The past few months have been interesting ones for those interested in the ways in which art practice, public institutional practice and their various audiences interact. As the economy has taken a downturn lately public institutions have begun to think about the ways in which they do or do not engage that larger audience that their very survival depends upon. With falling attendance, the rising costs of museum admissions institutions are realizing that a philosophy of "me-ism" and exclusivity is not only inappropriate, it can be downright fatal. So increasingly institutions are undergoing a reexamination of their missions, their very reasons for being. The smarter ones are coming to realize that their days as thriving public institutions are numbered unless they do more to engage that public than simply unlock the doors in the morning and collect their admission fees. This has led to a number of initiatives to expand the conversation taking place within pubic institutions, making them spaces in which a more dialogical experience can take place. This is not the case, of course, for every museum, but a fundamental shift is taking place, and taking real hold in more than a few places.

Of course, as one conference participant reminded those gathered at The School in New York awhile back for a conference on publicly engaging art practice, quite a number of community based institutions and organizations have long been engaged in creating just this kind of close relationship with their communities, and not just as a response to dwindling attendance or institutional reinvention. Institutions like the Studio Museum in Harlem and el Museo del Barrio in New York, and the DuSable Museum and National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago were created because both artists and audiences of color did not feel welcome in more mainstream places, nor did they see their art and culture adequately reflected there. Some of these institutions, like the Studio Museum have evolved to a point where they are now no longer entirely peripheral to the mainstream, with artists exhibiting in that institution also being exhibited on national and global platforms, even as the institution attracts an ever more diverse audience in addition to its original core constituency.

But current realities--along with a genuine institutional introspection and a more progressive stance on the part of a younger generation of museum directors and curators--are conspiring to bring forth a more engaging climate for rethinking the ways in which art is experienced. A number of foundations are also stepping up to provide support for just this type of institutional paradigm shift. The federal government--through the National Endowment for the Arts--has also created programs designed to brings citizens into a more dynamic and inclusive relationship with these institutions. Having been a panelist and consultant for two foundations recently as well as a panelist for the NEA, I've seen firsthand how this shift is being tied to funding. Some institutions are being more ambitious in these undertakings than others, and even the more conservative among them are developing programs to go beyond mere "family day" activities and reach for a more radical rethinking of the institutional space and it various prerogatives around how art is experienced and how to make the art viewing experience one conducive to multiple levels and kinds of engagement that do not merely propose to perpetuate a "master narrative" for a passive audience.

The recently completed Mark Bradford Project at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art was one recent example of a mainstream museum engaging in a radical reexamination of how it was functioning within the equation of art/artist/audience. Taking place over the course of several months, The Mark Bradford Project sought to not only engage 21 young high school artists from Chicago in an ongoing working/mentoring relationship with Bradford, but also sought to introduce Bradford broadly to a number of different communities in Chicago, from the art community to churchgoers, seeking to more deeply engage those communities through Bradford's presence and work during his residency. The project began last September with an ominously sounding program called "The Dialogue," which brought together museum theorist, consultant and educator Elaine Heumann Gurian and Bradford in a discussion moderated by MCA's director Madeleine Grynsztejn. Gurian, who has done museum based work and study for almost four decades (see her book Civilizing the Museum) did a brief but scholarly presentation outlining her ideas on museums, audiences, and inclusion. Bradford did a more conventional artist talk. His somewhat sketchy responses during the Q & A period that followed the presentations left me wondering just how this project would shape up, as he wasn't able to address how this project might shape and perhaps expand his own practice; he saw it more in light of what he could bring to the students.

That it did very much effect his thinking about his own practice was evident from the public program that took place some eight months after that first one, by which time Bradford had completed his residency. On stage with several of the students who participated in the project he acknowledged how profoundly he had been changed by the experience of working with them. They in turn acknowledged the respect with which he had treated them. This was apparent from the exhibition (Re)Collect that the students mounted of their work in a Pop Up gallery space in Chicago's downtown Loop. The show (on view for only one week!) provided ample evidence of the highly sophisticated formal, material, and conceptual work the students had done under Bradford's guidance. Professionally and smartly installed the work was a far cry from the "after school projects" level that some people still wrongly expect from young artists. The authoritative way in which they held forth in the standing room only program in MCA's auditorium only further reinforced the impact that this experience had on them. Bradford's own survey exhibition remains on view at MCA at this writing. The project is one that could serve as a model to those museums with enough self confidence to not feel that allowing the museum space to be a space of exchange diminishes the serious of the museum enterprise or somehow demeans the art objects themselves. Rather it acknowledges that the viewer has a place in the conversation that is as valuable as what the museum itself has to offer. The challenge is to find a way to enhance that conversation while respecting both the viewers and the objects.

This project represents another step in the evolution of this museum that began when Madeleine Grynsztejn became director four years ago. The exhibition immediately preceding Bradford's, "Without You I'm Nothing: Art and Its Audience," foregrounded works that required the active participation of the viewer in order to be activated or completed. This emphasizing of the viewer's position and relationship to the object set the stage for Bradford's extended project of community engagement. Significantly in choosing Bradford to undertake this project the museum was not making an obvious choice, choosing someone for whom--like Theaster Gates or Rirkrit Tiravanija--such engagement is endemic to their work and practice. Bradford is first and foremost a painter, a maker of nonrepresentational paintings. In spite of the social content and context underpinning and informing his work (which I feel is sometimes more rhetorical than present in the objects themselves), he is indeed a formalist, a maker of sometimes large scale, often atmospheric material objects. While he may be black, gay, from gritty South Central LA, and a recent MacArthur Fellow, his practice still would not make him an obvious candidate for such an ambitious project. That the project succeeded as well as it did bodes well for MCA, Bradford, the students, and all of those museums who might be looking to this as a successful model of how art and a broader civic engagement can meaningfully coexist. Indeed, MCA is in the midst of even more extensive changes, both physical and philosophical. One writer referred to these changes as, "a philosophical gut rehab." You can read about that here.

Eric Fischl is not necessarily the first name that comes to mind if one is trying to think of an artist who has been engaged in a meaningful social practice. One of the superstars of the overheated art market of the 1980s, Fischl--along with Ross Bleckner, Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia, Julian Schnabel, and others--came to represent the degree to which the economy of the art world was totally out of touch with the economic realities of most people's lives. With paintings selling for far more than the average person's annual salary, Fischl and other came to epitomize the worst excesses of the art world. That was then, this is now. Fischl is now spearheading an ambitious project to bring art to the masses. Dubbed "America: Now and Here," the project is designed to address what Fischl calls, "...an identity crisis in American culture." While I'm not sure that America's varied cultures are in crisis, the projects promises to be an interesting road show indeed. Consisting of up to six truck based roving museums displaying art and also bringing poetry, drama, film to various cities over the next two years, the venture is privately funded.

Artists include a number of past and present art world stalwarts such as Alex Katz, Laurie Anderson, Barbara Kruger, Ross Bleckner, Chuck Close, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns, Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, Bill Viola, along with Mark Bradford, Lyle Ashton Harris, Fred Wilson, Glenn Ligon, Ellen Gallagher, Kay Walkingstick, and Jeanne Moutousammy-Ashe. Would that others like Moutoussamy-Ashe and Walkingstick, who are under-recognized even as they have been working steadily for decades had been included in this all star cavalcade of culture. Musicians include Lou Reed, Phillip Glass, and Roseanne Cash, and hopefully more diverse talent will leaven this group as well. There is a section of the project called Artist Corp, which will feature the works of young undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate art students. This should go some ways towards making the project a more inclusive one.

An ambitious undertaking indeed, though the idea of a mobile art experience is hardly new. But if this project can generate half the excitement it is claiming for itself, it should be able to add to the dialogue around art and greater civic engagement with the arts in a meaningful way. You can go to the project website to see when and if they will be coming to your town.

Photographs (from top): The Mark Bradford Project documentation, MCA Chicago; El Museo del Barrio, NY; MCA Chicago, Mark Bradford exhibition banner, Mia Wicklund photograph © MCA Chicago; Mark Bradford and student lay out work for (Re)Collect exhibition, Nathan Keay photograph © MCA Chicago; Installation view, (Re)Collect; Madeleine Grynsztejn, photograph by Mark Randozzo; Eric Fisch, photograph by Chester Higgins, Jr. courtesy The New York Times