Cult of personality + Tara Foley
I’ve developed the terrible habit of “taking a break” and falling asleep around 11 or 12 and waking up in the middle of the night, feeling kind of wired. Need to fix that– but as Jan van Woensel, a Belgian curator who is a visiting faculty member in the CCA curatorial practice program, would say, “okwhatever.”
I was thinking superficially about qualities that make a good curator, beyond the obvious (knowing lots of artists, being resourceful, reading and writing a lot). Qualities that came to mind were: being easy to talk to; being interested in a lot of things outside your own field and having the savvy to apply those interests to what you do professionally; being energetic and fun; and being a really good listener. But as soon as I compiled that list in my head, I thought, isn’t that just what makes a good person? I guess this is what happens to your thinking when your specific discipline starts to seem so monumental and important that it no longer seems specialized, it just seems like everything. Sometimes I’m kind of in awe when I realize that I really do eat, sleep and breathe art and curatorial issues these days. No wonder I’ve started to equate good curating with a good way of life– my specialization has become a microcosm for living my own life, so I’m channeling ideas about myself as a person through the issues and questions that are constantly running through my head.
But there’s also something about that list of personal qualities that I think says something about curating itself as a construct in the “art world” (lame but convenient term). We think and talk a lot in this program about the term “curator” and what exactly that means. To me, it seems that on the one hand, the term is worn as this badge of specialness, and part of this specialness is this cult of personality– a curator has to have this magnetic personality, exude all the qualities in the list. This line of thinking very much reflects ideas and constructs around the term “artist” as well, recalling ideas around “artist –as-shaman”– in a lot of ways, curating has become the new shamanistic practice for a lot of people (curator as the magical link between art and the world). This is where we might get into the whole “is curating an art form/ is the curator an artist?” debate. On the other hand, the term curator is meant to do the exact opposite, to separate “curating” from “art-making”; this idea of curating falls staunchly on the other side of the “is the curator an artist?” debate. It’s been great so far, because we have a lot of different guest faculty in our Curatorial Models class, and we’ve met several curators who fall on either side of the debate. It’s really interesting to compare all of them; they’re all doing amazing work, and you can kind of respect each of their approaches to curating, even though they completely contradict one another. We’re so lucky that contradiction is welcome and invited in our curriculum.
Personally, I’m not sure where I stand– a cop-out finale, I know. But I do think that “art”, “artist” and “curator” are totally fluid terms that only mean things because peoples’ passion for what they think art is and should be and should do are so strong– this is what charges up these terms. This is what makes art so damn interesting and gives art practice and exhibition practice so many possibilities for real change and effect in peoples’ lives. So in that light, I think the debate really doesn’t matter that much– that is, I think the task of settling on one answer to the question, “is the curator an artist?” doesn’t matter. It’s the debate and questioning and rethinking that does matter and that makes the discipline interesting and alive. OK, I’m jumping on the old soapbox, so I’m going to curb my enthusiasm. Okwhatever.
I also just wanted to briefly plug Tara Foley’s installation, Give Me a Simple Life, at Triple Base (24th and Treat/Harrison), on view till November 10. I helped her a bit with install a couple weeks ago by painting one of the walls, and it was a lot of fun hanging out with her and her mom and a friend of hers. It was a good lesson for me, who hasn’t worked with that many artists yet, in trusting that what the process looks like can and will be totally different than the product. I helped her about a week before the show opened, and I have to say it was a mess. But I could tell that Tara had a really clear vision and really interesting ideas. Indeed, it turned out really well– she turned the very small, one-room gallery, into a sort of artificial forest, with two big, clear, plastic trees, and real grass on the ground with little mechanical sculptures growing out of it. She painted wind turbines and mechanical cranes on half of the walls, using pink and purple as her palette, and little blue honey combs on the other two walls. Parts of the room and the entire doorway are filled with tree branches she collected, giving the whole thing a kind of “magic forest” feel to it. It looks really great and really does transform the space. I recommend it.
I was thinking superficially about qualities that make a good curator, beyond the obvious (knowing lots of artists, being resourceful, reading and writing a lot). Qualities that came to mind were: being easy to talk to; being interested in a lot of things outside your own field and having the savvy to apply those interests to what you do professionally; being energetic and fun; and being a really good listener. But as soon as I compiled that list in my head, I thought, isn’t that just what makes a good person? I guess this is what happens to your thinking when your specific discipline starts to seem so monumental and important that it no longer seems specialized, it just seems like everything. Sometimes I’m kind of in awe when I realize that I really do eat, sleep and breathe art and curatorial issues these days. No wonder I’ve started to equate good curating with a good way of life– my specialization has become a microcosm for living my own life, so I’m channeling ideas about myself as a person through the issues and questions that are constantly running through my head.
But there’s also something about that list of personal qualities that I think says something about curating itself as a construct in the “art world” (lame but convenient term). We think and talk a lot in this program about the term “curator” and what exactly that means. To me, it seems that on the one hand, the term is worn as this badge of specialness, and part of this specialness is this cult of personality– a curator has to have this magnetic personality, exude all the qualities in the list. This line of thinking very much reflects ideas and constructs around the term “artist” as well, recalling ideas around “artist –as-shaman”– in a lot of ways, curating has become the new shamanistic practice for a lot of people (curator as the magical link between art and the world). This is where we might get into the whole “is curating an art form/ is the curator an artist?” debate. On the other hand, the term curator is meant to do the exact opposite, to separate “curating” from “art-making”; this idea of curating falls staunchly on the other side of the “is the curator an artist?” debate. It’s been great so far, because we have a lot of different guest faculty in our Curatorial Models class, and we’ve met several curators who fall on either side of the debate. It’s really interesting to compare all of them; they’re all doing amazing work, and you can kind of respect each of their approaches to curating, even though they completely contradict one another. We’re so lucky that contradiction is welcome and invited in our curriculum.
Personally, I’m not sure where I stand– a cop-out finale, I know. But I do think that “art”, “artist” and “curator” are totally fluid terms that only mean things because peoples’ passion for what they think art is and should be and should do are so strong– this is what charges up these terms. This is what makes art so damn interesting and gives art practice and exhibition practice so many possibilities for real change and effect in peoples’ lives. So in that light, I think the debate really doesn’t matter that much– that is, I think the task of settling on one answer to the question, “is the curator an artist?” doesn’t matter. It’s the debate and questioning and rethinking that does matter and that makes the discipline interesting and alive. OK, I’m jumping on the old soapbox, so I’m going to curb my enthusiasm. Okwhatever.
I also just wanted to briefly plug Tara Foley’s installation, Give Me a Simple Life, at Triple Base (24th and Treat/Harrison), on view till November 10. I helped her a bit with install a couple weeks ago by painting one of the walls, and it was a lot of fun hanging out with her and her mom and a friend of hers. It was a good lesson for me, who hasn’t worked with that many artists yet, in trusting that what the process looks like can and will be totally different than the product. I helped her about a week before the show opened, and I have to say it was a mess. But I could tell that Tara had a really clear vision and really interesting ideas. Indeed, it turned out really well– she turned the very small, one-room gallery, into a sort of artificial forest, with two big, clear, plastic trees, and real grass on the ground with little mechanical sculptures growing out of it. She painted wind turbines and mechanical cranes on half of the walls, using pink and purple as her palette, and little blue honey combs on the other two walls. Parts of the room and the entire doorway are filled with tree branches she collected, giving the whole thing a kind of “magic forest” feel to it. It looks really great and really does transform the space. I recommend it.
posted by Jess Brier at 4:17 AM
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