Jed Perl is right!?

Just a quick note about my current thoughts on the differences between editors and curators. I've got a long standing hate for everything on the web being 'curated' when I feel it's been edited. Seems trifling, but I think it's a symptom of the web being 'visual' to people (I'm delivering pictures of shoes I want, therefore I'm a curator) rather than verbal.

Visuality aside, I believe that if you are taking the course of information we all see daily as (metaphorically) a flow of water, then editing is narrowing down a river to a garden hose (again metaphorically). If you are reducing the scary amount of information to a smaller state, reducing the disorder, then (to me) that is an act of editing. Yes, editors select and organize. That is part of their gig. The editor of an academic book filled with her colleague's work is arranging and organizing, but the reason she was invited to build that book is because she can see the wider seascape and can see the importance of the essays that she selected. That winnowing down to a smaller selection, presenting the original essays without lengthy comment, is an act of editing. Writing a new book that quotes those same essays with new original comments for each and charts how these same essays relate to a wider story, is what curating is to me.

It's publicly adding original information to an existing body of work.

So on to Perl

The challenges involved in such curatorial work are the challenges of interpretation. Scholarship and erudition are essential. So is an instinctive feeling for the freestanding value of the work of art. And all of this must be combined with a sense of how works that emerged in a particular time and place can most effectively be presented in another time and place—in a way that is true both to the past and to the present.

Perl's notion is that real curators are there to present the contextualization of objects, ideas, and situations, and this rings true to me. Curating is the activity of knowing a subject and being able to add to it rather than arrange it.

A consequence of this notion is that it would be easy to say I think that editing isn't scholarly but curating is. I think that editing is equally academic, but it doesn't function synthetically. Editing is analytic and curating is synthetic. For an edited book of essays synthesis happens in the readers mind rather than in the creation of the book.

the unexpected links between fifteenth-century Italy, Oscar Wilde’s England, and New York today

That's what a well curated show delivers. Unexpected relevance.

Curator's bibliography

No joke, there has been a lot of books published on the subject of curators in the last decade. I've been reading a fair number of them and for a while, have been making a list of ones I need to get. Today I'm going to share them with you.

I don't doubt curators as much as others do. If it weren't for curators, there would only be two type of shows: solo shows in galleries and museum based historical retrospectives of dead artists. I do think that the word is being used way too much and we need to expand our vocab. Personally, I wrestle with how and what I do when I plan a show-- is it merely an illustration of an idea or is there something bigger going on, does the work or theme of the show lead, am I telling artists what to do, is it understandable to a wide audience, could I have found better artists or written about them differently, etc.

And yes, I don't shy away from books about museums.

Here we go:
Brief History of Curating
On Curating: Interviews with Ten International Curators
A Brief History of Curating New Media Art: Interviews with Curators
Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance
Rethinking Curating
What Makes a Great Exhibition
Cautionary Tales
Thinking About Exhibitions
Inside the White Cube
One Place After Another
Collecting the New
Salon to Biennial
Studio and Cube
Exhibiting Cultures
Art and Its Publics
Exhibiting Contradiction
Academies, Museums, and Cannons of Art
The Arts of Democracy
Contemporary Art and the Museum
Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects
Good and Plenty
Curating Consciousness
International Dialogues about Visual Culture, Education and Art
The Modern Eye
Money for Art
Museum Basics
Museums and their Communities
Museum Exhibition
Museum Legs
Museum Prejudice
New Media in the White Cube
The Place of Artists' Cinema
Spaces of Experience
Sponsorship
Museum Frictions
This is the Flow
Harald Szeemann: Exhibition Maker
Harald Szeemann--with by through because towards despite
Under Construction
Whose Muse?
Women Gallerists
Curating Now(PDF Yup, it's a free book! Goes for over 100 on amazon.)
Curating Subjects



If you know of a book that isn't on this list, let me know!

A new low?

This one is a no-brainer. You don't fire someone and hire them back at 60% of their old salary unless you are desperate to the nth degree. Good luck Euphrat Museum. You're going to need it.

Student work/reality show

What the christ is this? I'm not sure what the Whitney should do, but I know that this isn't going to endear anyone to the idea that 600K is going to a good cause by putting up ugly disjointed vinyl graphics on things. This I expect from the students who design work for (insert town here) window project. I hope the other three artists will have more success.

Edward Winkleman seems to have a similar problems processing the details behind the proposed new Whitney space as I do. I think the trap he talks about is the same advice given to contestants on the game show, wait, I mean important cultural launching pad that is Project Runway. Make it more, and push yourself. You have to have a unique Identity™ and be able to surprise the judges.

They are bored with you and know everything about you before you have your first line finished. One piece of clothing is a whole season to them. The next week you have to have another "new line" as one piece. The new gallery space needs to served the function of presenting art as much as satisfy the vocal minority of critics who will pan whatever is put up.

To continue my exploration of the ethics, for the museum, the space has to serve two masters. You can't win. Something is compromised. If the space is a white cube, you get panned for falling back on old presentation memes. If you go Bibao with your new space, you will get panned for the failure that is inherent to starchitecture. So a compromise is always staring at you. Choose the red or blue pill and you are sacrificing something. The museum's ethics demand you find a third road and keep the professionals who need to work in this space happy and the critical public happy.

Consider this: the original Breuer building was born of Starchitecture. It created this situation.

Ethics of teh moneys

Yup. Now we will barely look at the deep end. I have no idea what really goes on at such large institutions, but the reality is that if you want to run something larger than local, something where you can present art that is bigger than some cats you've met or the 2 galleries that your grad school friends founded-- you need to have a budget. This budget gets out of hand quickly. One minute you found a tiny gallery with friends the next you have a massive budget that is dependent on private and public funding, run a few non-profit spin offs, and 26 years later are "a contemporary art powerhouse."

In the case of the Whitney... we have some giant budgets, egos, and well, everything. Imagine. When you consider the ethics involved with the decision making process, it would be staggering. Lauder's $131 million ties the hands of the institution and proves the point that money talks in the art world. Yet it also gives the institution the flexibility to use the money to make choices. It seems that they've made choices already though.

They're making payments on a space in case they want it. It's only 600K a year, but still. Imagine the wrestling match behind the scenes.

Obviously, there are disadvantages of starchitecture and few if any of the rewards. But the Whitney finds itself at a cross roads. I hope that the numerous egos involved put the institution first when deciding how they will proceed. I have no opinion about rebuild/move/etc, but it's clear that they do not want to keep things status quo.

Oooh more conservation nerds

Art Power

Been reading Art Power from Groys. His On the New section brings another example of ethics v. morals. The collecting museum needs to protect, present, and keep the object alive for an unnaturally long period of time. From a handbag made of an emu shell to an egg tempera painting, all objects are ethically cared for. This, again, does not mean that the collections manager or the conservation specialist uses holy water or prays for the soul of the object. The conservation of objects, their upkeep has to fit within the objectives and responsibilities of the museum, the conservation staff, and the public. As conservators have worked with contemporary and ancient works longer than the average curator/other art professionals, and should have a deeper understanding into the issues of how an object should be preserved, one should listen to the conservator and trust in their abilities to pursue the correct actions.

As every Pollock is supposedly about to fall off their supports, and keep the conservation staff busy, we can look to them as an example. Each "new" Pollock that enters the world is quickly given a few tests on a physical level. These tests are non-intrusive and are compared to the texts that increase daily. Sometimes it becomes obvious that the former conservation needs to be removed in order for the work to be revealed to the viewer. The earlier conservation is not morally questionable, but rather indicates that the conservators professional ethics and material sciences are growing closer.

This gap is real, and you can see this in most conversations with conservators. They are often using jargon like "pre-established methodology" which means "I like using certain toys in the lab" or asking "Whose responsibility is it to authenticate artwork?" which means "Don't blame the conservator if the curator presents this as a real Pollock, we're pretty sure it's not real". But, again, this is not a question of their moral fortitude. It's a question of their professional methods and goals. Their participation in the museum's ethics is to keep the work on view as much as possible and as close to how the artist intended, however they interpret that goal.

Ethics v. Morals

As this is de rigueur to recent posts and I'm trying to put together a writing sample for grad school soon, I figure that I should try to get some basics down on screen so you could laugh at me and tell me that I'm wrong.

I'm going to be focusing mostly on ethics, but let's describe the difference first between ethics and morals. It's unethical to put your self into an exhibit that you curate. It's not immoral though. Morality is a question of right and wrong. A state of being and if it's right or wrong for your soul-- usually tied to a religion or creed. The religious stuff, don't kill, sleep with your neighbor's wife et cetera has nothing to do with the professional ethics of a curator. Usually there is not much of an overlap, so this question doesn't come up often.

For some it's both immoral and unethical to have sex with a museum professional in order to get your show on the schedule. Christianity says you shouldn't do that for moral reasons and the ethic of your profession says your show should be scheduled because it's a good show, not because you are good in bed.

There is nothing immoral to showing a work from a member of your board. It is usually considered outside the norms of museum ethics though to show a collection from a board member though. Even if the show is outside the norms of museum ethics, we can still view and critique the show as a show.

When the MoMA was founded, they expected to deaccession work regularly. Needless to say that they changed that as soon as they had some work worth a significant amount of money. There is no argument to the morality of collecting work but there is one for the ethic. A collecting museum has a different relationship to work than a non-collecting one but no one asks if they are breaking rules that will keep them from heaven.

What would the MoMA be today if they sold off all of their mid-century work and purchased work produced from 1990- 2010? Imagine if they couldn't own anything from before 1960. This is not a question of right/wrong, but rather questions how a professional would and should engage in their job. Is it ethical to show art work from 1945 in 2010 at a museum that wants to define and explore modernism? The founders thought it was unethical and put it into the rules of the MoMA. Should the public complain about the work that they hold from the 40's? No. But should they consider selling some old stuff that may be looking less modern by the day? Sure.

In the coming months I would like to explore some of the details I just glossed over. From the non/collecting issue, the deaccessioning of works, the sourcing of curators and collecting of collectors, to the gray ethical ares for specific museums. There are unending examples to talk about.