Behind the Scenes

The "Behind the Scenes: Curators on Curating" panel offered many ingenious insights to help provide a wider context for contemporary institutional practice. These insights ranged from “the basketball hoop is a signifier for basketball” to the more practical and engaged discussion of how organizations deal with unsolicited portfolios/project submissions.

 

Dominic Molon led Romi Crawford, Merrill Falkenberg, Claire Tancons, and Joan Young through a conversation on the transforming relationship between curator and artist in the gallery and the museum space. The emerging paradigm of established and mid-career artists exerting control over how their works are shown is exemplified in that some artists are asking that space be given to other artists in their shows. (This of course is related to the subtext of the conversation, which was the iteration and reiteration of the importance of networking.)

 

In contrast, the specter of theme shows evoked an understanding that these types of exhibitions could bring in a broader audience but came with the risk of watering down the complexity of the work in favor of an easily digestible theme. In a similar vein, each panelist dealt with varying levels of bemusement as they confronted the ideas of community involvement since their respective organizations deal with the balance of local, national and international constituencies in their audience.

 

The most interesting issue (and clearly frustrating to the panelists) was the question of the unsolicited portfolio or proposal.  The frustration stemmed not so much from the fact these materials were submitted, but because of the volume of submissions, the machinery of the institutions had no way of adequately dealing with them. Institutional response ranges from a limited one-month review period to more ambiguous dismay.

 

Claire Tancons mentioned that she had recently started working with an unsolicited proposal. But most fell back, admitting that new work is brought to their attention by someone they know and trust. Molon offered the salient advice to young artists that they had to get their work out into the world (in smaller venues so that they might become familiar to people who make decisions about larger venues.) He offered these words of pragmatic generosity to the many young people in the room with a palpable sensitivity to their concerns.

 

It was a gift that I hope was well received. (I know it is advice I will re-gift to studio majors who wander into my lit classes.)