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 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 East Liberty, Pittsburgh, the Waffle Shop is the Louvre, Paris—has recently included a community building, consciousness raising contemporary art within its treasure troves, location, performance space, TV studio, and blog Façade with 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, Carnegie Mellon University, that also offers a full New York, 2006 who arrived from the Tate Modern), oriented Pennsylvania, 2010–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 (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2007), that focus on the work of one artist or even, as 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 Contemporary Collaborative Art a slowly changing program of exhibitions of 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), 145–53. 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://waffleshop.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 director Ydessa Hendeles curates contemporary art. With a narrower set of costs 2 Ydessa Hendeles, cited exhibitions aimed at creating “an experience and far greater financial resources than most in Robert Fulford, “On the that precludes words” by establishing “new 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 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 1950s 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 3 Among many reviews, most darkly explicit meaning. evocative is John Bentley Ydessa Hendeles, The Wedding (The Walker Evans Polaroid Project) with Roni Horn. Installation view, Andrea Rosen Mays, “That Century: Notes Gallery, New York, December 10, 2011–February 4, 2012 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.