The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage : Blog

Braindrop: Carlos Basualdo

2013-05-06T12:20:13+00:00

"To be imagined: an exhibition that functions like a rendezvous--a meeting that is unexpected but becomes nonetheless revelatory, so that it is perceived by the members of the audience as happening exclusively for each of them, subjective, irreversible, and unrepeatable." --Carlos Basualdo, writing in The Exhibitionist No. 7 (January 2013). CATCH MORE BRAINDROPS >

Helen Molesworth: On Authorship

2013-05-01T13:17:17+00:00

Because issues of authorship and co-authorship have been on our minds recently—see our Push Me, Pull You series—we asked Boston ICA Chief Curator Helen Molesworth to tell us what these terms mean to her. Molesworth says, “I’m really aware when I’m speaking publicly that a lot of other people’s energies reside in my thinking and that it is important…that the power that accrues to my name is not a power to fall in love with.” For more from Helen Molesworth, see our interview clips with her and Paul Schimmel on the relationship between curating and historiography. Helen Molesworth is the Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, where she has organized one-person exhibitions of artists Catherine Opie (2011) and Josiah McElheny (2012), as well as group exhibitions such as Dance/Draw (2011). Madeleine Grynsztejn, director of the MCA Chicago, recently described Molesworth as “among the very, very best...

Pigeons on the Grass Alas: Valerie Cassel Oliver

2013-04-23T14:41:08+00:00

Editor's Note: Pigeons on the Grass Alas: Contemporary Curators Talk About the Field is published by the Exhibitions program of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (expanded bio below). Whose curatorial practice has inspired your own work and why? There have been so many sources of inspiration that this question is a very difficult one to answer. In truth, I have been deeply influenced by pioneers like Lucy Lippard, Linda Goode-Bryant, Samella Lewis, Deborah Willis, Leslie King-Hammond, Lowry Stokes Sims, Jeanette Ingerman, and Thelma Golden, among others. They are true intellectuals—modern-day philosophers who have reconfigured how we think about art and the people who create art and why they create. They have also understood, instinctively, that art is a component of a much larger history and existence. How has your thinking about exhibition-making and your role...

Postcard from Away: London on Display

2013-04-18T15:20:08+00:00

by Robert Chaney Editor's note: Robert Chaney, director of curatorial affairs at the Institute of Contemporary Art, received a capacity-building grant to study various forms of exhibition design in London museums and galleries. The Hayward Gallery in London is as difficult to find as any in the East End. Is that part of the attraction of galleries in London? Visiting one afternoon, I navigated through a dizzying series of concrete monoliths before finding the entrance, but the search was worth it. I thoroughly enjoyed the thoughtful exhibition Jeremy Deller: Joy in People, which would be coming to ICA a few months later. The show has a genuine warmth as it presents the artist’s humble and personal investigations of many key events and movements in British culture. Topics range from the rags-to-riches story of the successful British wrestler Adrian Street to the careful recreation and examination of the tragic confrontation between...

Considering the Alternatives, Part 2: Talking with Andrew Suggs of Vox Populi

2013-04-11T13:04:06+00:00

Editor’s Note: In 2012, Vox Populi received support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage to research the new generation of so-called “alternative” art spaces. This is the second part of a two-part conversation with Vox Populi’s executive director, Andrew Suggs, in which he discusses his discoveries. Let’s talk about how much the social landscape has changed, and the impact that has had. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, artists responded to what they saw as an inadequate system. They felt a political imperative to make room for alternative forms and presentation models, and to make heard voices of disenfranchised racial groups, women, and queers. The same degree of institutionalized exclusion doesn’t exist now. Although we are constantly reminded of the very serious problems of discrimination and occlusion (very recent examples include the David Wojnarowicz scandal in D.C., Michelle Handelman’s video debacle in Austin, the reaction to Marina...

Braindrop: Will Self

2013-04-10T05:49:18+00:00

"Might not self-consciousness itself be only a withering away of full-blown psychosis?" — The author Will Self writing in his latest novel, the Booker-prize shortlisted Umbrella (2012). Self was a collaborator with Tacita Dean on the artist's book that accompanies her Pew Center-funded film, J.G., recently exhibited at Arcadia University Art Gallery. READ MORE BRAINDROPS >

Considering the Alternatives, Part 1: Talking with Andrew Suggs of Vox Populi

2013-03-28T16:43:25+00:00

Editor’s Note: In 2012, Vox Populi received support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage to research the new generation of so-called “alternative” art spaces. This is the first part of a two-part conversation with Vox Populi’s executive director, Andrew Suggs, in which he discusses his discoveries. You and the founders of the Brooklyn-based, alternative space Cleopatra’s have been in dialogue with a lot of art spaces east of Chicago. Your goal is to understand how these new spaces think about themselves and what they do. Whom did you talk to? Andrew Suggs: Over the course of several months, we interviewed nearly 100 people who were involved in the activities of about 40 spaces in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Detroit. Our guidelines were that the groups 1) have a physical space, as we were interested in their relationships to both local real estate economies and to more professional...

The Curator and the Historian: Helen Molesworth and Paul Schimmel

2013-03-19T12:47:33+00:00

Most contemporary art curators of a certain age—those who went to graduate school before curatorial programs became prominent—were trained as art historians. In the short videos that follow, we ask two highly respected curators, Helen Molesworth and Paul Schimmel, how they see the relationship between curating and historiography. What tensions exist in your roles as curator and historian? Helen Molesworth: “I think in my life as an art historian […] I am able to make the artwork that I am discussing do what I want. […] In my curatorial life, where I am working more exclusively with three-dimensional objects in a three-dimensional space, I find I’m not in such a secure position of mastery. Even if I’ve gone to see all the objects I’m going to put in a show, and even if I know the space I’m working in really well, which is often, there’s always a handful...

Braindrop: Mac Wellman

2013-03-13T20:30:25+00:00

"My favorite philosopher, Heraclitus, said the most beautiful thing in the world is 'a random collection' of unrelated objects. We all know this is true, it’s why nature is so wonderful. I would like to make plays that are like things you find in the street." -- New York-based playwright Mac Wellman, in an interview in Bomb magazine in 1995 READ MORE BRAINDROPS >

Pigeons on the Grass Alas: Hou Hanru

2013-03-12T12:54:24+00:00

Editor's Note: Pigeons on the Grass Alas: Contemporary Curators Talk About the Field is published by the Exhibitions program of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Hou Hanru is an independent curator based in San Francisco (expanded bio below). Who and what most influence your curatorial practice? Bada Shanren, Ni Zhan, Jin Nong, Huaisu, Yan Zhenqing, Gu Yanwu, Huang Yong Ping, Mao Zedong, Paul Cézanne, Piet Mondrian, Russian Constructivism, Bauhaus, Cubism, Dada, Joseph Beuys, Yves Klein, Happening, Maryn Varbanov, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Jacques Dérrida, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, Arjun Appadurai, Paul Feyerabend, Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Guy Debord, Situationists, Rem Koolhaas, Constant, Merzbau by Kurt Schwitters, Cathédrale de Chatres, Notre Dame de Paris, la Basilique Ste-Madeleine de Vézelay, Lindesfarne Gospel, Metabolism, Archigram, Led Zeppelin, Ludwig Beethoven, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Serge Gainsbourg, Canto Songs by Sam Hui and George Lam, etc., Pearl River Delta as...