Numbers," Artforum 50, no. 1 (September 2011): 276-77. contestation that is city wide, regional, and often Not so anymore, at least not in Venice. national, in its dimensions. This is to be expected The past three Biennales have been laid out in any city of any size. in zones that echo at least two of the currents constituting contemporary art. In the Central THE BIENNIAL IDEA Pavilion, we find a reach for a "universal" theme within contemporary art (some version of Art in What of the biennial, tsunami-like in its recent General) that usually implodes into a melancholy ubiquity? Claire Bishop opens her review of the remodernism, but retro-sensationalism has mostly 2011 Venice Biennale with this comment: been avoided (except when offered in quick and easy doses, as last year in Cattelan's ubiquitous Who would have thought, eight years ago, pigeons, entitled Others, themselves an expanded that the biennial as an exhibition form had version of his 1997 installation, then entitled peaked? In hindsight, it appears that Okwui Tourists). A "global" glance outwards at the world Enwezor's Documenta 11 in 2002 and from the Euro-American center usually prevails Francesco Bonami's "Dreams and Conflicts: at the Arsenale. Transnational transition in The Dictatorship of the Viewer" in Venice various "official" forms appears in the National the following year may have marked the outer Pavilions (that divide between aspiration to enter limits of what is possible in these sprawling the Central Pavilion and indignant opposition

86 87 TERRY SMITH SHIFTING THE EXHIBITIONARY COMPLEX

to any such ambition). There is a spilling over of and the Caribbean, as well as to reach out laterally transnationality throughout the city, including to other "non-aligned" nation states around the 21 in the hired out palazzos, where smaller nations 21 See Rosa Artigas, Bienal world. As Carlos Basualdo observes, "In all 50 Anos (Sao Paulo: Funda~ao these shows, however, diplomacy, politics, and show their art and better-resourced ones show Bienal de Sao Paulo, 2001); their "unofficial" art, while dealer coalitions Walter Grasskamp, "'Degen­ commerce converge in a powerful movement, the show quasi-official art. Meanwhile, at the Palazzo erate Art' and Documenta 1: purpose of which seems to be the appropriation Modernism Ostracized and Fortuny, Belgian collector Axel Vervoordt Disarmed," in lrit Rogoff and instrumentalization of the symbolic value of demonstrates what universality really looks like and Daniel]. Sherman, eds., art."22 Museum Culture: Histories, when it comes to art. (Or at least he attempts to Discourses, Spectacles(Min­ do so, with diminishing returns-as a blinkers­ neapolis: University of Min­ He goes on to suggest that the proliferation nesota Press, 1994), 163-94; off comparison of ARTEMPO [1997] and TRA Roger M. Breugel, introduc­ of biennials in the past thirty years-which itself [2011] will attest.) Art made within the third tion to Roger M. Breugel, seems to constitute either a second wave or a Ruth Noack, and Georg new phase in their history, one now coming current appears sporadically, usually as an echo or Schollhammer, eds., Documen­ 19 19 For an example of my an absent option. ta 12 Magazine, No 1-3 Reader to an end-has occurred "completely in tune" take on the challenges facing (Cologne: Taschen, 2007); with the global integration of markets and the mega-exhibitions these days, and Rachel Weiss, To and see "The World, from Eu­ Venice is, of course, the primogenitor of all From Utopia in the New Cuban worldwide dissemination of information about rope: The Mega-Exhibitions biennials. Its history as a theater on which the Art (Minneapolis: University localities everywhere, along with resistances to of mid-2007," X-Tra 10, no. 3 of Minnesota Press, 2011). (Spring 2008): 4-19, http://x­ world's art-on analogy to international trade fairs such globalizing forces. The tension between the traonline.org/current_articles. and expositions-showed itself to itself, every two 22 Carlos Basualdo, "The homogenizing and anti-homogenizing forces of php?articleiD=173. Unstable Institution," in years, is routinely acknowledged, yet has not been Marincola, WhatMakes a globalization itself is captured in the biennial, explored in satisfactory historical detail or been Great Exhibition?, 56. And with its simultaneous fore grounding of both , from Anthony Gardner and 20 Lawrence Alloway, The 20 international and local art and its highlighting thoroughly contextualized. It is arguable that the Charles Green, Mega-Exhibi­ Venice Biennale 1895-1968: biennial format was not categorically revised until tions: Biennales, Triennales and of the complex relays between them. We might From Salon to Goldfish B()71Jl Documentas (Boston: Blackwell (London: Faber and Faber, the Sao Paulo Bienal (1951), documenta 1 (1955), add that the same is true of the museum that Wiley, forthcoming 2014). 1969). For minihistories from and the Bienal de la Habana (1984). Each, in enlivens its dutiful displays of its collection and of contemporary perspectives, see also the introductions to their different ways, inaugurated a more limited, local art with imported blockbuster shows from the catalogues of most subse­ regional version of international-local exchange. famous museums elsewhere. These generalities quent editions. In each case, again distinctively, regional emphasis 23 We anticipate such a treat­ seem valid enough, but more work needs to be ment from Caroline Jones's done to ground them with historical precision.23 aimed to manifest an ideological perspective: forthcoming book, Desires for Sao Paulo to connect art in South America the World Picture.· the global For example, in some cases, if one looks at the (Brazil especially) to Europe and the United work of art, judging by her capacity for long-term planning, budget size, and "Biennial Culture: A Longer States; documenta 1 to make Kassel a site for History," in Elena Filipovic, levels of personnel management, many biennials the symbolic internationalization of German art Solveig Ovstebo, and Marieke have matched and often exceeded the capabilities van Hal, eds., The Biennial after the Nazi era and to contrast West German Reader: An Anthology on Large­ of the local museum. This is particularly so abstraction to the Socialist Realism that prevailed Scale Perennial Exhibitions of outside of the Euro-American context-the Contemporary Art (Ostfildern: across the nearby border; and Havana to offer a Hatje Cantz, 2010), 66-87. Sao Paulo and Mercosul biennials in Brazil, for base for artistic connection within Latin America example-where operations move from small

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working staffs during the off years to employing Returning to my own argument, I would hundreds in the year of the biennial. observe that curators have a relationship to this complex mix of elements distinct from that of Yet Basulado's worry arises at a deeper level: artists, critics, or historians, on the one hand, and that of the museum's role as an "objective" the demands and expectations of public officials, guarantor of artistic value, a house of judgment funders, and traditional museum professionals, supposedly separate from the commercial greed on the other. While respecting the specific of the art market. perspectives of all of these players and constantly negotiating between them, the curator must The symbolic value created initially by articulate a position that interrogates "local museums-as a concealed affirmation of history and contexts," though always in terms of the exchange value of objects and artistic their potentially productive relationships with practices...,.-is ultimately transformed by the "horizon of internationalism" on which the biennials into pure utility. Perhaps this biennial is based. This is a huge challenge to the was (and in some cases, may still be) the contemporary curator, one that (presuming that (ultimately naive) reasoning of many my argument that biennials are now structural institutions that founded biennials. within the system has been accepted) faces him or And in some cases, such reasoning may her with a degree and kind of responsibility that 24 Basualdo, "The Unstable be partly justified. 24 parallels that of the museum director. Certainly Institution," 58. the long-term planning, the size of the budgets, But, he argues, the convergence between the and tasks of personnel management are, in many biennial and the museum on this level is more cases, comparable. As well as being exhibition apparent than real. Works shown at biennials makers par excellence, curators of mega-exhibitions tend to be less tied to market and collector tastes are required to become custodians of the biennial and dictates, more critical in character, more form itself. They tend, therefore, to assume the adventurous as to medium, and more likely to title Artistic Director, thus locating themselves on be drawn from other expressive and symbolic a par with the music director of an orchestra. mediums such as cinema, design, and architecture (in a word, more contemporary). And biennials Taking a broader view, many of us have require greater and more immediate immersion argued that, in recent decades, the biennial has in dense and diverse interpretative discourse frequently led in explorations of the implications than do the usual run of exhibitions at museums. of radically new forms of art making. Thus this (Ditto.) This has certainly been the case in the statement by Rosa Martinez about her 2005 history of biennial exhibitions to date. The Venice Biennale: question is, for how long will it remain so? A biennial ... looks beyond the present and into the future ... Biennials are the most

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advanced area for this expanded field precisely Among the curatoriate there seems to have arisen because they do not function like museums. a competition as to who could reconceive the Museums are temples for the preservation biennial in the most inventive and influential way. of memory ... Biennials are a context for the "Of late, it has become a cliche for curators to 25 Rosa Martinez, in Carolee exploration and questioning of the present. 25 announce bravely that they are dispensing with Thea, ed., Foci: Interviews with 10 International Curators (New the conventional biennial structure, a tendency York: D.A.P, 2001), 79. This is classic modernist wish projection. so pervasive that one begins to wonder where, More concretely, we are now reaping the benefits outside of Venice, a conventional biennial might 28 of twenty years of sustained assault, through the 28 Eleanor Heartney, be found today." Eleanor Heartney made biennial form, on the "canonical mechanisms "Gwangju Report: Image this comment in connection with the 2010 Surplus," Art in America 98, established in the historical narratives produced, no. 11 (December 2010): 78. Gwangju Biennale, noting that its early editions almost exclusively, in Europe and the United were curated by teams overseen by "big-name 26 Basualdo, "The Unstable States."26 Despite the fact that museums often European curators, like Harald Szeemann and Institution," 59. house biennials, I agree with Basualdo that Rene Block," while more recent editions fell to "large-scale international exhibitions never "younger, more geographically, philosophically, 29 completely belong to the system of art institutions 29 Ibid., 78. and ethnically diverse curators." These have in which they are supposedly inscribed" and that, included Charles Esche and Hou Hanru who, therefore, "the range of practical and theoretical in 2000, turned over curatorship to alternative possibilities to which they give rise often turns spaces and artist's collectives; and Yongwoo Lee 27 Ibid., 60. out to be subversive. "27 This is highly significant, who, in 2004, teamed "ordinary" people with with enormous potential for the development professional curators. In 2008 Okwui Enwezor of art and for its disseminative structures. presented an exhibition of other exhibitions, Museums have taken note and have been quick recreating in part or whole a number of shows to at least partially absorb some of the lessons that had been presented elsewhere in the world of the biennial into their usual displays and during the previous year. While these innovations regular programming. What has this done to the aimed at opening up the event to "the serendipity subversive potentials of the biennial format? of unexpected choices," Massimiliano Giani's 2010 edition, entitled 10,000 Lives, struck RETHINKING THE MEGA-EXHIBITION Heartney as "a carefully crafted exercise in curatorial control" that "embodied the museum 30 Since 2000 the biennial has been widely seen 30 Ibid. For other perspec­ ethos it was meant to overturn." However as being in a crisis of overproduction, of having tives see "Assessments: 10,000 accurate her characterizations (they are partial Lives: The 8th Gwangju become stale in form (theme A, with subthemes Biennale," The Exhibitionist, at best), they nonetheless illustrate my larger a, b, c, and d; theme B, ditto; x number of no. 3 Ganuary 2011): 23-34. point about the contradictory friction between artists, y number of works each, in z amount an open-ended format (such as the biennial) and of rooms) and, as a result, in danger of being a singular event (the clear curatorial statement, absorbed back into the traditional museum. the definitive exhibition) that haunts the curating

92 93 SHIFTING THE EXHIBITIONARY COMPLEX TERRY SMITH of contemporary art, whatever the site of the response to a graffiti attack on the main walls of 31 exhibitionary act. 31 See Ana Paula Cohen the empty exhibition spaces. and Ivo Mesquita, "Em vivo contato," Guia da exposifiio There is, I think, a quantitative issue at play (Sao Paulo: 28" Bienal de Sao As elsewhere, the polemical tone was soon Paulo, 2008); for a detailed lowered. The 2010 Bienal at Sao Paulo explored here. The sheer number of biennials (nearly contextualization, see Vmicius two hundred) has made it impossible for even Spricigo, "From Artistic a constellation of political/artistic "territories": the brilliant curatoriate described above to pull Internationalism to Cultural "The skin of the invisible," "Said, unsaid, Globalization: Notes Toward forbidden," "I am the street," "Remembrance and off its self-imposed challenge of reinventing the a Critical Reflection on the exhibition each and every time. No wonder that Recent Changes in the Strate­ oblivion," "Far away, right here," and "The other, gies of (Re)presentation of the the same." In 2012 we can expect an exploration Sao Paulo in 2008 and Bergen in 2009 decided Sao Paulo Bienal," Global Art to prioritize meetings and events that reflected and the Museum (Karlsruhe: of "The Immanence of Poetics." Poesis is ZKM, December 2009), replacing politics everywhere as the retreat on the history, relevance, and prospects of the http:/I globalartmuseum.de/ biennial form itself over exhibits of works by site/guest_author/254. See position in the international art world. Titles of also Royce W Smith, "28th this kind-mixed lists of lines of poetry, graffiti, international and local artists. That is to say, Sao Paulo Bienal: In Living they invited attendees to reexamine an exhibition Contact," X-Tra Contemporary book titles, text headers, and film subtitles-are Art Quarterly 11, no. 4 (Sum­ becoming a familiar mode for naming clusters of format whose success as a mode of global mer 2009), http://www.x­ connectivity-arguably to the point where the traonline.org/past_articles. curatorial themes. They signal the presence of "international" and "local" dialogue has become php?articleiD=3 3 5. disparate elements, "torn halves," that do not add decreasingly productive as an antinomy-was up, perhaps because that would imply totalities coming under threat due to local funding and that no longer exist. This does not, however, take political difficulties (themselves the outcome, away the challenge of making meaning on more largely, of the global financial crisis). There were, specific levels. of course, significant back stories at both places. The Sao Paulo organization, with its relatively Applying "biennial processes" to the problem long history (since 1951), its relative success in of rethinking the biennial is occurring throughout consolidating cultural links with Europe and the the system at the moment. For example, the U.S., and its promotion of local artistic ideas as of Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como, under the title international relevance (notably "anthropophagy" "The Most Beautiful Kunsthalle in the World," in 1998, an initiative of curator Paulo organized twenty-five meetings between 2010 and Herkenhoff), had often demonstrated a capacity 2012 for art world players to debate "the diverse for reflective changes of direction, however models of exhibition spaces and its characteristics; fraught and contested. In 2008 the decision to the relation between economy and art; the show few (initially zero) artworks and to devote 32 See the website of the definition and identity of the figure of the curator; Fondazione Antonio Ratti, the publications of art and other questions the entire exhibition to different forms of debate Como, "The Most Beautiful about contemporary art's relationships to local Kunsthalle in the World," related to all the aspects of doing and producing www.fondazioneratti.org/ exhibitions."32 Outcomes are as yet uncertain. society and international forces was derailed by calendarmostre/kunsthalle. the high-level security imposed on the venue in The 2009 conference in Bergen, To Biennial or

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Not to Biennial, led to an excellent resource book, was to take the form of an art school that would 33 33 Filipovic, Ovstebo, and The Biennial Reader. At the conference itself, the conduct classes in both parts of the only divided Van Hal, Biennial Reader. underlying issue was whether or not to institute city remaining in Europe, fell afoul of local a biennial in the city, given the plethora around regulations and political tensions. Since then it the world, but the few in Scandinavia, the relative has been shown at Trentino-South Tyrol (2008), wealth of Norway, and its need to prepare for and Murcia in Spain in dialogue with North a post-North Sea oil future. The City Council Mrica (2010). In 2012 it will land at Limburg, recently announced that the Bergen Biennial Belgium, curated by Cuauhtemoc Medina, 34 Foundation would play a major role in developing 34 See Elena Filipovic and Katerina Gregos, and Dawn Ades. the proposed Scandinavian Triennial for the city, Barbara Vanderlinden, The Manifesto Decade: Debates on and that "an aspect of discourse and knowledge Contemporary Art Exhibitions On a global scale cultural connectivities are production" would be inserted into its outlook. and Biennials in Post-Wall also changing, fast and drastically, as locales in Asia Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006); and http:// and the Middle East in particular institutionalize Against this model of updating and manifesta.org/biennials/ rapidly and the old cultural centers see the ghosts regionalizing the standard "international'? model, about-the-biennials/. of entropy looming within their success with the history of Manifesta, the nomadic biennial, spectacle. In locales outside of the former West, is instructive. It was launched from Holland, one regional connectivity has been sought for some of the key nations of Western Europe, precisely decades, as we have seen most notably in Havana to engage the fragmentation of the borders since 1984, from a tercomondialist perspective. of the European Union, at that time a newly In recent years, as the income divide becomes a formed yet largely notional entity. The errant yawning gap and concentrates in relatively few itinerary of Manifesta, a fragile yet resilient yet highly mobile hands, many Asian biennials, quasi-organization, has accurately reflected the and those in the Middle East, such as the Saadiyat productive errancy at the heart of the enterprise of Cultural District at Abu Dhabi, seek to use high rethinking the idea of "Europe." Since Rotterdam art as lifestyle cement within the formation of in 1996, Manifesta has been staged every two economic hubs for the top 1% in the region. years in a different European city-Luxembourg, On an intrastate scale, within large nations such Ljubljana, Frankfurt, Donista-San Sebastian, as Brazil and China, internal cultural connectivity etc.-by teams of curators from outside that city is a growing concern. It is coming to match their who have never worked together before, who are interest in connecting with "global" currents. asked to spend the intervening years combing Cultural policy, they might say, must face the continent for new art and to present it in both ways. whatever ways seem relevant to them. Iterations have deployed innovative formats ranging from If I am right that the biennial has become museum exhibitions through the use of unusual structural, then this recent history might indicate sites all over each city to Internet sites. The a certain ossification of the large-scale mega­ Manifesta planned for Nicosia in 2006, which exhibition, a lowering of its subversive potential.

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Does it make sense to take the biennial form, currently operating in Austra­ Fruit (2010), drawn from the collection of one rather than the concept of the specific exhibition lia; see http://aripedia.org.au/ its trustees, Dakis J oannou, and curated by Jeff index.php?title=List_of_Ac­ for this place and at this time, as the crucial tive_Artist_Run_Initiatives; Koons, whose workJoannou assiduously collects? object of critical curatorship? Is this not to and Georgie Meagher and How does the programming at the Museum of Brianna Munting, eds., We mistake a medium for a subject? Perhaps it also Are Here (Sydney: National Installation Art, London, differ from that at the presumes that the biennial is perfectible, singular, Association for the Visual Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh? An account that when the success the format as a vehicle Arts, 2012). These initia- of tives complement the dozen mapped out this field and tackled questions such for transitionality has for decades depended contemporary art spaces, most as these would show, more than any to date, precisely on its node-like structure; its easily of which have been active promoters of experimental the pivotal role that alternative spaces, artist- imitated parameters; and, on the local level, its arts for over forty years; see run cooperatives, and supportive site-specific unique (for the art-institutional ensemble) mix of http://www.caos.org.au/ organizations (such as Artangel, London, Exit content/Home/. A history of flexibility, regularity, and reliable unpredictability. these kinds of quasi-institu­ Art, New York, or Artspace, Sydney) have played This confusion between open-endedness and tional initiatives throughout since the 1970s in the growth and diversification the world, especially since 35 Examples of the begin­ 35 singularity remains unresolved-it might be said the 1960s, would show that of infrastructure for the visual arts. It would also nings of such research include to have proliferated. infrastructural activism has Julie Ault, ed., Alternative show how much unsung groundwork undergirds been with us for a while, Art New York: 1965-1985 but has only recently come what is emerging as a major activity for artists (Minnesota: University of We could keep going across the exhibitionary to be valued within the art and curators today: infrastructural activism. Minnesota Press, 2002);Julia world as inherently creative, Bryan-Wilson, Art Workers: spectrum, noting the low-level warring between "The infrastructural" is rapidly replacing "the transformative, and essential. Radical Practice in the Vietnam the institutionalizing, deinstitutionalizing, and At the same time, the growth curatorial" as the problem to be grasped, the issue Era (California: University of neoliberal values within of California Press, 2009); reinstitutionalizing forces that shape each site and to which attention must be paid, and upon which governments, and increasing and Peta Rake, "Inclusivity each actor. We could plot the ways in which each economic uncertainty, means energy must be expended. and Isolation: Artist-Run that support from shrinking Initiatives in Brisbane," Fillip, kind of institution and each kind of curator seeks public funds is becoming less no. 11 (Fall2011): 70-78. to draw either reactive or enabling energy from and less likely. Before we can clearly see how this issue Research into alternative art one or more of the other actors while at the same spaces underlies the small is being tackled today, it is important that we but sustained governmental time striving to create and maintain a distinctive, understand the delicate symbolic dance between support for them since the yet always transformable, profile. And we could as as 1970s in certain European two figures: the curator artist and the artist countries and in Canada and chart the ways these interactions have unfolded curator. There is a considerable history to both Australia. Documenta- through time, at different locations, and plot the models, a history that is constantly subject to tion of, and arguments for, their pivotal importance connections between them. There would be value simplification as a new relationship between these regularly appear in reports in this, as it would highlight the complexities two emerges to set the present agenda. Let us put to sponsoring agencies. For example, Sarah Thelwall, Size within which curators actually work and bring some history back into it and see what happens. Matters: Notes towards a Better out distinctive aspects of the different kinds of Understanding of the Value, curating required by each kind of exhibition Operations and Potential of Small Visual Arts Organizations site, as well as recognize the constant, variable (London: Common Practice traffic between them. Would Marcia Tucker, with support from the Arts Council England, 2011). Over founding director of the New Museum, have ever ninety artist-run initiatives are contemplated staging an exhibition such as Skin

98 99 3. Artists as Curators I Curators as Artists

Kaprow: Do you like waxworks? Smithson: No, I don't like waxworks. They are actually too lively.

-Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson, "What is a Museum? A Dialogue," 1967 TERRY SMITH ARTISTS AS CURATORS/CURATORS AS ARTISTS

This exchange occurs halfway through "What alternative spaces further along the spectrum (of is a Museum?." Kaprow begins by stating that course losing its resonance as belief in top-down museums have come to "look like mausolea" and power shrinks, reminding us that the spectrum are irrelevant to current and future art, which is also a vertebrae, a hierarchical distributer of is happening either in the mind or out in the cultural power, generating, but also feeding off world. Ever the contrarian, Smithson responds the cellular oppositions that cluster at its edges). by deploring the recent tendency of museums The merging of art with the everyday ("activity to react against their life-denying anachronism which is of uncertain aesthetic value and which by imitating discotheques, and says that artists locates itself apart from cultural institutions"­ should exaggerate the "nullifying" qualities of "blurring" was a favorite Kaprow goal) has museums-they should fill museums with art accelerated to the point that each constantly that explores "different kinds of emptiness." The disappears into the other and reemerges, from two artists go back and forth, one-upping each time to time, somewhat, although not totally, other, deliberately missing the other's point so as changed. Operating between art and the everyday, to better define their own. In the end, Smithson's with conceptualism as a residual aesthetic, can negative capability and Kaprow's enthusiastic mean that some museum somewhere will soon, radicalism seem equally potent, equally fanciful or eventually, hang your work. Nevertheless, options for the future. Awkwardly, Kaprow practitioners averse to blurring also know attempts a positive summary: "My opinion has something else: that acting within the spectrum, been, lately, that there are only two outs: one but at angles to it, opens out a parallel universe, implying a maximum of inertia, which I call 'idea' a space where criticality may be rehearsed, ready art, art which is usually discussed now and then to be imported back into the spectacularized and never executed; and the other existing in a everyday, to its detriment. The subversive maximum of continuous activity, activity which component of curatorial thinking remains relevant. is of uncertain aesthetic value and which locates itself apart from cultural institutions. The minute FROM CRITICAL CURATING TO THE we operate in between these extremes we get CURATING OF CRITIQUE 1 Allan Kaprow and hung up (in a museum)."1 Ha, ha. Robert Smithson, "What is a Museum? A Dialogue," Despite the recent, rightful celebration of a few 1967, in Alexander Alberro Two generations later, after much profound maverick curators-Harald Szeemann, Rene and Blake Stimson, eds., change consequent on precisely these two options, Institutional Critique: An Block, Pontus Hulten, Kynaston McShine (and a Anthology ofArtists' Writings artists, critics, and curators have arrived at a few maverick critics such as Lucy R. Lippard)­ (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT somewhat similar position concerning the range who staged pathbreaking shows during the Press, 2009), 58. of possibilities. The parameters have broadened, years around 1970, the historical record shows but the options look familiar. Spectacularism has that radical exhibition practice by curators come to dominate visitor experience in major was preceded and, until recently, dramatically museums and echoes through more specialist and outmatched by the work of certain artists who

102 103 TERRY SMITH ARTISTS AS CURATORS/CURATORS AS ARTISTS reimagined ways to make exhibitions. Anti­ exhibitions, substitutions of one kind of public display space for another, including transpositions of nonmuseum spaces into the museum and vice versa. As to purpose, these were envisaged, firstly, as vehicles for showing the artist's own work, then the work of confreres, until the transformatory urge embraced the museum as institution, beginning with the reinstallation of certain rooms, through parts of the collection, until some artists showed us ways of rethinking the museum itself. Not that this occurred systematically. Rather, it seems to have been as diverse in its inspirations and random in its effects as the art of the period. Many of these exhibitionary experiments have survived as models for current curatorial practice-they frequently serve as Marcel Broodthaers, Musie d'Art Moderne, Departement des Aigles, 1971. Mixed media, dimensions variable. Cologne Art Fair, October 5-10, 1971 go-to inspirations, often eclipsing more recent precedents.

Early efforts were all about artists projecting in 1971, he reassembled the meeting materials the core instincts that drove their art making onto (borrowed packing crates), added a number of the larger scale of a museum installation. In 1968 2 Marcel Broodthaers, "A items from local art and natural history museums, Marcel Broodthaers used the label "Museum" Conversation with Freddy antique shops, and stores (nineteenth-century de Vree," 1971, in Alberro for the setting, which happened to be his studio, and Stimson, Institutional sculptures, stuffed eagles, film apparatus, etc.), in which he and other members of the Belgian Critique, 135. There are a and labeled the lot "Musee d'Art Moderne," number of other resonances art world met to discuss the implications of the for contemporary curatorship "Department des Ngles," "Section Cinema," and events of May of that year. "Museum," in this in Broodthaers's presentation so on. To each of the stuffed eagles the label "This of consciously multichronic instance, was meant figuratively, to signify a place settings (or decors,as he called is not a work of art" was attached. While nothing least like a museum, yet that was now the place in them), and then his curation, in the display was a work of art, the display which the most important things relating to the toward the end of his life, of as is a number of "retrospectives" a whole was. This because it embodied visual arts were occurring. To name this particular that reworked much of the Broodthaers's intention: to ask, in the exhibiting meeting place a museum was a deliberate earlier material. For an of these things, in this way, and in this space, illuminating account, see misnomer. In Broodthaers's idiosyncratic, fey, Cathleen Chaffee, "Situating "Can't this place ... exist as a museum and fiction jokey way, it called attention to the retreat of the Michel Broodthaers's Final at the exact same time, so that ultimately those Exhibitions," Manifesto official institutions in the face of the uprisings. Journal, no. 7 (2009/2010): visitors who are willing will be happy to simply Invited to exhibit in the Dusseldorf Kunsthalle 40-49. take on this idea?"2

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At the time, a number of artist's museums were conceived in a similar spirit. The Mouse Museum, Claes Oldenburg's homage to the commercialization of the Walt Disney character, to the everydayness of souvenirs of all kinds, and to miniaturized replicas of his own work (themselves funky evocations of popular tokens), was begun in the mid-1960s and is now in the collection of the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Variants of Daniel Spoerri's musee sentimental were installed in Paris in 1977, Cologne in 1979, and Basel in 1989: like his art, these were frozen moments of the detritus of his daily life. The faux-musee is a travesty of the high art museum, exactly through its insistence on the exceptional peculiarity of everyday items, on the ordinary beauties of banality, and the inevitability of kitsch. The challenge to the museum establishment was immediate and long lasting, as Rebecca DeRoo 3 Rebecca DeRoo, The has shown. 3 The deadpan yet deeply eccentric Museum Establishment and para-museum has achieved perhaps its most Andy Warhol, the Icebox, 1969-70. Installation at the Museum Art, Rhode Island School Design, Contemporary Art: The Politics Raid of of of Display in France After sustained realization in David Wilson's Museum Providence, April 2 3-June 30, 1970 1968 (New York: Cambridge of Jurassic Technology, Los Angeles.4 University Press, 2006).

4 The best introduction For his 1969-70 "intervention" known as Raid characterization more exact: "It is as if the label to the Museum of Jurassic Technology remains the Icebox, Andy Warhol installed the backrooms 'Andy Warhol' would signify, not a person, in the Lawrence Weschler, Mr. of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) 5 Peter Wollen, Raiding sense of a human subject, but storage: boxes, reels, Wilsons Cabinet of Wonder Museum of Art in the main exhibition spaces. the Icebox: Reflections on spools, Polaroids, all labeled 'Andy Warhol."'5 He (New York: Pantheon, 1995). Twentieth Century Culture Other museums of this kind The museum director commented, "there were (Bloomington: Indiana is highlighting Warhol's obsession with recording exist: the most recent is exasperating moments when we felt that Andy University Press, 1993), every exchange between people and things in his the Center for PostNatural 168. The actual title of the History, which opened in Warhol was exhibiting 'storage' rather than exhibition was Raid the life-everything as it is and as it occurs to him, March 2012 in Pittsburgh, works of art, that a series of labels could mean as Icebox 1 with Andy Warhol. It an unperson, who wished above all to become brainchild of Richard Pell, was drawn from the vaults of who bills himself as the much to him as the paintings to which they refer. the museum at RISD, shown a passive recording device. Perhaps this was "Curator of PostNatural And perhaps they do, for in his vision, all things first at Rice University, Texas, Smithson's ironic vision, realized straight. Organisms," http://www. and at Isaac Delgado Museum postnatural.orglindex. php. become part of the. whole and we know that (now the New Orleans what is being exhibited is Andy Warhol." Citing Museum of Art), finally at Radical reform of the museum was the prime this remark, Peter Wollen makes the director's RISD in April-June, 1970. target of the artists' gatherings in New York

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during this period, including the Artists Workers Coalition, founded in 1969, and Artists Meeting for Cultural Change, founded in 197 5. The latter included the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition and five women artists' collectives. Direct actions included picketing the museum with signs pointing to the almost total absence of an anti-catalog art by women, blacks, and other minorities in the collections. An Anti-Catalog (1977) was issued in response to the Whitney Museum of American Art's decision to feature the private collection Because it calls the neutrality of art into ques­ of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III as one tion, this Anti-Catalog will be seen as a political of their Bicentennial exhibitions. It was a primer statement. It is, in reality, no more political than that exposed, in direct graphics, the exploitative, the viewpoint of official culture. The singularity exclusionary, class basis on which museums functioned. of that viewpoint-the way it advances the in­ terests of a class-is difficult to see because in The 1971 cancelation of Hans Haacke's mid­ our society that viewpoint is so pervasive. In career retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, is widely recognized as a turning this Anti-Catalog, we have attempted to eluci­ point in artist-museum relationships in the U.S., date some of the underlying mechanisms and the moment when cooperation turned sour and assumptions. Our effort is not intended simply the relationship became conflicted. Real-Life as a critical exercise. Culture has the power to Systems-as Haacke called his installations that displayed the complexities and contradictions shape not only our view of the past but also the of contemporary life-proved to be too real, way we see ourselves today. Official culture can 6 See Hans Haacke, Framing too lively, and too threatening to The System. 6 only diminish our ability to understand the and Being Framed: 7 Works, Haacke went on to become the most consistent 1970-75 (Halifax: Nova world and to act upon that understanding. The Scotia College of Art and and astringent critic of museums among Design, 197 5). contemporary Euro-American artists, writing critical examination of culture is thus a neces­ key polemical essays such as his 1984 "Museums, sary step in gaining control over the meaning we 7 Hans Haacke, "Museums, Managers of Consciousness. "7 Managers of Consciousness," give our lives. 1984, in Alberro and Stimson, Institutional Critique, 276-88. In retrospect, we can see turning points of similar significance for art in South America. In the context of increasingly repressive regimes during the 1960s, the focus of critique tended Artists Meeting for Cultural Change, An Anti-Catalogue, 1977

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These questiOns are and your answers will be part of to be less directed to "the system" and more to BaJ~~;Haacke's VISITORS' PROFILB a work in progress during the Haacke exhibition at the interventions in the public sphere. In Argentina, Guasenbeia llueeua, for example, with what became known as the Itinerary of 1968, a number of experiments Please till out the questionnaire and dror it into the box on pushed the limits of politics, institutions, and tbe white round table near the windows on the lluseua•e ground 8 floor, Do not sian your n•e. 8 For the statement "Itinerary radical art practice. Shouting "Yankees Out of 1968" and related of Vietnam!" artist Eduardo Ruano destroyed 1) Do you have a professional interest in art, descriptions of these projects, e.a. artist, student, critic, historian, etc? --yes~ see Ana Longoni, "Action one of his works that included a photograph of ll) Is tbe use of the Aaerican flag for the expression Art in Argentina from 1960: President Kennedy at an exhibition opening at of political beliefs, e.g. on bard-hats and in Body (Ex)posed," in dissident art exhibitions a le1titiaats exercise The of free speech? the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires. -yes -no- Deborah Cullen, ed., Arte 3) Row old are you? * Vida: Actions by Artists --years This was followed by the Experiences exhibition 4) Should the use of .. rijuana be legalized, of the Americas 1960-2000 Ushtly or severely punished? at lnstituto Torcuato di Tella-a key venue for 1'ei'i1"liiO ng!itly '""S'iVii'ely (New York: El Museo del punisl!ed Barrio, 2008). See also Luis 5) What is your urital status? experimental practice in the 1960s under the Married smre- divorced separated Camnitzer, "Art and Politics: direction of Romero Brest-that included Oscar widowed The Aesthetics of Resistance," 6) Do you syapathize with l1011en'1• Lib? --yes~ 1994, in On Art, Artists, Latin Bony's La familia obrera (The Working Class 7) Are you aale, feaale? ---.are -riiii'le America, and Other Utopias, Family), an actual real-life family-worker, wife; 8) Do you have children? ed. Rachel Weiss (Austin: --yes~ 9) 'IRiuld you aind busin& your child to integrate University of Texas Press, and son-sitting on a platform on public display schools? --yes -no-- 10) What is your ethic background? 2009). for the duration of the exhibition. The itinerary 11) Assuain& you were lndochines<>, would you syapathize with the present Saigon regime? culminated in the exhibition/event Tucmdn Arde ....,-es- --no- 12) In your opinion b the •oral fabric of this country strensthenerl or weakened by the US (Tucman Burns) in the industrial city of Rosario. involv-ent in Indochina? strengthened weakened Here, artists aimed to create an information 13) What is your religion? event about the social situation in the northern 14) Do you think the interests of profit­ oriented business usually are coapatible province ofTucman to counter government with the coaaon good of the world? yes-~ 15) What 1e your annual incoae (before taxes)? publicity and to reveal the socioeconomic realities 16) Ill your opinion are the econ011ic difficulties ' of poverty and unemployment exacerbated by of the US .. iDly attributable to tbe Hixon Aclldnistration 's policies? yes- --no­ the closing of the sugar refineries that were the 17) Where do you live? ~ county ~ population's mainstay. Planned to take place both 18) Do you think the defeat of the SST was a step in the riaht direction? in Rosario and Buenos Aires, the exhibition/ yes-~ 19) Are you enrolled in or bllve you graduated event was open for less than a day in the nation's froa college? ji'S" no- capital, due to a citywide clampdown after the 20) In your opinion shOuld the general orientation of tbe country be .ore or less conservative? military coup. The reaction of the government aore less and police and the continuing repression led to

Your auwers will be tabulated later today toaether with the the dispersion of many of the artists involved. answers of all other visitors of the exhibition. Thank you. Some went underground and joined the guerrilla movement, some were "disappeared," and at least

Hans Haacke, Guggenheim Museum Visitor's Profile, 1971. Questionnaire. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, one (Eduardo F avario) died in action after joining New York the Revolutionary Army of the People. Others,

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including Roberto Jacoby or Leon Ferrari, Art & Language artist Mel Ramsden continued to be active, developing techniques was the first to use the phrase "institutional 10 of indirection, but the repression of the Tucman 10 Mel Ramsden, "On critique." His argument, in his 197 5 The Fox project effectively silenced experimental and Practice," 1975, in Alberro magazine essay "On Practice," is worth a closer and Stimson, Institutional political art practice in Argentina for years Critique, 170-99. look. He was fiercely for dedicated individual afterward. commitment to building "a community practice (language ... sociality ... ) that does not just In Brazil, a series of participatory Happenings, embody a commodity mode of existence." He was

Domingos de Cria~ao(Creation Sundays), at arguing against metaphysical affirmations of art's the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, transcendent qualities and against liberal warnings presented at the height of the military repression about the power of "the military-industrial in 1971, could be seen to be a similar turning complex" as well as against Leftist slamming of point. They followed several years of fervent every existent institution and way of thinking as experimentalism amongst artists and the museum being inevitably in the service of capitalism. To both in the galleries and surrounding gardens him, the first was "undialectical idealism," the that had been designed by Roberto Burle Marx. latter two "undialectical materialism." It was in At the opening of the exhibition Opiiiao 1965 11 Ibid., 176-77. this sense that he argued: "To dwell perennially (Opinion 1965), Helio Oiticica had launched his on an institutional critique without addressing 12 See Terry Smith, "Art and performative capes and standards, Parangoles. This Art & Language," Artforum problems within the institutions is to generalize performance, involving people from the favela 12, no. 6 (February 1974): and sloganize."11 The Art & Language collective, 49-52. Mangueira, went too far: Oiticica was asked to especially the New York branch, was at this time move them into the museum gardens. Domingos, 13 Terry Smith, ed., Art & moving from conceptual self-critique toward Language Australia (Banbury, 12 organized by critic Frederico Morais, who was U.K.: A & L Press, 1976); forms of social and political engagement. After director of courses at the museum (the term Sandy Kirby, ed., Ian Burn, the group broke apart in 197 6, some members Art: Critical, Political (Nepean: "curator" was not used for such activities then), University of Western left museum and art world structures altogether capitalized on this experimental participatory Sydney, 1996); Bruce Barber, for active and often highly effective engagement spirit and the effective use of the museum's ed., Conde and Beveridge: Class in public sphere politics. 13 Meanwhile others­ Works (Halifax: The Press of surrounding gardens, creating six major events the Nova Scotia College of particularly those based in England-soon took over the course from January to July 1971, Art and Design, 2008). up painting and tackled the most paradoxical

attracting thousands of participants and involving 14 Art & Language, subject imaginable: their own works displayed in many artists from that generation including Confessions:Incidents in a a major museum, to the radical, albeit symbolic, Museum (London: Lisson 9 Frederico Morais. 14 now well-known Brazilian artists such as Lygia Gallery, 1986); and Art & transformation of both. "Chronocollage": Rio de Language: The Paintings Janeiro, 1967-1971 in Pape, Antonio Manuel, and Carlos Vergara. (Brussels: Societe des Fundaci6n Marcelion Botin. While artists continued to work with and present Expositions du Palais des Having spent decades imagining the Rio Experimental mas exhibitions at the museum, few events featuring Beaux-Arts, 1989). Two works antimuseum, critical conceptualists such as alia del arte, el poema y Ia from this series were shown at accion. Santander: Fundaci6n this type of broad public engagement occurred Hans Haacke and Joseph Kosuth seized the the Museum of Modern Art, Marcelino Botin, 2010 9 after 1971. New York, March-June 1999. opportunity, when it came, to install their

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contrarian vision inside an actual museum. Not only was their analysis the most theoretically sophisticated and politically trenchant available, outstripping that then being offered by critics, historians, and curators, but they were also able to draw on their superior, radical design skills. They did so by presenting a display that would be simultaneously an exhibition entirely of works by other artists and an exhibition of their own work, while at the same time an installation artwork and a reinstallation of (part of) a museum. The Brooklyn Museum Collection: The Play of the Unmentionable, staged at the Brooklyn Museum in 1990, was introduced by the caption: "An Installation by Joseph Kosuth." The design idea might be summarized as Gilded Age Grand

Salon meets Entartete Kunst. Treating statements Joseph Kosuth, The Brooklyn Museum Collection:The Play of the Unmentionable (Joseph Kosuth), Brooklyn Museum, like pictures and pictures as statements, it was a New York, September 2 7, 1990-December 31, 1990 searching, subtle, and confrontational exploration of censorship of the visual arts, juxtaposing works of the Unsayable: Ludwig Wittgenstein and the of art from many periods and places that had Art of the 20th Century," it took as its premise been deemed politically, religiously, or sexually the philosopher's famous final sentence in his objectionable with utterances about the role of art Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:"Whereof one in society by pundits ranging from Oscar Wilde 17 Joseph Kosuth, "The Play cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." For of the Unsayable: Preface 15 15 David Freedberg and to Adolf Hitler. It made unavoidably explicit two and Ten Remarks on Art the rest of his life Wittgenstein devoted himself Joseph Kosuth, The Play of the issues that are present in every curated exhibition, and Ludwig Wittgenstein," to contradicting this advice, a fact that Kosuth Unmentionable: An Installation 1989, in Joseph Kosuth, Art at the Brooklyn Museum by but that usually remain implicit. Cathleen Chaffee After Philosophyand After: recognizes in his notes on "The Play of the Joseph Kosuth (New York: New states them with admirable concision: "How does Collected Writings (Cambridge, Unsayable": Press, 1992). Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), exhibiting a work change it, and how does the 249. A few years later Alain 16 Chaffee, "Situating knowledge of its history change us?" 16 Badiou arrived at exactly One of the lessons for art that I believe we can Michel Broodthaers's Final the same understanding of derive from the Philosophical Investigations is Exhibitions," 42. Wittgenstein's project. See A year earlier, at the Weiner Secession, his Manifesto for Philosophy that I believe the later Wittgenstein attempted Vienna, and at the Palais de Beaux Arts, Brussels, (Albany: State University with his philosophical parables and language­ of New York Press, 1999); Kosuth had staged installations of works by and his Wittgenstein's games to construct theoretical objects-texts modern artists alongside statements from Antiphilosophy (London: Verso, that could make recognizable (show) aspects 2011). Antin, a "talk poet" Wittgenstein's writings on the relation between whose work owes much to of language that, philosophically, he could not philosophy and the aesthetic. Entitled "The Play conceptualism, came to the assert explicitly. 17

114 115 TERRY SMITH ARTISTS AS CURATORS/CURATORS AS ARTISTS conceptualism, came to the Kosuth recognizes that exhibitions-even same conclusion. See his 1998 those with the kind of explicit philosophical essay, "Wittgenstein Among the Poets," in David Antin, intent that informs his museum interventions­ Radical Coherency:Seleded operate in a similar, but not exactly the same, Essays on Art and Literature 1966-2005 (Chicago: way. "The work included in this exhibition University of Chicago Press, becomes meaningful, like language, on the 2011), 305-30. surface of its play ... (unlike a direct assertion, or a truth statement, in philosophical discourse) the potential of art lies in putting before us a manifestation concretized as a cultural 18 Kosuth, "The Play of the formation. "18 This is an important insight into the Unsayable," 250. ways in which ideas are exhibited and thought is curated. It is one of the essential components of contemporary curatorial thought.

In his comments on "The Play of the Unsayable," Jean-Hubert Martin acknowledges the impact of artist-as-curator exhibitions upon curators such as himself: Magiciens de Ia terre, La Villette, Paris, 1989. Installation view of works by Richard Long and Yuendumu

The works were installed with a freedom revival of this interest in the work of Nouveau that conventions of hanging have made us Realiste artists such as Daniel Spoerri and Fluxus forget. Kosuth used the whole surface of artists such as Robert Filliou. His exhibition the walls, from floor to ceiling. Some works juxtaposed works by Euro-American artists who were juxtaposed to provoke unexpected were interested in what were vaguely (that is, with formal comparisons, and others were the built-in, blinkered Eurocentrism of long­ brought together for meaningful conceptual term colonizers) understood as "spiritual" issues, 19 Jean-Hubert Martin, "The encounters. Because many works were ready­ with ritual objects, artifacts, and performances Musee Sentimental of Daniel made objects, he found a subtle balance, by artists and shamans from indigenous cultures Spoerri," in Lynne Cooke and Peter Wollen, eds., avoiding an odds-and-ends effect and creating all over the world. While the style of hanging Visual Display: Culture Beyond visual and imaginative associations to open up on the fifth floor of the Centre Pompidou was Appearances (Seattle: Bay 19 Press, 1995), 56. the way for imaginative ways of seeing. relatively formal, the taller and wider spaces of the hall at La Villette permitted more dramatic Martin's installation of Magiciens de Ia terre contrasts. It also enabled certain significant in 1989 was triggered by his fascination with the works-such as the ritual-based sand paintings by inclusion of "primitive" artifacts in the collections the Yuendumu elders from the Central Australian of the Surrealists, such as Andre Breton, and the Desert, works by New Mexican Navajo Joe

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Ben Jr., and Tibetan monks Lobsang Thinie, constellation of small exhibitions ("nucleos") at Lobsang Palden, and Bhorda Sherpa-to set their sites all over the city, each with a theme and a own terms of reception. Works such as these mix of artists in terms of nationalities, mediums, exceeded the curatorial framework that aimed to and status, or just a random addition based on leap across the yawning gap between indigenous a particular initiative. Looking back, Mosquera and Euro-American worldviews by recourse to insists that it was "not conceived as an exhibition a generalized notion of "magic" and a string of but as an organism consisting of shows, events, poetic speculations concerning "spirituality" meetings, publications, and outreach programs." around which each of the sixteen subsections of In this sense, it anticipates many of the changes 20 SeeJean-HubertMartin, the exhibition was organized.20 Despite these in curatorial practice that these essays have been Magiciens de Ia terre (Paris: Musee national d'art elisions and excesses-for which the exhibition tracing. It broke the Venetian model by rejecting modem-Centre Pompidou, was attacked, not least by Benjamin Buchloh21- national representations in favor of an overall 1989), 12-13. The catalogue Magiciens de Ia terre must be acknowledged as includes a preface by Martin, theme, "Tradition and Contemporaneity," that an extraordinary "museum offering the first European foothold to artists was explored, controversially, in the "new Cuban without walls" album of from outside the West, one that they and many art" and by art from around the Third World stereotypical colonialist imagery, as well as standard others have since built into a global platform. (plus in a small exhibition of work by black artists profiles of each exhibitor. The from Britain), meanwhile mixing in shows of petit journal takes the visitor on a schematic guide through A broader artistic scope and a more focused Mrican wire sculptures, cult altars, and statues the sixteen speculations and political perspective inspired the second Bienal of Simon Bolivar. It also stopped the practice is the most revealing profile of the curatorial thinking that de la Habana in 1986. While the first iteration, of awarding prizes, an important feature of shaped the exhibition. in 1984, had been confined to Latin America, biennials to that time (and still present in Venice). the second included artists, critics, scholars, and 21 "The Whole Earth Show: This second Bienal was the outcome of years An Interview with Jean­ curators from across the Third World, which of research, travel, archival work, worldwide Hubert Martin by Benjamin then accounted for eighty percent of the world's communicating, and intense, continuing dialogue H. D. Buchloh," Art in America 77, no. 5 (May 1989): population. A key member of the curatorial among the curatorial team, led by Lilian Llanes 150-213. team, Gerardo Mosquera, claims that it was "the Godoy and Mosquera. Subsequendy, the idea first global contemporary art show ever made: a caught on that the complex structure and broad mammoth, uneven, rather chaotic bunch of more scope of the biennial was best conceived and than fifty exhibitions and events presenting 2,400 executed by a team of curators (a curatorium), 22 Gerardo Mosquera, works made by 690 artists from 57 countries."22 rather than one omniscient orchestrator: this "The Third Bienal de La Habana in its Global and It laid the groundwork for the third Bienal in is now the norm. In 1989 in Havana, however, Local Contexts," 2009, in 1989, arguably the most successful realization of it was in dynamic gestation: contradictions in Rachel Weiss et al., Making its organizers' aims to date and the model most Art Global (Part 1): The Cuban cultural policy, contestations between Third Havana Biennia/1989 resonant in subsequent curating of art emerging the curators, differences of approach among the (London: Afterall, 2011), 73. from the transnational transition. While the artists, and the widely divergent attitudes of the idea of a central exhibition ("Tres Mundos") discussants added up to an extraordinary event, was retained, it was opened out by a sprawling the substance of which was the continuities,

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tensions, and potentialities of contemporaneity as exhibition of Leonardo that curating be unobtrusive and done in the 23 These are discussed at it was then understoodY da Vinci's drawings and general interest (of Art, of the museum, of "the length in Rachel Weiss, manuscripts, see Lynne "A Certain Place and a Cooke, "In Lieu of Higher public") rather than in the name of an idea, an Certain Time: The Third THROUGH THE EYES OF ARTISTS Ground," in Marincola, What ideology, or an idiosyncratic point of view. Bienal de la Habana and Makes a Great Exhibition?, the Origins of the Global 40-41. Exhibition," in Weiss et al., During these decades, museums responded to the Relatively comfortable alliances of this kind Making Art Global, 14-69. inventiveness in modes of display that directors were disrupted by Fred Wilson's installation This volume, first in a series of which the next focuses and curators saw in the work of contemporary Mining the Museum at the Maryland Historical on Magiciens de Ia terre, artists-above all, their reconceptualization of the Society, Baltimore, in 1992-93. The then­ also contains an important introduction by Charles "installation," a term previously reserved for the contemporary context is important: conservative Esche, essays from the 1989 hanging of a collection or a temporary exhibition radicalism, led by Ronald Reagan and pursued by catalogue, papers from the conference, interviews with by a curator. With increasing frequency, museums a rampant Republican Party and business leaders some of the artists and the invited artists to curate small exhibitions of works bent on recasting the economy in neoliberal curatorial team, as well in the museum collection that might have a terms, was rapidly unpacking the Great Society as contemporary reviews. Fantastic! The most thorough special meaning to them. The National Gallery, promoted by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. study is Miguel Rojas-Sotelo, London, began its series The Artist's Eye in the late Not least of the social compacts under threat was "Cultural Maps, Networks, and Flows: The History 1970s, while MoMA introduced an Artist's Choice that with African Americans. and Impact of the Havana series in 1989. Begun by Scott Burden's focus on Biennale 1984 to the Present" (Ph.D. diss., University of the bases of Brancusi's sculptures, it has waxed and It is also relevant that the project was timed Pittsburgh, 2009). See also waned at MoMA, the ninth in the series being the to open for the 1992 American Association of Luis Camnitzer, New Art of Cuba (Austin: University 2009 exhibition Rebus by Vik Muniz. Since the Museums (AAM) annual conference, held that ofTexas Press, 1994); and early 1990s, the Prints and Drawings Department ·year in Baltimore. We should not forget that Rachel Weiss, To and From at the Louvre has commissioned a series of one­ turning points of this kind are often long in Utopia in the New Cuban Art (Minneapolis: University off curatorial interventions into its collections the making. Mter some years of consultation, of Minnesota Press, 2011). from non-curators (known as "Parti Pris") that the AAM published Excellence and Equity: For my reading of the 2003 Bienal, see What is have led to strikingly original exhibitions and Public Dimension of Museums in 1992. Critical Contemporary Art?, chap. 9. catalogues that prioritize the exploration of an publications also followed conferences at the idea proposed by the invitee. These include 25 Ivan Karp and Steven Smithsonian: Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, filmmakers D. Lavine, eds., Exhibiting Politics of Museum Display (1991) and Museums Cultures: The Poetics and such as Peter Greenaway, and artists such as James Politics of Museum Display and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture and 24 Jacques Derrida, Coleman.24 Outstanding exhibitions of this kind (Washington, D.C.: Exhibitions (1992).25 The profession was ready to Memoirs for the Blind: The Smithsonian Institution Self-Portrait and Other include Les lmmateriaux, curated by philosopher Press, 1991); and Ivan Karp, shift. It took an artist/museum educator to give Ruins (Chicago: University Jean-Franc;ois Lyotard at the Centre Georges Christine Mullen Kreamer, this shift compelling form in this country. of Chicago Press, 1993); Pompidou in 1985, and a series-including and Steven D. Lavine, eds., Peter Greenaway, Flying Museums and Communities: Out of This World (Chicago: Dramatically Different (1997), Weather Everything The Politics of Public Culture Wilson's installation was not confined to a University of Chicago Press, (1998), and Coo/lustre (2003)-curated by Eric and Exhibitions (Washington, small section of the museum. Rather, displayed 1994); onJames Coleman's D.C.: Smithsonian Books, co-curatorship of the 2003 Troncy. Each was an exception to the usual rule 1992). through eight rooms across the main (third) floor,

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it entailed the whole institution. His starting point was the recognition that institutions, such as historical societies and museums, which are presumed to outline a general narrative and to present their materials in as objective a fashion as possible, consistently fail to do so when it comes to socially contentious matters, such as, in this case, the history of slavery in the U.S. Wilson deployed curatorial display techniques to make visible the African American stories that the museum had previously rendered minor or invisible. He did so literally, by bringing up from storage items that had not been exhibited for years, if ever, and figuratively, by repurposing art that was regularly shown.

Visitors entered to be greeted with "Busts and

Empty Pedestals," an installation that contrasted Fred Wilson, Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson, Maryland Historical Society (MHS), Baltimore, a set of black pedestals (captioned for Frederick 1992-93. Installation view, Pedestals with Globe · Douglas, Harriet Tubman, and Benjamin Banneker, all from Maryland, but whose busts white families by forgotten black artists such as were not in the collection) with a carved marble John Johnson were placed near family portraits set topped with portrait busts of prominent white in which a black slave was included as a sign of figures (Henry Clay, Napoleon, Andrew Jackson). local "color." Wilson added tapes of the children These were arranged on either side of a vitrine in the paintings speaking to viewers, asking containing an array of empty plastic display stands questions such as "Where's my mother?" and "Am captioned "Artist Unknown c. 1960s." The largest I your friend, am I your brother, am I your pet?" stand supported a silver globe with the word Landscapes were renamed for the black figure "TRUTH" embossed across it in gold (actually, within them rather than the area depicted. an advertising trophy from 1913). The word, in this context, stands not only for the general In one vitrine, captioned "Metalwork value, so elided in the museum normally, but 1793-1880," crudely made slave shackles are also for Sojourner Truth, the great abolitionist placed among elaborately wrought silverware and women's rights advocate. The absenting of jugs, goblets, and tankards. Within "Modes of names of the makers, not least Mrican American Transport 1770-1910" Wilson juxtaposed the artists, in museum and art-historical narratives governor's sedan chair (that would have required was evoked throughout the exhibit. Portraits of slaves as carriers) with a baby c;arriage in which

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he placed a Klu Klux Klan hood. In the room MUSEUM INTERVENTIONS labeled "Cabinet Making 1820-1910" a set of elegant Victorian sitting room chairs is arranged Wilson's projects raised the level of possibility in ideal viewing position around a roughly hewn for the artist as curator. They also shifted such whipping post, used as recently as 1938 in the exhibits from the "Artist's Vision" model to that of Baltimore City Jail. Not confining himself to the critical intervention. In this changing climate, African American matters, Wilson expanded artists such as Haacke accepted invitations to the critique to include the treatment of Native rehang museum collections and did so-notably Americans. A row of cigar store Indians, their in AnsichtsSachen/Viewing Matters at the Museum backs to the viewer, face off a run of photographs Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, in 1999, of Native Americans pictured in everyday and Give & Take: Hans Haacke, Mixed Messages 26 For a detailed first circumstances and a map of duck decoy sites to at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the response to the exhibition, Serpentine Gallery, London, in 2001-in ways see Judith E. Stein, "Sins which he added captions with the names of local of Omission: Fred Wilson's Indian tribes. The final room showcased the that, like Wilson's installations, made manifest the Mining the Museum," Art in research of astronomer Benjamin Banneker along exploitation and exclusions on which museums America 81, no. 9 (October 1993): 110-15. See also Lisa with extracts from his diaries chronicling abuse were based. This was achieved not only in the Corrin and Fred Wilson, directed toward him. The last image in the selection of artworks collected and displayed but Mining the Museum: An Installation (New York: New show is Banneker's statement in a book to also in their upstairs/downstairs banishing of Press, 1994). For Wilson's President Thomas Jefferson: "Dear Sir, I freely, the labor (of artists, workmen, custodians, and report of his experience, curators) that built them and sustains them. including a generous cheerfully acknowledge I am a member of acknowledgement of the the Mrican race. "26 Contemporary's director Andrea Fraser's formula-that the critique of and curator in drawing him out to shape his vision of the The impact of this exhibition on museum institutions inevitably turns into institutional(ized) installation, see "A Change of professionals everywhere has been great, and it critique-is elaborated by her and many others Heart: Fred Wilson's Impact 27 on Museums," http://www. remains (in the U.S. at least) a model for bringing 27 Andrea Fraser, "From the as an explicit function of reformist insiderness. vam.ac.uklcontent/videos/a/ the world's complexities into the museum's halls. Critique of Institutions to It recognizes the historical shift from artworks video-a -change-of-heart­ an Institution of Critique," fred-wilsons-impact-on­ A smaller version of the show stayed up for eight Artforum 44, no. 1 (September that used the museum as a site to critique social museums/. At this time, there years. In 2003 the Maryland Institute College of 2005): 278-83. For transcripts inequities, including those embodied in the of her performances, see was a widespread interest museum's governing structures and its social in archives among artists. Art presented What's It To You? American History is Alexander Alberro, ed., Mining is the most obvious Black History, a direct response to Wilson's show. Museum Highlights: The roles, to those that emphasized the mystifications metaphor for entering such Writings of Andrea Fraser perpetuated by conventional display protocols spaces. See Hal Foster, "An Its rebuilding program incorporated these lessons (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Archival Impulse," October, into subsequent displays, and the board continues Press, 2005). within museums. While the museum qua no. 110 (Fall2004): 3-22; to include black and minority Americans. institution proved that it could transform itself and, for example, "Mining the Archive," Art/ink 19, no. sufficiently to absorb the latter-and display such 1 (1999), guest editor Zara critiques as an ongoing phase in the history of art Stanhope, http://www.artlink. com.au/issue.c&n?id= 1910. (for example, The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect, at MoMA in 1999)-it had much more trouble

124 125 TERRY SMITH ARTISTS AS CURATORS/CURATORS AS ARTISTS with the former. Nor was such reform on this scale encouraged by rightward swings in many countries or by the increasing and continuing dependence of art museums on monied elites.

Fraser's insistent refrain is that there is no outside to the system. While this is, in important senses, true, it is limiting when taken literally.

To me, a~pectsof her practice actually exemplify a more radical option than she seems able to articulate. The oppositional artist whose art is entirely a practice of critiquing institutions may well become absorbed by an institution that welcomes critique of itself (for the pragmatic, flexible management reasons already mentioned). But the artist who maintains a nonutopic, partial, and paradoxical, yet also critical complicity with everything, including his or her own motivations and achievements, is always already partially institutionalized, though maybe at the same time Andrea Fraser, Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk, 1989. Image from performance at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia sufficiently otherwise engaged to be substantively uninstitutionalizable. Despite her protestations, Fraser is one such. She adds a dimension to the critique of artists such as Haacke, in that she confined to an essay, "No Place Like Home," in enters the museum, at its invitation, to perform which she turned her sharply critical lens on art 28 the critique, not as a still object that can be passed 28 Andrea Fraser, "No Place discourse itself. as Yes, Like Home," in Jay Sanders by but a living being. she is performing; and Elisabeth Sussman, eds., we know that. And, yes, she is performing Whitney Biennial2012 (New In general, as it enters the exhibitionary her own artwork. Yet it is precisely the overt York: Whitney Museum of spectrum, especially the museum end of it, American Art, 2012), 28-33. nature of performance as such that enables her Downloadable online institutional critique becomes absorbed through to instantiate the working conditions of those at http://whitney.org/ recognition, historicization, and modification, and Exhibitions/20 12Bienniall involved in presenting the museum's apparently AndreaFraser its critical edge fades. This is true for institutional seamless, effortless, labor-free spectacle within critique as art. Some artists are utterly embedded hallowed halls devoted to celebrating the outcome in the art museum system and some (for example, of the work of the absent, mythologized artist Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset) have (and, in some even more mythical sense, art). Her developed a practice dedicated to making that contribution to the 2012 Whitney Biennial was embedment explicit, attractive, or at least amusing.

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Reviewing this history, it is not surprising that manifest the flows and fissures of everyday life, Alexander Alberro's introduction to Institutional these artists seek to exhibit these flows and open Critique, written in 2009, echoes that of Allan out these fissures in whichever settings seem Kaprow, two generations earlier. Alberro wrote: most appropriate. Sometimes, as in the case of Tiravanija's convivial cooking and eating works, With the ideals of the institution of art, this involves transforming a gallery space into a and other Enlightenment institutions of dining hall, at others it entails a temporary event public subject formation, in ruins, artists at a remote site Geremy Deller), or an exchange who continue to work within the legacy of imagery in brand-space (Huyghe and Parreno), of institutional critique are left to choose Nicolas Bourriaud discussing while in others it has meant a return to the his Altermodern Manifesto for between contemplating the moribund cultural the Tate Triennial exhibition, museum, now understood as just one potential apparatus and engaging with social conflicts Altermodern, 2009. Video place among others where an exhibition might still, http://www.tate.org.ukl far beyond it. The more interesting art being context-comment/video/tate­ be staged. While curator at the Palais de Tokyo, produced today fuses these irreconcilable triennial-2009-altermodern­ Paris, Bourriaud encouraged this attitude by nicolas-bourriaud (accessed 29 Alexander Alberro, 29 positions. April2012) stripping the museum interior so that it resembled "Introduction," in Alberro a concrete warehouse or abandoned factory of the and Stimson, Institutional Critique, 18. See also John C. "Fusing" is the hard part. Sometimes, more kind used for raves. Welchman, ed., Institutional often these days, it is done in concert with Critique and After (Zurich: JRP/Ringier, 2007); and curators, as a process of co-curating. Some of these artists are more interested Gerald Raunig and Gene Ray, than others in the languages of visual display eds., Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing ARTISTS AS EXHIBITION MAKERS used not only in museum and gallery settings Institutional Critique (London: but also commercially and elsewhere in capitalist mayfly, 2009). A second model of what it is to make an culture. Attentive to the ways in which managerial exhibition as a work of art has emerged in the thinking is shaping our lives, the ways in which practice of artists such as Martin Beck, Liam our lives are thought for us, and the ways in which Gillick, Dominique Gonzales-F oester, Pierre we think we think them, Liam Gillick exhibits Huyghe, Goshka Magua, Philippe Parreno, settings that reveal aspects of these processes in all Walid Raad, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Each of of their normalizing ambiguity, as with "scenario these artists, in related, but distinct, ways, makes thinking," a process of role playing in imaginary the exhibition his or her core medium. In the settings, of exploring possible outcomes, that late 1990s this type of enterprise was dubbed is used in business and government when "relational aesthetics" by curator Nicolas consensus cannot be reached by more regular Bourriaud; since then Bourriaud and others have channels. Drawing together decor from such gone on to develop curatorial practices that entail settings, official-looking documents and other working closely with these artists to realize their paraphernalia, and inserting film of staged ambitions, often as a participant within the team discussions as well as fragments from his own of producers of the work. Committed to making texts that interrogate the work itself, Gillick

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For the sake of completeness, one other model of the artist as curator should be mentioned: when the entire museum becomes a Gesamtkunstwerk or, in contemporary terms, a domain of totalized, saturated spectacle, an analogy to a glam-rock show. In recent years, few have matched Matthew Barney's consummate takeover of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2003, to present his entire Cremaster series of performances, films, videos, installations, and 32 32 I devote chap. 8 of What sculptures. Just how profoundly this Baroque is Contemporary Art? to a Now style will resonate within curatorial practice detailed discussion of this exhibition. remains to be seen.

CURATORS AS ARTISTS

If we take a long view across this same (now fifty-year) period, we can see that some, but not many, curators matched these efforts by artists as Liam Gillick, One long walk ... two short piers ... , Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, 2010 curators. They did so mostly by acting as quasi artists, by envisioning museum spaces as if they were studios, staging places for artistic ideas­ builds display environments in which these kinds in-formation, or as if they were museums from of group thinking have occurred, could happen, another time and place, past or future. Sometimes or may be taking place. He also transposes they were not museum spaces at all, but rather them into ordinary leisure settings where such environments that housed an alternative, exchanges might be expected to take different parallel world. In his profession-shifting role forms and into quasi-cinematic scenarios. The of "curator as artist," Ausstellungsmacher Harald What If? Scenarios and Discussion Island works of Szeemann certainly did each of these things, 30 Liam Gillick, "The What 1996 take all of these forms. 30 Suzanne Cotter in exhibitions such as Live in Your Head: When If?Scenarios," http://www. liamgillick.info/home/workl credits Gillick's series with announcing "a new Attitudes Become Form: Works-Processes-Concepts­ projects-and -work-5/the­ field of the discursive that has seen artistic Situations-Information (1969), The Mountain of what-if-scenarios. production and the curatorial field merge into an Truth (1978), and Der Hang zum Gesamtkunstwerk 31 Suzanne Cotter, in expanded terrain of critical practices."31 While (The Inclination toward the Total Work ofArt) Craig Garrett, ed., Defining Contemporary Art-25 Years in this may be an exaggeration, we will see that (1983). The curator-as-artist approach meant 200 Pivotal Artworks (London: Gillick's model does indeed resonate strongly in foregrounding one's vision in the publicity for Phaidon, 2011), 198. contemporary curating. the show and in its presentation in the gallery,

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thus making the curator's thinking a conscious factor in the visitor's experience. It also meant that exhibitions came to be understood as works-in­ progress, subject to change by the artists involved (many works transformed over time, others changed via visitor participation, thus the whole ensemble could be in constant motion) and by the curator's evolving conception of what he or she wanted to convey. Temporariness became as much an element as temporality.

To a marked extent, a rather conventional, even populist, mid-nineteenth century, Romantic­ era notion of the artist as an alienated, inspired 3 3 Dorothea von Hantelmann genius underpinned these initiatives-ironically notes Szeemann's background at the very time that many visual artists were in the theater before taking up curating. See her essay, moving to erase that picture of their vocation in "The Curatorial Paradigm," favor of a more distanced professionalism. This in The Exhibitionist, no. 4 Donald Judd, 100 untitled works in mill aluminum, 1982-86. Mill aluminum. 104.1 x 129.5 x 182.9 em Oune 2011): 6. Daniel Buren was not, however, the case in European theater says that, by the later 1980s, and cinema: perhaps "director theater" and Szeemann labels himself an auteur d'exposition. See Daniel "auteur cinema" were equally inspirational for Buren and Wouter Davidts, Szeemann? 33 It is no surprise that innovations marker of cutting-edge exhibition making for "Teaching without Teaching," in Paul O'Neill and Mick in the time-bound arts should serve as models temporary shows, something quite other emerged Wilson, eds., Curating and the for rethinking temporary exhibitions nor that as a paradigm for those of longer duration. The Educational Turn (London: the frenetic swapping between artistic mediums careful, measured, high-skill tradesmanship that Open Editions I Amsterdam: De Appel, 201 0), 221. See that was occurring at the time (the transmedial served as an ethical model for Minimal artists also Florence Derieux, condition) should have impacted upon the such as Donald Judd in the planning, execution, Harald Szeemann: Individual Methodology (Zurich: JRPI shaping of exhibitions. All of these changes have and display of their "pieces" also inspired Ringier, 2007); Tobia Bezzola continued to resonate within curatorial practice what might be considered a distinct school of and Roman Kurzmeyer, Harald Szeemann: With by across the spectrum. Artworks and exhibitions curating. As is demonstrated above all in his own through becausetowards despite: have become increasingly alike. curatorial oversight of the installations of his Catalogue ofAll Exhibitions 1957-2005 (Zurich: Edition work and that of selected other artists at Marfa, Voldemeer, 2007); and Identity-sharing has not, however, meant Texas, Judd developed a set of principles that, Christian Rattemeyer eta!., sameness, not least because of the ever­ by minimizing all distractions between the work Exhibiting the New Art: Op Losse Schroeven and Ulhen accelerating diversity of art practice since the and the spectator, would honor the artist's intent Attitudes Become Form, 1969 1960s. If the overtly theatrical staging of the and maximize the spectator's experience. These (London: Afterall, 2010). work-in-progress style of exhibition became the principles can be stated as ethical imperatives.

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Undertake a journey, 'expend valuable time, that seems to be undergoing significant revision and take some trouble, before approaching the under its recently appointed director, Philippe place where the work is to be found. The place Vergne), above all in its sustained commitment should be dedicated exclusively to showing just to the work of a specific number of selected that work or work of its kind and type and not artists, especially their projects that require large be contaminated by other kinds of art or by any initial investment and perpetual maintenance other purpose. Each specific object is to be shown at dedicated sites outside of museum or gallery by itself, in a space specifically designed for it (or settings. In its programming from 1987 until suitably modified for it) and for a specific period 2009, the Dia Foundation exhibition building of time (ideally forever). Exiting the space should in the Chelsea art district in New York followed be the same sort of experience as entering, except a version of Judd's prescriptions: one artist, one in reverse-that is, it should be absolutely open­ floor, one year. Dia: Beacon offers a judicious ended, untrammeled by any other experience. mix of long-term spaces dedicated to one work Each step in this process should be known in or group of works by one of the artists from the advance and be legible throughout. It should be Dia stable as well as temporary exhibitions by undertaken in a steady, straightforward manner, these artists. The latter are presented in the same 34 with distractions put aside. No interruptions, 34 I discuss Dia in detail in carefully crafted and understated style. Aspects no extraneous noise; nothing but the work, and chap. 2 of What is Contemporary of this interplay between a stripped-down, fixed Art?. you, and .... structure and free-flowing, external movement have been widely adopted in museums all over the These procedures look like ritual sui generis, world, especially for showing art of this period stripped of all trappings. Indeed, they have the and since. In contrast to the highly performative same purpose: to precipitate an experience of the Ausstellungsmacher such as Szeemann, few unsayable. Resolute structural symmetry in every practitioners of this style have emerged as aspect of the staging of the exhibit is dedicated "starcurators" (analogous to "starchitect"), to generating transcendent outcomes for the although some, such as Lynne Cooke now at the viewer. The point of showing specific objects in Reina Sofia, but for many years at Dia, are highly this overdetermined style is, paradoxically yet respected exponents of it. precisely, to bring about an experience of that which cannot be specified. CURATORS ARE NOT ARTISTS

The minimalist curatorial ethos is evident in a Robert Storr puts his finger on the confusion number of small-scale, special-purpose museums that follows when a curator takes literally what in Europe, such as the Hallen fur Neue Kunst, is or should be in essence a mutually respectful Schaffhausen, and the Muller collection at lnsel exchange of ways of showing art and telling Hombroich. In the U.S., it has been at the heart stories with it to various publics. of the Dia project since its inception (although

134 135 TERRY SMITH ARTISTS AS CURATORS/CURATORS AS ARTISTS In the current climate a significant number Especially now that art institutions across of exhibition makers simultaneously the spectrum have taken careful note of the underestimate and overestimate their status innovations of curators as artists and artists as in relation to the artist. This confusion is curators during the past fifty years, and the slowly revealing of the present plight of their calling. evolving convergence between these two sets of On the one hand they operate contrary to already contingent practices. Instead of falling all that they know or should know as if the into the category mistake of collapsing one into artist was always right; and then, having the other, are we not approaching a situation in surrendered their authority as specialists, which curators will work closely with artists and claim in other facets of their activity that, vice versa, rather than persist with the one or at bottom, they too are artists and deserve the other, always unequal, relationship that has special deference. But exhibition makers are obtained for centuries? not artists, and deference, mixed with envy, is an unhealthy inclination in any dealings based Historical perspective is also telling us that 35 Storr, "Show and Tell," 17. on shared information and passion. 35 the idealism of early institutional critique has subtly saturated art's institutions-subtly because, This is a timely warning. It highlights the fact that a mistake in logic is being made when while the art-viewing public must of course be made aware of these latest impulses among artists, "acting like x" is (mis)understood as "being x," museum directors and curators take extraordinary in the sense of "being the same as x." If, as pains to ensure that the contract care between I have been arguing throughout, curating is of the exercise of curatorial thought within the themselves and the museum's public is not broken. In a museum, this contract is like the "fourth practical exigencies of making an exhibition, then wall" in a theater; it is the shared fiction that art whenever anyone does this, they are curating­ is fungible, it is just the beauty you see before artists included. Artists will do so, preferably, not you, it is a world that you can observe from close in a unique and distinctive way, one that shares up, but never enter. curator in an institution, certain qualities with the works of art that they The even an alternative one, cannot challenge the usually make. Their individual approaches to public to the degree and in the ways that artists curating may have much in common with that of such as Wilson have done. At least, they cannot their contemporaries who also curate and perhaps with some earlier artists or curators who have do so given the current understanding of what constitutes that public or, frankly, the prevailing attempted something similar, but most of what rule the dollar, which reduces museum visitors they do will have much more in common with of what curators do or would normally do in such to sheer numbers. This need obscures many circumstances. things: one relevant to us is that it makes almost invisible the critical work done inside institutions by what is now two generations of curators inspired by both radical artists and independent 136 137 TERRY SMITH curators. While the groundbreaking shows staged by curators as artists and artists as curators are rightly fabled, this internal achievement-one that has reformed, to varying degrees, many art institutions from within-remains a story asking to be told.

Perhaps the most important potential of the curator/artist convergence is the working with model of artist-curator exchange. The deep ethical import of all of these approaches pivots on conceiving the artist as in part, fundamentally, an outsider to art's institutions, a stranger in the place ostensibly devoted to his or her unique creativity, a foreign visitor whose otherness is the essence of the entire city. Does contemporary curating also aspire to this role, to a kind of insider outsiderness? A small but increasing number of curators find themselves, by choice or circumstance, forging careers outside the major art exhibiting institutions, and apart from corporate and major private collections. While of course this figure of the "outsider within" courts incorporation, the question remains: Does it have the same potential for subversion that Basualdo identifies in the relationship between the mega­ exhibition and the museum and between the biennial and the art system as a whole? Wherever you are in the exhibitionary complex, can you be simultaneously reformist, critical, and out there? Is this not what contemporaneity most urgently requires of us?

138 4. Curating Contemporaneity

My own definition of the field is more or less seat-of-the-pants (i.e., a rolling, continuously filtered aggregate of what I see in galleries and contemporary art museums, plus the same for what I read about it in periodicals and online).

-Peter Plagens, "The Art of Being Contemporary," Art in America, December 2010

To be present total all at once that is the purpose of Art.

-Anish Kapoor, Notebook entry next to sketches for Cloud Gate, 2004 TERRY SMITH CURATING CONTEMPORANEITY

"When it comes to the contemporary-as it seems phrase conjures a (nervously) conformist-or, to, ubiquitously, in art discourse these days­ at best, a (coolly) complicit-contemporaneity, some misconceptions (easy-ways-out) should a mood entirely familiar to the fashion industry. be immediately challenged. A major one arises (William Gibson's Zero History is a mildly if we take current forms of being contemporary interesting riff on the interplay between these or up to date as constituting an all pervasive, two situations, while Lady Gaga's ongoing implicitly coherent description of the present project is a spectacular one.) It is true that, at the as a whole. Or, as Plagens's too-busy-to-think­ margins, this is a mood scarcely distinguishable about-it-anyway remark illustrates, we reject from genuinely contemporary diffirance, yet the any generalization and thus allow anything-goes difference increases as one slopes away from the pluralism to rule by default. Swallowed whole, other until it becomes huge, then total. This or left alone, "the contemporary" performs, distinction was implicit in "A Questionnaire on simultaneously, two quite antithetical tasks: it 'The Contemporary,"' circulated by the journal accepts the seemingly most up-to-date instance October in 2 009, as may be seen from this extract as definitive of all present (and immediate future) from the lead question: possibility and, at the same time, it insists on a relationship of equivocal temporizing concerning The category of "contemporary art" is not everything that constitutes this up-to-datedness. a new one. "What is new is the sense that, "While pragmatism might want these options to in its very heterogeneity, much present be available and applicable depending on the practice seems to float free of historical situation, a blind contemporaneity (as Agamben determination, conceptual definition, and warns) puts them into play at once. The result is critical judgment.... At the same time, perhaps that the openness to possibility that should be the paradoxically, "contemporary art" has become leading quality of contemporaneity is foreclosed, an institutional object in its own right .... Is 1 and a weak, mindless presentism rules the roost. 1 See Hal Foster, ed., "A this floating-free real or imagined? However vibrant and vivid this contemporaneity Questionnaire on 'The Contemporary,'" October, may seem to those immersed in it, melancholy no. 130 (Fall2009): 3. For The distinction between dazzling and deep impotence and the rule of repetition haunt it. commentary on the absence contemporaneity was not picked up by many of of curators among those taking up the invitation, see the thirty-four respondents, only three of whom Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Johanna Burton, "On Knot had curating as their primary profession. Almost Curating," The Exhibitionist, fashion industry, where novelty of innovation no. 4 Oune 2011): 42-54. everyone who is subject to the bedazzling glare at its peak is swamped within days by massive, of the contemporary seems inclined to wait for it diluted imitation. The whole point of that to come to them, to mirror the present through industry is to generate such recursion. In art the lens held up by certain artists, collectors, and discourse, where the opposite should be the case, dealers. Curators are fading as agenda setters. a similarly disabling situation is obvious in the Critics have almost entirely disappeared into use of the phrase "the contemporary." To me, this the role of art reviewers and reporters. Most art

142 143 TERRY SMITH CURATING CONTEMPORANEITY historians seem content to hover in the wings, be identified to its time and place. The unusual waiting to describe the fallout. None of this is concentrations of red ochre in caves across Africa, healthy, nor is it good for art. some dating back 160 thousand years (that is, to the earliest Homo sapiens), may indicate the An equally disabling mistake is to assume that beginnings of human consciousness of temporal "contemporary" is a term that applies exclusively differentiation. Recently it was announced that to the present. Kapoor's remark is in one not ochres blended with binding fat from mammal­ helpful sense universalist, but in another, useful bone marrow had been found, along with sense, it is an assertion about art's necessary container shells and stone tools for pounding and attachment to its own times and an affirmation of grinding, in Blombos Cave, South Africa. They the demand that each particular work of art makes have been dated to one hundred thousand years 2 on our time (that of each individual viewer). If we 2 John Noble Wilford, "In ago. The suites of paintings in the Chauvet-Pont­ are contemporaries with the artist, the artwork Mrica Cave, Ancient Paint d'Arc Caves, dated to around thirty to thirty-four Factory Pushes Human Sym­ makes its claim upon us in the name of our times, bolic Thought 'Far Back,"' thousand years ago, may have been produced by that is, our shared temporality. If we are not New York Times, October 14, just a few "artists," working individually or as part contemporaries with the artist, the artwork invites 2011, A12. of small groups, yet five hundred to thousands the possibility of such a sharing-in a past time, of years apart. Such specific authorship explodes or an imagined other time-as an act of empathy our primitivizing preconceptions that this type that we know will be partial, temporary, but of imagery had entirely generic or collective 3 perhaps no less valuable for that. These exchanges 3 Werner Herzog's The Cave origins. The message is that contemporaneity occur in concrete ways and in particular places, at of Forgotten Dreams (2011) has a history-perhaps many histories, variously highlights the stranger aspects particular times. They have always done so. They of these paintings and, enter­ connected or disconnected-that we are just always will. tainingly, the innate weirdness beginning to trace. These histories would belong of those concerned with their contemporary reception. alongside those of other cultural formations, such Today, contemporaneity (in the complex sense as tradition, disruption, and everydayness, or defined earlier that includes the saturation of the histories of mediums, or of kinds of relationship, present with many different kinds of pasts, both or of sexualities. In this quest to understand past as memories and expectations) is significantly contemporaneities, there is a great task for art more powerful than historical determination as curating, as there is for art history and perhaps the definer of contemporary life. It is, therefore, for a kind of projective art criticism-a quest that one of the key signs that we are no longer wholly clearly expands beyond art to curatorship of all modern. Yet these qualities of contemporaneity kinds and to historical research in general. are not confined to today, nor can their current forms be back-projected without falling into Awareness of the historicity and the temporal misleading anachronism. Specific kinds of complexity of contemporaneity is a crucial step contemporaneity have been present since the toward overcoming the narrow conception dawn of human consciousness. Each needs to that contemporary curating must be devoted

144 145 TERRY SMITH CURATING CONTEMPORANEITY to the concerns of contemporary art, or the Meanwhile, especially since the 1980s, all kinds of Contemporary Art world, or some vague sense of museums have been obliged to attend to the boom "the demands of our times." It should never be a in the market for contemporary art, the exhibition matter of applying the presumed priorities of "the of which has become, quantitatively, the chief task contemporary" to the showing of art, present or of most curatorial practice throughout the world. past. The challenge is more interesting than that. Yet we should not overlook the fact that this focus Let me try to show how, beginning with a review on current currency has been accompanied by of exhibitions that explore the actually existing an urgent wish to revisit repressed, unknown, or contemporaneities of art's past. It will emerge forgotten prehistories of the present precisely to that many curators, mainly working through ascertain why the forgetting occurred and to find city and regional museums, university galleries, out how valuable insights and energies from an and contemporary art spaces, are charting the earlier moment might be reshaped into a current multilayered ways in which late modern art relevance. Focusing on the period immediately became contemporary. This is a huge collective prior to the recent past, to explore it before enterprise, one that is being undertaken by the it detaches fully from the present and is then contemporary exhibitionary spectrum, as if at the recuperated as "retro," is to pay attention to an level of a historical reflex of the system itself. involuntary yet natural gulf in memory, one that resonates through the present, although usually EXHIBITING HISTORICAL out of sight. While I will cite large survey shows CONTEMPORANEITIES that were mostly exhibited at major museums, this urge can be seen at work in all kinds of Many of the most interesting art exhibitions of exhibitionary spaces, venues, and occasions. For recent years have been contributions to this quest. example, Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965- While they often seem to arise due to individual 1980, mounted at the various campus galleries initiative, donor interest, or as supplements to of the University of Toronto in 2010, was a the usual mix, such exhibitions are also frequently bold attempt to rethink the recent history of responses to real and pressing social needs. They the art of a whole country. Sometimes this urge stand out amidst the normal policies of museums, can consume the art scene of an entire city, as galleries, or art spaces: to survey major trends­ Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 did stylistic, medial, thematic-in art past and throughout 2011 and for much of 2012 in Los present, to stage retrospectives when they are due, Angeles. and to introduce young artists. It should not be necessary to say that the continual staging of these Perhaps the strongest and most persistent kinds of exhibitions-to rotate the collection, to exhibitions of this type have revisited histories enrich the historical record, and to recognize the of feminist art, or art by women, seeking to work of living artists-remains a core function of relate it, directly or by implication, to the curating and should continue to be valued as such. contemporary situation both then and now.

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Some have been national in focus, most have students were born, yet at the same time many had an international component. They include of the artists who made those works were still the First International Women's Art Festival living and making new work at the time of in Taiwan, Women, Art and Technology(Taiwan, these exhibitions. Fourth, these exhibitions 2004); Life Actually (Tokyo, 2005); Konstfeminism were all shown in major national or regional 4 (Helsingborg, Sweden, 2005); Kiss Kiss Bang Bang 4 Hilary Robinson, Feminism­ museums or galleries. (Bilbao, Spain, 2007); Wack! Art and the Feminist Art-Theory: A History (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming). Revolution (Los Angeles, 2007); Global Feminisms These exhibitions also register the fact (New York, 2007); the Incheon Women Artists that the aspirations of the 1970s have had a Biennial (Incheon, Korea, 2007, 2009, 2011); marked quantitative impact (in the proportion Rebelle (Arnhem, the Netherlands, 2009); Gender of women regularly active as artists), but more Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of ambiguous qualitative outcomes (art institutions Eastern Europe (Vienna, 2 009); Med Viljann ad and structures remain as subject as others to Vopni: Endurlit 1970-1980 (Reykjavik, 2010); antifeminist pushback and business as usual). Donna: Avanguargia Femminista Negli Anni '70 In the New York area, the Elizabeth A. Sackler GENDERCHECK (Rome, 2010); Goddesses(Oslo, 2010); and elles@ ...... ,..,.,,._,,_._.... ,.-rolt_....,...... Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum centrepompidou (Paris, 2009-11). Hilary Robinson is a plus; so is the Modern Women project at notes that these exhibitions share four qualities: MoMA, which has led to major shows of painting, Vlado Martek, NECU prints, and photography by women artists and to First, they all purport to be surveys, as distinct (I Don't Want It), 1979. an increased inclusion of art by women in more Cover of exhibition catalogue, from the many themed feminist exhibitions or Gender Check: Femininity general exhibitions, such as On Line: Drawing exhibitions of women's art that also occurred and Masculinity in the Art of Through the Twentieth Century (2010-11), in which Eastern Europe, MUMOK­ during these years (such as It's Time For Action Museum Moderner Kunst the contributions of women artists predominated. [Emily Davis Gallery, University of Akron, Stiftung Ludwig Wien, In a parallel move, Daniel Birnbaum, recently Vienna, November 13, 2009- Ohio, October to December 2006]). Second, February 14, 2010. Curator: appointed director of the Moderna Museet, they all intersect with feminist thought, Bojana Pejic Stockholm, determined that art by women would in either the stated curatorial impulse for be prioritized in the museum's exhibitions, in the exhibition, and/or in much of the art both displays of the permanent collection and selected, and/or in the ancillary products of temporary shows. During my visit in September the exhibition such as the catalogues. Third, 2011 the majority of women photographers in they have occurred at the time when the Another Story: Photographs from the Moderna Museet lived experience of the women's movement Collection shifted the tone and texture of what is turning into the subject of History, its is usually a historical survey of iconic images. disciplining impulses are being written, Such shows make visible the contribution of and, in the art world, are beginning to be extraordinary artists, such as Eva Klasson, who are canonized. Many of the works exhibited were not known outside their immediate circle. created around twenty years before today's art

148 149 TERRY SMITH CURATING CONTEMPORANEITY

Attention should be paid to less obvious Like all other critical perspectives, feminism moments of inclusion. The exhibition Abstract thrives on institutional critique and seeks Expressionist New York at MoMA (2010-11) structural transformation, not simply a seat at posed a number of challenges to its curators. For someone else's table. Forty years of struggle, reasons of historical accuracy, they were obliged however, has produced significant gains and some to convey a sense of the overtly masculinist ethos outstanding practitioners. The lineaments of a of the leading artists and the relative downgrading history of feminist curating are becoming visible. of the women artists at the time. Yet they also The terms of the current struggle are, however, needed to reflect the subsequent revaluation of quite different from what they were in the 1970s. the work of the latter, as well as recent awareness Just how these terms might be formulated is a 7 of the ambiguous, changeable senses of sexuality 7 See "Curatorial Strategies," pressing challenge. at play in the work of some of the male artists. n.paradoxa 18, ed. Renee Baert, special issue (July This complex psychic and temporal layering was 2006); Griselda Pollock, En­ Art exhibitions played a major role within the handled with some subtlety. Instead of placing counters in the Virtual Feminist anticolonial and national liberation struggles that Museum: Time, Space, and the works by Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and others Archive (London: Routledge, took political form in the non-aligned movement alongside iconic bravura pieces by Pollock, de 2007); Malin Hedlin Hayden of the 1950s and appeared in art contexts in and Jessica Sjoholm Skrubbe, Kooning, Still, Newman, and Kline, we were eds., Feminisms is Still our occasional ways before the 1980s. Since then taken from a room full of jostling canvases by Name: 7 Essays on Historiog­ decolonization has burgeoned as one of the major the big boys into the next main space, the tone raphy and Curatorial Practices drivers of social, political, and cultural change in (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cam­ of which was set by a major painting by Krasner, bridge Scholars Publishing, the world. Survey exhibitions in major galleries placed alone on a facing wall, with strong works 2010); Angela Dimitrakaki and the •biennial form itself became an important and Lara Perry, eds., Politics by Mitchell to one side and Frankenthaler to the in a Glass Case: Exhibiting medium to both manifest and examine this world­ other, which manifested their singularity among Women's and Feminist Art transforming force. Prefigured as a potential in (Liverpool: Liverpool Uni­ lower-key works by de Kooning, Leslie, Tworkov, versity Press, 2012). See also Magiciens de la terre (Paris, 1989), The Other Story 5 I thankJoao Ribas for and others. Exhibitionary flow of this kind picks "Transnational Perspectives (London, 1989), and explicitly in Cities on the drawing my attention to this up differences that existed, however distasteful on Women's Art, Feminism Move: Contemporary Asian Art at the Turn of the moment. A similar effect may and Curating," Faculty of be observed in the "Singular they might have come to seem, while at the Arts, University of Brighton, 21st Century (various venues, 1997-78) and Global Vision" rooms at the Whitney same time allowing us to see what these works active since 2010, http://arts. Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s (New Museum currently, in which brighton.ac.uk/researchlirn. 5 one room is devoted to a have to offer to present possibility. Whethe~the York, 1999), decoloniality became a game changer single work. Both Krasner and current emphasis on women artists will outlast at Documenta 11 (platforms around the world, Eva Hesse are handsomely treated, their rooms flanked the initial funding remains to be seen. As I have 2000-2002). Documenta 11 had been prepared by one holding a Jasper Johns noted, MoMA is dedicating itself to becoming for in Okwui Enwezor's earlier exhibitions, flag painting and another cen­ tered on a kinetic sculpture by a contemporary art museum in everything but 8 Chinua Achebe and Okwui including Trade Routes: History and Geography Len Lye. name. Curator Sabine Breitwieser explained the Enwezor, The Short Century: 0 ohannesburg, 1997) and, with Chinua Ache be, Independenceand Liberation 6 Sabine Breitwieser cited in recent purchase of a group of works from the Movement in Africa 1945-1994 the traveling show The Short Century: Independence Carole Vogel, "Inside Art," 1960s and 1970s by Valie Export and Martha (Munich: Prestel, 2001). and Liberation Movement in Africa 1945-1994.8 New York Times, February 3, 2012, C31. Rosier: "All of their thinking is so present."6

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To this list of pathbreaking exhibitions we it matter if African-based scholars are not part must add others relating to Africa by other of the debate elicited by these shows? Does it curators, including A Fiction ofAuthenticity: matter that Africa-based (critical) reviewing Contemporary Africa Abroad (St. Louis, 2003), publics are marginal to what has become the Looking Both U7ays:Art of the Contemporary effective discursive horizon of contemporary 10 African Diaspora (New York, 2003), Fault Lines: 10 Ibid., 160, 187. Mrican art?" The call for "representativeness" Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes in international exhibitions was debated. It can (London, 2003), 10 Years 10 Artists, Art in a itself represent little more than "dunderheaded Democratic South Africa (Cape Town, 2004), A nationalism" (as exemplified, egregiously, in the Cover of exhibition catalogue, Decade of Democracy, South African Art 1994- Italian Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale) or Africa Remix: Contemporary it can be a generalized expectation on the part Art of a Continent, Hayward 2004.(Cape Town, 2004), and Africa Remix: Gallery London and Museum Contemporary Art of a Continent (London, 2005, of distant audiences that the work look evidently Kunst Palast, Dusseldorf, and Johannesburg, 2008). It is striking that "authentic." Both views, participants felt, are 2005. Chief Curator: Simon Njami, with Marie-Laure few of these were seen in Africa and that few based on the mistaken belief that exhibitions Bernadac, Jean-Hubert were produced by curators based in Mrica-if are meant to be evenhanded anthropological Martin, Roger Malbert, surveys of the art of a place, people, or region Alfred Pacquement, and so, South Africa was the venue and the base. David Elliot This topic, among others relevant to curating rather than what they actually are-curators' historical contemporaneities and contemporary arguments about the importance of certain kinds art, was discussed in an illuminating roundtable of art and its relationships to certain existential 11 moderated by Chika Okeke-Agulu for Nka: 11 Ibid., 168-69, 178-81. issues. While concern was expressed that "big 9 Chika Okeke-Agulu, Journal of Contemporary African Art in 2008.9 all-Africa" exhibitions were becoming repetitive, moderator, "The Twenty­ which implies that "smaller, more rigorously First Century and the I will detail the topics that came up, because Mega-Shows," Nka: Journal of curators everywhere are confronting similar focused thematic or one-person shows" should Contemporary African Art, nos. challenges in balancing the need to build local be prioritized, most participants favored going on 22/23 (Spring/Summer 2008): 153-88. Participants were Ery infrastructure while at the same time, in a world with a judicious mixture of both, not least because Camera, Okwui Enwezor, that is both local and global, securing appropriate the continent-wide shows bring emerging and Laurie Ann Farrell, Elizabeth developing artists to notice, theme shows advance Harney, Clive Kellner, international recognition for the achievement of Colin Richards, and Gilane local artists. the discourse, and one-person shows can reveal Tawadros. 12 12 Ibid., 165. the depth of an artist's achievement. The patchy Roundtable participants lamented the huge history of biennials in Africa was remarked upon: mismatches in arts infrastructure between the continuing relevance of Dak'Art contrasted most African cities and those available in most to the cessation of the Johannesburg Biennial cities in Europe, the U.S., and, increasingly, after two editions. Given their value as vehicles Asia. As Okeke-Agulu suggests, such inequity for intercontinental and international exchange, has negative implications for the development suggestions about building on the example of the 13 of curatorial thought: "If African institutions 13 Ibid., 187. Trienal de Luanda were made. cannot afford to produce these exhibitions, does

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A variety of audiences were identified in the course of the discussion and objections were raised against dividing them into "Western" and "Other." Rather, "an audience located in cosmopolitan conurbations around the world" was 14 14 Ibid., 171. envisaged. Johannesburg Art Gallery director Clive Kellner questioned the preponderance of externally based curators and the "parachute curating" of Mrican art, asking "Is the diaspora 15 15 Ibid., 174. See also Krista the new West?" This provocation elicited a Thompson, "A Sidelong number of responses; perhaps the most subtle­ Glance: The Practice of M­ rican Diaspora History in the and the most explicitly relevant to my overall United States," Art Journa/7, argument-was that of artist/curator/educator no. 3 (Fall2011): 7-31. Colin Richards. He notes that "contemporaneity (for all that has been written) remains a critical term for discussions such as this" and that "if one takes engagement, relation, willful openness, worldliness, and strangeness seriously as key experiences in contemporary art, we begin to think of what we do slightly differently ... a 16 16 Okeke-Agulu eta!., "The different cultural politics becomes possible." Twenty-First Century and the Applying these insights to the situation in Mrica, Mega-Shows," 172, 177. he states:

There is an odd replication or echo of some fundamental questions at the concrete Meschac Gaba, The Museum of Contemporary African Art, 2002. Mixed media, dimensions variable. Installation microlevel of actual artworks, the curated view, Documenta 11, Kassel, 2002 shows as experiences in space, the relation of a given show to others in the country, between institutions, the country and the continent, the continent to the rest. What happens in situ, on the ground (to use a definitely overused metaphor), seems surprisingly accurately reflected throughout the system and its discourses, even at a high level of abstraction. Just the fact that the West, and the non-West, and their complex mergings

154 155 TERRY SMITH CURATING CONTEMPORANEITY

and entanglements, is everyday reality here Euro-American perceptions of other (conflicted to be sure) ensures that we decolonizing regions have been changed for the grapple continuously with such questions better by a number of survey exhibitions that have 17 Ibid., 173. at every level. 17 tackled key issues within the old-fashioned basket of the continent-wide survey. For South America, These remarks alert us to the connectivity these include Carlos Basualdo's Tropictilia: A of contemporary life, to the multilayered, nested Revolution in Brazilian Culture 1967-1972 (Sao

settings in which art is ~reatedand exhibitions Paulo, 2005) and Mari Carmen Ramirez and are made, and in which curatorial thought takes Hector Olea's Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art shape. This is also the context in which an artist 20 Carlos Basualdo, Tropictilia: in Latin America (Houston, 2004). 20 Ramirez such as Meshac Gaba developed his ongoing A Revolution in Brazilian and Olea are continuing this work in a manner Culture 1967-1972 (Sao Museum of Contemporary African Art project in Paulo: Cosacnafi, 2005); that is highly suggestive for the problem of which he celebrates a do-it-yourself approach and Hector Olea and Mari infrastructural inequity so disabling in Mrica Carmen Ramirez, Inverted to showing art that is shot through with the Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in and for curating within the Mrican diaspora. qualities Richards values, while at the same Latin America (New Haven, The International Center for the Arts of the Conn.: Yale University Press, time highlighting the provisional, chancy, and 2004). For detailed citations Americas is not only housed at the Museum of 18 Meshac Gaba, Museum volatile conditions in which such art is made. 18 on exhibitions in various Fine Arts, Houston, it is seen as a vital component of Contemporary African Art, Center for Historical Re-Enactments, world regions, see the "Select http://www.museumofcon­ The Bibliography" in Terry Smith, of the museum's activities. In 2005 it began its temporaryafricanart.com/ established in 2010 in Johannesburg by a group of Contemporary Art: World Documents of 20th-Century Latin American entree.html. curators, artists, and writers led by Gabi N gcobo, Currents (London: Laurence and Latino Art project, an ongoing archival and King; Upper Saddle River, is a parallel project that encourages site-specific N.J.: Pearson/Prentice-Hall, publication enterprise that scans key primary artworks that "investigate and create dialogues 2011), 334-39. On the deco­ documents relating to the arts, artists, culture, lonial, see Walter Mignolo, between artistic practices in order to reveal how The Darker Side of Western history, and politics of the region (the Americas), within their constellation certain histories are Modernity: Global Futures, which it makes available freely on the Internet. Decolonial Options (Durham, formed or formulated, repeated, universalized N.C.: Duke University Press, Prior to this initiative, documents and other 19 Gabi Ngcobo eta!., Center and preserved."19 The promising yet stillborn 2011); and his "The com­ materials were frequently lost or maintained in for Historical Re-Enactments, munal and the decolonial," http:/I centerforhistoricalreen­ experience of the Johannesburg Biennial has turbulence: ideas for movement, fragile circumstances and were difficult to access, actmen ts. blogspot.com. been a topic. It is not only histories of art that are 2010, http://turbulence.org. even for local researchers. This situation fed questioned, nor only the elusive infrastructure for uklturbulence-5/decolonial/. local forgetting and ignorance abroad not only the arts in South Africa and elsewhere, but art's regarding the work of specific artists but Latin relationships to broader contextual forces and American and Latino art in general. Under the to prevailing understandings of historical forces. guidance of a region-wide, representative editorial Projects have included Kemang Wa Lehurle's board, the center poured considerable resources Echoes of a Rehearsal, an exhibition on Xenoglossia: into assisting local archives throughout South The Unknowing Grammar of Inhabiting a Text, and America, training archivists and researchers, and a performance by Tracey Rose. building collaboration between the one hundred participants, thus creating research networks in

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21 Mari Carmen Ramirez, the region. A selection of the documents will be Biennial Reader: An Anthol­ Puck Off, in which Ai Weiwei had a leading role, "Critical Documents of published in English in a series of books that will ogy on Large-Scale Perennial and, in 2001, Post-Sense and Sensibility: Spree, a 20'h-Century Latin American Exhibitions of Contemporary and Latino Art," in Melina be framed critically by the editors. They consider Art (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, one-night performance curated by Qiu Zhijie Kervandjian and Hector Olea, this as a "curatorial approach" to the issues 2010), 164-83. This essay and Wu Meichun that likened the commercialized eds., Resisting Categories: Latin 21 is drawn from his Biennales American and/or Latino? (New confronting them. and Contemporary Asian Art: fabrication of contemporary Chinese art to Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer­ Histories of the Asian "New," Babylonian excess. Qiu Zhijie's vivid account sity Press, 2012), 13, http:// forthcoming. mfah.org/researchlinterna­ Although not emerging from direct of the evening, its motivations and its bizarre tional-center-arts-americas/ colonization, the eruption of contemporary art pageantry, takes the form of a dialogue icaa-documents-project/.. in post-Mao China is a fascinating story that has between a witness to the events and himself, 25 22 For example, Gao Minglu been interpreted in the West and in China itself 25 Qiu Zhijie provides the organizer. et al., China!Avant-Garde through a series of important exhibitions that background to the exhibition Exhibition, National Art in "Post-Sense Sensibility 22 Gallery, Beijing, 1989; Chang have tracked its history as it has been happening. (Hou Ganxing): A Memo­ The Long March Project, initiated by Lu Tsong-tzung, ed., Chinese randum," written in 2000, Interestingly, the Chinese word for curator ~Ji{ Jie in 2003 as a reaction against the "outer­ New Art, Post-1989 (Hong published in Wu Hung, ed., Kong: Hanart TZ Gallery, A [cezhanren] is made up from the characters for Contemporary Chinese Art: directedness" of certain contemporary Chinese 1993); Gao Minglu, Insideout: a person (ren) who plans or manages strategically Primary Documents (New artists, was a sustained attempt to focus attention New Chinese Art, organized York: Museum of Modern by the Asia Society and San (ce) the presentation of exhibitions (zhan)­ Art, 2010), 343-47, http:// on forms of art making that were widespread Francisco MOMA, 1998; Wu presumptively, art exhibits. This reflects the arthubasia.org/archives/ within China itself. A group of artists retraced Hung and Christopher Phil­ an-interview-with-qiu-zhijie­ lips, Between Past and Future: word's first coming into usage in China during by-li-zhenhua-and-com­ the ten thousand-kilometer route that the New Chinese Photography and the 1990s. Unlike the European root in curare, mented-by-davide-quadrio/. Maoist insurgents walked in 1934, making works Video, International Center Latin for "to care," there is no connotation of See also Thomas Berghuis, to distribute for free to interested locals and of Photography, New York, Peiformance Art in China and Smart Museum of Art, custodianshipY With the exception of Japan, (Beijing: TimeZone8, 2007), inspiring local artists and craftspeople of all kinds Chicago, 2004; Wu Hung, which has had a long and sustained history of 144-45. to share their own productions. Collections of Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century, cultural exchange with Europe and the U.S. these works were displayed later in national and Smart Museum of Art, Chi­ since being forcibly obliged to do so in 1853, international exhibitions. Long March now runs cago, 2005; Gao Minglu, The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary it was not until the 1980s that other Asian a successful commercial gallery in the 798 Art Chinese Art, Albright-Knox countries introduced biennial exhibitions to show District of Beijing. Art Gallery, Buffalo, 2005. international art to local audiences and local 2 3 See Baidu, the Chinese art to international audiences. 24 This has never Retrospective contemporaneity was also used Wiki, at http://baike.baidu. cornlview/362714.htm. See been a simple matter of showcasing art from by exhibitions that sought, in the wake of the also Yu Hsiao-Hwei, ed., Hou abroad to awed local artists and audiences. In Cold War, to establish alternative histories of Hanru, On The Mid-Ground: 2000 curator Hou Hanru opened the Shanghai modern art in areas previously within the Soviet Selected Texts (Beijing: Time­ zoneS, 2003). Biennale, initially reserved for Chinese artists sphere. They used it as a vehicle for connecting using traditional techniques and materials, to the contemporary art of their region to the 24 See John Clark, "Biennials as Structures for the Writing international participation, thereby precipitating presumed circuit of "international art." Early of Art History: The Asian a number of reactions that insisted on the value of examples include Beyond Belief(Chicago, 1995), Perspective," in Elena Fili­ povic, Solveig Ovstebo, and the work of local artists and a critical response to After the Wall (Stockholm, 1999), Body and the Marieke van Hal, eds., The Western art values. Reactive exhibitions included East: From the 1960s to the Present (Ljubljana,

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1998), Aspects/ Positions: 50 Years ofArt in Central interaction between artistic and social change in Europe (Vienna, 1999-2000), Blood and Honey 27 See Kristine Stiles ed., her city, region, and the wider world.27 (Vienna, 2002), and In the Gorges of the Balkans States of Mind: Dan and Lia Perjovschi (Durham, N.C.: (Kassel, 2003). Again, only some of these traveled Duke University Press, 2008). Recently a number of exhibitions have in the countries of origin of the artists, but they sought to deepen understanding of alternative art were known, mainly through their catalogues, practices during the later years of the Communist to which local curators made important regime in Russia, highlighting the contribution contributions. Contemporary art centers (not of the Moscow Conceptualists, among others. least those supported by financier George Soros's These practices included secret gatherings, Open Society Foundation) played a major role apartment exhibitions, private reading groups, .~ in building visual arts infrastructure in this distant performances, and ad hoc events. A series region before the collapse of state Communism. of exhibitions at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Curators have been crucial to its sustenance ever East Art Map website Rutgers University, New Jersey, supported by homepage. Project of the art since; now they must face down the reemergence Norton Dodge, have shown this art in the U.S. collective Irwin. http://www. of ultranationalist ideologies. as an instance of the thirst for liberation within eastartmap.org (accessed: April2012) an unfree society. A more nuanced picture is Artists have also been key players in the being developed by Boris Groys in a number construction of art-historical memory. Initiated of exhibitions, notably Total Enlightenment: in 2004 by Irwin, an artists' collective based in Conceptual Art in Moscow 1960-1990 (Frankfurt, Ljubljana, East Art Map is a research, exhibition, 2008) and Empty Zones at the Russian Pavilion at book, and online project that enabled artists, the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011. It is pursued in critics, and curators from Eastern Europe to map his writings as well as in curated events, such as 26 East Art Map Online, a fifty-year history of the art of their region.26 It the conference "Global Conceptualism: The Case http://www.eastartmap.org. experienced an inspiring start, but those involved of Moscow Conceptualism in an International are aware that it has not progressed into a full­ Context," Center for Russian Writers, Moscow, scale, ongoing research program. It has, however, 28 For a video of the sponsored by the Stella Art Foundation.28 precipitated a sustained output of multilayered, symposium, see http://www. ruspavilion.ru/en/symposium/ absorbing art. A somewhat similar, although report--311. See also Boris One set of implications for contemporary more intensely personal perspective emerges in Groys, ed., Global Conceptual­ practice is evident in the impact of the Moscow ism Revisited (Berlin: Stern­ the CAA (variously named Contemporary Art berg Press, 2012). Conceptualist model on thee-flux project, led by Archive/Center for Art Analysis), established in Anton Vidokle, Julieta Aranda, and Brian Kuan Bucharest by Lia Perjovschi in 1985. In parallel Wood. E-flux offers artists and cultural producers to her own distinctive sculptures and performance an interactive website, a journal compiled quickly art, Perjovschi uses materials gathered archivally from articles about pressing issues freshly written, to create installations that track, for example, low-cost booklets with similar content, a meeting the impact of globalization on Romania, as well place for organizational activity, links to similar as wall drawings that constitute timelines of the sites everywhere, a time and skill barter bank, and

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an exhibition space open to curatorial initiatives and global scales. While the format is a familiar such as repeats of unjustly neglected shows or one-the exhibition as argument-the stakes are realizations of unrealized projects. These might specific to a time and place: the curator wants to be construed as offering-within a nominally offer a clarified view, retrospective yet realistic, "free," but actually highly conventional, society­ of how a certain body of artists (a variety, a 29 See Anton Vidokle, heuristic models of creative infrastructure.29 group, even an individual) wrestled with their Produce, Distribute, Discuss, Repeat (New York: Lukas and contemporary circumstances, or are doing so now. Sternberg, 2009). Taking all these exhibitions and activities She or he does so, not only for the record, or to together, it becomes clear that they were not counter then-poisonous ideologies and imposed simply concerned with filling in the art-historical misinterpretations, but also, perhaps more so, picture (although they were that, too), and were in order to shape future possibilities-to oppose only superficially driven by generalities, such as a certain emergent directions, to support others, spirit of fairness. Decolonization will take decades and to keep still other (as yet unseeable) options to run its course if-given the proclivity of certain open. Curating is-in this sense, within the nations to build empires when they achieve a domain of the symbolic-a first-order activity. certain scale of economic power-it ever does. Here, curators join artists, public commentators, Enwezor is working on an exhibition that will politicians, expert scholars, and many others explore apartheid as it was negotiated, through as definers of the public discourse. This is an photography, in South Mrica; in his new role ideological domain in which nothing is neutral. as director of the Haus der Kunst, Munich, he will follow up his interest in the postwar history THE CONTEMPORARY GOES GLOBAL of Europe, within which decolonization plays a crucial, although underacknowledged, role. He What happens when contemporary out-of­ recently organized Meeting Points 6, a series of jointness itself becomes the subject of a survey talks, performances, and films by a number of exhibition? To explore this question was the artists from many countries that reflected on main purpose of the exhibition The Global civic antagonism in the Middle East and North Contemporary: Artworlds after 1989 that opened Mrica. Many years in the planning, it traveled at ZKM in Karlsruhe in September 2011. It in various forms to Amman, Beirut, Brussels, was the culmination of the five-year Global and Berlin during 2011 and 2012, the months of Art and the Museum project, undertaken since the still-unfolding Arab Spring, a kind of social 2006 by art historians Hans Belting and Andrea transformation anticipated by the artists in the Buddensieg. To me, GAM is a research project exhibition and by its curator. that is exemplary in most respects: conducted in the most open-hearted fashion, it was carried Every exhibition I have cited was shaped out by brilliant theorists, artists, critics, curators, in contestation with other perspectives on the and historians, from different generations, with a same issues, viewpoints held at local, regional, variety of perspectives, usually of a critical kind,

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2009). Curated by Andrea A pivotal section of the Karlsruhe exhibition, Buddensieg and Peter Weibel, entitled "Room of Histories: A Documentation," and with Hans Belting playing a major role, co-curators of was devoted to outcomes of the analysis. Using The Global Contemporary were wall charts, photographs, and documents, it Jacob Birken and Antonia Marten, and members of the displayed the range of museum types that have curatorial committee were arisen since 1989; it profiled key exhibitions N'Gone Fall, Patrick D. Flores, Carol Yinghua Lu, and and publications that redefined relationships Jim Supangkat. between Western and other art (including a room, designed by Rasheed Araeen, featuring every issue of Third Text); it quite properly highlighted contemporary Aboriginal art from Australia as a special kind of contemporary art; and it concluded with a dramatic, panoramic digital projection that profiled the rise and rise of biennials since 189 5, but especially from 1989. One did not, however, get the message that there exists something that might be called "the global museum" or even "the museum in, within, or under globalization." Raqs Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta), Escapement, 2009. Mixed-media installation, 27 clocks, high gloss aluminum with LED lights, 4 flat screen monitors, video and audio in loop, Rather, there was a general sense of the spread dimensions variable, edition of 2 of stereotypes and a resistant pushing back, a sense that art museum types had multiplied to the point of incessant variability depending on local conditions, and that the main connector between 30 On this history, see Reesa and built around conferences arranged according them was the growing and now ubiquitous Greenberg, "Identity Exhibi­ to local priorities at venues all over the world. biennial form. It is in the introductions to the tions: From Magiciens de Ia terre to Documenta 11," Art Everyone involved was acutely aware of the volumes published by the project and in the Journa/64, no. 1 (Spring groundwork laid in the exhibitions that I have just chapters within them that these connections are 2005): 90-94, and articles in that issue by Anthony mentioned; and of controversial precedents such most strongly and critically drawn. Downey, Norman Kleeblatt, as 'Primitivism' in 20th Century Art: Affinities of Elisabeth Sussman, and others. the Tribal and Modern (1984), Magiciens de Ia terre When one turned from the "Room of (1989) and Documenta 11 (2002). 30 The series Histories: A Documentation" to the main 31 See Andrea Buddensieg of volumes edited by the project leaders (Hans exhibition spaces, the first impression was and Peter Weibel, eds., Con­ temporary Art and the Museum Belting, Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter Weibel) of passing from a learning environment into (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, testify to the success of the enterprise on this level one filled with striking works of art. They 2007); and Hans Belting and 31 Andrea Buddensieg, eds., and are a unique, and critical, resource. The were arranged in groupings according to The Global Art World: Audi­ Global Art Museum project was pitched against relevant themes: "World Time: The World as ences, Markets, and Museums (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, the conformist contemporary. Transit Zone," kicked off by the Raqs Media

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Collective, "Life Worlds and Image Worlds," of globalization such as Andreas Gursky. The "'World Art': The Curiosity Cabinet from a Global Contemporary did include some artists Postcolonial Perspective," "Boundary Matters: who figure globalization and its effects from The Concept of Art in Modernity," "Networks critical positions within their own (dominant) and Systems: Globalization as Subject," "Art cultures, such as SUPERFLEX, Ashley Hunt, as Commodity: The New Economy and Art and Christian Jankowski. But artists such as Allan Markets," and "Lost in Translation: New Sekula, Thomas Hirschhorn, Zoe Leonard, Biographies of Artists." In between, a film by Santiago Sierra, Isaac Julien, and Steve McQueen, Manthia Diawara, Edouard Glissant: Un monde to name just some of the most prominent who en relation, provided a profound conceptual do exactly this, were missing. Few artists from bridge to those who immersed themselves in it. my third current were visible; exceptions include It followed the recently deceased philosopher Sommerer & Mignonneau, Bielicky and Richter, on a journey through the scenes of his life as he and Hito Steyer!. Nor does the exhibition include expounded his ideas about slavery and history, "bad object" artists of the postcolonial, such as the Relation and meaning. Its placement invited Ashley Bickerton, whose work veers from the us to view the exhibition themes as archipelagos, distasteful to the egregious, then collapses into the Glissant's signature metaphor for the global plain awful, reveling in his own incorrectness­ 32 The interview text of the contemporaneity of cultural difference. 32 gross, but indicative nonetheless. film is published as Edouard Glissant, "One World in Relation: Edouard Glissant in To me, the zones of the exhibition formed When allied with these omissions, the focus Conversation with Manthia into an archipelago within the same current. on art that has "the global" as its overt subject­ Diawara," Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, no. From the perspective of the three currents that I that moreover seeks some critical distance 28 (Spring 2011): 4-19. discern as most prominent in contemporary art­ while recognizing its own immersion within indeed, in art since (around) 1989-there was globalization's constraints-pushes the exhibition only one on display here: the postcoloniai turn, as a whole dangerously toward a general idea or the transnational transition. This enables us to of "global art." The Global Contemporary shows read the exhibition as showing the connectivities a wide range of transnational work outside of the within this current, between cultures "outside" biennial context, as if this art were the subject of an the West. A "global" exhibition of art in the ordinary, European, temporary exhibition (that is, age of globalization-what else can The Global one based on topic, style, theme, or medium). This Contemporary mean?-would, however, have is unusual to the point of being unfamiliar and included artists from my first current, its most somewhat shocking. The white walls, regulated prominent representative and prime beneficiaries: rhythms, and repeat floors of the ZKM Museum, remodernists such as Richard Serra and Jeff Wall despite their open lines of sight across great and retro-sensationalists such as Damien Hirst courtyards, inevitably reinforce this impression. It and Takashi Murakami. At minimum it would is difficult for a view from one place in Europe to have included acute explorers of the aesthetics avoid becoming The View from Europe.

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Of course, some works broke out from these The Global Contemporary onto the pernicious constraints, surprising us by their sheer oddity: pervasiveness of the idea of "the contemporary." Pauline Curnier Jardin's Ami (2009) was a small At Karlsruhe, it is claimed in the name of these booth that could have been located anywhere. postcolonial artists, but unfortunately, and I am A dark form, it seemed to turn its back on the sure unintentionally, it revives their old (1990s) museum. It housed a slideshow of highly personal desire to be contemporary with the art of the West, photographs of seemingly random details as well not their actual achievement since then, which has Pauline Curnier Jardin, Ami, as camera accidents from shots taken in a range been (as the exhibition rightly claims) to change 2009. Video installation, color, sound, 7 min. of museums (classical, high art, natural history, at the terms within which art is made all over the Hiroshima) that slowly faded into each other with world, primarily through their challenge to Euro­ an understated, yet acute, uncanny irrationality. It American art and though their lateral connectivity is as if we have chanced upon a window into the with each other. Thus the comment by Peter unconscious of postcoloniality. Weibel in his "Preface": "These artists from Asia, Mrica, South America, and so on, do not want to What, in the case of The Global Contemporary, integrate into Western culture; at most they want 34 intervened between the conception and the 34 Peter Weibel, "Preface," to break down these mechanisms of exclusion. " creation? The curators had one local agenda, The Global Contemporary, 5. Far from enabling global equity of access, "the to insist on a "global practice that has changed contemporary" is just such an exclusionary contemporary art as radically as 'new media' mechanism, above all because it is an idea vitiated 3 3 Hans Belting and Andrea had done previously."33 At ZKM, locus classicus, by the disabling double that I described earlier. Buddensieg, "Introduction," There was, simply, no need to appeal to it in The Global Contemporary, exh. if there is one, of new media and digital art, this guide, Karlsruhe, 2011, 6. is a highly pertinent, even somewhat subversive the presentation of this show. (It sounds like a move. Seen on a worldwide scale, however, "new publicists' title tacked on at a late stage in the media" has proven to be one medium among process.) others in the "postmedium condition." Its initial promise of transforming the bases on which Is there a tension, or at least a relevant Stewart Smith, Robert distinction, between content (curatorial thought) art will be made seems to be fading as fast as Gerard Pietrusko, Bernd photography's implied promise of ubiquity during Lintermann, trans_actions: and mode (an exhibition form) at play here? the later 1980s. To some, however, including The Accelerated Art World Inspiring The Global Contemporary was a curatorial 1989-2011, 2011. Installation myself, it remains a slowly unwinding spring that view, The Global Contemporary idea as important at those that I earlier attributed is propelling visual communication, including art, Art: Art Worlds After 1989, to Varnedoe, Enwezor, and Bourriaud. Namely, PanoramaScreen, ZKM cinema, and social media, into dimensions as yet Center for Art and Media, that the art exhibited at Karlsruhe demonstrated unimaginable. This is a large question, with many Karlsruhe the emergence of a "global practice that has sides to it, not resolvable here. changed contemporary art as radically as 'new media' had done previously." If we put aside Instead I am going to place most of the the "new media" comparison, the claim is close, blame for the obscuring of the critical goals of indeed identical, to that I make about what I call

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the transnational transition: in the many art­ identified is a major force in the world's art. producing centers in the rest of the world outside They have helped us see the shape of its flow Euro-Arnerica, a variety of local negotiations through the regions that they treated and in between indigeneity, tradition, modernity, and some of the nations that constitute each region. globalization led to the forging of distinct kinds They alert us to the connections between regions of modern art and, in artistic exchanges within and those that reach across to what were the nearby regions and with distant centers, the colonial centers. In some cases, these old centers emergence of specific kinds of contemporary art. remain important forums through which art These developments have been underway since must pass to have in~ernationalpurport. Among the 1950s in Africa, the 1960s in Latin America, the next steps to be taken is the staging and the 1980s in Central Europe and China, the circulation of retrospectives of major artists from 1990s in Southeast Asia, the 2 OOOsin India and the decolonizing regions, such as Emily Kame 3 5 I track them in the central the Middle East, etc. 35 Taken together (as a world Kngwarreye and El Anatsui, who have made chapters of Contemporary Art: 38 38 See, for example, Utopia: breakthroughs of world relevance. There are World Currents. current) they amount to a substantial reorientation is The Genius of Emily Kame many challenges facing artists and curators alike of the way art made in the world: they claim Kng;warreye,National Art value for the making visible of local issues and they Center, Tokyo, and Museum who are active in this current; not least is the have become an important way in which global of Australia, Canberra, 2008; seduction of easy exoticism, the invitation to fall El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote inequities on the level of culture are renegotiated to You About Africa, Royal for aesthetic tourism of the Other, to simplify toward respect for difference. In doing both, they Ontario Museum, Toronto, the local specificity of work-in other words, to 2010. For my review of the are artists' contributions toward the coming­ latter, see Nka: Journal of become the stereotype that uncritical audiences into-being of what has been called a "new African Art, no. 28 (Spring in the West instinctively desire. If you think that 2011): 142-45; for an essay 36 lniVA (the Institute for 36 European culture at its heights has arrived at a internationalism" or a "global cosmopolitanism." on Emily Kame Kngwarreye, International Visual Arts) see "Kngwarreye Woman mental state beyond colonialism, a visit to the has argued the first since the This is what The Global Contemporary set out to Abstract Painter," in Jennifer 1990s; Marsha Meskimmon Musee Quai Branly-where a vision of primitivist profile. The introductory essay by Hans Belting Isaacs, ed., Emily Kame Kng­ profiles the latter in her and Andrea Buddensieg in the broadsheet warreye (Sydney: Craftsman paradise begins as soon as you leave the street book Contemporary Art and House, 1998). the Cosmopolitan Imagination that was issued in lieu of a catalogue at the and enter the gardens-will quickly cure you of (London: Routledge, 2010). opening is an excellent analysis of the concept of that illusion. See also Nikos Papastergiadis, Cosmopolitanism and Culture contemporaneity in the art of what they see as a (London: Polity Press, 2012). "globalized world."37 Marry its arguments more THE LIVES OF THE NON­ CONTEMPORANEOUS 3 7 Belting and Buddensieg, fully to the hypothesis of contemporary currents "Introduction," 6-8. and we have, I believe, a basis for tackling most of the questions that face us. \Vhat about contemporaneity in the art of the past or in non-contemporary art of the present, the In general terms, we can see that survey topic with which I began this essay? Exhibitions exhibitions such as this one (in the wake of that focus closely on the careers of individual Documenta 11 and the many listed earlier) artists or the achievement of certain schools in the have demonstrated that the second current I history of art in such a way as to take us to their

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moments of origin have been a staple of museum of Mannerism as an art-historical movement programs for over a century. Their limitation, occurring in Italy between the High Renaissance from the perspective of contemporary needs, is and the Baroque was a direct outcome of the that these exhibitions have tended to return the impact of contemporary expressionist painting artist or the school to their allotted place within and sculpture on German art historians in the a rather linear narrative of the history of art or to early years of the twentieth century. In a reverse demonstrate that that place should be elevated or effect, contemporary experiences can be infused modified in some way. Rare indeed is a focus on with connotations carried by past art. A notorious how the artist or the school grappled in their work instance occurred at the United Nations in 2003 with the multiple challenges of contemporaneity when officials realized that the announcement in their own time. Exceptions include the string by the U.S. Secretary of State (at that time, of recent exhibitions of Chinese art at the Colin Powell) that Iraq was hoarding weapons Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, that of mass destruction and that military invasion range from general treatments such as Anatomy of of the country was justified would be made in a a Masterpiece: How to Read Chinese Paintings (2008) room decorated by a tapestry based on Picasso's to quite specific studies such as Eccentric Visions: famous antiwar, antifascist painting Guernica. The Worlds of Lou Ping (1733-1799) (2009-10), The hasty covering of the image matched, Mastering the Art of Chinese Painting: Xie Zhiliu metaphorically, the delusory nature of the 1910-1997 (2010), The Yuan Revolution: Art and announcement. Picasso's critical commitments Dynastic Change (2010-11), and Chinese Art in the continue to resonate: thus the fallout when, in Age of Revolution: Fu Baoshi (1904-1965) (2012). June 2011, the Van Abbemuseum responded to a request that it lend its Head of a Woman (1943) Quite another approach to the multiplicity to the International Academy of Art in Ramallah, 39 of ways of being in time that is at the core of 39 See Charles Esche, Khaled Palestine. contemporaneity is to apply this to works of Hourani, Lynda Morris, Els Roelandt, Rasha Salti et al., art themselves-to explore them for how they "Picasso in Palestine," special In a complex response to the imagery of 9/11 might have been uncanny in their own times, issue of A Prior Magazine in the general visual culture-still pervasive; (School of Arts, Ghent, 2011). to show their inherent anachronism. In some still repressed, ten years later-MoMA PS 1 periods, this becomes a highly conscious topic curator Peter Eleey brought together a number for artists, as we saw in Kenneth Silver's Chaos of works, only one of which (Ellsworth Kelly's and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany Ground Zero, 2003) addressed the events of that 1918-1936 shown at the Guggenheim Museum, day and its implications directly or indirectly, all New York (October 2010-January 2011). More others being made before the event. The works generally, retrospection is a common effect in art's were chosen because their formal qualities or history: an innovation at one point in time will inherent connotations could be seen to resonate precipitate a fresh reading of certain works from with mediated visual registrations of that day and the past. In a famous example, the apperception with visual memories associated with it: Sarah

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Charlesworth's image of a woman jumping from curator's essay and other details, listed the works in a building; a Christo wrapping of an obscure the show, and into which were inserted, randomly, architectural ornament. This was a rather postcard -sized images of each of the works contrarian way of realizing the curator's goal, including stills from many of the films in the show. described thus: to consider "the ways in which 9/11 has altered how we see and experience the As for non-contemporary art being made 40 Exh. brochure, cited in world in its wake."40 One of the most striking in these contemporary times, it is of course Hal Foster, "September 11," effects 9/11 as it impacted the U.S. has been Artforum 50, no. 5 Oanuary of constantly being exhibited, often with claims for 2012): 210-11, a rather tren­ to inhibit visual artists (and indeed curators) its contemporary character (that are routinely chant review of the show that from engaging with it in any degree of depth as pays attention to its struggles ignored or mindlessly flagged a return to the with anachronism. or subtlety. A perverse response still prevails: to "purity" of a medium, usually painting) or for the defend art's withholding of itself from such an relevance of its deliberate anachronism (as in the 41 This contrasts the depth engagement.41 case of ink painting in China). Recognition of its and variety of response by filmmakers and architects, the complex relationship to contemporary currents latter discussed at some length Layered temporalities were evoked with rarely becomes the subject of an exhibition: an in my The Architecture of Af­ greater subtlety in After Nature, curated at exception is Sidetracks: Painting in the Paramodern termath (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). the New Museum, New York, in 2008 by Continuum, curated by Peter S. Myer at Stavanger 43 Massimiliano Gioni. The theme and title were 43 See PeterS. Myer, ed., Art Museum in January 2012. In the next essay, taken from W G. Sebald's great prose poem-or Sidetracks: Painting in the I will return to this parallax instinct toward Paramodern Continuum rather, his collection of three poems devoted, (Stavanger, Norway: Stavan­ layered temporalities and temporal escape within in turn, to the lived experiences of the sixteenth ger Art Museum, 2012). On contemporary art and curating. para-modernity, see Jonathan century Flemish painter Matthias Griinewald, Hay, "Double Modernity, the nineteenth century botanist Georg Steller, Para-Modernity," in Nancy An enormous amount of work remains to and the author himself growing up in Germany Condee, Okwui Enwezor, and Terry Smith, eds., Antinomies be done by art historians and curators if the after World War II. These experiences become of Art and Culture: Modernity, historical lacunae, infrastructural shortfall, and vividly present for the reader and seem to Postmodernity, Contemporane­ mistakes about the present that we have discussed ity (Durham, N.C.: Duke exchange qualities across time, especially the University Press, 2008). are to be addressed. Work of this kind continues sense in each case of the protagonist feeling to make more and more possible the curating of displaced from currents in his own time. Gioni contemporaneity in general and of contemporary aimed at a similar effect, saying that his exhibition art in particular-if both are to be imaginatively "aspires to a similar hallucinatory confusion, a grasped, thoroughly thought through, and 42 Massimiliano Gioni, conflation of temporalities, a blurring of facts historically grounded. untitled essay in After Nature as as (New York: New Museum, and fiction-an exhibition a visual novel or 42 2008), n.p. See also his reflec­ a wunderkammer." The catalogue continued this tions on the curatorial process sense of a blasted space-time by taking the form of in "After After Nature," The Exhibitionist, no.1 0 anuary a printing of Sebald's book, around which a wrap 2010): 49-54. announced the title of the exhibition, carried the

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It provides a platform for artists' ideas and interests; it should be responsive to the situation in which it occurs; and it should creatively address timely artistic, social, cultural, or political issues. It could be said that the role of the curator has shifted from a governing position that presides over taste. and ideas to one that lies amongst art (or objects), space, and audience. The motivation is closer to the experimentation and inquiry of artists' practices than to the academic or bureaucratic journey of the traditional curator.

-Kate Fowle, "Who Cares? Understanding the Role of the Curator Today," Cautionary Tales: Critical Curating, 2007 TERRY SMITH CURATORIAL PRACTICE NOW

1 Kate Fowle, "Who Cares? These are the "key factors in curating today," 1 and past forms. All of these result from giving Understanding the Role of priority to curatorial praxis, to the revivification the Curator Today," Caution­ according to Kate Fowle, writing in 2005 ary Tales: Critical Curating while Chair of the MA Program in Curatorial of institutions, the proliferation of alternatives, (New York: Apex Art, 2007), Practice at the California College of the Arts in and the creation of open-ended connections. 16. San Francisco. The recent growth in academic This is not simply reformist or oppositional, it courses in curatorship is one of the factors is infrastructural activism across and beyond the (some say a major factor) precipitating a need exhibitionary spectrum that I earlier identified. to articulate principles hitherto confined to Modern kinds and styles of curatorial practice are ICOM statutes and codes (where curators are not being reshaped by these ideas and approaches. named as such, but presumed to be included with Curators all over the world now know that things "museum professionals"), many internal museum really are different than they were before; they are 2 ICOM Statues, http://icom. documents, and a few trade books. 2 Mostly, such responding to the demands of contemporaneity; museurnlfileadminluser_up­ becoming, in a word, contemporary. Each of these load/pdf/Statuts/Statutes_eng. principles have had informal status or have been pdf; Code of Ethics, http:/I simply taken as read. Now, it seems, they must be new "turns" is a contemporary kind of curatorial icom.museurnlwho-we-are/ spelled out for the increasing numbers attracted thinking, but are they modes of thought that the-vision/code-of-ethics. html. See Alison Carroll, to a profession that promises a life close to are distinctive to curating? Do they add up to a Independent Curators: a guide where the culture is changing fastest and with coherent body of ideas? Do they need to do so? for the employment of indepen­ dent curators (Fitzroy, Vic.: the most style. Art Museums Association of THINKING ON THE PAGE Australia, 1991) On curating courses, see also essays by Fowle's remarks highlight many of the values Johanna Burton, Andrew that stand out amidst the talking, showing, and As I have often noted, it is rare for curators Renton, and Kate Fowle in to reflect, in a sustained way, in print, on The Exhibitionist, no. 4 Oune writing that constitute contemporary curatorial 2011): 42-65. discourse. In the Introduction, I listed a set their professional practice-certainly there is of items for action that resound loudly these some distaste for academic forums such as the days. How do they look after our track through theoretical debate or the historiographic essay. We the issues raised in the previous essays? They have noted a constant recourse to the view that still feel like instructions-to-self, but perhaps the exhibition is the statement, one that speaks with some sharper edges. Let me list them, for itself. Yet curators are frequently invited to roughly according to their current prominence. talk about art and do so in a variety of venues. Historicize curating; Innovate within exhibition The inventiveness, acuity, and prominence of practice; Reimagine museums; Turn curatorship; curatorial ideas about contemporary art since the Co-curate with artists; Commit to outside-the­ 1990s that I have tracked in these essays has led art world, participatory, activist curating. Less some publishers to make curatorial thinking the voluble, but just as important, are issues such basis of their output. These texts are invaluable as rethinking spectatorship, engaging viewers records of articulated curatorial thought, so, as co-curators, and the challenge of curating before exploring the "turns" listed above, I want contemporaneity itself-in its present, recent to examine one recent instance, treating it as a

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snapshot of the question: What is contemporary contemporary paintings, the well known to the quietly influential, curatorial thought? land art and monumental share one achievement: they have irrevocably sculptures by Anish Kapoor and Antony Gormley-almost changed the course of art. Collected here, In 2011 Phaidon published Defining every form of art imaginable. they provide a chronological depiction of art Contemporary Art: 25 Years in 200 Pivotal Artworks. The Art Museum is not limited to one era, one century, or in our era, a mosaic in which readers may find Promoting itself as "A revolutionary history of the even strictly arranged in their own patterns.4 past twenty-five years in art," it boldly asserts that chronological order. Instead, artworks are laid out in the contemporary period is unique in the history 450 "rooms," within 25 We are being invited to experience this of art: "galleries," organized next book as an exhibition. Phaidon has published to similar works reflected through time and influence. a number of series that take this approach. Its Rising from the ashes of modernism and "Temporary" exhibitions are Contemporary Artists series, begun in 1995, on show throughout the book encompassing a staggering diversity of new for a closer look at themes is based on the format of a mid-career review forms, the twenty-five-year period beginning such as Islamic Mysticism, The exhibition: a well-illustrated survey of key works in 1986 is one of the most vibrant episodes Nineteenth-century Body, and Drawing in Space. Whole to date, a commissioned interview with the artist in the history of art. It is also one of the rooms are devoted to the and an artist's statement, relevant readings chosen least understood. Interpreting recent events likes of Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, and The Tomb of by the artist, an illustrated exhibition list and is seldom easy, but making sense of today's Tutankhamun. bibliography, plus a review essay by a sympathetic advanced art-decentered, complex, and See phaidon.com/agendalartl yet independent scholar. Reviewing this series articles/20 11/september/27I contrarian-requires innovative techniques blowing-apart-the-idea-of-an­ in 2000 Blake Stimson worried that the strong 3 Defining Contemporary Art and new approaches. 3 art-museum/. resonance of the spectacularized exhibition in (London: Phaidon, 2011). The publisher applies this 4 The curators are Daniel the format of these books would work against idea to the art museum itself Ignoring certain other recent and current Birnbaum, Cornelia Butler, the hard-won critical perspectives then being in its 2011 book The Art publications, it goes on to say that Defining Suzanne Cotter, Bice Curiger, 5 Museum, the blurb for which Okwui Enwezor, Massimil­ introduced by "the new art history. " On reads: ContemporaryArt is "the first comprehensive ac­ iano Gioni, Hans Ulrich balance, I believe that they have come to serve as The Art Museum is not like count of this period" and a "groundbreaking study Obrist, and Bob Nickas. any other museum, it is open invaluable introductions to the work of the artists 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a­ of the emergence of art as we now know it." Fully 5 Blake Stimson, "Art History selected. Stimson's concern is more obviously year. Its luxurious, 2-ft wide embedded in the discourse of contemporary art and After the New Art History," born out in Taschen's Art Now series: one hundred page spreads brim with iconic Art Journal (Spring 2002): artworks from big name mu­ curating, Defining ContemporaryArt knows that: 92-96. See also A. L. Rees artists, a double-page spread for each, a few seums and galleries, as well as and F ranees Borzello, The images, minimal info, a one-liner for an "ideas" those hidden away in private New Art History (London: collections-some only ac­ The book's radical approach to art history Camden Press, 1986). hook. Cultural industry values prevail: Taschen cessible with a pair of sturdy starts with its structure. Assembled and has flourished by serving the thirst for instant hiking boots and a map of the more remote parts of the written by eight of the most highly respected information on the part of the barely attentive. planet. There are Cave paint­ curators working today, each of whom has It is dismaying to see bookshops everywhere ings and Egyptian sarcophagi, both witnessed and shaped the period in friezes and woodblock prints, ceding the entrances to their art sections to stained glass and ceramics, question, Defining Contemporary Art tells the displays by this one publisher that is hell-bent on masterpieces by Van Gogh story of two hundred pivotal artworks from and Vermeer, photographs, monopolizing the category of the art book and the past quarter century. These works, from replacing it with the compiled image collection.

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Punning on the idea that the best art of made available. All ancillary information has the the time will rise to the top and punting on status of fact or opinion, none of it is presented as the fact that curators are the best spotters, definitive. Like the Judd model of an exhibition Phaidon launched its Cream series in 1998. or, in the case of Dia, a program of exhibits, the Distinctive packaging distinguished each of the structure itself is doing the defining. Turning volumes: Cream (1998), Fresh Cream (2000), the pages generates meanings that are absorbed, Cream 3 (2003), lee Cream: Contemporary Art in subliminally, like the experience of an observer Culture (2007), and Creamier: Contemporary Art walking around an exhibition. in Culture (2010). (We await Creamiest. Mter that, presumably, contemporary art will go off, The structure of Defining Contemporary Art spoil-in a word, turn.) The one hundred artists echoes that of Art Since 1900: a year-by-year whose works are illustrated in each volume are coverage, one artwork or art exhibition each year, 6 chosen by ten curators-the emergent curators of 6 Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin the items chosen by the book's "authors." Defining contemporary art at the time-not by art critics, Buchloh, Hal Foster, and Ro­ Contemporary Art covers twenty-five years-with salind Krauss, Art Since 1900: theorists, or historians. Although each of these l\llodernism, Anti-Modernism, 1986 chosen, presumably, for no other reason than curators offers arguments for his or her choices Postmodernism (London: it is twenty-five years (one generation) prior to the and reflects on developments in contemporary art, Thames and Hudson, 2005). date of publication (no explanation of the choice some of the buzz of the books arises from their is given). With no introduction, as if we have formats (augmented by inventive, sexy, designer just walked into the first room of an exhibition, packaging). No editors are credited as primary it starts right in with Jeff Koons's Rabbit (1986). authors: the publisher itself is the orchestrator, The first words we encounter, like a wall text (one the artistic director, or, perhaps, "curator" of piece of information, one descriptive remark, one the project. The books themselves argue that evaluative pointer: discuss), are those of curator the most cutting-edge, most contemporary art Massimiliano Gioni: "An archetypical image is the art chosen by these curators. Curators are, and an icon of the entire decade, Jeff Koons's after all, closest to art's production, to artists, its Rabbit has the coldness of an object not built by 7 producers. This is the least mediated access you 7 Defining Contemporary human hands." Also like Art Since 1900, there is can get. The reasons for choosing this or that Art, 8. a roundtable discussion at the end. At least the artist are just what they are, whatever the curator authors of the former had the honesty to frankly says that they are. There is no requirement that admit that they did not, in 2004, feel able to the curators be consistent in their arguments or confidently characterize contemporary art, let that what they offer amounts to an art-critical alone define it. Perhaps, by 2011, the word "define" intuition, an art-theoretical idea, or an art­ has shriveled in meaning or perhaps it is meant historical narrative. You are invited to make up only in a weak sense. Whatever, the titling of the your own mind about the work-accepting that it book implies that curatorial thought is ambiguous has, in the opinion of the curators, something of in this sense: it offers instances of what may value in it-and to draw on such information as is become definitive.

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Given the quality of curators assembled for goes on to present his core belief as a question this project, does the discussion offer us a seat-at­ about how "a single material (or immaterial) the-table view of the best contemporary thinking object or cultural artifact can actually change the about curating? The blurb says, "Completing history of art, the very definition of art. Is it in the book is a roundtable discussion in which the its materiality that the art object can transform eight authors deliberate the historical conditions history itself? Is it in its reception or institutional and principal themes this period." Moderator 11 of 11 Ibid., 459. position, as Okwui seems to suggest?" He Craig Garrett from Phaidon reminds the curators obviously prefers the former, but does not say how that they were asked to select "twenty-five works (although he does specify what in his descriptions from this period that you consider pivotal, of each work elsewhere in the book). "I do the works you look at now and say 'After this, believe that the unique power of the artwork (and 8 8 Ibid., 457. everything changed. "' On my reading, two again I don't want to sound like a formalist) is distinct perspectives emerge fro'm the discussion that it can exist within different exhibitions and between the eight curators. A clear statement presentations and be itself and yet be completely . represents each perspective. Giani: "What I've different. It is the power of the artwork to particularly enjoyed about this book project was produce a space around itself, its ability to 'make the premise that the artwork is the place where worlds' ... that makes it exist beyond the confines 12 art is defined, transformed, and changed. It is a 12 Ibid, 461. of the exhibition." Reflecting the book-as­ history of artworks rather than just a history of exhibition blurring inherent to the project itself, 9 9 Ibid., 456-57. art." Enwezor: "My decisions for selecting the he opines: "The exhibition, I am afraid, does not artworks I have were made with full awareness have the same power as the artwork in this sense; of the shifting grounds of the contemporary, the exhibition to me is the cover of the book, its the way the postcolonial and global conditions layout, its fonts. The artwork is the novel, and, have inflected our awareness of art produced as with the novel, it is quite unclear where the 13 throughout the twentieth century, but also by th~ 13 Ibid., 461. artwork really resides." fact that I have invested my career making these arguments unambiguously in my exhibitions and Enwezor rejects this approach: "The artworks writing ... with the distinct outcome that the in Defining Contemporary Art are in conversation works, at any rate, are great works of art that have with many other artworks, both inside this forum survived the test of analytical interpretation over and outside it, and, due to this, the history of 10 10 Ibid., 458. all these years." their being accumulates and accommodates many layers of meaning. Each work of art is part of a Giani's remark seems to suggest that it is multiplicity, not a singularity ... [the exhibition] the artwork that somehow does the thinking and helps construct an analytical structure through implies that the curator's task is to put the work in which we can experience and judge the unique 14 front of a viewer so that he or she can somehow 14 Ibid., 462. nature of each work." Enwezor is the only see that happening. Responding to Enwezor, he speaker who deliberates with any depth on "the

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historical conditions and principal themes of this HISTORICIZE CURATING period." Given the claims of the title of the book, this is disappointing, but it is perhaps a function Establishing an independent history of curating of the roundtable format, poorly moderated and would contribute greatly to a sense that it is confined to exchanges of opinions of what might an autonomous profession. It might also help be happening and what could be done, rather to identify what is traditional, modern, and than a close focus on what the exhibitions made contemporary within it. Of course, we would by these curators and others have, in fact, been expect curating to remain closely aligned · saying about what is happening in art and in the with contingent interests-those of artists, art world and what art can do about it. historians, art critics, art's audiences; and those of museums, collectors, gallerists, publicists, and Returning briefly to an earlier theme, it is so on-but it would no longer be subservient to interesting that another of the interlocutors, them. Current thinking about this seems to switch Daniel Birnbaum, believes that, "nobody in our back and forth between the history of exhibitions generation has been able to develop a theory and the history of curating. as strong as Hal Foster's systematic attempt to theorize postwar art in terms of repetition as Exhibitions have been at the center of a productive power. ... I have wondered about critical responses to art since Diderot's Salons, his the lack of models to make sense of more recent pamphlets on the annual Academy exhibitions 15 15 Ibid., 458. forms of repetition and return." Given the large­ 17 See Robert Hughes, in Paris, most written between 1759 and 1779. scale curatorial ideas pinpointed earlier, this is The Shock of the New (New Exhibitions were pivotal during the 1850s, when York: Knopf, 1991) for an untrue. It may, however, be true for most of his outstanding popular account; the independent exhibition, contra the Salon, generation of curators, although more and more for scholarly groundwork, see became the vehicle for Realism (Courbet in 1855) Bruce Altshuler, The Avant­ are joining their art historian contemporaries in Garde in Exhibition: New Art and, later, courtesy of well-heeled artists such as exploring the 1960s and 1970s as, at once, the in the 20'h Century (New York: Manet and Caillebotte, for the Impressionists. Abrams, 1994); and his Salon moment of late modernism and the originary to Biennial: Exhibitions That Exhibitions have dominated both specialist art­ 16 16 This is the explicit argu­ moment of contemporary art. Included within Made Art History 1863-1959, historical accounts and popular stories about the ment I make in chap. 1 of this recursion is a recuperation of certain vol. 1 (London: Phaidon, twentieth century avant-gardes for the obvious Contemporary Art: World 2008). This is a rather sparse Currents (London: Laurence curators as major agents of change during this list, but see note 20. reason that, along with the manifesto, the self­ King; Upper Saddle River, transformatory moment. The urge to historicize staged group exhibition was the primary means N.J.: Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 18 See, for example, Tony 2011). curating is one of the key "turns" that is making it Bennett, The Birth of the Mu­ through which artists defined themselves and contemporary. seum: History, Theory, Politics challenged their publics. 17 Most British studies (London: Routledge, 1995); and Bruce W Ferguson, of the history of exhibitions reach back into Reesa Greenberg, and Sandy the mid-nineteenth century-no surprise given Nairne, eds., Thinking About Exhibitions (London: Rout­ the boom in public displays of art, design, and ledge, 1996). Two editors of manufacture at the time, and their palpable the latter are Canadian. resonances in Britain and its colonies ever since. 18

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Curators, critics, and historians elsewhere-in Another: Site-Specificity and is not a one-off exchange between curators but LocationalIdentity (Cambridge, the interviews conducted over many years (1962- Europe, the U.S., and Latin America-are Mass.: MIT Press, 2002), more interested in 1960s and 1970s precedents, which includes studies of the 86) with the artist Francis Bacon by British art the frontier days of the curator as artist. More curating of public art projects, critic and curator David SylvesterY notably those by Mary Jane generally, the fascination everywhere is with the Jacob in Chicago. See also beginnings of what is now experienced as one's David Carrier, Museum Skep­ Sustained attention to the history of ticism: A History of the Display current, contemporary situation. There has ofArt in Public Galleries (Dur­ exhibitions is, as J ens Hoffmann and Tara been a boomlet in attention to the history of ham, N.C.: Duke University McDowell remark, a "rather Herculean" task: Press, 2006); and Charlotte exhibitions for the obvious reason that they have Klonk, Spacesof E-xperience: become, since the 1990s, the major interface Art Gallery Interiors from 1800 In addition to attending to the organization, to 2000 (New Haven, Conn.: installation, and reception of the exhibition, 19 Hans Ulrich Obrist, between art's primary producers, disseminators, Yale University Press, 2009). A Brief History of Curat- and interpreters and its continually growing and the historical specificity of the moment ing (Zurich: JRP/Ringier, increasingly diverse crowds of consumers. 21 David Sylvester, The Bru­ in which it appeared, its relevance to 2008). Recently augmented tality of Fact: Interviews with by April Lamm, ed., Hans Francis Bacon, 3rd ed. (Lon­ contemporary practice, and its material Ulrich Obrist, Everything You Recently interest among art historians in don: Thames and Hudson, relations with market and site, there are, of Always Wanted to Know About 1987). Obrist discusses his Curating* *But Were Afraid the role of exhibitions in the history of art has interview process in "Curios­ course (and most importantly) the works that to Ask (Berlin: Sternberg been matched by deep curiosity among curators ity Is the Motor of the Entire are in it.22 Press, 2011), in which sixteen Interview Project: Hans artists interview Obrist about in the history of curating, one in which their Ulrich Obrist in Conversa­ curating. A number of other predecessors can be seen to have played leading tion with Philip Ursprung," Then there are the works left out and collections of statements by Art Bulletin 114, no. 1 (March questions about why: "the forgotten artists, the curators complement Obrist's roles. Hans Ulrich Obrist has led this enterprise, 2012): 43-49. enterprise. See, for example, as much in his dedication to oral history as in his failed artworks, the minor or transitional efforts." Carin Kuoni, ed., Words of 22 )ens Hof&nann and Tara To say nothing of the blind spots, or mistakes, of Wisdom: A Curator's Vade multifarious exhibition making and programming. McDowell, "Reflection," Mecum on Contemporary Art His A Brief History of Curating is unabashedly The Exhibitionist, no. 4 Oune 'the curator-who will, after all, be the hero or (New York: Independent 2011): 3. heroine, villain or mediocrity, in such accounts. Curators International, devoted to offering a platform for a number of 2001); and Carolee Thea, On pathbreaking exhibition makers to tell their own Nevertheless, to keep perspective in the face of Curating: Interviews with Ten fears created by (impossible, indeed ludicrous) International Curators (New stories, to historicize the curatorial networks in York: D.A.P, 2010). which they have worked, or still work, and to demands for completeness, it should be observed add their voices to an ongoing, accumulative, that challenges such as these faced the history of 20 Now-classic studies 19 include Mary Ann Stanisze­ collective memory of curating itself. This art as it became a modern university discipline in wski, The Power of Display: A is very much an enterprise in which curators Germany in the mid- and late nineteenth century. History of Exhibition Installa­ Whatever their shortcomings, art historians have, tions at the Museum of Modern write-or, better, speak (for this is a never-ending Art, New York (Cambridge, conversation)-their own history, rather than have as members of a vast collective enterprise, met Mass.: MIT Press, 1988); such challenges many times over. Brian O'Doherty, Inside the it done for them by art or cultural historians, as White Cube: The Ideology of has been mostly the case to date.20 It is interesting the Gallery Space (Berkeley: A crucial, constitutive part of this collective University of Caiifornia Press, that Obrist relies so heavily, even obsessively, on expanded ed. 1999); and the interview format as the medium for this work. enterprise has been the art-historical groundwork Miwon Kwon, One Place After And that his model for the ideal interview process undertaken by curators in museums everywhere.

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Establishing the art-historical facts is a standard antecedents will be shown side by side with their 23 reason for rehanging a collection display and 23 Nick Waterlow, "A View of peers from other countries." This inclusion was World Art c. 1940-1988," in essential to his curatorial purpose: to show that regularly drives temporary exhibitions based on Australian Biennale 1988: From institutional holdings, which are often augmented the Southern Cross; A View innovation in Australian art grew from its own by appropriate borrowings. Broad public of World Art c. 1940-1988 roots as well as resulting from the impact of art (Sydney: Biennale of Sydney, education in the story of art is often advanced as a 1988), 9. from elsewhere. This might seem odd, but two justification for blockbuster exhibitions of works centuries as a British colony and the more recent loaned from a famous museum. Adding depth, impact of U.S. culture meant that reorientation detail, or variation to the story of the oeuvre toward the obvious was necessary. Given the of a well-known artist is the classic purpose of almost entire absence in Australian collections monographic exhibitions. Scholarly essays in hefty of art from the early and mid-twentieth century catalogues have become staple output in major European avant-gardes, historical precedence museums everywhere. For some publishers, such was a frequent inclusion in later editions of as Yale University Press, exhibition catalogues the Biennale, for example those of Rene Block have come to outnumber their strictly art­ (1990), Lynne Cooke (1996), and Carolyn historical studies. Accumulating information on, Christov-Bakargiev (2010). Similarly specific around, and about works of art in the collection deployments of historical precedent for local is fundamental to museum work and a core purposes have been a common feature of biennials component of curatorship that is tied to either throughout the world, for example, the display museum or private collections. How essential is of key works by Lygia Clark, Helio Oiticica, and such art-historical knowledge to curating within other Concrete and N eo-Concrete artists during other parts of the exhibitionary complex? the Bienal do Mercosul (2005). Documenta 12 (2007) was memorable, to many, for lacing its During the 1980s and 1990s, as the biennial survey of current work with key examples of early form flourished around the world, its primary feminist art OoSpence), contrarian eccentrics purpose of bringing contemporary art from (Lee Lozano, Juan Davila), and lesser-known elsewhere into juxtaposition with local work was minimalists (Charlotte Posenenske). frequently augmented by "historical" exhibitions, usually of earlier avant-garde art that the curators What about the uncertain, hoped for, or believed was important to the theme of their show unanticipated consequence? This is a key quality and to the aesthetic education of local artists and of many exhibitions: an opportunity that the audiences. Beginning with European Dialogue best curators take advantage of when it presents in 1979, Nick Waterlow's Sydney Biennales itself and seek to underscore for visitors. It is one did this as a matter of course, most notably the of the factors that distinguish curating from art 1988 edition entitled From the Southern Cross;A criticism and art history, although not of course View of World Art c. 1940-19 88, in which "For from art itself. Unexpected connections present the first time, a small number of key Australian themselves when works are hung within sight

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celebrations of the Bicentennial of the settlement of the continent by British colonists. They evoked the subsequent suffering of the Aboriginal people as well as affirming their persistence, not least 24 For a detailed explora­ through such flowerings of their visual culture. 24 tion, see Terry Smith, "Public Added late in the planning via the intervention Art Between Cultures: The Aboriginal Memorial," Critical of Djon Mundine, an indigenous art adviser, Inquiry 27, no. 4 (Summer shown in one of the Piers that extends out over 2001): 629-61. Sydney Harbour, and mediated by a ceremony that the painters performed on opening night, The Aboriginal Memorial became, as Waterlow acknowledged, "the single most important statement in the Biennale," highlighting his belief that "for many artists, particularly in this century, the Aboriginal presence is the most civilizing and 25 Waterlow, "A View of creatively challenging element in our world."25 World Art," 11-12. On the While this instance of curatorial openness to a background to the work's inclusion in the exhibition, see crucial artistic manifestation of a key factor in Ramingining Artists, Aboriginal Memorial, 1988. Mixed media, dimensions variable. Installation view, Pier 2/3, 7th Djon Mundine, "Marking the Biennale of Sydney. Curator: Nick Water! ow contemporary life is at least documented, how Test of Time: Nick Waterlow and The Aboriginal Memo­ many other moments of similar consequence rial," Art and Australia 4 7, no. have disappeared from the record because of the 4 (Winter 2010): 642-45. of each other. The narrative of an exhibition strange reluctance of curators to record the results changes, in subtle and sometimes major ways, of their labors? when it is installed in another venue. Taking a risk on showing a work not yet complete, or Yet even this moving example could be one not fully known, can skew the impact of seen as adding to the general narrative of the the whole. In the 1988 Australian Biennale, relationships between artworks and between Waterlow focused on the provincialism problem artworks and their "times" that art historians (a problem for.white artists). He only partly typically offer. That narrative consists of facts anticipated the impact of The Aboriginal Memorial, from the exhibition history of particular works, an installation of two hundred hollow log coffins from the reception history of certain artists' painted by indigenous men from Ramingining, works, or that of an art movement. This brings us a small settlement in the Northern Territory. back to the question of just what is the difference These were being made in the months before the between conceptualizing, researching, and writing exhibition and had their first showing there. the history of exhibitions and doing the same for amounted to a countermemorial, an oblique, but the history of curating? An obvious difference on quite deliberate, critique of the yearlong official the ground at the moment is one of style: Obrist's

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approach is intensely conversational; it researches through dialogue, through DIY strategies that, again, parallel those of his artist contemporaries. These are early days, so we cannot expect the variety of competing approaches-the strengths of which have been refined over time, and the weakness exposed as raw wounds-that characterize art criticism and art history, both of which are disciplines two hundred years in the making in their modern forms. We cannot expect the deep and revivifying interest in art historiography-the theory and history of writing histories of art-that is itself becoming one of 26 See, for example, the the ways in which art history is done these days. 26 Journal ofArt Historiography, online since 2009, at http:// But we can expect that taking a curatorial arthistoriography. word press. perspective toward the history of curating might com. lead to a different kind of historical recollection,

unlike that which an art or cultural historian Palle Nielsen, The Model: A Model for a Qualitative Society, 1968. Mixed media, dimensions variable would produce while attending to the history of exhibitions. Facilities for continued creativity were at RECURATION the children's disposal during the entire course of the manifestation, in the form Some curators interested in the exhibitions/events of tools, paint, building materials, and that, during the 1960s and 1970s, challenged art fabrics. The Royal Theatre donated period world/real life divides have revisited them not costumes from different epochs to be used only to recover forgotten histories or to adjust for role-play. To this day, the noise level distorted memory but also to rethink current of the pedagogical art project is surely practice and to do so by restaging past exhibitions unparalleled in art history: loudspeaker or developing a fresh one that reworks aspects of towers were placed in each corner of the a past exhibition or event. In 1968 Danish artist exhibition space and the young museum­ Palle Nielsen persuaded Pontus Hulten to permit goers operated the turntables with LPs from the main galleries of the Moderna Museet to be every genre, playing dance music from the transformed into a children's playground for his Renaissance at an ear-splitting level. In the installation Mode/len: En modell fo"r ett kvalitativt restaurant, a number of TV screens with live samhiille (The Model: A Model for a Qualitative transmission offered a panopticon for uneasy Society). Lars Bang Larsen describes the scene: parents and enabled more sedate visitors to

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take in the active study of children's contact 28 Over a period of two years For a current project, entitled The New Model, language. playground architecture made (2011-12), TheNewModelwill Larsen and Maria Lind are revisiting the legacy The investigate the heritage from concrete the pedagogical aim: a protected, The Model: A Model for a Qual­ of this project at another venue in Stockholm, the but pedagogically empowering, milieu, to itative Society in a number of Tensta Konsthall. It takes the form of seminars, projects, seminars, workshops, be accessed freely by all Stockholm's kids and exhibitions. Participants discursive events, exhibitions, and artists' (adults had to pay 5 crowns to get in). During will include Dave Hullfish residencies from which new artworks and ideas Bailey, Magnus Bartas, Ane 28 its three-week exhibition period the Model Hjorth Guttu, Lars Bang will emerge. Perhaps a reflexive account of received over 33,000 visitors, 20,000 of whom Larsen, and Hito Steyer!. See the meanings for the present of such revisiting 27 http://www. tenstakonsthall.se/ will result. Perhaps it will be a specifically 27 Lars Bang Larsen, "Social were children. english.php. Aesthetics: 11 Examples to curatorial one. Begin with, in the Light of Parallel History," Afterall!On­ He interprets its affect in the light of his lineljournal1 ( 1999), http:/I theory of "social aesthetics," within which the In a similar spirit, the Experimental Nucleus www.afterall.org/journal! issue.llsocial.aesthetics.11. museum has a crucial role as a social connector or, of Education & Art at the Museum of Modern examples.begin.light.parallel. in this case, a slingshot: Art in Rio de Janeiro, coordinated by curators/ For an assessment ofHulten's educators Jessica Gogan and Luiz Guilherme role at the Moderna Museet, see Magnus M Petersens, The notion that a child's early social relations Vergara, is constructing a dialogue with the "Pontus Hulten and the Open form the adult individual was investigated by Newspaper article,Jornal do museum's institutional history and its unique Museum," ARKEN Bulletin 5 Brasil, March 30, 1971 on (2010): 29-40. way of the Model. Creativity and experiential Domingos de Criafiio (Creation location. The museum was a key center of contact were thus incited as ways of Sundays), a series of six experimentation in the 1950s, 1960s, and early participatory art happenings assigning new priority to human needs which at Museum of Modern Art, 1970s. The Nucleus, in operation since 2010, acknowledged the "qualitative human being" Rio de Janeiro, 1971 seeks to revisit this past, not to repeat it but rather as an individual of society. The great need to recuperate forgotten institutional histories and for group relations and the necessity to work seek inspiration from previous experimental art, as collectively as an alternative to authoritarian ··-· the preferred ground for possibility in the present. society was made evident. The Model accepted These are urgent needs in a context where history I;,;g ... the white cube as a "free" topological is often overlooked and infrastructure is fragile. 29 premise: free in the sense of public access, Galpao Aplauso, Peiformance accentuated by the anti-elitist stance of the inspired by Helio Oiticica, In late 2008 Eastside Projects-that describes Model; free in the sense that what is inserted March 6, 2010. Image from itself as "a new artist-run gallery as experimental DouAfoes (Action Gifts), The New Model seminar, into art institutions automatically legitimates public space, set in the heart of Birmingham's City Tensta Konsthall, March a project of Experimental 11, 2012. Q&A with Palle its existence (or that is what they tell us, Nucleus of Education & Art, Center Eastside regeneration zone"-launched Nielsen, Gunilla Lundahl, anyhow). Hence the Model embraced the art Museum of Modern Art, its program with This is the Gallery and the Gallery and Erik Stenberg. Curators: Rio de Janeiro Maria Lind and Lars Bang institution as a vehicle positioned in such a is Many Things. Over nine weeks, the gallery Larsen way in culture that the statements it conveys 29 For general information presented a series of accumulating installations, on the Nucleus, see also all of which took their inspiration from three are catapulted into society. http://nucleoexperimental. wordpress.com. The Nucleus earlier examples of "the gallery as an ongoing recently launched a digital artwork." The first was El Lissitzky's Abstract

196 197 TERRY SMITH CURATORIAL PRACTICE NOW publication of its seminar Cabinet, designed for the 1926 International Art of fifty of her performance works were reenacted Reconfiguring the Public: Art, Exhibition in Dresden and subsequently installed (in an approximated, sanitized fashion) by a Pedagogy & Participation, which also featured a screen­ at the Hannover Museum, a famous example team of younger performers trained by her and ing of the film documentary of an avant-garde artist designing a space for was accompanied by a renewed work that she by Guilherme Coelho, Um do­ mingo com Frederico (A Sunday the work of others. The second inspiration was herself staged in the main second-floor gallery with Frederico), followed by the British anarchist anti-artist Peter Nadin. In for the duration of the exhibition. Entitled The a panel discussion on Domin­ gos de Cria<;ao, an important 1978, for a project entitled The work shown in Artist is Present, the latter restaged the format of series of participatory art this space, Nadin, Christopher D'Arcangelo, and a piece entitled Night Sea Crossing that she and happenings at the museum in 1971. Nick Lawson invited artists such as Daniel Buren, Ulay did on twenty-two occasions in a number Lawrence Weiner, Dan Graham, Louise Lawler, of museums in Australia, Europe, and elsewhere and others to make works that responded to those between 1981 and 1987, some of which also that were on show. The third exhibition supplied involved a Tibetan Buddhist lama and a member the title, This is the Gallery and the Gallery is Many of the Pintupi tribe from the Central Australian ·Things. Curated by Bart de Baere and presented Desert. The artists sat facing each other across a at the Museum van Hedendaage Kunst, Ghent, simple table for seven hour stretches. At MoMA, in 1994, it was at the -time exceptional in that the Abramovic sat still, opposite whomever chose to exhibiting artists planned the exhibition jointly by wait, for as long as that person was able, during workshopping possibilities. Eastside Projects takes the times set for the performance each day. (This as its motto a 1978 statement by Peter Nadin: pattern was broken just once, when Ulay visited, "We have joined together to execute functional and both artists reached across the table for a constructions and to alter or refurbish existing long moment.) In the "repeat" performances, structures as a means of surviving in a capitalist there is no suggestion of antiquarianism-unlike, 30 See http://eastsideprojects. economy. "30 for example, the mood that pervaded the re­ org/past/this-is-the-gallery­ creation of Marcel Broodthaers's Section Cinema and/; and Barbara Holub, Initiative Island (Birmingham: Is there an emergent tendency manifesting (1972) at 12 Burgplatz, Diisseldoif at the Marian Eastside Projects E.P.P.1, itself here, however tentatively, one that we Goodman Gallery, New York, in September 2010. 2009). might name, in parallel to the current vogue for (Antiquarianism was, of course, not absent from reperformance, a kind of recurating? If so, its goal Broodthaers's original decors. It is just that it was does not seem to be antiquarian repetition but not made contemporary in the Goodman show. rather to make a contemporary exhibition, one Perhaps because the goal was to sell the original recommended as relevant to current concerns. 31 On the specifics of the exhibit in a form as close as possible to its initial differences between perfor­ 31 While of course there would be an inclination mances intended to be re­ object status.) to evoke the ambience of the original exhibition, peated for a season or revived, as is common in theater and there is also the necessity of shooting it through visual arts performance, see We are talking about exhibiting the layering with contemporary presence. Just this double-play Adrian Heathfield and Amelia of memory, the counterpoints of time, as they Jones, eds., Pe'iform, Repeat, inspired Marina Abramovic in her managing of Record:Live Art in History have been and are manifest in exhibitions. Artists her exhibitions at MoMA in 2010: a retrospective (Bristol: Intellect, 2012). such as Tacita Dean pursue these concerns in a

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variety of ways and with extraordinary subtlety. One of her pathways is through the working lives of artists of an earlier generation (such as Marcel Broodthaers, Joseph Beuys, Mario Merz, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham), including the kinds of exhibition spaces that these artists preferred. Dean's Darmstiidter Werkblock is devoted to a careful examination of the rooms in which Beuys, beginning in 1970, created his famous installation Block Beuys, an informal museum of his own work, including such major pieces as the Auschwitz Demonstration (1956-64) and the props for his performance The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overrated (1964). In the film and booklet versions of Darmstiidter Werkblock,

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elements become strangely distant in time, popular culture, especially pop music, seems uncannily distinct from their own placement­ addicted to its immediate past, contemporary art rather than appear as a "natural" spin-off of a and curating-which certainly shares the remix merely present interest, the contemporaneity of instinct-nonetheless tends-in its consciously which would "normally" become evident later. critical moments-to subject this instinct to a ]ens Hoffmann attacks this problem in When more historically conscious comparativity. In Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes, a "script projects such as When Attitudes Became Form and display" (exhibition, book, and series of Become Attitudes, the goal is to address the discussions) intended to "take on the history and complex contemporaneities in play when one the myths around" Harald Szeemann's famous highly reflexive, Late Modern exhibitionary 1969 exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes event is revisited, in order to occasion another, Become Form: Works-Concepts-Processes-Situations­ contemporary one. Projects like these are specific, Information. Subtitled A Restoration/A Remake/A meta critical instances of the more general Rejuvenation/A Rebellion, the exhibition at the enterprise of curating contemporaneity that I CAA Wattis Art Institute, San Franciso, in the discussed in the previous essay. fall of 2012, features sixty-nine artists (the same number as in the original show) "working within An instinct toward recurating the recent past the legacy of Conceptual Art." According to also appears in Massimiliano Gioni's inclusion of a the press release, from which I am quoting, the partly, imperfectly recreated work by Mike Kelley artists were invited to present "both existing in his Gwangju Biennale 2010. Gioni wished this and commissioned works and bring together work to act as a historical counterpoint to the archival material, floor plans, and installation range of contemporary work in his exhibition. images from When Attitudes Become Form with As we noted earlier, a more general comment ephemera sought from the artists [originally] on the state of the biennial form was made in included." All of these elements are to be shown Okwui Enwezor's 2008 edition, a major part of simultaneously: "As this exhibition does not which consisted of reinstallations of exhibitions make the distinction between what is past and that he had seen throughout the world during present, but rather considers When Attitudes the preceding twelve months. In the context Become Form as a living past, the documentary and of Vilnius, a "European Capital of Culture" historical material will not be separated from the in 2009, Simon Rees curated Code Share: 5 contemporary artworks." Within the dialectical continents, 10 biennales, 20 artists, an exhibition logic of modernity, if When Attitudes Become Form at the Contemporary Art Centre that brought is a "living past," the risk is that When Attitudes together works shown at ten biennials around the 34. See Simon Reynolds, Became Form Become Attitudes might find itself world during the previous few years in order to Retromania: Pop Culture's commemorating a dead present. Or, perhaps, picture the exchange system within international Addiction to its Own Past (London: Faber and Faber, embalming a living present that is haunted to art and its curating. I discuss some of Charles 2011). the point of saturation by retromania. 34 Yet, if Esche's projects along these lines in my remarks

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on reimagining the museum. The exhibition Processuality and performativity, and more spaces established bye-flux in New York are recently even dramaturgy and choreography, often devoted to recurated exhibitions or shows are often mentioned in analyses of exhibitions of unrealized projects, including exhibitions that and other artistic and curatorial formats. Still, were planned, but did not happen. space remains the main category of reference; the temporal dimension of exhibiting has yet These initiatives seem to share an implicit to be researched in any depth. This is all the wish to establish a history of curating that makes more surprising if one considers that current explicit the dialogue between exhibitions, the discussion on the subject focuses in particular constant learning from the example of another on the ways exhibition practice has changed curator that constitutes the substance of most over the past twenty years in the wider context curatorial talk. More than any written record, of cultural and economic globalization-a exhibitions themselves are the intertexts that context closely linked to notions of curators use to speak to each other. This is an acceleration, processuality, action orientation, exchange that has been going on for at least and mobility. In this light, the exhibition 35 By some accounts, for two centuries.35 It has usually done so, however, appears as a transdisciplinary and transcultural much longer, at least as far in textual silence, and without leaving much space, as a public and social sphere. It back as the first "public" openings of princely col­ in the way of written traces. Recuration makes manifests itself as a set of spatia-temporal lections, or perhaps even to the exhibitionary exchange visible, exhibits it, relations, a medium that is already time-based ancient times, when the tri­ umphal parades of pillage and brings it to publicity. Let us hope that recurated by its very nature: as a form of presentation tributes from the conquered exhibitions will continue to add meaning to the that is of a specified duration and as an event were accumulated in imperial "museums." subjects they evoke and broach. Let us hope that bringing together different actors-from the they will apply the reflexivity that inspires them exhibits to the artists and curators through to to themselves as exhibitionary events-that their the audience and the institution. It is clear, curators will archive their own processes, and the then, that key aesthetic, social, and economic responses to their efforts. It is not Holy Writ issues of the early twenty-first century run that the exhibition is over when the exhibits are through the field framed by the axes of 36 taken down. 36 "TIMING. On the exhibiting and the temporal. Temporal Dimension of Exhibiting," Cultures of the Where does the nascent history of curating Curatorial and Studio Inter­ Although it is, perhaps, too soon to comment stand now? One useful indicator is the call for national Academy of Visual on where these experiments in recurating are Arts, Leipzig, January 2012, the conference "TIMING. On the Temporal http://www.artandeducation. leading us, everyone interested in repetition Dimension of Exhibiting," held at the Cultures of net/announcement/timing­ and its affect would benefit from consulting the %E2%80%93-on-the-tempo­ the Curatorial and Studio International Academy ral-dimension-of-exhibiting/. authority on this matter: Soren Kierkegaard, ofVisual Arts, Leipzig, in January 2012. The call whose Repetition: A Venture in Experimental reads as follows: Psychology(1843) remains the most compelling account of the impossibility, but also the

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compelling necessity, of attempting to repeat that 3 7 Soren Kierkegaard, Fear which once was. 37 and Trembling/Repetition: Kierkegaard's Writings, vol. 6 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton INNOVATE WITHIN EXHIBITION University Press, 1983). PRACTICE

Speaking about the curatorial thinking underlying his and Hou Hanru's exhibition Cities on the Move (1997-98), Obrist recalls:

If one thinks about the historical precedence of such experiences, Alexander Dorner was the general spirit, but I was perhaps more conscious of Harald Szeemann's 1969 exhibition When Attitudes Become Form. Szeemann had a very open research approach

and let the show emerge. It was this idea to Cities on the Move: Contemporary Asian Art on the Turn of the 21st Century, Wiener Secession, Vienna, 1997. Curators: be transgressive, to work against many of the Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hou Hanru rules about museum exhibitions. With Cities on the Move we were adding artists up to the format, above all through artistic director last minute and the catalogue was done the Okwui Enwezor's use of "platforms," four of day before the opening-otherwise it would which took the form of conferences, debates, have frozen the process too early. and workshops, followed by publications, on key issues of global concern-"Democracy The exhibition traveled to Louisiana Museum Unrealized," "Experiments with Truth," "Creolite 38 Hans Ulrich Obrist, in in Humelbaek, Denmark; CAPC in Bordeaux; and Creolization," "Under Siege: Four Mrican Victoria Lynn, "Curators on The Hayward Gallery in London; Kiasma in Cities" leading intellectuals in cities around the Move: Hans Ulrich Obrist -with in Conversation with Victoria Helsinki; and PS1 in New York. Each time it the world (Vienna, Berlin, New Delhi, St. Lucia, Lynn," Art and Australia 49, traveled we asked an architect to displace the and Lagos), followed by the fifth platform, the no. 2 (2011): 242. Hamilton curated his own retrospective one before. Kaspar Konig taught me to think exhibition at Kassel. Enwezor was explicit about at the Barcelona Museum about architecture and Richard Hamilton his goal: to challenge the Eurocentric, Westernist of Contemporary Art in 2003, including a suite of taught me that when you do an exhibition, conception of avant-garde art that, he believes, is rooms with walls designed if it doesn't invent a new display feature, it is institutionalized in mega-exhibitions. He aimed to to echo imagery in his early 38 Pop works and other rooms doomed to oblivion. do this not merely in the weight and nature of his containing contemporary selections and not only via overt interrogations computers as well as com­ Documenta 11 (2002) is widely recognized at the forums but also by questioning the puter game consoles. as a paradigmatic reinvention of the biennial exhibition form itself. "As an exhibition project,

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Bonami divided the exhibition sites into eleven sections and invited that number of curators to develop independent yet connected exhibitions at each venue. He was inscribing into the design of the Biennale the critical interpretation, advanced by the philosopher Edouard Glissant, of the homogeneity sought by Euro-American globalization and his counterpicture of mondialite 40 40 Francesco Bonami, ed., as an array of contiguous archipelagos. In the 50th VeniceBiennale, Dreams same spirit, Obrist (who, with art historian Molly and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer (Venice: Skira/ Nesbitt and artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, curated one Marsillo, 2003). of the Venetian archipelagos, "Utopia Station") recalls that:

Many of our traveling shows since the mid 1990s-Life!Live (1996), Nuit Blanche (1998), Uncertain States of America: American Art in the 3rd Millenium (2006-7), and, more recently, Indian Highway (2011-12)-have

Yinka Shonibare, Gallantery and Criminal Conversation, 2002. Mixed media, dimensions variable. Installation view, tried to achieve it, which creates the idea Documenta 11, Kassel, 2002. Artistic Director: Okwui Enwezor. Co-curators: Carlos Basualdo, Ute Meta Bauer, of travel almost as a crazy algorithm. The Susanne Ghez, Sarat Maharaj, Mark Nash, and Octavio Zaya exhibitions are learning systems. They involve a lot of self-organization, a lot of grassroots Documenta 11 begins from the sheer side research. They are not imposed homogenous of extraterritoriality: firstly, by displacing its structures, yet they do participate in this historical context in Kassel; secondly, by moving potential for global dialogue that hopefully outside of the domain of the gallery space to that produces a difference. That's why when these of the discursive; and thirdly, by expanding the 41 Obrist, in Lynn, "Curators shows happen twice they are never the sameY locus of the disciplinary models that constitute on the Move," 244. and define the project's intellectual and cultural Why should exhibitions stay the same from 39 Okwui Enwezor, "The interest. "39 The project's effectiveness may be the moment they open to the day they close? Why Black Box," in Documenta gauged by the depth of initial reaction against should they be available for standard periods, ]]_Platform 5: Exhibition, Catalogue (Ostfildern: Hatje it and its underlying, persistent presence as a usually three weeks for small-scale shows, two or Cantz, 2002), 42. paradigm. three months for larger ones? Can they not be events·, constantly changed by their visitors, and Under the heading "The Dictatorship of the available at times and in modes that are responsive Viewer," 2003 Venice Biennale director Francesco to need? Ghrist's career is full of such initiatives,

208 209 TERRY SMITH CURATORIAL PRACTICE NOW not least the do it series of exhibitions (happening performances and to new ones as soon as they are since 1993) based on instructions written by made available. Openness to the new does not, artists for anyone to present a work of theirs. any longer, mean the erasure of the past. Both Curators are being inspired to derive exhibition are accessible through the same page, hovering structures from purpose, rather than fit purpose to in the cloud, just a few clicks away. The success conventional modes of exhibiting. This is how the of sites such as You Tube and others in expanding exhibitionary infrastructure is being rethought. access to all kinds of music suggests, by analogy, that, while a particular art exhibition or event Obviously the communicative conditions at a physical site may indeed be replaced by under which curators work are constantly another, then another, and so on for as long as changing. This is having profound effects on the museum is able to keep mounting them, each the nature of the exhibition. We might ask, for exhibition is not erased by the next. Rather, it can example, why should an exhibition be presumed live on through its traces (under the link "Past to end when the exhibits are removed?. On a exhibitions"). At the moment, these are small commonsense level, this question is nonsense. and relatively short-lived kinds of connection Installing and taking down an exhibition are acts (as is most consumption of music on YouTube). that mark certain limit conditions of exhibiting as Yet they suggest that curating exhibitions across such when compared to mounting a permanent, this range of formats, and through this type of or long term, display, for example. The room contemporaneous time, is a challenge to be met is vacated for the next exhibition, otherwise and an opportunity to be grasped. the museum, the space, the webpage, becomes frozen in time, and visitors see fewer reasons to It is now quite common for an exhibition return. In this regard, museums and galleries to be distributed into venues all over the city, share structures with theaters and concert halls: as was done by the group What, How & For performances have seasons, while exhibitions have Whom, curators of the 2009 Istanbul Biennale. dates. We do not attend concerts only to hear a The 2011 edition, curated by ]ens Hoffmann and particular performance; we go to add breadth or Adriano Pedrosa, returned to museum settings, depth to our experience of a particular type of orchestrating five group exhibitions and fifty solo music-indeed, of music as such. For this essential presentations, all of which took their cues from activity, turnover is essential. Yet we also hear one of five "Untitled" works by the late Felix music on the radio, through players of various Gonzalez-Torres. The "platform" idea is the kinds, on iPods, and watch performances on actual subject of the 12th Gwangju Biennale that portable screens. In spectacularized economies, will stage exhibits, discussions, and events under consumers increasingly expect to be able to select, the heading "Roundtable." All six artistic directors listen, and look across all of these formats, and are women. The topics they have identified to do so whenever they ~ish.They also expect typify the issues now prevalent as concerns held access to a seemingly limitless archive of past by curators: "Forms of Collectivity and Their

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Critique," "Individual Spirit in Identifying REIMAGINE MUSEUMS Alternative Logics and Horizons of Connectivity," "Belonging and Anonymity," "Re-Visiting Who among museum curators today matches History," and the "Impact of Mobility on Space institutional critique artists in making their 42 "Roundtable," Gwan­ and Time."42 However lost in translation this critical institutionality explicit in the way gju Biennale 2012, http://www.gb.or. language might seem, there are real issues at stake 43 Charles Esche, "What's they present their "permanent," as distinct kr/?mid=sub_eng&mode here. Let us hope that they will surface. the Point of Art Centers from "temporary," exhibitions-in particular =02&sub=01_2012. Anyway? Possibility, Art and Democratic Deviance," in how they do away with that distinction? What general lesson might be drawn from April2004, at http://www. Charles Esche, currently director of the Van this inclination to reinvent the exhibition itself republicart.net/disclinstitu­ tion/esche01_en.htm. This Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, would be a candidate. every time? Surely the point is not to rework is his direct response to the To him, the twenty-first century art museum the biennial format, the museum, or the shape post-1989 challenge articu­ lated by Giorgio Agamben, should be "something close to that mix of part of "the exhibition" for the sake of it. It is, rather, cited earlier: "The fall of the community center, part laboratory, part academy, that the world is asking everyone to rethink Soviet Communist Party and the unconcealed rule of the alongside the established showroom function" their relationships to their times-"without capitalist-democratic state on that "encourages disagreement, incoherence, any illusion and without any possible alibi"-an a planetary scale have cleared uncertainty, and unpredictable results."43 Along the field of the two main ideo­ undertaking that seems intractably difficult when logical obstacles hindering the with Van Abbemuseum curator Annie Fletcher, one is immersed in the mess. Among the array of resumption of a political phi­ Esche led a team of collaborators that attempted losophy worthy of our time ... interzones between public citizenship and private . Thought thus finds itself, for to realize this ideal on a nationwide scale from selfhood that have evolved in recent centuries, the first time, facing its own 2007 to 2009 through the Be(com)ing Dutch exhibitions of all types, and art exhibitions task without any illusion and without any possible alibi." project. The core question was "whether art can specifically, offer sites of negotiation, a bounded "Notes on Politics," in Means offer alternative examples of thinking about how space, usually with at least relatively open access, Without Ends (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota we can live together today ... to put our ideas of that is occupied for a stated amount of time (and Press, 2000), 109. cultural identity under pressure and examine the with the potential to expand that time across new process of inclusion and exclusion in the world communicative formats). Exhibitions constitute a 44 Timeline from Be(com)ing 44 Be(com)ing Dutch, Van today." .An interesting indicator of the core ideas Dutch, 2006-9. Project venue in which objects, images, and ideas can be Abbemuseum, http:/I underlying this project is the "Dictionary" link comprising debates, reading WWw.becomingdutch.com/ arranged in forms that prefigure aspects of reality events/?s=ee. groups, artists' projects, on the associated website: in Wikipedia fashion, exhibitions, residencies, reimagined, framed by a "what if?" provisionally, it is open to participants to offer definitions and publications. Van and that can be visited on a basis, usually, of of key terms-such as "be(com)ing," "dutch," Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Curators: choice rather than coercion. In spectacularized "diversity," "modernism(s)," "art"-although Charles Esche and Annie and coercive societies, these fundamentals of the most of them seem to have been written by Esche Fletcher. http://www. exhibition are rare, invaluable commodities, not 45 "Dictionary,'\ ibid., http:/I and Fletcher.45 With Dutch national identity becomingdutch.com/events/ WWw.becomingdutch.com/ (accessed April 2012) to be taken for granted. dictionaryI. an issue of overt public debate due to intense division along racial and religious lines, especially concentrated in the figure of the immigrant, the project ran into a roadblock when two of the

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participating artists, as part of their work Read the Masks: Tradition Is Not Given, staged a public demonstration that questioned the ideological baggage of Zwarte Piet, a popular traditional 46 For more detailed com­ pre-Christmas character.46 Intense reaction from mentary, see Paul O'Neill, "Be(com)ing Dutch," Art certain offended members of the public, and news Monthly (October 2008): 23; media pressure, pushed the museum into a retreat and Emily Pethick, "The Dog position. That Barked at the Elephant in the Room," The Exhibition­ ist, 4 Gune 2011): 79-80. If the Be(com)ing Dutch project offered the museum as a base from which a nation could interrogate itself, the Play Vtln Abbe project turned the microscope on the museum itself. For eighteen months from late 2009 the museum organized its entire range of activities according to a scripted yet open-ended opera in four parts,

in each of which distinct issues were explored, Hiiseyin Alptekin, Self Heterotopia, 1991-2007. Installation view, Play Vim Abbe: The Museum in the 21st Century, part one after the other. Part 1, "The Game and the 1: The Game and its Players, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, November 28, 2009-June 26, 2011. Curators: Christiane Players," asked, "Who are the 'players' within Berndes, Charles Esche, Annie Fletcher, Diana Franssen. Guest Curator: Steven ten Thije a museum and which stories do they tell? How was the collection presented in 1983 and how is this perceived in 2009? How does the current and that persists, awkWardly, in contemporary director present the collection? In what way does conditions. "Time Machines" consisted of an art museum position itself-both in the present mini-exhibitions by contemporary artists and and in the past?" These questions were explored filmmakers inspired by historic room installations through a re-creation of the 1983 summer display from famous museums around the world, such of the collection curated by then-director Rudi as MoMA during the 1930s; the Museu de Arte Fuchs, accompanied by an exhibition of recent de Sao Paulo in 1968; an unrealized design acquisitions and one on contemporary political developed in the 1920s by Alexander Dorner art practices, with the goal of posing yet more (Raum der Gegenwart); and Andre Malraux's questions: ""Which story did the original curators Musee Imaginaire (Museum Without Walls), a want to tell and how do we perceive this part of collection of reproductions gathered in the 19 5Os. history in our time? Does the presentation in this new context become a new exhibition or a copy of When I visited during this period-without an exhibition?" Part 2, "Time Machines," focused prior knowledge that I was walking in partway on historical alternatives to the white cube display through a performance by the museum itself­ format that dominated modern exhibition spaces these installations struck me as an exciting

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47 example of recuration, of meta-exhibiting, one 47 Van Abbemuseum inspiration?" This invitation applied to artists as that revisited a set of roads-not-taken during website, http://www. well. Each of the many artists invited to exhibit vanabbemuseum.nl/en/ modern times and made them open to the browse-all/?tx_vabdisplay _pi 1. during this period created installations that present, as resonances available for taking up and reinstalled the galleries in unexpected ways or running with. The most contemporary aspect of displayed their own works in a similarly reflexive these eddies and billabongs in the flow of history manner. is that they are shown together, close in time to each other. The feeling in the museum as a Museum directors in many parts of the whole was that sequential temporality had been world are turning to reflexive recuration as a suspended in favor of an aggregated ensemble means of addressing the multilayered temporal of pockets of time. (The thoughtful guides were and ethical complexities occasioned by the ever­ invaluable to discombobulated visitors, as is the more-blatant contradictions of contemporary director's forthrightness about what is going societies. In Lodz, Poland, the Museum Sztuki­ on in his online video responses to frequently historic home to a major collection of Polish asked questions.) The museum showed itself Constructivism, above all the great Neoplastic to be conscious of what it was doing, especially Room designed by Wladyslaw Strzemmski in in the tower room, where a reflexive, critical 1948-has developed an interesting response to commentary on the project was on display, a place a very specific set of such challenges. In Poland, where visitors could add comments. contemporary art does not occupy the prominent place in spectacle culture that it does in the Part 3, "The Politics of Collecting/The U.S. and elsewhere in Europe. As neoliberalism Collecting of Politics," was devoted to the advances, this presents an opportunity for following questions: "What does it mean to Poland to take a different path from that taken collect and keep works of art? What kind of world elsewhere. It is not, however, one that all will is perceived when viewing a collection? Who welcome. Having moved into a warehouse that decides and why?" Finally, Part 4, "The Tourist, was part of a nineteenth century weaving plant, the Pilgrim, the Flaneur (and the worker)," the museum precipitated a revival of the area investigated the role of the public and its that now includes shops, restaurants, cinemas, expectations of the museum, the pleasure of a visit · theme parks, and a theater. Directly opposite, and how might that experience be intensified. The however, remnants of deindustrialization persist entire play required the museum to continually in the form of buildings occupied by homeless rehang its collections, recalibrate its usage of squatters. The contradictions between spectacle space, and involve its audiences more thoroughly and scarcity are instantiated, literally, in the exact than is normally the case, so as to ask, "Are there social location of the museum. Acutely aware new roles that the museum can develop for and of these, director Jaroslaw Suchan introduced with the public, in such a way that the museum policies resonant of those instituted at the Van becomes a genuine platform for exchange and Abbemuseum. Under the rubric of "the museum

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as a Happening," Suchan set out to dismantle the art-historical approaches (via "plug in" shows), framing spectacle of art history by prioritizing as well as to offer an alternative to the event­ the "here and now" of a viewer's interaction with oriented, spectacularized, or commodity priorities the works that are displayed within a "continual of other spaces (large museums, art spaces, art movement of contexts." The permanent fairs, etc.) that presented works of art. Believing exhibition was replaced by "exhibition-sketches, that art is made to be encountered, anywhere in every one of which presented the collection from the world, so why not in a museum of this type, different perspectives ... viewed together, the she insisted that the key question is not "What exhibitions were to make the recipients aware is contemporary?," rather it is "What is urgent?" that no interpretation can claim to be exclusive." However, to go only for the immediately, This included restaging the Neoplastic Room obviously urgent is to invite superficial as a setting for encounters between works by contemporariness. A more measured, layered take artists, such as Katarzyna Kobro and Lygia Clark, on our contemporaneity would show that these who themselves transformed Constructivist art. are the same question. N eo-avant-gardist J 6zef Robakowski turned Chto Delat, Activist Club, 2007. Installation view, Plug his show over to two-day exhibitions of works In #51, Van Abbemuseum, So too, it seems, for Obrist: by his artist friends and of works from the Eindhoven, 2009. Plug In is a series of "episodes" where the collection. Reaching beyond those interested in presentation of the museum While Gertrude Stein said that the museum contemporary art, the museum commissioned collection is reimagined couldn't be both a museum and modern, a skateboarding rink based on a sculpture by under Hulten it could either be time storage Kobro and opened the exhibition rooms to local or a laboratory; he showed us it could be both. residents and visitors to the shopping complex And it's combining these two elements-this to display whatever they chose, or whatever they oxymoron condition-which makes museums 49 48 Jaroslaw Suchan, "Museum created while at the museum.48 49 Obrist, in Lynn, "Curators particularly interesting. as a Happening" (unpublished on the Move," 241. paper, CIMA Annual Confer­ ence, Shanghai, November The major challenge posed to museums by The Serpentine Gallery, London, led by 8-9, 2010). reflexive recuration is how might it be sustained? director Julia Peyton-Jones and co-director These exhibitions raise profound questions the Obrist, is one example among many of museums answers to which take some time to search out. now committed to constant, visible, reflexive Asking them all at once or over a short period reinvention. At the Serpentine, this is most of time might leave most of them as merely evident in the annual commissioning of a pavilion rhetorical questions. In her comments on these adjacent to the eighteenth-century building. An projects at The Now Museum conference, Annie architect who has not built elsewhere in Britain is Fletcher asserted that the Van Abbemuseum no invited to design a temporary structure to shelter longer made exhibitions, rather, it reexhibited a cafe and serve as a meeting place. Designs its collections so as to reveal the instability of by extremely innovative architects, including the objects shown and to trouble the linearity of Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and Peter Zumthor,

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have attracted worldwide attention. Exhibiting These terms typify current searching by arts artists have routinely reimagined the gallery by professionals for a "tactical museology" through reorienting viewers through "backstage" spaces which the museum might remain a space apart (Doug Aitken) or shifting spatial reach via the from the commercialization and immediation of use of spilled sound (Philippe Parreno, Anri contemporary life, yet also operate as a critical 3 Sala). The gallery presents linked exhibitions 53 On "tactical museologies," institution in relation to everyday realities. 5 Ai Weiwei in conversation see Ivan Karp and Corinne with Hans Ulrich Obrist, off site-in the case of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, While many modern art museums have, on A. Kratz, "Introduction," on the occasion of Map at twelve places around the city. It regularly in Gustavo Buntinx et al., occasion and often for long periods, maintained Marathon, Serpentine eds., Museum Frictions: Public Gallery, London, 16-17 stages discursive events, especially in the this delicate balance, contemporary circumstances Cultures/Global Transforma­ October, 2010 pavilions, including twenty-four-hour interviews tions (Durham, N.C.: Duke require considerable rethinking of how these and and marathon readings of important texts. Its University Press, 2007), 5, 24. other fresh purposes might be pursued. nearby Center for Possible Studies is devoted to orienting aspects of curating in a globalized CO-CURATE WITH ARTISTS toward neighborhood needs (notably those to do 50 See Centre for Pos- with multiculturalism).50 Despite profession-wide protestations of sible Studies, Serpentine Gallery, http://centreforpos­ admiration for the Szeemann-style auteur siblestudies.wordpress.com/; As contemporary curators move out Ausstellungsmacher, in practice most curators and Serpentine Gallery web­ of traditional museums, then back into the site, http://www.serpentin­ attracted by the curator-as-artist model have egallery.org/projects.html. reimagined museum, thus generating an tended to devote themselves, selflessly, to increasing variety of new roles and revitalizing facilitating whatever the artist wants to do. Of old ones, their activity is spinning off a course practical, personnel, and financial limits plethora of names for what is happening. "New must be spelled out, but the mood is do anything, Institutionalism" was one, articulated by the persuade everybody, move mountains, so as to 51 Jonas Eckeberg, ed., "New Office for Contemporary Art, Norway, in 2003.51 make an exhibition that gets as close as possible Institutionalism," Verksted, no. 1 (Oslo: Office for Con­ As they speculated, in 2010, about the dreams, to the artist's projective fantasy. This recalls the temporary Art Norway, 2003). ambitions, missteps, and achievements of their Walter Hopps ideal of the curator as an invisible three-year-long exploration of the concept of hand, willing to do everything necessary to show Utopia, the director, staff, and adjuncts at the art in whichever way attracts most interest. ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, A recent example: Nancy Spector reflecting came up with an interesting list: "the Open on Maurizio Cattelan's insistence that his Museum," "the museum as generator," "the retrospective exhibition take the form of all of his polyphonic museum," "the dialogic museum," works hanging from the ceiling inside the famous "the negotiating museum," "the critical rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum, New York: institution," "the Nobrow Museum," and "the 52 "Utopic Curating", ARKEN third space" (between high culture and everyday To work successfully with Cattelan means to Bulletin 5 (Copenhagen: ARKEN Museum of Modern life). Each of these emerged from within their become complicit with his schemes and take Art, 2010). experience of what they called "utopic curating."52 institutional and personal risks-whether

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allowing him to break into galleries, steal the The opposite side of this slave/slave contents of another exhibition, or plan an relationship is described by Boris Groys: escape route from the show. A lot of cura museum directors, and gallery owners before When it comes down to it, the independent me have aligned their vision with the artist's curator does everything the contemporary achieve remarkable and memorable projects artist does. The independent curator travels that have tested the limits of their respective the world and organizes exhibitions that institutions .... In accepting his dramatic are comparable to artistic installations­ proposal or, perhaps I should say, his dare, comparable because they are the results of we needed to reconcile our institutional individual curatorial projects, decisions, standards and best practices with the actions. The artworks presented in the Maurizio Cattelan: All, outrageousness of his ideas. This exhibition 56 Boris Groys, "On the exhibitions take on the role of documentation Solomon R. Guggenheim and the accompanying catalogue attest to Curatorship," Art Power of a curatorial project.56 Museum, New York, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT November 4, 2011-January both the power and provocation of Cattelan Press, 2008), 50. 22, 2012 concept and the museum's ability to remain In this situation, the artist as curator and the agile and responsive in the face of the truly curator as artist occupy an equivalent position experimental. 54 in terms of power, status, and creative potential when it comes to making a contemporary 54 Nancy Spector, Maurizio As we saw in a previous essay, in recent years exhibition. In some cases, this is doubtless true: Cattelan All (New York: Gug­ the mutual relationship between professionals for example, the relationship between Groys genheim Museum, 2011), 11. with contingent yet essentially distinct tasks himself and Andrei Monastyrski in the design of in the exhibition of art has been increasingly the Russian Pavilion at the 2 011 Venice Biennale. overlaid by the figure of the artist as curator, the It obviously does not apply across the board-to, artist whose medium is the exhibition, whose for example, the extreme opposite case, that of work is, precisely, the making of exhibitions, the junior "curator," grateful to be one (lowly and whose work of art is an installed exhibition. paid, on-call) member of a production unit. And Spector leaves us in no doubt that Cattelan is the in the case of an institutional curator challenged originator of the idea of this exhibition and that by the trickster double plays of institutional the role of the institutional curator is to accede critique artists, it can lead to confusion or abject the artist's curatorial conception, with alacrity surrender and result in a superficially attractive, gratitude. After four pages of acknowledgments, but ultimately compromised, exhibition. she concludes her preface to the catalogue with, "Lastly, and again, I must thank Maurizio In instances where the interaction is one of 55 Ibid., 16. This statement Cattelan for his profoundly serious art, which, at parity, the hand of the curator should be shown, does not represent a curator for the reasons Groys goes on to note. of long and high accomplish­ first glance, may seem humorous, but in the 55 ment at her best. will make you cry."

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There is, in these remarks, a perverse logic of equivalence, and of reverse paradox, that many will resist. As we have noted, a majority of curators do not thrust their creative vision as curators to the forefront but rather prefer the spectral presence of hiding in the light of the artist's manifest intention. They see their task most fully realized when all signs of traditional curatorial labor have been erased and all that is left are markers-visible only to their peers-that the curator has performed a creative act that parallels, but remains subservient to, that of the artist, especially the artist as curator. Far from managing the situation from above, the curator "lies amongst art (or objects), space, and audience." The highly visible, self-aggrandizing curator­ as-artist model has been superseded, for most practitioners, by that of curating with artists. The Andrei Monastyrski surveying an image from Pictures during the installation of Empty Zones: Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Actions, Russian Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2011. Curator: Boris Groys. Pictures was an action by desired relationship is close to the model of that Monastyrski and Collective Actions (including Boris Groys, first on the left), at Sukhanovo Park, Moscow region, between the film director and the producer on February 11, 1979 the set of a movie, thus the self-description, often heard these days, of the "curator as producer." Indeed, curating acts as a supplement or a "pharmacon" (in Derrida's usage), in Another example, one among thousands, that it cures the image even as it makes it will point these thoughts in the direction of unwell. Like art in general, curating cannot contemporaneity. Julie Rodrigues Widhalm, escape being simultaneously iconophile and curator at the Museum of Contemporary inconoclast. Yet this statement points to the 58 Julie Rodrigues Widholm, Art (MCA), Chicago, describes the impact Escultura Social: A New question: Which is the right kind of,..,~".-.....~ Generation ofArt From Mexico on her of artist Gabriel Orozco's curation of practice? Since curatorial practice can never City (New Haven, Conn.: Yale the satellite exhibition Everyday Altered at the entirely conceal itself, the main objective of University Press, 2007). Oro­ 2003 Venice Biennale: "Orozco's curatorial zco applied this display logic curating must be to visualize itself, by making to a survey of his own work rules-no walls, no pedestals, no vitrines, no its practices explicitly visible. The will to in his 2009 MoMA show. video, and no photographs-emphasized a See http://www.moma.org/ visualization is in fact what constitutes and interactives/exhibitions/2009/ heightened awareness of the quotidian objects drives art. Since it takes place within the gabrielorozco/#. See also Yve­ that surround us and our direct experience of context art, curatorial practice cannot elude Alain Bois, ed., Gabriel Orozco 58 of (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT them in shared space." Some might say that 7 57 Ibid., 46. the logic of visibility. 5 Press, 2009). Orozco was countercurating or seeking to present

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a nonexhibition. Correctly seeing this as a kind based on a passion for art itself, an approach that of reverse supplement, Rodrigues Widhalm, like balances respect for the vision of particular artists many of her peers, takes up the artist's example against commitment to developing audiences as a positive model of exhibition making. For her for art and that brings these two together in exhibition Escultura Social: A New Generation of Art exhibitions that enable shared insight into the From Mexico City at the MCA in 2007, Rodrigues contemporary world-its dark, its dazzling, Widhalm framed the work of twenty artists­ and even its dull ways of being. But there is no ranging from architect Fernando Romero through consensus along these lines. While some of the installation sculptor Abraham Cruzvillegas to various elements that might, eventually (perhaps participatory artist Pablo Helguera-within soon) add up to relative autonomy have been terms derived from Orozco's highly personal, identified, they have yet to come together into even idiosyncratic, yet nonetheless unmistakably an overall theory of contemporary curating. Less contemporary Mexican perspective. She cites ambitiously, but perhaps more appropriately, the artist: "We could say that this practice of what we are looking at is a set of distinctively transforming the objects and the situations in contemporary approaches to curatorship. which we live everyday is a way of transforming the passage of time and the way we assimilate the TURNING THE CURATORIAL economics and the politics of the instruments of living .... The irony of thinking, the immediate Obrist recalls that Szeemann once described the gesture, the fragility of intimacy, and the exhibition maker as an "administrator, amateur, meticulous violence of transforming the familiar author of introductions, librarian, manager and make these artists' work relevant to understand a accountant, animator, conservator, financier, and 59 59 Rodrigues Widholm, powerful tendency in the art practice of today. " diplomat," to which Obrist adds the functions of Escultura Social, 10. "the guard, the transporter, the communicator, Contemporaneity-its actualities, its fissures, 60 Obrist, A Brief History of and the researcher. "6°Fowle summarizes these its challenges, its potentials-are descr-ibed as Curating, 27. roles in language that highlights relationships succinctly in Orozco's words as they are embodied rather than specific roles. For her, the in his actions, objects, and interventions. (Here I, contemporary curator is a "mediator, facilitator, too, cede to the artist.) middleman, and producer." It follows that:

Of course, these two approaches-curator as Actively engaging with artists is central to artist and curating with the artist-are choices practice, which is an aspect of the role for from within a wider range of options. For most which there are no guarantees of immediate curators, wherever (and whenever) they are or quantifiable outcomes. This requires a situated across the infrastructural spectrum, the kind of creative "maintenance," as opposed to ideal is to strive to work from an independent, Foucault's "care," as it involves supporting the relatively autonomous professional perspective seeds of ideas, sustaining dialogues, forming

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and reforming opinions, and continuously exhibitions without art, working with artists updating research. It could also be said that on projects without ever producing anything 62 exhibitions are not the first or only concern 62 Hoffmann, inJens that could be exhibited. Hoffmann and Maria Lind, of the curator. Increasingly the role includes "To Show or Not to Show," producing commissioned temporary artworks, Mousse Magazine, no. 31 (No­ Livia Paldi expands this slightly to say that it vember 2011), http://www. "implies an intertwining net of activities as well facilitating residencies, editing artist's books, moussemagazine.it/articolo. 61 61 Fowle, "Who Cares?," and organizing one-time events. mm?id=759#top. as diverse modes of operation and conversation 32-33. based on more occasional, temporary alliances 63 Throughout these essays, we have noted a 63 Livia P:ildi, "Notes on of artists, curators, and the public." For the Paracuratorial," The Ex­ Hoffmann, these activities are like curating, growing sense that the nature of curating has hibitionist, no. 4 Gune 2011): moved so far beyond its traditional focus on care 71-72. close to it, associated with it, but are not it of collections and the making of exhibitions that (the analogy is obviously to paramedics, para­ an expanded conception has become inevitable. teachers), so his strategy is to acknowledge the Attempts to define this change more closely, interest in these matters, but relegate them to a however, jump back and forth between additive somewhat lesser status. But Paldi is hardly alone lists of specific roles and more abstract statements in suggesting that, in the mix of curatorial and about readjusted relationships between art paracuratorial programs pursued in recent years world players, including participatory audiences at such institutions as the Rooseum, Malmo, for art. No surprise, given the embedding of the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, the curatorial thinking within the practice of making Kunstverein, Munich, and the Van Abbemuseum, exhibitions, the latter now expanded to include all Eindhoven, educational goals have led the way types of showing. with such success that they might stand as models for curating in general. The term "paracuratorial" sounds like a simple extension of Lind's "curatorial" into an We already have noted many such examples, expanded and more wide-ranging set of roles. Yet not least the Documenta 11 "platforms" and if we look closely at the intention of the coiner of the initiatives by Esche in Sweden and Holland. the term, curator Jens Hoffmann, it is clear that Others do not have even an anchorage in a he aims to acknowledge, but also put into their museum, however reimagined. In 2006 proper place, activities that sit outside the idea of Manifesta 6 set out to be an exhibition in curating as tied to exhibition making: 64 Unitednationsplaza was a the form of an art school and an associated book, project by Anton Vidokle in Notes for an Art School. For a mix of accidental collaboration with Liam Gil­ Exhibition making is a craft, and I treasure lick, Boris Groys, Natascha and intentional reasons, it became entirely event that. Too many curators seem to think that Sadr Haghighian, Nikolaus driven, as was its follow-up in Berlin during 2007, Hirsch, Walid Raad, Martha 64 exhibition making is a thing of the past and Rosier, ]alai Toufic, and unitednationsplaza. Paldi reminds us that in some that today it has to be all about what I call Tirdad Zolghadr. See http:/I countries, notably those in which repression rules WWw.unitednationsplaza.org/. the paracuratorial: lectures, screenings, in public institutions of every kind, including

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in apparently alternative spaces, paracuratorial

activity may be the only mode in which critical u n J\l:e~ciinatOOIJ,~,fJ~~,i: 65 Paldi, "Notes on the thought can be exercised.65 In more secure Paracuratorial," 76. situations-where the paracuratorial is, as Emily Pethick points out, "a useful tool to think through Art & Social Life; The Case of Vtdeo Art- Day 2 beck to archive The earty history of autonomous video art is a practices that have shifted away from conventional pivot point in the intemat culture wars of the an world. Starting in the late 1960sthroughthe earty 1970s. artists with quite diverse praatces exhibition formats and refuse to be contained"­ experimented with lhe new (but not yet widety the term, in her view, "still posits a boundary and available) ponabte video apparatuses, Film had by mid--oantu!'ysuperseded bOth 66 Emily Pethick, "The Dog 66 architecture and muStc as the queen or the arts. sustains an unnecessary dualism. " But by the 1950s the broadcast televisiOn That Barked at the Elephant industry and Its structures of ceJebfity were challenging the soetaJStatus of high an in the Room," The Exhibition­ TeleVIsion was a probJem... and 1hen the ist, no. 4 (June 2011): 81. Portapakwas invented. VIdeo suggested varieties of freedom 10 artists restive about or The "Educational Turn" is a recently dismis$w- of traditiOnal studio practk:es. Video promised a sort of gesamtkunstwerk 011 the emergent form of art making and curating that ruins of a higtr modernism that had demanded a stnd separation between forms. VIdeo offered no! Just the experience orlime married precedes identification of the paracuratorial and to the illusiOn or space aocompan~by sound; because of poor image quality, Video also switchtolowquatity offered relati't8 h'eedom even fro-m11'\e may (hopefully will) outlast it, at least in form ooncems or cinema/ an filmJrnOvies.Jt provld&d the opporluni1y' to skeleh or 10 perform, to Curating and record a gesture or a naiT8tive. to sing in the if not in usage. In their anthology A ~,··~·-~ ~ ... A , _ A ...... ~'·- ..... __ ...... k-. the Educational Turn, Paul O'Neill and Mick Wilson add a string of further examples, including Martha Rosier: Art & Social Life; The Case of Video Art- Day 2, December 11, 2006, unitednationsplaza, Berlin, protoacademy, Cork Caucus, Future Academy; Germany. Organized by Anton Vidokle in collaboration with Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, Nikolaus Hirsch, Walid Raad, Martha Rosier, Natascha Sadr Haghighian,Jalal Toufic, Tirdad Zolghadr. http://www.unitednationsplaza. The Paraeducation Department; "Copenhagen org/video/103/ (accessed April2012) Free University"; A.C.A.D.E.M.Y; Hidden Curriculum; Tania Bruguera's Arte de Conducta in Havana; ArtSchool Palestine; Brown Mountain exhibitions of discrete artworks to a College; Moana Free University; and School of practice with a considerably extended remit, 67 Paul O'Neill and Mick Missing Studies.67 Although they eschew attempts contemporary curating may be distinguished Wilson, eds., Curating and the Educational Turn (London: to define such efforts as amounting to "a new from its precedents by an emphasis on Open Editions I Amsterdam: medium," as Kristina Lee Podesva proposes, the framing and mediation of art and the De Appel, 2010), 13. they definitively state that "Educational formats, circulation of ideas around art, rather than on 69 methods, programs, models, terms, processes, and 69 O'Neill and Wilson, its producti~nand display. procedures have become pervasive in the praxes Curating and the Educational Turn, 19. of both curating and the production of art and in Just how these activities differ from the 68 Kristina Lee Podesva, their attendant critical frameworks."68 To them, directly educational work of curators in education "A Pedagogical Turn: Brief Notes on Education as Art," the "turn" takes on predominantly "educational" departments of art museums throughout the Filip, no. 6 (2007), http://filip. or, more narrowly, "pedagogical" forms and world during the past forty or fifty years is, at calcontent/a-pedagogical­ purposes. These manifest its contemporaneity. times, difficult to discern. Many of these latter turn; O'Neill and Wilson, Curating and the Educational can take intensely creative forms: for example, the Turn, 12. Having moved, since the late 1960s, from an "Museum as Artist" model deployed at the Andy activity primarily involved with organizing Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, since 2000, and the

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linking of contemporary art and multiculturalism the Zuccotti Park protesters for them to display by the educational and outreach program at the whatever they wished, however they wished, for 70 Jessica Gogan, "The New Museum, New York, since 1996.7° as long as they wished. Live video streams to Warhol: Museum as Artist: Creative, Dialogic, and the park and to other Occupy sites around the Civic Practice," Animated Ideas about the processual rather than the country played on monitors around the space. It Democracy Initiative (New procedural character of curating echo those of Irit became one among many meeting places for the York: Americans for the Arts, 2005), http://www.artsusa. Rogoff cited earlier, and indeed her influential protesters, especially those from the university org/animatingdemocracy/ essay "Turning" is included in the anthology.7 1 itself. To director Keith Miller-honest to a fault pdf/labs/andy_warhol_mu­ seum_case_study.pdf. See also While some of the artists involved, Anton Vidokle about the ethics of the relationships between EungieJoo and Joseph Keehn for example, accept that their activity is one of galleries and real life, between representation and II, eds., Rethinking Contem­ porary Art and Multicultural knowledge production and dissemination, but activism-this was his most "successful" effort Education, 2nd ed. (New York: deny that it is educational in any of the senses to date to resolve the ethical dilemma that arises New Museum I Routledge, usually associated with the academy or the 2011). whenever there is a gap between social demand 73 museum, other artists, such as Pablo Helguera, 73 Keith Miller, comments and those of curating itself. Wishing to create 71 Irit Rogoff, "Turning," in move seamlessly between museum-based projects made during "A Symposium a "theater of the streets" while remaining an art O'Neill and Wilson, Curating of Curatorial Interven­ and the Educational Turn, and those, such as The School of Panamerican tions" (Gallatin School of gallery, his "process" mirrored that of Occupy 32-46. Unrest (2006), that are entirely community Individualized Study, New Wall Street (OWS). He had stepped back so· 72 York University, November 72 See Rodrigues \Vidholm, based. Everywhere today the deeper aspirations 17, 2011). See also "The that OWS could "curate" itself. His open­ Escultura Social, 144-5 3. driving the educational turn are being absorbed, Wall Street Occupennial," handed offering of a display space augmented a in their turn, by museum directors and museum­ https:occupennial.org/ community of narrators and translators. Now the based curators. We noted earlier, for example, the gallery was occupied. ARKEN Museum's trial of "utopic curating." The utopic, or at least hopeful, question (How might All of the approaches that we are reviewing we live better?) takes us beyond the museum respond, in various ways, to the key factors that to the edges of the exhibitionary complex, into Fowle identified in her remarks, cited earlier, to curating that is engaged with the exigencies the effect that contemporary curating "should be of contemporary life, and does so via kinds responsive to the situation in which it occurs; and Pablo Helguera, The School of of infrastructural activism that are animating it should creatively address timely artistic, social, Panamerican Unrest, Plaza del Cabildo, Asuncion, Paraguay, everyone involved. cultural, or political issues." Many cities have September 2006 spaces dedicated to doing exactly this. Curators ENGAGED, ACTIVIST CURATING This is what democracylooks have recognized that building local infrastructure like!, Gallatin Galleries, New York University, November is a necessary condition for encouraging and For the exhibition This is What Democracy Looks 2011. Curator: Keith Miller enabling artists and audiences to think away from Like! at New York University's Gallatin Gallery the vertical structures of local and international during October and November 2011, space was art worlds. Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta has shaped by offering an expansive interior wall been pivotal to the development of contemporary opposite huge windows that face 4th Street to Indonesian art. San Art is playing,a similar role

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in Ho Chi Minh City, while the Arrow Factory Abbemuseum). The goal is to "reflect one of the in Beijing seeks to connect the activity of the core Palestinian experiences-displacement­ 76 known art districts to that of a remnant hutong 76 For the founding s'tate­ without illustrating a political narrative." Similar in the heart of the old city. Connecting such ment, see http://almamal. concerns underlay the contribution "Palestine c/o blogspot.com/20 10/09/2007- centers through lateral or regional networking is contemporary-art-museum­ Venice," curated by Salwa Mikdadi for the 5Jrd the next important step. Since 2004 tranzit has palestine_22.html; and http:// Biennale in 2009.77 It may be that we are seeing www.almamalfoundation.org/ been coordinating the activities of independent aboutus.php. here intimations of the creation of a support artists' initiatives in Austria, the Czech republic, structure for art that does not follow Western 77 "Curator Statement," Hungary, and Slovakia, as well as showcasing Palestine c/o Venice, http:!/ infrastructure models, notably the exhibitionary its network model at venues elsewhere. From www.palestinecoveniceb09. complex that I have described. It should not Hungary it has also launched a research project, org/curatorstatement.html. surprise us that the fragility, the extending, and Parallel Chronologies, that displays archives the stretching of that structure has geopolitical of exhibitions and events that have achieved dimensions. legendary status in local art worlds, but about 74 See tranzit.at, http:// which little is known.74 Vasif Kortun, Istanbul­ These dimensions mean that activist at.tranzit.org/en/aboutl; and based curator of the innovative UAE Pavilion infrastructural initiatives are important, too, East of Europe-An Archive of Exhibitions, http://tranzit.org/ at Venice in 2011, prioritizes links between the in centers where the exhibitionary complex is exhibitionarchive/. Platform Garanti in Istanbul and, say, Ashkal well established. In the U.S., engaged curating Alwan in Beirut and the Townhouse Gallery has long been inspired by the example of Mary in Cairo, over European or U.S. connections. Jane Jacob's emphasis on art in public domains, Residencies for artists, curators, writers, and especially the legacy of that work in the parks 78 administrators have become a key medium for 78 See, for example, Mary and public spaces of Chicago. A number of Jane Jacob, Art in Action: New 7 5 "If you can improve the such network building.75 outstanding curators are committed activists. Public Art in Chicago (Seattle: corner of your Street ... ", a Bay Press, 1993). These include, in the U.S., Nato Thompson and recent discussion between Kader Attia, Vasif Kortun, In circumstances where the institution Greg Sholette, co-curators of The Interventionists: Wael Shawky, and Kaelen of even the most fragile infrastructure is Art in the Social Sphere (2004). Thompson has Wilson-Goldie on art in the Middle East, canvasses many impossible, persistent curating is nonetheless also curated Democracy in America: The National of the issues in play from local achieving important gains. Responding to a Campaign (2008)~artist Paul Chan's Waiting and regional perspectives. See http:!/www. tate.org. ukl situation in which Al-Ma'mal Foundation for for Godot (in New Orleans) (2007), Experimental tateetc/issue2 2/artinmiddlee­ Contemporary Art-established in 1998 in Geography (2009), and Living as Form (2011). In ast.htm. the Old City, Jerusalem-found itself with an Houston, the Station Museum of Contemporary accumulating collection of contemporary art by Art, led by James Harithas, emphatically Palestinian artists, but no prospect of exhibiting addresses timely issues; Lauri Firstenberg has it, in 2007 director Jack Persekian conceived the driven LA>

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New York, the 16 Beaver group is one of many being, consumers of art become participant alternative, critical, and political platforms. producers ("prosumers") and audiences become Meanwhile, activists such as Brian Holmes make co-curators. More than at any time to date, the interventions-such as Holmes's Continental exhibitionary system has expanded to include Drift series of workshops-at whatever viewing activity before going anywhere near place seems open and appropriate, as well as, the gallery space, and often begins days before of course, online. the event. It may be prefigured in a variety of ways: online imagery, printed information, While exhibition formats undergo constant word of mouth, posted pictures. Experiencing reinvention, museums are reimagined, and the exhibition in the display space now mixes venues proliferate, the exhibition visitor is rapidly actual and virtual, direct looking and apps-based ceasing to be the passive, quiescent, abstractly responses. Postvisit, after the event activity, is projected object of the efforts of all the other likewise expanding and merging with other, agenda-setting actors within the art world. This similar experiences. Some art is now made in the is What Democracy Looks Like! was significant in expectation that it will be seen only online. Given that it solved, in the most direct and inherently this dispersal of information across so many dramatic fashion, an issue that has become front mediums, the sense of loss, sometimes exclusion, and center for art making and curating: the felt by those who for good reason could not role(s) of the spectator(s). The infrastructural actually visit an exhibition-who obtained some shift that we have been discussing and the entire sense of it through readjng about it in the press or push of all the renovations within contemporary in magazines or by consulting the catalogue-is 80 curating, everything that makes it contemporary, 80 The fifth issue of the lessening. Spectatorship is diversifying, curating moves in their direction. Spectatorship is the journal Reading Room (2012) itself. Of course, spectacle subjectivization is will be devoted to these issues. next big category of agency in the art world. See http://www.aucklandart­ predominant, but it is not historically inevitable, At this point art world commentators reach for gallery.com/library/reading­ especially as globalization implodes all around us. room-journal/reading-room- Jacques Ranciere's The Emancipated Spectator 5-call-for-papers. Although anticipated for decades, this is relatively with as much alacrity as they grab Agamben new territory and is a challenge to curatorial on "contemporariness" when confronted with thought on everyone's part. 79 79 Jacques Ranciere, The thinking through contemporaneity. What is Emancipated Spectator (Lon­ contemporary spectatorship? What are its kinds, don: Verso, 2009). See also CURATING CONTEMPORANEITY­ Claire Bishop, "Introduction/ roles, hopes, and responsibilities? That everyone PRESENT, PAST, AND FUTURE Viewers as Producers," Par­ is everyone else's translator is the bare beginnings ticipation (London: Whitecha­ pel; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT of an answer. How does the challenge of curating Press, 2006), 10-17. contemporaneity, discussed from geopolitical As artists and curators reach for Utopia, seek perspectives in the previous essay, look when to survive, or, in most instances, search together we place it, as I argue we must, among the to understand the perplexities of contemporary impulses driving curating now? South Mrican

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artist/curator/critic Colin Richards offers a timely caution. Recognizing the value of "contemporaneity" as a critical term, especially in that it renders problematic our inheritances from modernity, he nonetheless worries that, "Putting things this way, though, however pragmatically useful, tends to reduce complex, intimate individual imagination and creation to so many responses to the conditions of existence, and this seems exactly what art (almost 81 Colin Richards, in Chika uniquely) is not about, or not entirely."81 Quite Okeke-Agulu, moderator, "The Twenty-First Century so; art is not about reduction, except of course and the Mega-Shows," Nka: when it takes reduction as its topic and subjects Journal of Contemporary Afri­ social stereotyping to the complexity required can Art, nos. 22/2 3 (Spring/ Summer 2008): 172. by individual imaginations. I have, many times in these essays, evoked the multitemporal, multidirectional, and inherently multiplicitous nature of art making in contemporary Sarah Michelson, Devotion Study #1- The American Dance, February 26, 2012. Image from performance at the conditions-never better than the way it was 2012 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum, New York. Curators: Elisabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders expressed by Gabriel Orozco, in remarks cited earlier in this essay. Contemporary curating shares in these characteristics, of necessity. Otherwise, it normal exhibition formats in the service of their has no urgency and is not contemporary. themes: documentary, collage, sexual identity, and abstraction. Smith is alert to the energizing effects Roberta Smith praises the 2012 "Whitney of role-switching between the various specialized Biennial as "a new and exhilarating species of professional practices that, together, constitute art 83 exhibition, an emergent curatorial life form, at 83 This phenomenon has worlds. Such switching has accelerated recently been theorized since the to the point where every specialist feels that least for New York," because it "places on an 1960s. Classics include Arthur equal footing art objects and time-based art-not Danto, "The Art World," innovation is most likely to occur in the zones just video and performance art but music, dance, Journal of Philosophy, no. 61 of ambiguity generated by let's-try-it-and-see (1964): 571-84; and Howard theater, film-and does so on a scale and with a S. Becker, A17 Worlds (Berke­ exchanges with another specialist degree of aplomb we have not seen before in this ley: University of California Press, 1983). 82 Roberta Smith, "A Survey town."82 She celebrates the curators (Elisabeth At the \Vhi tney in 2 012, however, the of a Different Color," New Sussman, curator from the museum, independent equalizing of visual and performing arts in the York Times, March 2, 2012, C21. curator Jay Sanders, and Light Industry, a spaces and the time of the exhibition did not, in Brooklyn film and electronic art space developed my view, lead to a new kind of show. Instead, it by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter) for shifting read as a rather formalized conjunction of mostly

238 239 TERRY SMITH CURATORIAL PRACTICE NOW paintings (spearheaded-although anything volitional seems too strong a word-by Andrew Masullo), low-key aggregations of slightly estranged objects, remodern choreography (Sarah Michelson), slide show-like films (including a rather ordinary contribution by the extraordinary Werner Herzog), everything-in-my-studio installations, re-creations of club environments, token usage of social media, etc. The themes listed by Smith were raised, but not pursued with any persistence. The museum itself remained dominant throughout, confusing the made-for­ myself-and-my-friends sensibility that actually motivates much of the work. Time to move to Tribeca. Maybe there it will be possible for at least parts of the museum to connect with the street.

Just when I was about to give up on museums as even residual platforms for showing genuinely The Ungovernables, New Museum, New York, 2012. Curator: EungieJoo contemporary art, I went next day to the New Museum, where the second Triennial, The Curator Eungie J oo opened the museum to the Ungovernables, was stirred up by the critical and skeptical yet deeply committed, locally specific yet creative energy of a generation of artists born worldly outlook of these artists. This is to curate between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s. 84 See Ryan Inouye and into a museum setting some ripples in the third Eungie Joo, eds., The Ungov­ current that I have identified, especially those That most of them came from outside the ernables: 2012 New Museum United States, while the Whitney Biennial­ Triennial (New York: New that are responsive to the looming collapse of which showed work mainly by artists mostly Museum I Skira Rizzoli, globalization, the shortcomings of decolonization, 2012).Joo usefully draws of the same generation-remains a survey of attention to James C. Scott's and the everydayness of survival within societies "American" art, albeit broadly defined, might The Art of Not Being Governed: whose "governors" continue to act out hollow An Anarchist History of the 84 have had something to do with the starkness of Upland Southeast Asia (New grand narratives. the contrast. Not much at the Whitney matched Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni­ versity Press, 2009), with its the works at the New Museum by Mounira AI path-finding argument about Much that is at stake in curating Solh, J onathas de Andrade, lman Issa, Hassan the longevity of cultures that contemporaneity comes into view when one have persisted, deliberately, Khan, Rita Ponce de Leon, Jose Antonio Vega at the edges and beyond the contrasts the presumptions underlying these Macotela, Adrian Villar Rojas, Lynette Yiadom­ reach of ancient civilizations, two exhibitions. As one looks at the work in the principalities, and modern Whitney Biennial, taking (as one must, at first) Boakye, The Propeller Group, or the Invisible nation states. Borders Trans-Mrican Photography Project. each on its own terms, quite soon one's instinct

240. 241 TERRY SMITH CURATORIAL PRACTICE NOW is to compare it to other art, contemporaneous on varying scales that link the local history or older, and then, as you move around, to assess and reality of a place with the world, and the 85 the exhibition as a whole against other attempts, 85 Citations from Caroline worldy." Although Kassel is the point of past and present, to survey current art. At the Christov-Bakargiev, "The concentration, dOCUMENTA (13) locates dance was very frenetic, lively, New Museum the immediate response to each rattling, clanging, rolling, aspects of its programming in three other cities: work by the artists mentioned is to imagine the contorted and lasted for a Kabul, Alexandria/Cairo, and Banff. Each is actual, particular place in the real world in which long time," dOCUMENTA (13) information page, at understood as the site for a distinct way of this work was made, into which it searches, and http://d 13 .documenta. being in the world, a set of differences that (it is out from which it reaches. While one scarcely de/#welcome/. implied) together, in their simultaneity, exemplify considers the "world out there" at the Whitney, our current general condition. Christov-Bakargiev that "world" is almost palpably present in the sees each place as precipitating, embodying, and galleries of the New Museum. It is only after one representing in the imagination a distinct kind of has grappled with these affects that one compares experience, thus: the works as art to other similar and different art and this exhibition to others that seek to broach On stage. I am playing a role, I am a subject in similar subjects. It is, however, too soon to expect the act of re-performing. ~otalsuccess in this regard. The Ungovernables Under siege. I am encircled by the other, does not embody in its form the ungovernability besieged by others. that is its theme, leaving the theme to be stated In a state of hope, or optimism. I dream, I am in very large, banner-like wall texts on each floor. the dreaming subject of anticipation. And it remains tied to Unmonumental ruminations On retreat. I am withdrawn, I choose to leave on sculpture and assemblage with which the the others, I sleep. New Museum announced its renewed presence in 2007. Nonetheless, this show strikes out in She describes each position as being a state of the right kinds of direction, toward curating mind, that relates to time in a specific way: contemporaneity. While the retreat suspends time, being on Which is exactly what dOCUMENTA (13) stage produces a vivid and lively time of sets out to do, of course on a more ambitious the here and now, the continuous present; scale, and on the world stage that this famous while hope releases time through the sense survey has become. In the words of its director of a promise, of time opening up and being Caroline Christov-Bakargiev, the 2012 iteration unending, the sense of being under siege takes "a spatial or, rather, 'locational' turn, compresses time, to the degree that there is highlighting the significance of a physical place, no space beyond the elements of life that are but at the same time aiming for dislocation tightly bound around us. and for the creation of different and partial perspectives-an exploration of micro-histories

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Christov-Bakargiev underlines the fact that whether it is also an exhibition that itself thinks "Artists, artworks, and events occupy these four the present in ways that advance current thinking positions simultaneously," and that unpredictable about what it correctly identifies as the key exchange between them is constant. From my problem of world-picturing today, how to "link perspective, an exhibition built around such the local history and reality of a place with the premises would stand a good chance of avoiding 86 For a detailed discussion world, and the worldy"? 86 the self-defeating trap of presenting contemporary of world picturing, place making, and connectivity, as art as an effect, however complex and mediated, well as "the worldy," see Terry The ambitions underlying dOCUMENTA of the forces of globalization. It would also, Smith, "Currents of World­ (13) remind us ofJoao Ribas's cry, cited in my Making in Contemporary perhaps, avoid the opposite simplification: staging Art," World Art 1, no. 2 opening speculations: "It is a fundamental a showcase of selections from "world art." Instead, (2011): 171-88. necessity of curating to situate itself within those it would, one hopes, succeed in demonstrating contemporaneities that remain in darkness, how a number of artists and thinkers are engaging 87 Joao Ribas, "What to Do untheorized and unlived."87 Is this not the with contemporary conditions, with the multiple With the Contemporary?," contemporary version of the support for art's 3/10, Ten Fundamental Ques­ contemporalities, and the layered spatialities that tions of Curating, ed. J ens essential anarchism that curating has made constitute contemporaneity within us, between us, Hoffmann (Milan: Contrap­ available to art since the mid-1850s? Is this not punto S.R.L., 2011): 91 and around us. And by doing so, it might evoke the goal that has been sought, against all odds, for us a glimpse of the larger picture within which since Courbet curated his own show in 1855, these world-making interactions actually occur right through the early twentieth-century avant­ and might be imagined. gardes, then by the curator as artist during the 1960s and 1970s, followed by the artist as Staged every five years, and drawing on curator years that worked the tensions between resources matched by few other mega-exhibitions, deinstitutionalization and reinstitutionalization documenta invites meta-curating. dOCUMENTA so productively, until now, when we see curatorial (13) follows the past three or four editions, open-endedness reaching out in a variety of each of which was also an essay exhibition of a directions? If so, this legacy commits curating particular kind. There is no doubt, however, to continuing its long and radical process of that it is premised on a deeply thought and unconcealing art precisely by making public, in felt interpretation that is highly specific to this exhibitions, the concealments that commercial, present. In this sense, it is an advanced example official, and institutional contemporaneity of contempo,rary curatorial thought. It is an imposes upon it-the demands of globalized exhibition that shows us striking instances of, and consumption, social conformity, and identarian certain crucial approaches to, thinking about the fundamentalism. As its definitive form of present. It is, in its structure, an exhibition about resistance, its quintessential subversion, curating such thinking, and one that, by all initial reports, makes public, in exhibitions, the specific ways requires hard, affective thinking about the present in which each artwork, each artist, each image from its audiences. I look forward to finding out out there accedes to, refuses, or deflects these

244 245 TERRY SMITH impositions. The deinhibiting, perhaps we might say the outing, of works of art is what curators must do now. They do so in order to exhibit art itself in the ways that it requires us to do now. For the same reasons, the task facing art critics and art historians is to unmask uncritical, unhistorical, art market ideas such as "the contemporary" and "Contemporary Art" and replace them with ideas that speak from our actual contemporaneity.

246 The Infrastructural

Contemporary curating desires to locate itself deep inside the changes being undergone by thought itself within contemporary conditions. This desire resonates in the remarks by curators and critics that I have been quoting. Throughout these essays I have been trying to sketch the ways in which they are attempting to do so. As we noted, some are tending, at this moment of all-pervasive uncertainty, to frame their participation in terms of Agamben's paradox, using it as a holding pattern. Others locate it in a more constructive manner. Fowle, in her notes on "Reflexive Curating," observes:

As debates on the role of the curator are being further complicated by the notion of "the curatorial" as a methodology, key factors by . which "curating" is measured today include the viability of exhibitions, events, and even institutions to be platforms for curators', artists', and participatory publics' ideas and interests. Increasingly, the curatorial 1 Kate Fowle, "Reflexive position is less engaged in upholding an Curating: Generative Prac­ institutional mandate than trying to transform tices Today" (unpublished paper, 2011, presented at it, experimenting with processes, functions, Musee d'art contemporain de structures, and hierarchies in relation to an Montreal, Max and Iris Stern International Symposium 5: expanding international art world that is Manufacturing Exhibitions, located within ever-widening sociopolitical March 24-25, 2011). frameworks. 1

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Fowle recognizes, but (rightly) rejects, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia "widening divide between two camps-the presented First Among Equals, an examination of independent and the institutional," insisting the interplay between artistic generations and instead that these new roles reflect the fact that, between artists who work individually and those "The institution is now not just the museum who work collectively. Of course, it took the form but a whole industry that has grown up around of performances, publications, curatorial projects, exhibition making." Just how internally various and artworks that incorporated the work of 4 and externally connected this industry has become 4 First Among Equals other artists. (Philadelphia: Institute of has been evident throughout these essays. So has Contemporary Art, University its need to activate its infrastructure. of Pennsylvania, 2012), http:// We have reviewed the various ways in which www.icaphila.org/exhibitions/ curators have responded to these deep challenges first-among-equals.php .. Paula Marincola's provocation: "Can we ever to traditional and modern modes of museum, get beyond the essential conservatism of displaying curatorial, and art practice. In the remarks I have works of art in conventional, dedicated spaces?" been citing, Fowle adds some more. A key one 2 Tino Sehgal, in April resonates through the exhibitionary complex, is the growing commitment among curators to Lamm, ed., Hans Ulrich shaking the presumption of each kind of venue creating international and regional networks Obrist, Everything You Always wanted to Know About Curat­ that it is a special domain for art. When we move devoteq to maintaining research capacity that ing* *But Were Afraid To Ask inside these structures to the kinds of exhibitions "goes beyond the national or localized mandates (Berlin: Sternberg Press, . 2011), 11. that curators regularly stage, a widespread of the traditional contemporary art museum and

contemporary ~mpulseis voiced by Ghrist's regular addresses the 'stop-start' problem of biennial 3 The most thorough analysis refrain: "We must experiment with ways beyond structures that celebrate a kind of 'urgently may be found in Manuel objects." Tino Sehgal glosses this by pointing epic temporary scenario' with a new curatorial Castelis, The Rise of Network Society, vol. 1 of his trilogy out that there is, now, "something reductive and team, theme, strategy, and artist-list each The Information Age: Economy, lifeless in the way that the 'exhibition' format time." Research capacity is as vital to effective Society, Culture, 2nd ed. (Malden, Mass.: 2000). For focuses on the highly static human-to-object infrastructural activism as is choosing the right an essay relating changes in relation."2 His own art is built around person-to­ locatiqns, people, and timing to realize a project. art to this culture, see Kazys Varnelis, "The Immediated person interactions, as is the whole move to what Now: Network Culture and Maria Lind dubbed "the curatorial." As we have The endless cycle of exhibitionary events, the Poetics of Reality," in making every visit into a spectacularized networked: a (networked_book) seen, these cultural producers are responding to about (networked_art), http:// the full-scale shift into network culture that has experience-the great drive of twentieth-century networkedbook.org/. It is ear­ been pervading the arts, as everywhere else, for museum practice, requiring every venue across ly days; profundity will take time, although Seth Price's re­ the past decade, and that seems on course for the spectrum to enslave itself to incessant markable essay "Dispersion," yet more proliferation. 3 The deprivileging of the programming and reprogramming-may be under revision since 2002, is a powerful example of an artist artist from her/his position as the core producer reaching its end. In some centers at least, its thinking this change through within the art system is the third paradigm inventive energies have been undermined by the as it is happening. See http:// www.distributedhistory.com/ shake-up resulting from this shift. It is already self-exhibiting priorities of artists on the one hand Disperzone.html. having its impact on curating. In March 2012 the and, on the other, consumed by the overwhelming

250 251 TERRY SMITH THE INFRASTRUCTURAL success of the mass museum. Elsewhere, scarcity encompasses the constant, creative reinvention still haunts every cultural initiative. These of the settings for artistic, curatorial, critical, contradictions in our contemporary situation and administrative practice within each of these require curating to be a flexible, platform-building practices-in themselves, and in their increasingly practice-tied to the specifics of place as well as embedded interrelationships-the curatorial has appropriate international and regional factors­ expanded beyond the paracuratorial to become that pursues "a transgenerational, transregional, what might be called "the infrastructural." multilayered approach to programming priorities and organizational structures." These essays have been an inquiry into the ideas that preoccupy curatorial discourse today, It is of interest that many curators involved including those that preceded current thinking in these experimental initiatives are taking jobs and persist within it. I have tried not only to in institutions, with effects yet to be seen. Others profile what is being thought and said but also leave institutions for more risky settings. Whereas to suggest ways in which contemporary curating collection builders and exhibition makers were might engage with the demands being made once the models of curatorial heroism, they have upon it and do so in ways that are specific to its been joined by those-to whose efforts I have peculiar competencies, its driving passions, and its returned again and again in these essays-we distinctive mission. Waterlow's testament echoes might dub "process shapers" and "program here. It is, we must recognize, the product of his builders." Those with the capacity to see large­ wide experience as a curator in the second half scale pictures, local needs, and the complex of the twentieth century. Like all credos, it takes connectivities between these scales, who can absolute form, but is subject to revision by reality. track art's movement and shape its potential as Let me try to summarize the ways that curators well as its potential effects through the creation are now encapsulating the imperatives that they of sustained programs that are committed to feel drive what it is to be a contemporary curator. experimentality, to opening out possibilities for all participants in art making. At times, probably Curators feel less subject to the reticence often, these require an institutional location, at that has-except for the moment of stardom others they seek freedom from even the most around-2000-characterized curating to date, permissive structure. These people we might especially in relation to the other practices that dub "infrastructural activists." New kinds of enable and interpret art. While caution continues curating are being imagined everywhere around to be appropriate in many circumstances (for the world, inside the art world and outside of it, example, building collections or beginning any every day. A contemporary model of cooperative project), it is not an absolute rule or a "natural" caring for art, artists, institutions, and audiences is inclination and works least well when engagement emerging-on a scale and with a dispersive energy with contemporary art and life and with past not envisaged before. As an orientation that contemporaneities is the goal.

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When it comes to the core purpose of history, originate its own theories, pursue its own curating-to exhibit art's work-curators now research programs, and spin off insights that will express intuitions, define nuances, articulate ideas, surprise not only the rest of us but itself. state hypotheses, all the while comparing and contrasting them with the relevant others that Archive the achievements. Exhibiting art are out there. Each of these steps is, of course, does not stop with the works on the wall, the basic to the initial thinking that precipitates any program of events delivered, or the catalogue project, including curatorial ones, and gives early published. The history of exhibitions, of museum form to them. Many curators have already taken displays, and of institutional programming is not the next necessary step: to think with appropriate adequately served by taking a few uninformative others so as to change, improve, and stretch the panoramic photographs of each room, collecting dialogue. These steps are essential moves toward the press clippings, adding catalogues to the the main goal: to find the figure that is inherent library, and filing the announcements among in that which is to be exhibited, a configuration administrative records. Nor will online archiving that will shape the flow of movement through long suffice on institutional websites where the exhibition, a pathway that will carry the quick searches and striking visual images rule the spectator's experience, until we reach the roost (as they must, because they are directed reconfiguration-the exhibitionary act-that, in at holding, for a time, the attention of those doing these things, opens art to be seen. who are searching or surfing). Archive functions tend to fade in these circumstances. For all its Curating can be reflexive: much of it already immediacy and attractiveness, doing history by is; it could become more so. As I noted in my recording conversations, no matter how often opening paragraph, every exhibition demonstrates they are worked over and re-collected, is only that curators reflect on circumstance, wrestle the first step toward developing the interpretive with ideas, develop research programs, and structures that sustain history and, after time, spark insights. This is the substance of curatorial require revision and rethinking themselves. Much thought as a discourse. It is not summed up by more is needed if a reflexive practice is to be the rhetorical gestures, knowing asides, and built and maintained. I would love to see curators ostensive demonstrations that seem to satisfy keeping detailed records of every stage of their many in the profession. As we have seen time and thinking and planning and to read statements again throughout these essays, curatorial thinking of how they previsualized exhibitions, including amounts to much more than this. Perhaps the how these ideas changed during the hang. I would appearance, in the past two or three years, of four love to follow their version of learning by walking profession-oriented, scholarly journals of curating through the exhibition and their sense of what suggests more than a service to university-level various audiences made of it. Of course, it would courses in the subject. Perhaps it signals the be great to have records of visitor responses, arrival of a discourse ready to reflect on its own of the spectator's emancipation, but it would

254 255 TERRY SMITH THE INFRASTRUCTURAL be a major step forward to see more writing by I am aware that to people in many art curators about other exhibitions that have inspired communities throughout the world-especially their own, or were curated in response to theirs, those where art making is itself a struggle or simply were devoted to the same artists or against scarcity and every infrastructural element about a similar issue. Making visible this dialogue is daily threatened with evaporation-these between exhibitions (the curatorial equivalent of recommendations will look like indulgent intertextuality in literature) would be to articulate solutions to problems they wished that they what we have posited as the core, distinctive, had. The options set before those who would unique medium of curatorial discourse. Doing be curators in well-served societies pale in so is essential to the advancement of curatorial significance against the challenges facing those thought. None of this is art history per se, nor who would be curators elsewhere. Societal crisis is it art criticism. It is the history and theory of engulfs the Middle East; the Chinese government curating and of exhibition making, both of which moves iri mysterious ways to reign in the creative are devoted-like art criticism and art history, but energies unleashed by Deng Xiaoping three before them-to making art public and to enabling decades ago; austerity measures are imposed the art that is to come. across more and more of the member states of Europe (with immediate impacts on the major We have already canvassed a number of other form of arts infrastructure, the non-profit sector), suggestions that would follow in the sequence and authoritarian governments return to many that is emerging here. To avoid repetition, I will of its peripheral states. Meanwhile, in South put them (and the ideas just presented) as slogans America, people's governments prioritize, as and ask you, if you wish, to read back to where they must, the needs of the people. Africa resists they have been discussed in earlier essays in this even this level of generalization. Yet artistic and book. Together, they amount to my answer to curatorial activity has been pivotal in the bringing the question with which I began. These are the about of positive social change in these parts of constituents of contemporary curatorial thought: the world and in others. It will be important to building futures everywhere. The West versus Exhibit art's work. Renounce reticence. the Rest, North versus South, divisions, while Curate reflexively. Build research capacity. real and persisting, are fading. As I have tried to Articulate curatorial thinking. Archive the show, models appropriate to each time and place achievements. Reinvent exhibition formats. are emerging and are constantly being tested. Turn the exhibitionary complex. Proliferate Given the pressing need for all of us, in the face of alternative exhibitionary venues. Activate climate change, to participate in the development infrastructure. Embrace spectatorship. Curate of a planetary consciousness, it is no surprise that contemporaneity in art and society-past, being alert to initiatives of all kinds, wherever present, and to come-critically. they may be being trialed, is something that is shared by artists and curators everywhere.

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In the introduction to these essays I asked you take the three words "Thinking Contemporary Curating" as if they were spelled out in neon in a work by Bruce Nauman, somewhat like his 100 Live and Die (1984). We have mostly thought of them as three ideas, each flashing independently, but also, often, as combined into a number of almost sentences-some very clear, others ambiguous, while still others seem to await their time to make sense. I have been trying to track the directions of contemporary thinking in current curatorial thought. Many kinds of thinking have become visible and, despite convergent fashion following by some, they amount to a vital, open­ ended discourse-one that works by thinking in/through/during exhibiting-in the broad sense that I outlined in the first essay and have sought to expand, constantly, ever since. Only one combination of the three words is ruled out: curating contemporary thinking. That kind of "curating"-the preserve of spin doctors, propagandists, media managers, and commercial persuaders-goes against the nature of art, the critical spirit essential to anything worthy of the name "thought," and against the differencing that drives contemporaneity itself. It is the antithesis of the kind of curating that is admired in these pages-themselves, perhaps, a somewhat contentious exercise in curating contemporary thinking about curating.

258 ILLUSTRATION CREDITS p. 16: Courtesy Juliet Darling and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; p. 2 3: Courtesy Ben esse Holdings, Inc. ©Bruce Nauman/Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York; p. 41: Courtesy the artist and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. ©2010 William Kentridge. Photo: Paula Court; p. 49: Courtesy Exit Art; p. 50: Photo: Alexandra Kleiman; p. 53: Courtesy Serpentine Gallery, London. ©Mark Blower; p. 58: ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image source: Art Resource, New York; p. 58: Courtesy Peter Mortenbock & Oda Projesi. ©Peter Mortenbock and Helge Mooshammer; p. 59: Courtesy Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski; p. 62: Collection ofYdessa Hendeles Art Foundation. Courtesy Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation. Photo: Robert Keziere; p. 63: Courtesy Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation and Andrea Rosen Gallery. Photo: Jessica Eckert; p. 70: Courtesy the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York. Photo ©2012 Tate, London; p. 75: Courtesy Lorena M. Photo: Lorena M.; p. 76: Courtesy Neil Cummings. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0; p. 78: Courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown's enterprise. ©Rirkrit Tiravanija; p. 80: ©The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA. Image source: Art Resource, New York; p. 85: ©Christian Hanussek!Rautenstrauch-J oest­ Museum, Germany; p. 85: Collection Kolumba Koeln. Photo ©Lothar Schnepf/Kolumba Koeln, Germany; p. 105: ©Marcel Broodthaers/ Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York; p. 107: Courtesy the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; p. 109:

261 Courtesy the author; p. 110: ©2012 Hans the Netherlands. Photo: Peter Cox; p. 219: Haacke/Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New Collection Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the YorkNG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany; p. 115: Netherlands; Photo: Peter Cox; p. 220: Courtesy ©2012 Joseph Kosuth/Licensed by Artists Rights Serpentine Gallery, London. Photo: Mark Society, New York. Photo: Ken Schles; p. 117: Blower; p. 222: ©The Solomon R. Guggenheim ©Centre Pompidou MNAM/CCI, Kandinsky Foundation, New York. Photo: David Heald; Library. Photo: K. Ignatiadis; p. 123: Photo: p. 224: Courtesy the artist and Stella Art Museum Department. Courtesy of the Maryland Foundation, Moscow. Photo: Daria N ovgorodova; Historical Society, Baltimore; p. 127: Courtesy p. 232: Courtesy the artist; p. 233: Courtesy the artist. Photo: Kelly & Massa Photography; Gallatin Galleries; p. 239: Courtesy Whitney p. 130: ©2011 KAH Bonn. Photo: David Ertl; p. Museum of America Art, New York. Photo: Paula 133: Permanent collection: Chinati Foundation, Court; p. 241: Courtesy the artists and New Marfa, Texas. Art ©Judd Foundation/Licensed by Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley VAGA, New York. Photo: Douglas Tuck, 2009; p. 149: Courtesy the artist and Collezione Zattoni; p. 152: Courtesy Hatje Cantz; p. 154: Photo: Werner Maschmann; p. 160: Courtesy Irwin. ©2004 East Art Map; p. 164: Courtesy the artists, Frith Street Gallery, London, and ZKM I Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; p. 168: Courtesy ZKM I Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; p. 169: Courtesy ZKM I Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany. ©Stewart Smith, Robert Gerard Pietrusko, Bernd Lintermann. Photo: Fidelis Fuchs; p. 192: Courtesy Biennale of Sydney; p. 19 5: Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona. Courtesy Palle Nielsen. Photo: Palle Nielsen; p. 196: Courtesy Tensta Konsthall; p. 197: Courtesy Frederico Morais; p. 197: Photo: Jessica Gogan; p. 200: Courtesy Marina Abramovic and Sean Kelly Gallery. ©Marina Abramovic. Photo: Marco Anelli; p. 200: Courtesy Marina Abramovic and Sean Kelly Gallery. ©Marina Abramovic; p. 207: Photo: Margherita Spiluttini; p. 208: Photo: Werner Maschmann; p. 212: Collection Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands; p. 215: Collection Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven,

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Terry Smith, FAHA, CIHA, is Andrew W Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, and Distinguished Visiting Professor, National Institute for Experimental Arts, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. He was the 2010 winner of the Mather Award for art criticism conferred by the College Art Association (USA) and the 2010 Australia Council Visual Arts Laureate. During 2001-2 he was a Getty Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, and in 2007-8 the GlaxoSmithKlein Senior Fellow at the National Humanities Research Centre, Raleigh-Durham. From 1994-2001 he was Power Professor of Contemporary Art and Director of the Power Institute, Foundation for Art and Visual Culture, University of Sydney. He was a member of the Art & Language group (New York) and a founder of Union Media Services (Sydney). He is the author of a number of books, notably Making the Modern: Industry, Art and Design in America (University of Chicago Press, 1993; inaugural Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Book Prize 2009); · Transformations in Australian Art, volume 1, The Nineteenth Century: Landscape, Colony and Nation, volume 2, The Twentieth Century: Modernism and Aboriginality (Craftsman House, Sydney, 2002); The Architecture of Aftermath (University of Chicago Press, 2006); What is Contemporary Art? (University of Chicago Press, 2009); and Contemporary Art: World Currents (Laurence King and Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 2011). He is editor of many others including In Visible Touch: Modernism

265 and Masculinity (Power Publications and the University of Chicago Press, 1997), First People, Second Chance: The Humanities and Aboriginal Australia (Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1999), Impossible Presence: Suiface and Screen in the Photogenic Era (Power Publications and the University of Chicago Press, 2001), with Paul Patton, Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction Engaged: The Sydney Seminars (Power Publications, 2001; Tokyo: lwanami Shoten, 2005), Contemporary Art +Philanthropy (University ofNSW Press, 2007), and Antinomies ofArt and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, and Contemporaneity (with Nancy Condee and Okwui Enwezor, Duke University Press, 2008). A foundation Board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, he is currently a Board member of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. www. terryesmith.net/web

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