- April 5th, 2008
- Filed under Conservation, Exhibitions
Having Adrian Schiess at the IMA last fall to install his exhibition was a unique experience for the whole group that worked on the show. During the installation, I spent the better part of a week working with contemporary curator Rebecca Uchill, (whose IMA employee profile includes some Schiess installation video), and a host of other folks helping to install the works – everyone played a part from marketing to installation to the Nuggets to security. Though the physical labor wasn’t great, the work was demanding and the result was remarkable: the IMA has installed Adrian’s largest solo exhibition, and his first solo exhibition in the U.S.
From the outset, there was a lot to consider for this show. Start for example with the fact that we don’t usually put artwork on the museum’s floor (well, unless it is a floor, like Do-Ho Suh’s, then we do). And I don’t think we’ve ever exhibited any contemporary art in the dining room of the Lilly House. Adrian installed one of his paintings right next to the dinning room table. Taking inspiration from the Kalm Report I made this video to show you how to find it (mind you, I had the artist’s permission to do this).
Museums tend to hang artworks on walls or put them on pedestals or risers, so this show required some extra thought and a lot of trust that you, the IMA patron, wouldn’t just go and walk all over the panels and do serious damage. Thanks, by the way, for not doing that; I would know, too, because I’m the guy that goes around every week or so to dust and look after these pieces. (On a side note, I do know that people occasionally like to cough and sneeze when standing over Adrian’s paintings; I’ll let you put the rest of that puzzle together, but rest assured I gently remove this “residue”).
It would be simplistic to say that Adrian just came here and put his paintings in the galleries, had an engaging conversation with Claire Schneider, and then left. No, he too had to work pretty hard to precisely install each one of his panels into the specific locations.
If you haven’t done so already, you should go through the exhibition with the free audio tour and hear the discussion about the decisions that came into play during each installation location; or check out Rebecca’s on-line essay; or better yet buy the IMA exhibition catalogue, “Elusive,” in the gift shop, which through some irony I don’t really understand is also available at Wal*Mart.com. Also, Scott Grow over at onthecusp.org completed an in-depth interview with Adrian.
In addition to making sure we got the works installed in a way that fit Adrian’s ideas, we also took the time to consider the long-term preservation concerns related to these pieces, in the event the IMA were to make an acquisition (you never know).
Here are a few of the larger concepts that we discussed with Adrian, and then later recorded by video in an “Artist Interview,” which will be stored in the IMA’s historical files. First, though, it helps if you play out this scenario: It’s 100 years from now and nobody is around that was here during this installation (sure, it’s a bit morbid, but it helps). So,
• How would we successfully re-install these artworks “correctly”?
• Who would be making the decisions about their installation and positioning?
• Which ones could be leaned against a wall, and which ones must remain flat.
• Could we exhibit them at the Lilly House again?
• What happens if one gets damaged?
• How could it be repaired?
While it’s rather difficult to quantify all of the subjective decisions that went into installing these artworks, both Rebecca and I are confident that the documents that we created would help future IMA employees install these work in a way that correctly fits Adrian’s intentions.
If you want to see the Adrian Schiess before it closes, you’d better hurry. It ends on May 4, and then we’ll de-install the paintings from the gallery, pack them up, and then ship them back to Switzerland.
April 8th, 2008 at 8:27 am
I thought I would pass along this press release about a conference at the Getty that dealt with preserving contemporary art (some very interesting talks about Terrell (an installation like the IMA’s), Hesse, and Mondrian, and an interesting panel discussion that included Paul McCarthy):
The Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and Getty Research Institute (GRI) are pleased to announce that the video recording of “The Object in Transition” conference is now available to view on-line at:
http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications/videos/object_in_transition.html
“The Object in Transition: A Cross-Disciplinary conference on the Preservation and Study of Modern and Contemporary Art”, was held in the Harold M. Williams Auditorium at the Getty Center from January 25-26, 2008. A close collaboration between the GCI and the GRI, the conference brought together conservators, curators, art historians, artists and conservation scientists to discuss interdisciplinary case studies on the conservation of some of the varied-and frequently untraditional-materials used by artists over the last seventy years.
The conference was comprised of a series of case studies to debate the conservation issues presented by specific works of art, dialogues between conservators and art historians on the interdisciplinary study of certain artists, and a number of more general panel discussions. The works chosen for study included Piet Mondrian’s Victory Boogie Woogie, Roy Lichtenstein’s Three Brushstrokes, Sol Lewitt’s 49 Three-Part Variations on Three Different Kinds of Cubes, James Turrell’s Trace Elements: Light into Space, David Novros’s 6:30 and VI:XXXII, and Eva Hesse’s Expanded Expansion. Interdisciplinary studies were presented on (Bruce) “Nauman’s Edge” and “Encountering (Barnett) Newman”, and panels on “The Painted Surface”, “Artist’s History’s Claim”, and the “Life and Death of Objects” allowed for significant discourse on topics brought up in the conference.
In addition, a panel discussion “The Object in Transition: Contemporary Voices”, was held on the evening of January 24. This too is available to view online at
http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications/videos/conservation_matters.html
Organized as part of the Conservation Matters series of public lectures, the event was a sell-out, and attended by 500 people. Elisabeth Sussman from the Whitney Museum of American Art served as moderator for a discussion between artists Rachel Harrison, Paul McCarthy, and Doris Salcedo, and conservator Christian Scheidemann, in which they described the often complex production processes of their art, the fleeting nature of some of the materials they use,
and the implications for the long term survival of their work.