Art can be selfish. I definitely have times when I’m writing “just for me” because performing your art without an audience can be extremely therapeutic. I think that’s why so many people are silent in galleries—they don’t want to disturb anyone so everyone can have their own experience; effectively making each piece you pass “just for you.”

I don’t think Julianne Swartz had me in mind when she constructed Terrain, but maybe I was more in the process than one would think. Terrain is a contemporary work that was originally in the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion but has been re-strategized to spider web the Caroline Marmon Fesler Gallery in the Contemporary Art Collection. It has a network of speakers that hang over head from a rainbow of wire.

The speakers play the voices of 37 different volunteers whispering. They start and end on their own accord and echo thorough out the space. As you move through the room and pick-up on varying voices it’s like you’re the conductor of 37 hushed ghosts. Basically, it’s really creepy. Logging time in the gallery, I watched quite a few people enter, get freaked out and leave. However, those who stay just long enough to read the label are rewarded.

The exhibition’s label tells you that the ghostly voices were instructed “to think of someone for whom they feel tenderness and to recite what they would whisper in his or her ear.” Very quickly the whispering doesn’t seem so haunting–it’s loving. “The murmuring mass of voices is largely indiscernible; however, in certain moments private intimacies can be distinguished, such as the words ‘I love you.” While some patrons may continue to drift in and out in various levels of spooked, these hushed voices give me the feeling of wrapping myself in a blanket.

My favorite speaker hangs near the entrance on a pale purple wire. The whispering is too soft to make out but it seems almost constant, as if the stranger is completely caught up in their loved one. There’s something juicy about listening in on a stranger’s most intimate musings. (Creating a great irony because this is where I go for my little dose of selfish art.) These hushed words aren’t for me. The speaker has no idea who I am and we’ll probably never meet and who am I to listen to this private conversation?

Well, for one—it’s echoing through the entire collection– not private. Two, if I’m being affected by it then who is a better candidate for listening? I have a love for works of art that initially seem like craziness but, if given a chance, melt into something really approachable. Terrain, Julianne Swartz’s installation, falls in this category. I know by the worried looks of the people leaving its gallery that Terrain isn’t for everyone, but there are other pieces I can’t wrap my head around that are very approachable for others.

I think the point is the joy in finding a favorite; taking the time to read that extra label or stay another minute to let something soak in. What can you get out of it? Well, I have 37 people on the 4^th floor that tell me they love me every time I walk by and someone else could find something equally as good. Either way, we’re being inspired, engaged and I think that is what this whole museum thing is about.

Lamson first began experimenting with resonant sound during his recent Binaural / Nodar Artist Residency in Portugal. The artist attached rocks to a metal railing on a bridge that spanned a river. The rocks were then attached to bottles that floated in the river via long strings. When the bottles bobbed in the river, the rocks struck the railing, creating a low-frequency, ringing sound captured through microphones Lamson affixed to the metal.

Railing, rocks, string, and bottles in Nodar, Portugal.

The river.

Similarly, the artist often develops devices that harness the power inherent within the natural environment in his practice. In 2009 Lamson created a series of automatic drawing apparatuses that harness the power of wind or water. Lamson attached a drawing utensil to his inventions, which then created fine, detailed works determined by the surrounding weather conditions. His project for the IMA will similarly make apparent the unseen forces that surround us, as a radio signal (also linked with the weather) is made audible and tactile through the vibrations in the tower.

Lamson’s automatic drawing titled "Jan 28, 09 1130AM–230PM, Colonia Valdense, Uruguay"

Since January, Lamson has been working in Pierogi Gallery’s Boiler space in Brooklyn, where high ceilings have allowed for the construction of the resulting adapted 35-foot tower. After completion of the structure, Lamson has conducted extensive experiments with it to investigate all of the possibilities for sound that the object is capable of producing.

Lamson standing inside the structure at the Pierogi Boiler.

I was recently able to see the project in development and meet with Lamson on location in Brooklyn, where he was continuing to discover new ways to engage the installation. Alternating audio feeds create a varied soundtrack surrounding the installation. Sometimes the NOAA broadcast can be barely discerned; at other times, the radio signal activates a bass shaker (a vibrating mechanism attached to the tower), the effects of which can be heard and felt when touching the object. Lamson also employs other devices through unconventional means to find ways of capturing different aspects of the sound the tower produces. For example, when the artist touches an electric guitar pickup to the tower at different locations, a range of sounds emerge from the structure as it creates an escalating feedback loop.

Lamson in Brooklyn using a magnetic guitar pickup to make vibrations through the tower audible.

Join us for the opening of Lamson’s installation for the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion, including an artist lecture and sound-based performance on the installation by Lamson during an evening of contemporary art at the IMA starting at 5:30 on Thursday, April 7th.

Also held at the IMA on the 7th is a panel discussion between IMA curator and Commissioner for the U.S. Pavilion during the 2011 Venice Biennale, Lisa Freiman; Cheryl Hartup, Chief Curator, Ponce Museum of Art in Ponce, Puerto Rico; and Anabelle Rodriguez-Lawton, Adjunct Professor of Art History and Liberal Arts, The University of the Arts + Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia.

It’s impossible to attend every conservation-related conference or symposium. This summer, I missed what was perhaps one of the best conferences about the conservation of contemporary art in the past 10 years: Contemporary Art: Who Cares? Research and Practices in Contemporary Art Conservation. It was organized by the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN), Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art in the Netherlands (SBMK), and the University of Amsterdam (UvA).  The symposium was an activity of the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA).  It was held in Amsterdam June 9-11, 2010.

Shortly after the conference concluded, I interviewed Karen te Brake-Baldock on Art:21’s blog about the initial outcomes. When I was working on that interview and considering what I had missed, it occurred to me that, though there were many great talks, I really would have liked to hear those by Charles Esche, the Director of van Abbemuseum and Peter van Mensch, professor of cultural history at the Reinwardt Academie (Amsterdam). Well, now we can all hear these talks, and the rest of that were presented.

Charles Esche:

Charles Esche – Van Abbemuseum from incca on Vimeo.

Peter van Mensche:

Peter van Mensch – Reinwardt Academie from incca on Vimeo.

Both talks challenge us to re-think some of the purposes of museums and the display of artwork within them.  I’ll not go into a summary or any kind of critique of any of the talks, but instead simply encourage you to go check the complete list out.  Here’s a complete list of the talks.  Thanks, INCCA, for making the conference available online and letting me “attend” from my own home.

For the past 16 weeks I’ve been volunteering my Monday mornings in the Variable Art Conservation Lab to clean and maintain the 6 room-size installations in the Tara Donovan exhibition, Untitled, which closes in less than 2 weeks on August 1st. Back in March I volunteered to help construct these complex installations under the guidance of Tara, her assistants, and alongside 15 other volunteers. The initial installation took this team more than 60 hours over the course of 8 intense days.

On the night of the opening party I remember walking through the exhibition with a friend and proudly pointing to certain areas of installations in which I worked the most. I talked about the specific areas in Untitled (Plastic Cups) where I sat and stacked cups in order to execute Tara’s plan. And then, after Tara and her assistants returned to New York, I became Richard’s go-to guy for cleaning and maintaining the installations.

Untitled (Plastic Cups) 2006, Courtesy of Artie and Millie Glimcher

Looking back I think I had a false sense of agency on opening night, a false sense that my aesthetic had entered the installations in some way. Now, after spending all this time with Tara’s artworks, I’ve thought a lot about her process, and along the way regained perspective on the minor role I played in Tara’s work. Tara’s art is the unique process she discovered for each instance. Tara’s ideas have the artistic merit; I was simply a means to help realize them here in Indianapolis.

I no longer care about my specific contributions. When I’m working in the exhibition I focus on each installation’s overall aesthetic and its complete impression—and I can’t deny the intense feeling that builds when I’m realizing that each installation is more than the sum of its parts. The totality of her exhibition shows us a transformative beauty inherently present within the millions of everyday objects that surround, occupy, and consume us. Focusing directly on a certain section of one of Tara’s installations reduces the objects to everyday things. In the same way when I gaze on a field in nature I do not consider each blade of grass individually with equal importance—it is the whole field that engages me.

There are no hidden tricks in these artworks. For example, look at this image of the 2008 installation of Untitled (Plastic Cups) at the Institute of Contemporary Art.

Like at the IMA, San Diego, or Cincinnati, the installation is simply millions of plastic cups, stacked. At each instance the installation crew consisted of people who generally had little experience with the materials, much less the installation, yet the show looks aesthetically similar to Tara’s prior installations. Tara’s idea dominates, not the installer’s.

From a museological perspective, I feel well-qualified to work on this show and advocate for the correct representation of each installation on Monday mornings.

Volunteering in the conservation department for almost a year now has led me to understand that while I may be comfortable maintaining Tara’s work and other contemporary ideas, I know that I would not be comfortable physically intervening with ancient Roman artifacts like this or on precise still life paintings like this. The importance of these artworks resides in their physicality and finality, not necessarily their concepts or process. Understanding these works from a technological perspective requires an expertise I do not have.

Tara’s works change slightly from site to site and they weather the audience organically. Dust may accumulate or visitors may accidently move a section of pencils or shift a glob of glue, but I know these fields can be repaired with the kind of understanding and appreciation for process that I developed after working closely with Tara and her crew during installation back in March.

To hear from Tara directly, check out this interview that Richard completed on Art 21’s blog.

I took two of my children with me the other weekend when I came in to check on the installation.  Because they often critique exhibitions at the IMA and other museums we visit, I thought I would include a picture that pretty much captures what they thought.  So take it from Nolan and Maeve, this is an all ages show.

click here to read it

While you’re at it, don’t miss the latest from IMA Director Maxwell Anderson on environmental control in art museums:

click here to read it

]]> http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2010/04/08/links-we-liketara-donovan-interview-and-climate-control/feed/ 0 tdscreen maxarticle http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2010/04/06/the-care-feeding-of-contemporary-art/ http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2010/04/06/the-care-feeding-of-contemporary-art/#comments Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:09:39 +0000 Richard McCoy http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/?p=11839 This Thursday at The Toby I’ll be participating in a panel discussion about the new exhibition, Tara Donovan: Untitled. Here’s a taste of what we’ll be discussing, from this exhibition’s TAP tour.

The event is free, open to the public, and offered in conjunction with the IMA’s Educator Sneak Peek Program. To accommodate multiple audiences, the program will be divided into two sections (feel free to come to one or both parts):

Part 1 — 5:00 pm
We’ll discuss the roles of staff members in selecting, displaying and caring for contemporary art.

Part 2 — 6:00 pm
We’ll discuss in greater detail the process of commissioning new artworks, complexities of working with installation art, and the long-term care of contemporary artworks.

Joining me on the panel will be a friend and special guest, Jill Sterrett, Director of Conservation and Collections at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA); and

Lisa Freiman, IMA Chair of the Department of Contemporary Art;

Greg Smith, IMA Senior Conservation Scientist.

Here’s a link for more information about the program. I think we’ve got just about all the angles covered in this panel, but if you have any questions that you’d like us to address, please leave a comment and we’ll see if we can add it into the conversation.

Detail of Tara Donovan's Untitled (© Tara Donovan, courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York)

You may have heard, that we softly launched the new IMA website on Tuesday? Well, we were kind of busy with that recently. But we’ve kept our eyes on a couple of other projects, including a major video documentary. You may recall our first major documentary, on Maya Lin which we debuted on ArtBabble. A pic of Dan on location for that documentary, below.

Senior New Media Producer Dan Dark, on location in Walla Walla

So speaking of documentaries. In December, Danny Beyer and I spent a week in NYC working on our next documentary, featuring the artist duo Type A.  This is a really unique project for us, because we have enjoyed a wonderful working relationship with them – in fact, they’ve become ingrained in IMA’s culture through their work in 100 Acres….even on this blog. We’ve been even luckier in that we’ve received the full support, encouragement, collaboration and engagement from IMA’s contemporary curator, Lisa Freiman. It’s the makings of something special.

Stay hydrated! Simple advice.

In fact, this might be our most prolific collaboration with any artist. We’ve got hours and hours of team building raw footage, a Flickr set, blog posts, hilarious phone calls, hugs, the exchange of gifts and more.  It’s lasted years. They’ve also given us (and ArtBabble) one of the best In the Factory series to date. You can view that below. I implore you to at least watch the beginning…which will prompt you to watch the end.

It’s already become a very special project (and we’re a couple of months away from completing the documentary). Type  A have opened their studio to us, befriended the entire IMA family and been incredibly kind, patient, funny and inspiring collaborators. They even gave us hockey tickets for a Rangers game.

Our week in NYC was intense and we shot hours of footage. Interviewing people is an exhausting process and during the week we conducted on-camera interviews with several different people involved in Type A’s career (you’ll meet them in the video) and we grabbed tons of studio b-roll footage. It was an intense but good time.

The final day of shooting at Type A's studio

We’re a couple of months away from completing this video. Danny is currently editing the piece, sifting through all of the footage and searching for usable nuggets. There are plenty.  Even though it’s not done yet, I can imagine the final product being well over twenty minutes long, in which case, this would be our longest documentary to date. We’ve come a long way.

So while you’re waiting for this release, take time to watch Type A’s In the Factory interview (above) or check out their section on the IMA site and what they’re doing in 100 Acres. We love them.

The truth is, I really haven’t traveled that much in my life. Part of that has to do with the fact that I’m afraid of flying (like really really afraid.) But, for the sake of ArtBabble, I had the amazing opportunity to visit Los Angeles last May. Fellow Nugget Danny and I documented the whole experience with photos and video. On our trip we met a lot of interesting people and dogs and enjoyed the sunshine, the warm weather, and (Danny especially) fresh tacos.

The reason we traveled was to film on location the construction of Andrea Zittel’s project, a large floating island to be installed in the lake of 100 Acres back in Indy. The island was fabricated by Barnacle Bros studio in East L.A. where upon arrival, we were greeted by a cast of characters led by a heavily tattooed man known as Smilee Barnacle. They brought us up to speed on the project and led us around the work shop,  which looked more like a carnival parade storage room than any kind of studio! The interview we did with Smilee turned out to be pretty hilarious:

And here are some pictures I snapped throughout the day. You can find more here.

That's Danny filming Smilee and crew

Shop dog

From the desk of Mr. Barnacle...

The colorful alley behind Barnacle Bros

Danny filming Smilee as he explains what materials were used for the island

There in the middle of the shop sat a snow-white igloo, which on closer inspection was not made of snow, but foam. And even better, it really looked like it would float! Smilee and his team used homemade tools to claw, shave, and mold the foam into a smooth, round shape. I can only imagine the spraying bits of foam as they hacked away at the towering mound of white.

It's snowing in L.A.! (standing in a pile of foam bits)

Here’s an interview we did there with Andrea to get a little more background info on the whole project.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when the Barnacle crew brought the island to Indianapolis… only to be greeted by chilly temps and mud in the Art and Nature Park… Indiana at its finest! There was a lot of activity in 100 acres lake that week. Both the island and Eden II are now floating in the lake for all to see.

I felt kind of sorry for Andrea and the Barnacle Bros, wading around in the frigid lake, because their visit to Indy was a cold and damp one. Then again, they get to experience the beautiful California weather all year ‘round. (Special thanks to Smilee, Theresia and the whole Barnacle Bros. crew, Andrea, and the cool cats at The Getty for their kind hospitality.)

It sure was sunny in California but I think I’ll stick with Indiana. I’m kind of partial to the sunsets.

I snapped this photo outside my house a couple months ago

He Is Risen (The Passion of Christ Series)

There are two African American artists that I thought I would never have the opportunity or the funds to purchase, Romare Bearden and Henry Ossawa Tanner.  I still haven’t been fortunate to acquire a Tanner, but Bearden became part of the American collection in 2006.  Much of Bearden’s work falls outside the American collection, because it was done after 1945 and, therefore, considered contemporary art.  The organization of museum collections can seem so arbitrary to an outsider, even inside it can be confusing. The cut off of 1945 was made because that is the period when American art no longer emulated European style and ventured out on its own to develop Abstract Expressionism.  I discussed this in the Delaney blog.  Because of this demarcation I never thought a Bearden would become available that would fit into the American before 1945 collection.

The discovery of this painting occurred during my 2006 trip to New York for my yearly symposium on American art.  I always visit the galleries to see what is available.  On the wall in an American art gallery was an early Tanner that caught my eye, but it was not representative of the artist’s style and would not have been a good representation of his work.  So I continued to look at the display on the rest of the wall when I was struck by the color and design of the work next to it.  I wasn’t used to seeing early works by Romare Bearden, so I was surprised to learn he was the artist.  The piece was stunning.  I kept coming back to it during my walk through the gallery.  When I returned to the IMA I couldn’t take my mind off the painting.  The price was more than I had ever asked the museum to pay for an acquisition, but I thought it was so important to the collection that I had to try to acquire it for the museum.  
The painting is from a series called The Passion of Christ.  It is not so much a translation of a biblical text as it is a statement about the human condition, and the artist’s hope for the future of his race. He is Risen captures the spirit of resurrection, rebirth and redemption, while its vibrant colors create a celebratory mood. After serving in the Army during World War II, Bearden created this series of cubist inspired watercolors and paintings and called it The Passion of Christ.  He completed 24 pieces based on the gospels of St. Matthew and Mark.  Most of the series was done in watercolor.  When Bearden was offered his first one-man show in New York the dealer felt the series would benefit from the addition of a few oil paintings.  We don’t know how many oil paintings Bearden created in this series, but we do know there were not many.  These oil paintings are unique experiments in technique and the beginning of the artist’s experimentation that would eventually lead to his later collages. Out of the 24 works in this group, 20 of them sold.  One of the oil paintings was purchased by Duke Ellington.  You’ve probably guessed that it was the one being offered for sale to the IMA.

The religious subject matter reflected Bearden’s interest in Albrecht Durer’s Passion series. It is very close to Durer’s 1512 engraving of the Resurrection.  The similarity is remarkable considering the difference in style, but it clearly shows Bearden’s interest in this early Northern European master.

At the time of this purchase, the IMA had a new director who fortunately saw the merit in acquiring this piece. Money from four acquisition funds were required to make this purchase, but this is one painting that was worth the sacrifice. Of course, all curators feel that way about their purchases, and it would be the other curators who would have to make the sacrifice.  That’s the way it works with museum purchases, especially ones with a high price tag.  There is never enough funds to buy everything that the curators propose. The director, with the curator’s input, makes the final decision on what objects should be added to the collection.

The painting came to the IMA in a silver-toned frame which did nothing to bring out its vibrant color and was not the type of frame the artist would have used.  The IMA conservation department researched the artist’s frames and had a similar style made for this painting, which can be seen in all its glory in the American galleries.