Reshaping The Art/Museum/Public Experience
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.

An Eighties Superstar Shapes A Public Project
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


6

View comments

November 21st, 2012

Birmingham on My Mind

September 15, 1963 - Fifty Years Later

One night, many years ago, a book appeared in my suburban Jamaica, NY home. My parents had attended a lecture that James Baldwin had given at our church, Calvary Baptist Church, and had returned with the book in hand.

3

On The Passing of Two Giants

This has been a difficult month, what with the loss of poet and activist Louis Reyes Rivera, and even more recently the esteemed artist Elizabeth Catlett.

4

Reshaping The Art/Museum/Public Experience

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.

6

The recent passing of Dr. Billy Taylor was marked by notices of his contribution to jazz music as both musician and advocate.

2

Recent Censorship Recalls Spirit of an Earlier Era

In 1936 Adolf Hitler, German Chancellor, instructed Adolf Ziegler, president of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, to put together an “exhibition of shame”, depicting the “deterioration of art since 1910”.

7

John Boehner Fires the Opening Salvo

I had the rather auspicious fortune to be in Washington, DC for several days this past week when the opening salvo of a new round in the Culture Wars was fired by Congressman John Boehner.

6

A Different Kind of MoMA?

On a recent trip to New York I had one of those rare epiphany like moments where I found myself standing in front of a group of works that spoke clearly to how the work we do as artists might actually matter in the world.

National Endowment for the Arts chair Rocco Landesman was in Chicago recently, holding a series of meetings, gatherings, and conversations with various institutions and the arts community.

I was the speaker at the Yale University School of Art Commencement this past Monday. The School of Art ceremony followed the school wide ceremony on the Old Campus where, among others, Aretha Franklin fittingly received an honorary Doctor of Music degree.

4

The Society of Photographic Education Meets in Philadelphia

The Society for Photographic Education held its national conference this past week in Philadelphia.

6

Published here are the remarks I gave during my opening Keynote Address at the College Art Association Conference Convocation here in Chicago on Wednesday evening.

7

The 60s and 70s Redux: All Power to the People

I could not have imagined when I was sixteen and seventeen years old selling The Black Panther newspaper on Jamaica Avenue in Queens, NY that forty years later I would finally meet the man who not only visually shaped the paper but also created the ico

6

A Sublime Experience in Worcester, MA

I had the opportunity during an unusually busy month to catch the curated exhibition project by sculptor Rona Pondick.

2

When I was a kid the calm evening air would sometimes be dramatically and suddenly broken by my father's excited shout. "There's a blue on!" he would cry out from the living room.

9

[Note: Today I am turning this space over to my good friend the writer and playwright Ifa Bayeza. Ifa's critically acclaimed play "The Ballad of Emmett Till" completed a successful run at the Goodman Theater here in Chicago a year ago, where it premiered.

2

Where the Past Meets the Present

I was in New York recently, the East Village actually, and from my usual perch at BBar on East 4th Street and the Bowery found myself reflecting on the rapid pace of change in that neighborhood. I had worked on St.

13

Where People Go to Be Themselves in Public

Cities are composed of diverse communities. The makeup of these communities is determined by everything from ethnicity, culture, economics, patterns of migration and more than a little bit of overt and covert social engineering.

3

Frank Gohlke's Queens Photographs

Photographer Frank Gohlke was in Chicago recently as my invited guest at Columbia College Chicago.

1

When Artists Rock the [Art] House

I was asked to give a presentation for the Education Committee at the Museum of Contemporary Art a few weeks ago. The committee is comprised of educational and curatorial staff, along with a few trustees and patrons.

2

Art and Youth - A Powerful Combination

One day when I was in grade school, my class took a field trip to Carnegie Hall, then the home of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

3

University Moves to Close Rose Art Museum

That sound you may have heard the past two days rippling through the art world was the sound of a collective shudder, as Brandeis University's trustees unexpectedly announced that it would sell off some 6,000 modern and contemporary artworks in the museum's

16

Barack Obama's historic ascendency as the 44th president of the United States certainly signal a huge paradigm shift, one that has numerous national and global implications.

6

With Barack Obama's inauguration as the nation's forty-fourth president a scant five days away, excitement and anticipation are building as we enter a moment of profound change and potential paradigm shifts.

8

I particpated in an Artists at Work panel discussion at the Chicago Cultural Center three nights ago.

41

I was in Nashville, TN for a couple of days last week, where I gave a lecture at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts and spent time at Fisk University visiting the storied Carl Van Vechten Gallery, and viewing some of the partially restored Aaron Douglas murals on campus.

5

How One Institution Has Made A Huge Difference

I received the recent issue of Contact Sheet, the publication produced by Light Work that documents its programs, resident artists, and exhibitions.

3

Barack Obama's Election - The View from Chicago 

My son and I went to Grant Park on Tuesday night for the election night Barack Obama rally and victory celebration, standing for hours amongst a veritable sea of our fellow Chicagoans.

15

Believe In Change

Sarah Palin (with the complicity of John McCain) is doing her best to stir the pots of racism and xenophobia in the waning days of their failing campaign.

4

Young Artists Take the Lead in Making a Difference

A group of former students from California College of the Arts have gotten together to form Art for Obama, an online auction of photographs to raise campaign funds for the Obama/Biden ticket.

A Beautifully Poetic Show

I haven't written anything on the blog for a few weeks, but not for want of things to write about. I recently attended the opening of a wonderful exhibition that prompted this entry.

Photographing Barack

I've had the opportunity over the years to do commissioned portraits of a number of people.

1

Opening Up The Curatorial Process

I've been in Baltimore, MD for the past three weeks working at the Walters Art Museum on a curatorial project with twelve Baltimore area teenagers that will culminate in an exhibition at the museum in December entitled The Portrait Re/Examined.

3

The Difference Between Making It Up and Seeing It

Richard "Chip" Benson (seen above in an earlier Lee Friedlander photograph) once said something when I was a graduate student in the Photography program at Yale that has stayed with me all these years.

3

Photographs of Transformation

I've been looking at the Paul Fusco photographs made on June 8, 1968 which were recently published by Aperture, and exhibited at James Danziger Gallery.

7
Dawoud Bey
Dawoud Bey
Dawoud Bey
Photo © by Jason Smikle
About Me
About Me
Chicago, IL, United States
I began making photographs in 1969 after seeing the "Harlem On My Mind" exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had inherited my first camera the year before from my godfather Artie Miller when I was fifteen years old. I began my first project "Harlem, USA" as a direct result of that exhibition and my own family's history in the Harlem community. Born in Queens, NY my formal training began by apprenticing to local commercial and fashion photographer Levy J. Smith and then later studying at the School of Visual Arts with Larry Siegel, William Broecker, Shelley Rice and Sid Kaplan. I completed my undergraduate work at Empire State College under the guidance of Mel Rosenthal and Joe Goldberg and did my MFA at Yale University in the graduate photography program under the watchful and rigorous eyes of Tod Papageorge and Richard Benson, along with Lois Conner, Frank Gohlke, Susan Kismaric and Joel Sternfeld. Classes with Robert Farris Thompson and Michael Romer significantly rounded out my graduate work. A former Guggenheim and NEA fellow, I am currently Professor of Art and Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago, where I have taught since 1998.
"What's Going On?"
"What's Going On?"
Marvin Gaye's signature song "What's Going On?"--a musical critique of a world gone off track--provides an apt framework for looking at the role of art and cultural production in the larger society.

With so much art being made at all ends of the market, it's always a good thing for artists to look both forward and back in trying to access the role that art can play in a larger society, a society that actually exists largely outside of the distorting bubble of the Art World. When one of my students recently answered the question of why she was in school in an MFA program with, "So I can be a part of the system," I knew it was time for a reassessment and a forum from which to look at the various histories in my own little corner of the art and "real" world.

Artists used to be the ones who led the charge to challenge the system; they were the proverbial "fly in the buttermilk," the monkey wrench that mucked up the system and made it act, function, and exist in new ways. Artists were the ones who created paradigms of everything the system was not. James Baldwin once said, "Artists are here to disturb the peace."

This blog will range freely over a range of issues, highlighting individuals, events, and ideas that provide a catalyst for thought and reflection. Hopefully for younger artists it might provide a sense of a world both in and outside of the so-called art world, and hopefully provoke a conversation about the relationship between the two while offering a thought or two about just what ones work might be about as one attempts to engage both history and the contemporary moment.

For others this blog might serve as a window into how one particular artist, after three decades of practice, sees and thinks about the vast world of human social and aesthetic experience. Consider this my own small commentary or my brain periodically laid bare for your perusal and consideration.

Feel free to use the "Comments" button to share your thoughts and responses if so provoked.
OTHER BLOGS / OTHER SITES
Blog Archive
Loading