mickey mouse art
“A Brief History of Curating” is a title recently published in 2008 containing interviews with about a dozen so-called legendary 20th century curators. Strangely, all were born between 1919 and 1943, making them 65 to 89 years old at time of publishing. If they’re still alive. The interviewing happened between 1996 and 2008, but the fact is that nearly all could be considered curators for the mid-20th century. So a brief history, it isn’t; unless you consider the 1990’s onward a vacant lot of contemporary art curatorship.
brief...and narrow
What struck me about reading the curators’ memoirs, was the anonymity of so many artists. While a great deal of well-known modern artists were included in these long-ago shows, many more, long-forgotten names were included as well. I hadn’t heard of 75% of the artists mentioned. I think this reflects just how splintered the art world is. In many other aspects of our lives, we can all name a top ten of some industry, or popular culture like music, film, literature, etc. Visual artists are truly living the Warholian experience by being, at best, famous for a very short time.
Curating a show is by nature a relatively anonymous production anyway. Only a certain type of person, who might have heard about the show, who lives near the exhibition, and is alive during a one to three month time frame, is going to see it. Of that very small group, how many people are going to appreciate it or understand it? (Let’s face it, artists aren’t the world’s best communicators.) What percentage will just say it was complete rubbish. I realize this isn’t a very optimistic deduction process, and the candid results from this type of analysis would preclude anyone from doing anything ever again. Still, it seems that curating could do with a little broadening of its distribution.
The best exhibitions are ones that affect the greatest number of people, regardless of the message and sophistication of the audience. Whether it’s crass, antagonistic, violent, sexy, or even easy, affecting a large number of people will always result in a changed behaviour in the world. Affecting very few people, won’t. It’s simple maths, regardless of what anyone else thinks.
One of the museums of Disney
That’s why I think the greatest curator of the 20th century is Walt Disney. Walt, and his team, not only created their own art, but devised the exhibitions as well: animated films, books, TV shows, Disney World. Disney even did his own voice-overs. He was also heavily involved in art education, bequeathing 25% of his fortune to The California Institute of the Arts, which places him amongst heavy spenders like national public galleries and museums. Disney arguably did more for art in the 20th century than any curator did in fine art. Even by today’s standards of investment and spending, the Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami, with his KaiKai Kiki LLC company, pale in comparison.