Trade Secrets
"Trade Secrets" by Leah Sandals, Summer 2009, pp. 100-102
Whither the “public” in “public art gallery”? Where’s the exhibitionism in exhibition-making? If the broadly understood purpose of art can be summarized by that old E. M. Forster chestnut “only connect,” why then does there seem, at times, to be so much disconnect between art and its audiences?
Such questions were not the focus of “Trade Secrets,” a curatorial conference held at the Banff Centre last November, but they did emerge afterwards, as niggling, nagging, circling flies whose swatting became one of the conference’s more resonant subthemes.
The Barbican Art Gallery curator and 2003 Royal College of Art curatorial-studies graduate Francesco Manacorda poked at the issue in the conference’s first panel, “Education and its Discontents.” Speaking of his current experience teaching at his alma mater, Manacorda noted that he was “very frightened about many curatorial projects having as an audience colleagues only.” More pointedly, he added that “very often in curating people disregard one of the two final clients of the curator: the public or the artist.”
This pegging of the curator’s “two final clients” proved useful in parsing the discussions that followed. Marc Mayer, then director of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and now director of the National Gallery of Canada, expressed distress at the experiences relayed by Manacorda and other panellists. He said, “I came here skeptical and now I’m appalled…Is the public ever mentioned in curatorial-studies programs?” In a later panel discussion on institutional collecting he mentioned that he desired works acquired by museums “to be didactically useful to the public.”
In another panel, the University of Toronto professor and commissioner of the Canada Pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale Barbara Fischer argued vigorously that the job of the curator is to follow artists, and that it is artists who have been reinventing exhibition-making all along—not self-important cur-auteurs. Though Fischer did not refer much to the public, it’s clear that her rigorous philosophy could lend itself both to more isolationist and to more socialist models of the public art gallery. On the one hand, a focus on artists could simply reinforce the limiting of art’s circulation to a tight sphere of artists-curators-critics-collectors-students. On the other, the idea of a public gallery as a relatively accommodating, open-ended bridge between the artist’s studio and the public eye could well connect art with new audiences.
Also contributing to the discussion was the Mexican curator and critic Cuauhtémoc Medina, who, following six years as associate curator of Latin American art at Tate, continues to work on, among other things, shifting the art world’s gaze to artists and publics south of the equator. In January 2009, he coordinated an international symposium in Mexico City called “South South South South.” “After the politics of inclusion, where do we go?” he quipped. “We go south.” As persuasive as Medina can be, it’s doubtful whether institutions will dare to follow this lead.
Though the discussions may appear largely theoretical, it’s clear that the public/gallery divide they indicate has grown to near-crisis proportions in North America. Just before the conference, the Canadian government saw fit to cancel long-standing plans for a national portrait gallery, after years of design work and proposals from three major cities. The newly revamped Art Gallery of Ontario—mere months after its reopening—was in early 2009 considering laying off 108 workers due to under-target attendance figures. The Art Institute of Chicago, in order to offset years of rising operating costs, has plans to raise admission fees by 50% (71% for students and seniors)—a strategy that could backfire in any season, but seems particularly risky during a recession. Brandeis University, near Boston, thought it would be a good idea to close down its Rose Art Museum and sell off the collection to right a slack recession cash flow—who on campus valued the art any other way, after all? And the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, recently signed by U.S. President Obama, reneged on a stimulus proposal for museums and art centres, lumping them in with casinos and golf courses. Heck, even insiders think a good portion of museums aren’t serving the public: Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums, a think tank run as an initiative of the American Association of Museums, has proposed a number of possible scenarios, including, provocatively, that 20 per cent of museums should be allowed to fail in the coming decades.
What might resolve this rift? It’s hard to tell, but this summer will provide opportunities for more talk on the subject. The fourth International Conference on the Arts in Society is scheduled for July in Venice. The same month, the second International Conference on the Inclusive Museum takes place in Brisbane, Australia. If that’s too far to travel, perhaps coffee with a local curator—if you figure out how to reach one—could be a good start?
Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.
