Dates for Panorama Display in Whitney Museum of Art
Open up Plan: The Whitney Museum's Arts of Fourth dimension and Space
Curated by: Scott Rothkopf, Laura Phipps, Christopher Lew, Donna De Salvo, Melva Bucksbaum, Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Jay Sanders, Lawrence Kumpf, and Christie Mitchell
Exhibition schedule: Whitney Museum of American Fine art, New York, Feb 26 through May xiv, 2016 (Andrea Fraser, February 26–March 13; Lucy Dodd, March 17–20; Michael Heizer, March 25–April 10; Cecil Taylor, April 15–24; and Steve McQueen
April 29–May 14)
In wintertime and leap 2016, the Whitney Museum of American Fine art presented Open Programme, an innovative v-office exhibition comprised of a mix of new and historic projects. The iterations progressed with a definite rhythm; austere projects with sober, restrained palettes alternated with more ebullient and colorful selections. Distributing curatorial authority, Open up Plan united an ensemble cast for the following program: A sonic piece of work past Andrea Fraser, curated by Scott Rothkopf and Laura Phipps; a painted environment created by Lucy Dodd, curated past Christopher Lew; projected photographs by Michael Heizer, curated by Donna De Salvo, Melva Bucksbaum, and Ballad Mancusi-Ungaro; an exhibition of Cecil Taylor's documents, curated past Jay Sanders and Lawrence Kumpf, accompanied by performances past the jazz musician; and a presentation of a filmic FBI file past Steve McQueen, curated by Donna De Salvo with Christie Mitchell.
Lasting as few every bit 4 days, the serial of provocative shows possessed an accelerated temporality, which seemed closer to that of performance than the duration of fine arts exhibitions (for instance, the following temporary exhibitions ran for nearly four months). Open Plan should therefore be conceived equally 1 more twist in the performative turn—a recent humanities trend, which has been manifested in both museums and fine art-historical scholarship. Instead of just a turn, this mode of conceiving art and piece of work may also be considered a return. In the 1960s, critic Michael Kirby grouped various emerging forms—Kinetic art, new media fine art, theater, and dance—nether the rubric "arts of time." Similarly, the Whitney series convincingly proposed that the obviously diverse projects in distinct media that it presented possessed a common logic. Curating converged with directing; the galleries became a stage for mounting productions.
Beyond reimagining the temporality of exhibitions, the prove importantly implicated space besides. The title, Open Plan, refers to the flexible architecture that hosted each installation: the Neil Bluhm Family Galleries in the new Renzo Pianoforte building. Bluhm's wealth has spatial origins too. He made his fortune in real manor. Perhaps appropriately, the museum site has exceptional views of the Hudson River also as Chelsea and the Meat Packing District, areas that have undergone a meaning revaluation in recent years (in part due to the arrival of the museum and the High Line Park). Buoyed by its trendy location and the sheen of "starchitecture," the renewed Whitney Museum elicited significant excitement when information technology opened in 2015. The series highlighted institutional space, and the mixed-utilize volume boasts an area of "approximately 18,000 square feet . . . making it the largest column-costless museum gallery in New York."1 With its numerous makeovers, Open Plan showcased its potential.
Open Plan'south format likewise meshes with museum marketing. The limited time offers operated perfectly well independently; the serial structure implied series attendance. The novel exhibition seemed to exist designed for members—who would not be charged admission every couple weeks to see all of the parts—and those who came to the Friday night pay what you wish hours. Some other consequence of the experimental series was that going to the Whitney became a habit. Patrons ideally made repeated pilgrimages to the museum every bit a destination. Every office ushered in an associated media moving ridge of visitors' digital posting and journalists reporting. Ultimately, each iteration of the exhibition inscribed new meanings onto the galleries. The projects recoded the space, such that it no longer solely signified institutional dominance and the benignancy of a magnate and his heirs.
Fig. ane. Andrea Fraser (b.1965) Downwards the River (installation), 2016. Multichannel sound installation. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Photo by Bill Orcutt.
Andrea Fraser, famous for her interrogations of institutions, realized the most dialectical critique. In Down the River, 2016, she confronted 2 seemingly opposed institutions and ultimately synthesized them. The projection consists of looped audio from the interior of Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a prison roughly twenty miles upstream on the Hudson River. Bangs, clangs, metallic clinks, screams, and public address system announcements were translated to the vast chamber of the museum. Contemplation became coextensive with doing time. Moreover, as her title inverts the euphemistic maxim, "sent upward the river," it implies a consideration of perspectives from the prison.
Fraser'southward insinuation evoked the argument past Donald Preziosi that the museum is a "panoptic apparatus."2 Actually, the more literal relationship of museums and prisons has long preoccupied her. She views them as interconnected sides of neoliberal capitalism. Indeed, in Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk, 1989, (which was shown in an adjunct black box gallery) Fraser touches upon the development of civic institutions with distinct disciplinary functions. Recently, her focus tightened—equally is evident in Tehachapi at Kings Road, 2014, a recontextualization of recordings from California penitentiaries, and Index Ii 2016, which charts parallel trends in museum and prison house structure every bit well equally population growth in these industries.
Fraser'south projection is non-retinal; however, she did capitalize on the institutional imperative to look: her intervention prompted spectators to study their boyfriend museumgoers and the room, with its gridded ceiling, elevation-of-the-line climate control system, and spectacular views. By broadcasting sound into the space, the artist cast new inflections on the experience. She infected the empty flooring with the spirit of the prison yard, rendering uncanny the rarefied gallery air and prime number real estate vistas. The modular ceiling came to evoke prison bars. The movements of slowly circulating guests became haunted by those of the inmates confined to the upriver institution. Even so, at that place were many instagrammers and selfie-seekers who blithely took photos—seemingly untroubled by the connections Fraser laid out. For visitors to whom the work gave pause, her moves catalyzed a procedure of reflection. How did Bluhm, whose proper noun captions the wall, amass his fortune? How practice incarcerated bodies and those that flitted and sauntered through the heights of lower Manhattan compare in terms of socioeconomics and race? Do the prisoners ever glimpse similar views of the Hudson coursing past? How do vision and mobility relate to privilege? Whom exercise our institutions serve?
Fig. ii. Lucy Dodd (b. 1981). Installation view B.O.V., 2016. Spirulina, black lichen, sumac tea, wild blackness walnut rind, kombucha SCOBY, foss leaf extract, East River h2o, Hudson River h2o, sea snail (Murex trunculus) dye, raspberry foliage tea, yerba mate, mica, powdered atomic number 26, hematite, graphite, sand, and other materials on nine canvases. Collection of the artist; courtesy David Lewis Gallery, New York. Photograph past Bill Orcutt.
For the briefest phase of Open Plan, Lucy Dodd conjured a sea change with B.O.Five., 2016 (an abbreviation for Nativity of Venus). Every bit William Shakespeare suggests in "Ariel'due south Song" (from The Tempest), which describes this kind of aquatic transformation, Dodd'due south inflow of objects and bodies yielded "something rich and foreign."3 She filled the gallery (instead of its walls) with raw canvas sails—upon which she had splashed, swirled, and splatted wavy organic browns, greens, and whites. Formally, they recalled some other sail named for the same department of The Storm, Jackson Pollock's Full Fathom Five, 1947. Dodd'south shaped canvases were arranged like to hedges in a public park. Here also, modern institutions converged. The paintings segmented the clangorous infinite into loose courts, each with its own grouping of color-coordinated, comfortable, faux-modernist piece of furniture designed by the artist.four While her project dialogues with the history of painting, it is meliorate understood as a whimsical, social environment for breeding "ritual activeness . . . [and] enervating a longer and broader engagement on the role of the audience."five For the spatial production, she tacked and jibbed with a coiffure. Dodd scheduled four performances each day of the exhibition. The press release asserts that she brings the studio into the museum.half dozen As she did not pigment in the performances, the precise type of studio is non clear: she variously acted equally landscaper, choreographer, decorator, and ready designer.
Willem de Kooning described art as a "stew," with uniquely flavored $.25 and pieces; while Dodd'due south cuisine is different, the elder painter's comment resonates with her methods.7 She achieved magnificent hues with "fermented walnuts, kombucha SCOBY, hematite, yerba mate, and pigments she has collected in her travels."viii Dodd playfully reminded the viewers that fine art is a question of taste. Although the shades of matte green and walnut brown are striking, her ingredients smacked of foodie-ism. Her palette surely aligns with those of many of the museum visitors. Still, her poetic utilize and abuse of a bourgeois diet slightly contradistinct the protocols of the "bourgeois" establishment: individualistic, totally silent contemplation of auratic inert objects was not the order of the day.
In the final xl minutes of the exhibition, Dodd, Dawn Kasper, and Sergei Tcherepnin staged a kind of "wild rumpus"; the untitled operation was equal parts Maurice Sendack's Where the Wild Things Are and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The trio entered at staggered intervals, seemingly from dissimilar directions, announcing their presence with musical utterances. Garbed in patchwork, multicolored dream coats, they pranced, artfully flicked their trains, played music, and snuck around the about-sculptural or architectonic abstractions. Creeping circles of spectators—many brandishing cell phones for photos—responded to their movements and were drawn around the same stage. Although the audition did not become primary performers, the project lulled them into minor roles. The piece of work concluded with a tour de force piano improvisation by Tcherepnin, recalling the compositions of Philip Glass. Finally all 3 sleepily huddled beneath the piano-cum-fort. Watching adults appoint in childlike, whimsical activities enabled spectators to remember the magic of play. Similar the castles built of cushions in childhood living rooms, Dodd'due south dreamy ecology fabricated the Whitney gallery get more than the materials arranged within it.
Fig. 3. Michael Heizer (b. 1944) Installation view of Actual Size: Munich Rotary, 1970, Whitney Museum of American Fine art, New York. Photograph past Ron Amstutz.
In the next act of Open Plan, dark curtains covering iii sides of the gallery—which obfuscated the view of the New York and New Jersey skylines—greeted patrons every bit they exited the elevators. Skirting these shrouds, spectators establish Michael Heizer's Bodily Size: Munich Rotary, 1970: vi custom projectors fitted with photographic glass plates projected static images of Munich Depression, 1969, a no longer extant, round earthwork necessarily beyond the museum. Actual Size saw a static gray-tone, horizon "screened" on the white walls.9 Albeit in a distinct manner to Dodd and Fraser's efforts, Heizer's project also dug upward the past with a deferred translation. His installation maps documentation onto the architectonic support. For the 1969 concavity, the artist displaced 1 yard tons of soil; Actual Size displaces this displacement across time and space.
Heizer states that his works reflect our world's status of beingness "technological and primordial simultaneously."10 Today the analog projectors and black and white images seem almost primitive. The bespoke equipment in the museum was in one case highly innovative. Commercially available equipment was not capable of yielding images that were actual size. Heizer enlisted the inventor Maris Ambats (the programmer of another 1970s staple, the mood ring) to blueprint them. Furthermore, a significant amount of room is necessary to place the projectors—1 subsequently another—at the correct distance from the wall. Because of this, the Whitney'southward Marcel Breuer building could non arrange the artwork. The printing release affirms that the museum has just at present defenseless up with the industrial—or alternately prehistoric—scale of the work.11
In the galleries, the 360-degree referent turned into a about lunar panorama. The dramatic pseudo-cinematic exhibition recalls a longer history of spectacular landscapes. Nineteenth-century artists similar Frederic Edwin Church presented paintings, brightly illuminated in otherwise dark spaces, to paying customers. Actual Size's vistas are pure illumination. Moreover, information technology constitutes a kind of slide presentation, the sort of domestic show and tell that represented vacations of upper- and center-class Americans, especially in the terminal century. When framed in the context of a museum of American art, the projected earthwork connects to longer traditions of tourism and visual civilisation.
Fig. 4. Open Program: Cecil Taylor installation view, Whitney Museum of American Art. Photographs © Paula Court.
In some sense, the ten-day bear witness past Cecil Taylor was the most radical selection. As a poet and jazz musician, his work falls outside the purview of the art programming of the Whitney Museum. While he had non exhibited earlier, Taylor performed in the museum's Breuer building in the 1960s and 1970s. The installation featured videos, audio recordings, handwritten drafts of poems, and assorted ephemera—all of which was fairly traditionally arranged on walls and in vitrines. Here it seemed the curatorial hands manifested themselves most forcefully. Their decisions almost presenting the information impelled visitors to consider the contents with the same seriousness equally works of art. Particularly successful in this regard were the wall-mounted posters and albums, which highlighted their appeal to vision. Conversely, if visitors were not convinced, they at to the lowest degree witnessed an expansion of "American art" to fit contents that might belong in a Jazz Hall of Fame.
Furthermore, a festival of performances brought such notable figures as Hilton Als and Fred Moten to the Whitney. In addition to the curated content, Taylor acted as manager and determined his ain regime of sold-out shows to great fanfare. He collaborated with dancer Min Tanaka and percussionist Tony Oxley in two improvised sets. The complimentary jazz pioneer (and the public) enjoyed his residency at the museum so much that he added an additional appearance.
Fig. 5. Steve McQueen (b. 1969), Installation view of End Credits, 2016. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.
Steve McQueen, End Credits, 2012/16, provided a strong conclusion. Dual projections of declassified FBI documents, culled from bureau files on Paul Robeson, scrolled on screens placed on either side of the massive gallery. A soundtrack of two voices read fragments out of sync with the visual materials, which disrupted a shine chronology. As the title suggests, the structure of a cinematic parergon forms the entire work. In contrast to the light font on dark footing that characterizes the final minutes of commercial films, McQueen's moving images are striking in their whiteness and run for nearly eight hours. The work was expanded for the Whitney presentation, where McQueen's Moonlit, 2016, a pair of rocks covered in silver leafage, accompanied it in a neighboring gallery.
The idea of centering (or recentering) the marginalized undergirds the content likewise equally the form of the work. Robeson is a figure of limited renown in the United States. A star football role player, a Columbia University-trained lawyer, a historic actor on the phase and in Hollywood, and a globe-course baritone, Robeson was also a committed socialist and ceremonious rights activist. Because of his political activities, particularly his efforts to maintain friendship between the United states and Soviet Marriage, he was placed nether constant surveillance by the FBI. The government harassment became so intense that he was forced into exile. Equally a result, Robeson is meliorate known away. McQueen takes the FBI files readymade, rendering them pedagogical to recuperate their subject. At the time they were recorded, Robeson's deportment were deemed sinister. Today, the reports on his "unpatriotic" activities read similar an amazing curriculum vitae.
Though driven by an "archival impulse," McQueen's piece of work is not pure didactic information; spectators alternate between reading and gazing.12 End Credits cleverly trades on the legacy of Conceptual art: the "artful of administration" that bureaucratic papers necessarily possess has come to hold artistic value.thirteen As in the other parts of Open Program, a scalar translation produces new significance. Handmade scrawls and crossings out of redaction turn into marks worthy of Franz Kline when expanded to the silvery screen.
This concluding phase of the series wedded aesthetics and politics. The museum became an amplifier, broadcasting Robeson's numerous achievements (this went across the galleries; the bookshop even stocked his biography). Although belated, information technology is fortunate that a British artist can employ the frame of the Whitney Museum of American Art to repatriate Robeson, who was one time seen equally "un-American." Non a terminus, Cease Credits marks a new stage in the activist-performer'south afterlife.
Open Plan importantly asked audiences to rethink exhibitions as productions in time and non but in infinite (or identify). The multi-platform, performative prove was the effect of a multitude of contributors and collaborators. The ane-work installations would accept seemed bereft as stand-lone exhibitions. With the framing, they operated in concert; the shared elements of the plainly disparate practices came into focus. Although Open up Plan was a diachronic exploration of space, the programming was also coterminous: the memories of prior iterations haunted each subsequent installation. Each facet, whether by dissimilarity or similarity, illuminated the others. In this sense, Fraser's sensory deprivation and Dodd's overload were particularly strong—productive foils to ane another. Similarly, Heizer's tranquillity, still landscape projections appeared all the more antiquated and gray in comparison with Taylor and Dodd's colour and live, musical numbers. McQueen's Robeson files were at in one case an entrée into history and an austere fortnight-long conclusion.
The serial prove resisted singular curatorial or artistic authority in a way few do. Under the sign of production, it ushered in a blurring of the labor of art-making and that of curating. On one hand, the breakup of traditional roles and collectivity propose a democratization of the museum. On the other, the shift to producing could be less charitably read equally a kind of corporatism, a neoliberal decentralization of mounting an exhibition. Indeed, the five rapid transformations highlighted the Whitney Museum'southward capacity for performance and the flexibility of the open-plan Bluhm Family Galleries—elements that reverberate the values of the new spirit of capitalism. Nonetheless, the ground-breaking show cannot be flattened out and charged with merely reproducing dominant economical logic. As I have attempted to prove, in distinct fashions, every iteration used the museum as a platform for the sometimes antagonistic artistic ideas it introduced. Working to destabilize monolithic institutional identity, each reprogrammed the Whitney Museum. Ultimately, with projects that compellingly explore the time of painting and cinema besides as the space of audio, Open Plan demonstrated new means to perform the museum.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24926/24716839.1576
PDF: Open Program
Notes
Nearly the Author(s): John A. Tyson is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the National Gallery of Art.
Source: https://editions.lib.umn.edu/panorama/article/open-plan-the-whitney-museums-arts-of-time-and-space/
0 Response to "Dates for Panorama Display in Whitney Museum of Art"
Post a Comment