On Curating, Carolee Thea | Notes 2

This book is a bit pompous, but I'm mainly just looking at the parts that give insights into art and exhibitions - function, distribution, their impact, how they relate to their audiences...etc...

Massimiliano Gioni / Interview 2007     (continued)

pg. 34 - Carolee Thea (CT): 'The notion of site-specificity refashioned the idea of the journey by no longer confining it to the abstract gallery space.

Through this, a form of domestic tourism was invented - one that renewed ties with the modern tradition of the flaneur and his fascination with the strangeness of the city and its slightly tawdry glamour'

Okwui Enwezor / Interview 2003

pg. 52 - OE: It's interesting to look at the exhibition as a medium that is part of a continuing cultural practice. What comes out of that understanding is a larger awareness of how you tell a story, because exhibitions are narrative by nature - one thing after another: sentences, paragraphs, line breaks, punctuation, exclamation marks, etc'

'An exhibition for me is as much a textual as a visual device'

Charles Esche / Interview 2005

pg. 60 - CT: 'The word curator means "overseer, guardian, agent." In Latin law, the curator was appointed guardian of a person legally unfit to conduct him - or herself, such as a minor or a lunatic.

However the curator in the Middle Ages is known specifically as somebody in a clerical position, a priest for whom the exhibition would be an ecclesiastical display of who would be crucial to the organisation of religious spaces and beyond.

Today, in the exhibition, the curator takes into account both the zeitgeist and repressed history - a history associated with individual motivations, with the transcultural and the mythic'

On Curating, Carolee Thea (2009)

On Curating: Interview with Ten International Curators

Introduction

pg. 7 - 'It was during the chaotic 1960s and 70s that Robert Smithson and Gordon Matta-Clark attempted to break the barrier between culture and society, innovating strategies that deconstructed the museum paradigm of viewing art.'

'This 1970s imperative fueled the work of American independent curator Mary Jane Jacob, who is today considered a pioneer in the development of new forms of public art'

Mary Jane Jacob / Interview 2002

The Michigan Art Train
[article] NY Times, 08.11.1984

pg. 20 - 'When I curated my first project, The Michigan Art Train, I was a graduate art student interning for the Michigan Arts Council. Using a six-car train, we traveled the countryside stopping in one location per week. Here a community audience walked through the train, feeling a new spirit and acknowledging the value and accessibility of sharing the art. It was art for the public'

'It showed there were other ways of sharing and recognizing culture. One factor was to acknowledge what was already in place: not having to import art, but to look at the culture and resources of a specific locale'

'It was a ripe moment for ushering in new audiences to participate in what had been considered an elitist experience'

pg. 21 - 'A communal experience can also be a shared silence on a public street; it can propel a dialogue that extends beyond the art object. This is what public art can do - when you think about the public as much as the art'

David Hammons, America Street, 1991
courtesy Mary Jane Jacob and John McWilliams, McClennanville, SC

pg. 24 - CT: 'In the 90s, the demise of the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States was brought about by its innate philistinism. Today, however, the current tax structure enhances/encourages philanthropic funding of the arts and, it seems, has temporarily filled the void.

MJJ: 'We have studies and proof of the economic development-value brought by galleries, real estate, tourism and philanthropy, but that's not enough. Our root questions are: why does art matter and how does it have essential resonance and relevance?'

Massimiliano Gioni / Interview 2007

The 387 Houses of Peter Fritz, Insurance Clerk from Vienna

pg. 32 - MG: 'Another influence, an American cult-classic road story, set in a small mid-western county, is Blue Highways, written by William Least Heat-Moon. In 1,000 pages, he paints remarkable portraits of the people living in each room of a tall building. His tales descend beginning from the top floor; instead of a sprawl, it's a vertical hyper-concentration'

'Then there's Giorgio Morandi, the reclusive painter who spent his life painting the same bottles over and over - a search for density and depth rather than mobility or multiplicity'