Convenings
Past Learning Exchange Reports:
Seattle, May 3–5, 2002
Andrea Assaf
2002
Breaking Conventions Discussion Group: Visual Arts
Participants: Norman Kleeblatt, Carole Zawatsky, Joanna Lindenbaum, The Jewish Museum; Jessica Arcand, Margery King, Andy Warhol Museum; Felicia Gonzales, Robin Held, Tamara Moats, Julie Johnson, Bridget Nowlin, Henry Art Gallery; Sandy Agustin, Intermedia Arts; Susan McInnis, Perseverance Theater dialogue organizerValerie Cassel, ADI liaison, curator, Houston Contemporary Art Museum; Selma Reuben Holo; Kinshasha Conwill, Alex Marmion Roosa, American Association of Museums; Claudia Bach
Norman: The question on our worksheet I’d like to explore is: What are effective ways to transition between the art experience and civic dialogue? But I would like to maybe ponder the “tension” in moving between art and the dialogue.
Sandy: I struggle with three different ways to look at this:
- What is really art-inspired in the dialogue?
- What is issue-driven dialogue?
- What is community-come-to-know-each-other dialogue?
I wonder why must it be one into the other. Also, are we commenting on the art that inspired the dialogue, or on the comments of the scientists? There is community, there are experts on issue, and there is art. What is the goal in meshing those things together?
Jessica: How much were we criticizing format or looking at what came out of this?
I don’t usually participate in dialogues; I’m more inclined to go to a lecture. Yet a lot of my work is about structuring dialogue! I think it’s true that our own instinct leads us to another format or mode—the more comfortable one.
Carole: I struggle with that too. I prefer to go through an exhibition in an unmediated way and yet I have to create mediation for other people, the public.
Valerie: Natural and unnatural acts is an important issue; it gets to the heart of it. Did dialogue become an imposition when there was a sense that the art, in and of itself, should be enough?
Margery: For civic dialogue to happen anywhere, it has to be essential to the project we’re undertaking or it just doesn’t work. There are 2 ways of coming at this work, it seems:
- Artists in community create something and dialogue is integral; or
- Other organizations begin from the product.
There is a really big distinction. All of this looking at arts-based civic dialogue seems to privilege organizations that use dialogue within the art itself, in the way that Intermedia Arts does. There are assumptions about the way that dialogue might take place; who the community is; what is civic dialogue; does it have to be a certain kind of community? Certain institutions do this all the time; others maybe only on timely occasions.
Alex: Isn’t there a public dimension to your institution? What do you mean?
Margery: At the center of the Andy Warhol Museum is the art; everything else grows out from there. There is a language that has been created that seems to favor projects that are about a neighborhood and what that neighborhood wants to be; more so than about Nobel laureates talking among themselves.
Claudia: Is the art a tool for creating civic dialogue, or an outgrowth?
Norman: What if it’s the nucleus?
Margery: Are you starting from the art or the dialogue?
Claudia: An exhibition can happen and you see an opportunity for dialogue; or you can create an exhibition with the intent for dialogue.
Margery: In the Without Sanctuary exhibition, they are inextricably linked.
Claudia: The process issue—need to develop clarity within an institution about why civic dialogue, and how many ways the concept of civic dialogue can look; how, for this project and for this institution, we’ll explore civic dialogue.
Felicia: When do you have an arts institution that hasn’t entered the civic arena?
Carole: Audiences shift throughout the development of an exhibition. It begins as rarified; dialogue shifts and changes because the audience shifts and changes.
Norman: Example of a Jewish Museum show in which artists were paired with technology in the 1970s: the discussion remained internal; no one thought of who your community is. Had there been a launching pad, that exhibition might have had a bigger impact ... How much of the discussion is about creating civic dialogue and [how much is] our own fears inhibited going the next step? Should I have welcomed my Menachem Rosenblatt into the dialogue? How fearful are we that the dialogue won’t remain civil? How much are you willing to let uncomfortable happen?
Valerie: This is where the challenge comes in: allowing the challenge as an opportunity, as a chance for transformation.
Susan: I’m doing label writing for a museum. Our museum has researchers and curators.
Wherever the dialogue has gone in the last two days, the art has constantly been my metaphor and home—the place where I return for understanding and sense, and the springboard for the next question. Art couldn’t have been central to my experience without the people who curated and struggled in the back room about what the dialogue might be.
Margery: Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me?
Susan: I heard you say the core is your art. As a jack of all trades; its so back and forth, it’s a mobius strip.
Valerie: When and where does dialogue enter into a visual domain?
Tamara: I’m interested in how our own personal issues and relationships get into the planning of these programs.
Norman: How close do we go to the heat? That was my question.
Tamara: We talked a lot about that—how much pressure do we put on the presenters on stage, and whether we could get them to say yes if we paired them with someone with whom they’d have to defend themselves.
Norman: Maybe you have to wait for the level of safety that comes with time passing to go the next level.
Sandy: This is a great discussion. When is it dialogue? In the real time experience, or post-creation of the work, or during? Intermedia Arts is trying to articulate this process. We’re having a hard time feeling it’s okay not to produce, but to just be in the process. I wanted to know how the scientists interacted with the exhibition; some people in the audience brought the art in well, to bring back art that instigates.
Tamara: One scientist saw the show; the other has not yet. Hartwell saw the show twice.
Robin: Hood made himself very available.
Valerie: The whole element of how exhibitions get designed—the development of exhibitions is often never visible.
Margery: I’m talking about what different organizations’ mandates are. What’s exciting is that institutions like museums are constantly evolving at this point. For a long time, museums were the same way. I want to make sure we have the opportunity to explore the full range of ways we could do this. Sometimes I get the sense “museums must bring everyone in.” Baseball is a fine option for some people sometimes!
Alex: In the American Museums Association “Museums and Community” initiative, we convened 6 community dialogues across the country. When people became uncomfortable with the transparency of the exhibition or institution process, they said they were not sure this is within my mission. The question of whether you should be trying to engage the broadest possible audience—that’s part of a museum’s mission. It’s a question of how you understand your institution.
Kinshasha: It’s moving to me that you are wrestling with this so passionately. The broader civic discussion that was generated by the exhibition at the Henry was valuable in and of itself as a context for dialogue. Sandy’s trinity inspired me: art-inspired, issue-driven or community-get-together. If that is a grid, the nature of the art, organization, and community then interact with that trinity. Without Sanctuary at NY Historical Society—to have this material in a history museum, to be more civically engaged; this exhibition became their moment.
Jessica: At the Warhol, the images from Without Sanctuary were the table around which we gathered for conversation. It was assumed that the conversation and the image go hand in hand. Synthesis was important.
