A Month in the Mid-West

Art work at Art Chicago. All photos courtesy the author.

Whohooo! This funny video work by an artist at Art Chicago (I should have been taking the label pics but did not, I apologize to this artist) is an unintentional bracket to the month I've just had.

















Lambert Field after tornado strike.

A tornado hit Lambert Field just after I took off for the weekend, luckily they re-opened the next day so I was able to fly in Monday morning. This may be the only upside to an under-utilized airport.






















Mats Stjernstedt in bamboo back yard.

Friend and colleague Mats Stjernstedt, former director of Index Gallery, Stockholm, current director of Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (I've even been there, twice!) and member of Laumeier's International Advisory Council, visited STL. He gave a gallery talk on Jessica Stockholder's show, conducted studio visits and participated on my panel at Art Chicago concerning new sculptural practices and changes for dedicated sculpture parks. Peter Tao, of Tao + Lee Architects, knows the owner of this bamboo backyard in U City.

What a haunting, lovely yard. Downside: you couldn't have kids, the bamboo shoots were like spikes jutting from the ground.

















Theaster Gates in his home / studio / performance space.

One of the smartest artists / cultural workers is Chicago-based Theaster Gates. A group of us (me, Kevin Miyazaki, Mats Stjernstedt and NY-based critic and pal Lilly Wei) went to Theaster's studio at the invitation of Kavi Gupta. Theaster has purchased several houses on the south side of Chicago with the intention of creating a vibrant cultural space in this neglected neighborhood.

Theaster is planning a collaborative project for next year's Documenta that involves a group of his south-side neighbors traveling to Kassel to convert a building there. Stay tuned.

















Sculpture panel at Art Chicago, May 1.

I organized a panel on changing sculptural practices at dedicated sculpture parks and other arts organizations. Left to right: Dr. Matthias Wascheck, former director, Pulitzer Foundation, St. Louis; artist / activist Theaster Gates; me, talking about Beverly Pepper's commissioned work Cromlech Glen at Laumeier; Dennis Kois, director, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum; missing, Mats Stjernstedt, director, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo. We talked about new artistic practices, like Theaster's, and how they are being manifested in spaces like Laumeier, deCordova and elsewhere.

















Philip Guston at Art Institute of Chicago.

And a break to run through the Art Institute of Chicago's permanent collection show. Guston, someone whose work makes me sad and happy at the same time.






















Mark di Suvero at center in white hat, deinstalling work at Laumeier.

Mark di Suvero has been a presence at Laumeier since it opened in 1976. He recently won the Presidential Medal of Honor, and is having a show of his work on Governor's Island (I gave the Board Chair, his wife and a St. Louis collector a tour of Laumeier last fall). Here Mark is, overseeing the complicated deinstallation of a work, in-between two cranes and lots of strong, and strong-willed, guys. Fun to watch--from a distance.

















Ursula von Rydinsgvard at Laumeier.

Laumeier continues working on a collections assessment which includes refurbishing and reinstalling Ursula von Rydingsvard's Untitled work. She chose this great location near the Estate House (see the stakes in the ground?) This gives us the opportunity to clear out this area near a small non-functioning pond, pour a set of stairs for easier public access and to animate her work by sending visitors through it. Ursula is a great artist and fabulous person who deserves all the attention she is getting these days.

















Next generation: Tea Makipaa.

These are the five foundations poured for Germany-based Finnish artist Tea Makipaa's work. The six-part piece, called Not Without My Dog, has been commissioned for our show Dog Days of Summer. The piece is designed from a dog's perspective and is part of our investigation into an "archaeology of place." Over 20% of Laumeier's audience comes with their dog--thus, we are focusing on our long relationship with them and how it has changed since the mid-19th century. June 25 - October 2. Tea will be at the opening to speak, she'll give us some great insight into her process.






















Art work at Art Chicago (apologies to the artist).

My favorite piece at Art Chicago, not just because I'm working on a show about dogs and not just because of the quirky juxtaposition of the fluffy poodle and a doomsday message (May 21st has come and gone and we're all still here).

I am finally tired of the unstable Missouri landscape. I spent a weekend in May at a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Wisconsin--tornado sirens went off there too.

Enough already--let us enjoy our poodles!

LA in Da House

Bruce Yonemoto lecture at Steinberg Auditorium, Washington University, night before opening of his show at the St. Louis Art Museum.

SLAM and Wash U have a smart set-up going. With funds from the Freund Family, the curator and artists at both institutions put out a call for a one-year faculty appointment. Each artist who receives the faculty appointment has a one-person show at SLAM.

St. Louis is brilliant for this kind of cooperation and resource sharing. Bravo.

Bruce talked about his past work in new media, and his up-coming work in Peru, where he will stage an opera in the still-active ancient Peruvian language Quechua. Bruce's droll description of the on-going colonization of the Other by Western powers was understated but powerful.

What struck me with the brief clips he showed of his work is how prescient his work has been, and how he has vaulted over a generation of artists still grappling with an eclipsed Western visual culture.

Bruce's show adds to the vibrant presence of LA in da STL house. Today you can find at Stephen Prina at CAMSTL and Sharon Lockhart at the Kemper, Wash U. We at Laumeier are talking to a range of California artists--Sam Durant and Kelly Mason--about possible future projects, which will allow us to represent the "other" coast (here on the Mississippi we're the "fourth" coast, but that's another issue) in our programs.

Nancy Spero, Queen

Nancy Spero installation at the Cairo Biennial, 1998, photo by Barry Iverson; all images, unless otherwise noted, are by the author

Two friends just sent me the link to the NY Times' obituary of Nancy Spero, which I had missed, here in my move "cocoon".

Nancy was an inspiration to me for two reasons.

As a young curator working at MoMA, I went with a colleague from Prints & Illustrated Books over to meet Nancy. Of course I knew her work and was thrilled for the strong visual world she created through her collages. Despite her fame within the downtown arts community, she was kind and gracious and spoke frankly about the work, which tells not only abut the past but about our collective feminist future.

Many years later, in 1997, I approached Nancy to propose her work for the 1998 Cairo Biennial, and Nancy's work was chosen. My first trip to Cairo was shocking--I had a haunting, almost out-of-the-body experience after seeing the pyramids (remind me to tell you about the Winchester house "incident"). There was something about that place that I felt in my bones, despite being Northern European stock.

Nancy's installation was deceptively simple: her three assistants were to stamp images directly onto the walls of the Palace of Arts in Cairo. However, because the building was still in litigation, four years after its completion, we had to find a quick solution to not mar the walls with the paint. The Egyptians I worked with were both proud of Nancy's use of mythic symbols from Egypt's Pharonic past, but also somewhat defensive that a Westerner would "borrow" these forms.

The day of the Biennial's opening in Cairo was the day we bombed Iraq in the first war. The official opening the day's events attacked Nancy as the American representative--shocking, given Nancy's history and politics. Luckily, the first person to speak on our panel about Nancy's work couldn't be bothered to listen to the translation of this official's rant--she went blithely on about pattern & decoration in the work of Nancy Spero. In any case, my experiences in Cairo were transformative, thanks to Nancy.

















Marwan Rechmaoui's work at Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut, 2008

In addition to visiting one of the most glorious countries on earth, I came to work with many great artists from Egypt and the region, and indeed, I have worked, traveled and written about contemporary art in the area for a decade (the last article, on Beirut's "Home Works IV", was published in Art Papers last spring). And my work at F.A.R. (Future Arts Research) @ ASU, on desert aesthetics, was rooted in my reading, writing and finding ways to travel to the region.




















Ghada Amer, Untitled (Milwaukee Love), 1998, photo courtesy the author

I commissioned works from Ghada Amer in 1998, Lara Baladi in 2004, and most recently, Ahmet Ogut, in 2008. Other artists whose work I supported include Mona Marzouk, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Halil Altindere, and Khaled Hafez. Scott Bailey, with whom I co-founded a curatorial practice program in Cairo in 1998, was a great inspiration and friend in negotiating the complex social issues of Cairo.

















Work by Khaled Hafez, courtesy the artist

I had three dreams when I was a child: sky diving (are you crazy?), scuba diving and living in Africa. Because of Nancy Spero, I did one (Red Sea) and had close encounters with another. Nancy was not just a global leader in a radical, political, visual feminism, she was a personal inspiration to many women of her own generation, and mine.

Road Trip Art

A selection of room keys, PHX - STL:
Arizona Biltmore, Phoenix (most lush experience)
Sheraton, Albuquerque (palm trees???)
Hyatt Express, Tulsa (rather dull suburban location)
Moonrise Hotel, St. Louis (best bed)

Museums make art experiences happen deliberately. Road trips make art experiences happen accidentally.

Some of my favorite images from my four day tour with Mary Louise:

Bathroom painting, Munds Park, AZ (image of Munds Park):


















Mega-church, OK:























Sculpture Park, Coffeeyville, KS:

















Pump jacks, a selection of sizes:


















Finally, remnants of unpacking:























The efficiency of the American I-highway system made our trip fast, but our detours made it interesting. We drove through Window Rock, AZ, to see the administrative capital of the Navajo Nation, and Tucumcari, NM, a formerly thriving town on Route 66 but now a struggling enclave of dilapidated 1950s motels, to measure the impact of the highway system on small town America.

We also stopped in Coffeeyville, KS, where my grandfather Ogden grew up. The docent at the historical Brown Mansion confused our looking for the downtown (mostly empty storefronts) with their commercial strip (Arby's, gas stations), a testament to a town that hasn't yet revitalized its old real estate stock with boutiques and bars (too far from KC and Tulsa?)

The most dramatic image was outside Amarillo, TX (see previous post), which consolidated Amarillo's reputation for me.

Small town America looks like Stephen Shore to me, although Robert Frank loomed large in my mind while driving as well. Like any art experience, I learned a lot about the world in this trip, the trials and tribulations of people living outside big cities--and in our go-go, internet connected world, what a great and rare privilege it is to spend four days with a friend. We found artistic moments everywhere, thanks to the refined eyes of photographers who allow us to frame images laden with social and political content.

On a side note: I'm for the government's stimulus package, but improving roads seems less urgent than helping these smaller communities reinvest in themselves.

© all images author and Mary Louise Schumacher

Modern totems

all images, unless otherwise noted, courtesy the author

I was in Washington in mid-July to participate on an NEA panel (doing "the people's work," as Kevin says), and had the chance to see lots of art in different museums. New Orleans artist Ron Bechet and I got our exercise by running to and from the Mall every day at lunch, seeing the National Gallery West, the National Museum of African Arts and the Hirshhorn Museum. It was great to share the pleasure of being in big buildings full of cultural richness from around the world.

On Friday, after the panel, I walked to the National Museum of American Indian that featured an exhibition of the artist Fritz Scholder (1937-2005). I'm not a fan of Scholder's work--although much of what I read makes me understand how his work broke through the cliches of "native" art--but I was struck by his obelisk from 1987, somewhat hidden in the garden outside the museum.

This work seemed to throw out a real challenge to the culture that has suppressed Native peoples in the US, represented by the thrusting Washington Monument nearby. (Begun in 1848, the Washington Monument was intended to be the largest structure on earth. Construction halted during the Civil War, but was finally completed in 1885.) That Americans would commemorate their new republic with a cultural form borrowed from an ancient, "pagan" culture is interesting--why not borrow the indigenous American form of a totem?












































Fritz Scholder Obelisk, 1987, bronze, detail bottom

Unfortunately, however, Scholder's obelisk also looks Egyptian, influenced, no doubt, by the time he spent in Egypt. I never found a didactic panel that explained the work. The Museum missed the opportunity to toss out a social bomb in the form of an art object, but they are right to avoid the kind of controversies caused when Museums look at history through different eyes.

The Native American artist who does artistically bridge the death-defying gap between white and Native cultures is Brad Kahlhamer. His obelisk, Waqui Totem, 2007, below, is sharp edged, sarcastic and penetrating. Kahlhamer embraces and challenges both Western and indigenous artistic forms, creating vibrant, sex-death-and-rock 'n roll odes to finding identity and spirituality in contemporary America.












































images courtesy of Brad Kahlhamer

Kahlhamer's totem was built of cardboard then cast in that uber-art material bronze. It's a bird of prey / nightmare head, tree limbs stripped of leaves by rapacious industry and a provisional base suggestive of the persistence of the ancient myths of Native spiritual systems.

Kahlhamer's totem would be a spectacular apparition on the mall in honor of the millions of Native peoples who lived in North America upon first contact. His work reclaims not only the physical shape of Native American art, but some of its psychic space, too. This work would be a testament to the persistence of indigenous peoples and their evolving cultures long lain dormant underneath the self-aggrandizing myths of the American conquest of a wild but empty paradise.

I think the issue of internal diaspora or exile is a compelling and urgent one for Native artists, and deserves much broader discussion in the art world.

Public space, public speech

Scott Illman on Gormley's Plinth, 2009

I am amused, captivated and mortified by Anthony Gormley's Fourth Plinth project "One & Other."

Amused because it's a simple gesture, harkening back to soapbox preachers and, as more morbid commentators have noted, the prisoner's walk to the guillotine in history past. Amused because it's officially sanctioned anarchy. Anything could be said, although I suspect anyone willing to sign up for the computer lottery is less nutcase than media hound.

I love this image of Scott Illman dressed as a town crier; it makes me think of the diaries of Samuel Peyps, a 17th century London merchant who chronicled London's great fire, the exile and return of his King, and his personal picadillos. LA-based artist Monique Prieto brought his writings to my attention; her recent work uses phrases from his diaries to comment on our own time, giving voice to the human concerns that return over and over. I think Illman understood the possibilities and responsibilities of the Plinth opportunity to disseminate news, release decrees or plea for mercy.

Captivated because there is no public space anymore, every nook and cranny of the streets and public plazas are controlled and corporatized--the arts may be one of the few places where embarrassing, angry dialogue can flow (well, outside of the tight control the market has).

Mortified, and this is why I have such respect for artists: what would you (me) do if you were given such an offer? What makes performance transformative is not just an artist's depth of historical knowledge or years of practice, it's the spark of a unique mind which cannot be scripted. This is when their magical spark lights your own, this is what art can do.

It's possible that most of the people who signed up for Gormely's Plinth are egotists, trained perhaps by reality tv that their every inanity is a meaningful as my every inanity--and why not? But this is where a range of people can have a voice. And not all reality tv is bad of course--competitive shows like Project Runway, and even the Antiques Road show, show off forms of expertise and critical judgement so that the use of a ruche front or square-headed nails separates the women from the girls. Enlightening.






















© Sam Durant, This is Freedom?, 2009

The Plinth project makes me think of LA-based artist Sam Durant, who has been exploring public speech and its manifestation, and suppression, in American public life over the past half-century. Durant's sign in lower Manhattan is poignant and distressing--indeed, what is freedom in the face of official speech?

Curator's Forum: Enrico Lunghi

© Jacques Charlier

During my trip to Helsinki for the IKT conference, Enrico Lunghi, current IKT President and Director of the Musee d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (Mudam) Luxembourg told me about curating Belgian artist Jacques Charlier's "100 SEXES D'ARTISTES" for the French-speaking (Wallonia) community at the Venice Biennale.

Charlier eats at the edges of bourgeois pretension, like fellow Belgians Renee Magritte and Wim Delvoye, and the "100 SEXES..." project continues Charlier's quasi-scientific exposition on the genesis of creativity in artists by making drawings of their genitalia. This project, begun in the 1970s, is Charlier's mockumentary-style reduction of artistic "style" to secondary sexual characteristics (and a form of "macho feminism"?).

After being submitted to be part of the collateral events (in the form of posters scattered around Venice) for the Venice Biennale, supported by Ministry of the French Speaking community of Belgium (Wallonia Brussels), the Department of Plastic Arts with the help of Wallonia-Brussels International (WBI), Lunghi received a letter from Biennale artistic director Daniel Birnbaum disinviting the project. After an appeal, the disinvitation was confirmed.

So the posters can't be shown in Venice, but they will be in seven European cities (Antwerp, Belgrade, Bergen, Luxembourg, Metz and Namur) during the months of June and July, with other cities expressing interest as well. In Venice, however, the team will show all the documents relating to the project on a boat which will be moored along the Grand Canal, close to the Giardini, during the professional (pre-opening) days so visitors will still be able to see the drawings--and decide for themselves. It does mean, however, that the general public, tourists and residents alike, will not see the works--and weren't they ultimately the artist's target audience?

I wonder why this form of nudity--and a project with funding and support from legitimate institutions--would be censored and not, say, Francesco Vezzoli's 2005 "Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's 'Caligula' "? In Vezzoli's trailer--produced with blessings from Gore Vidal, who sued to have his name taken off the 1979 movie--the artist was drawing a parallel between the excesses of Caligula with the art world's "desire for visibility" as represented through the Venice Biennale. (Other soft porn / corn, Italian-themed works are Jeff Koons's performances with former wife La Cicciolina, intended to skewer American--and the art world's?--puritanism, image below).








© Jeff Koons

Birnbaum told Lunghi on the phone (and confirmed subsequently via e-mail) that the reason for censorship was a fear of offending the artists whose genitals are represented. One might ask, cynically, does this have anything to do with the art market instead?

Is quasi-pornography and art world critique acceptable in forms of high production (Vezzoli, Koons) and not, as in Charlier's place, base modesty? Are the Charlier works just, too, well...naked?

To quote Enrico Lunghi regarding the censorship: "It only remains for the art world and journalists (at any rate, those who don’t just parrot the official press releases) to ask themselves what values the Venice Biennale is promoting if it censors an artistic project in such a dubious and irresponsible manner. Is it up to the Biennale to castrate artists by deciding for them what might offend those whose very existence consists of forever extending the limits of freedom?"

This preemptive self-censorship seems familiar to Americans caught up in the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. Does this censorship suggest an Americanization of European sensibility, or simply the manifestation of personal taste? In any case, a vigorous dialogue around this project that has already begun, and we'll learn a lot from it.

June 4 up-date (sent in by Anila Rubiku):

From an interview of Daniel Birnbaum by Nicola Davide Angerame at
http://www.exibart.com/notizia.asp?IDNotizia=27815&IDCategoria=1&MP=true

"In Italia ci sono stati recenti casi d’intolleranza e censura. Da Cattelan a Milano alla mostra di Sgarbi, sempre a Milano, a quella di Adel Abdessemed a Torino. Dove inizia la libertà dell’arte e degli artisti, e dove deve finire la libertà della politica e della società quando applicano la censura?
Gli artisti dovrebbero essere liberi quando creano i loro lavori, ma sono anche semplicemente esseri umani, che dovrebbero mostrare rispetto verso gli altri esseri umani, come deve fare chiunque. Non ci sono misteri. Nella maggior parte dei casi è una questione di decenza." (I would translate this but my Italian is a bit rusty, it would only be an approximation...)

Milwaukee / Chicago

I was in Milwaukee a few weeks ago and was lucky to catch the newly-configured Chicago Art Fair and the Next Art Fair for younger galleries. As expected, the art quality varied, but the Merchandise Mart's low ceilings allowed for a surprisingly refreshing, intimate experience (oh, that and attendance was modest, a sign of the economy or that the space self-selects its audience?) Kevin and I ran into many pals--Megan Riley of Megan Riley Projects, Chicago (me), Jen Bekman of Jen Bekman gallery, New York (him), curators from the mid-west, etc... The fairs are rebuilding after Chicago was trumped by New York and Miami, and indeed I found some good work.

Like:
Edward Lipski's Freak and Child, 2005 (above)
Timothy Hutching's video of murderous explorers Player vs. Player, 2008 (below)



Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich's inflatable tank (I'm a sucker for the blow-ups)



The last art-related thing I did during my ASU-"sponsored" furlough was attend the opening of Milwaukee's latest addition to the young gallery scene, the Green Gallery (East), run by artist / entrepreneurs John Riepenhoff and Jake Palmert. The show--Lovable Like Orphan Kitties and Bastard Children--was a survey of contemporary art being made in LA.



The show was an irreverent, thoughtful snapshot of one of the most complex and dynamic arts communities--dare I say--on the globe? (I lived in LA from 1988-1997, and while the community has broadened and gone international, it allows for an astonishing range of artistic productions).

What the Green Gallery (located in an old gas statation? dry cleaner?) means to me is that the ecosystem in Milwaukee is sufficiently mature, and the artist community sufficiently diverse, to allow jewels like the Green Gallery to exist--let's hear it for pioneering galleries Hermetic, Jody Monroe and Hotcakes for paving the way!

Megan mentioned to me that she tried to weave together the Chicago and Milwaukee communities while helping to set up the educational programs for the Chicago Art fair--this pairing doubles the value of both communities. As art worlds dissolve and reconfigure themselves, this is surely a powerful combination.

(Henceforth, and unless otherwise noted, all pictures are by the author. This last picture, of Green Gallery, is by Kevin J. Miyazaki, a professional using an amateur's camera.)

Favorite Estonian installation

installation of works by Villu Jaanisoo at KUMU Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia (photo MK)

While fumbling about the lovely but disorienting spaces at the KUMU Art Museum, I found this room.

The artist, the beloved Estonian modern master Villu Jaanisoo, created these busts between the 1920s and 1950s. While the variety of materials and size shifts created a nice coloristic effect, it was the installation itself that really wowed me.

The curator used the tall walls and narrowing, triangular pinch of the gallery to create a dynamic, purposeful installation. That the artist's work from different decades of real vs. historical figures was intermixed reflects how we live our lives--time is jumbled about, eras are unfairly compared, fictional characters play as large a role in our world view as do real people. It is not just the past that affects our present but the future taints our lives today as well.

I don't read Estonian so I can only guess at the notes on the works, and how this artist represents and preserves the Estonian character, but this installation shows that, when curators read space correctly and respond physically to three-dimensional space, their work adds to the conceptual meaning of an art work.

PHX

© Franco Mondini-Ruiz detail "Porcelain Party," April 9, 2009, Matador restaurant, Phoenix

March (and April) madness ended last night with a blow-out "Porcelain Party" by Franco Mondini-Ruiz. The project--curated by Joe Baker, with help from me and Peter Held--set up at the Matador restaurant in downtown Phoenix was part (early) rave, part flea market, part Tupperware party, but mostly a complex complement / commentary on the NCECA conference in town this week.

Franco dips into the clash of his own hybrid background--Italian and Mexican--by creating mixed objects gleaned from local antique stores (with some pre-fab resin food stuffs). The objects comment gleefully on art's high and low, and on the specific recipe of class, race and gender issues of Phoenix.

This project brought together multiple communities--Latino, Native American, art world and music--to give the NCECA visitors a truly unique impression of the city. April begins with a bang.

How to make the site specific

© Matts Leiderstam "Papago Park," 2007

It's a tricky business, commissioning artists to do site specific work that has some resonance with your local audience. I had invited Matts Leiderstam to do a new work as part of a Scandinavian show I co-organized with Silvia Cubina, then-director of The Moore Space in Miami (other commissioned artists include Ragna Robertsdottir, Egill Saebjornsson and Torgeir Husevaag). Because landscape is such a primary material in the Sonoran desert, because it is the way people around the globe know Arizona (through early photography and Westerns), Matts's work seemed appropriate to grapple with a contemporary range of references that can be found in the landscape--beyond the cliches of surburban sprawl and golf courses littered with retirees.

Through his interest in history--both official and unofficial--Matts chose a promontory in Papago Park to photograph through his Claude lenses--lenses developed by an English inventor to help tourists find picturesque landscapes, like those of Claude Lorraine, father of landscape painting--Papago Park, Phoenix, is home to the zoo, the Desert Botanical Garden, a national guard battery, picnic tables, the phallic tomb of the state's first territorial governor--and is an active cruising site. (There was a WW II prisoner of war camp there, they had a breakout of German marines one Christmas eve, all surrendered or were found with a day or so.)

Matts uncovered histories unknown even to area residents, and thus, made something that resonated for the museum audiences.

Making site specific work is then about working with the right artist, not just the right landscape.

Making the site specific

© Maurizio Cattelan, 1998
Photo: Marilu Knode

We're awaiting the installation of a work (nicknamed "the jellyfish") by Janet Echelman, and despite attempts to defund it last fall, the work will be the first, most significant marker of place in the city of Phoenix. I started thinking about how public art is often reviled when first installed (the Eiffel Tower, Claes Oldenburg / Coosje Van Bruggen's "Shuttlecocks" in front of the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City), although later, the work becomes an icon of said city.

But so many more artists make temporary, ephemeral sculpture that provides an equally intriguing opportunity to become socially engaged in our civic discourse.

Above is a picture I took of a work (unpublished) by Maurizio Cattelan that he did for us at inova (Institute of Visual Arts) in Milwaukee many years ago (show curated by Jerome Sans). When Maurizio's first idea didn't work (he wanted to shoot bootleg movies and screen them), I spent a day with him visiting thrift shops looking for the appropriate clothes for this homeless dummy--Kenneth--which we placed by inova's front door. The public response was truly astonishing, and started me on a path towards working with more non-traditional forms of art in public places.

Responses we got with regards to Kenneth included a call from a young woman who yelled at me, saying she had been afraid to leave her house because of the homeless guy laying by our door. Colleagues on UWM-campus came by to see if they could get Kenneth into a homeless shelter. When it rained I thought to bring him inside, but real world Kenneth wouldn't necessarily have that option. Instead I put an umbrella in his hand--it blew away. One afternoon, within a space of a half-hour, students had posted a sign on Kenneth's coat, protesting the cost of rising tuition (students would go homeless, the note suggested).

Then one weekened, someone stole / kidnapped Kenneth (but left his shoes). It made national and local news. Maurizio thought maybe Kenneth was tired of the attention, or that he had started a march on Washington on behalf of the homeless. The e-mails were hysterical, and added another dimension, for me, to Maurizio's works.

Finally, someone from the Milwaukee police department called to say they had found Kenneth. The detective stopped by to talk about where and how they found him, and when he described what Kenneth was wearing, I had to stop him--they were the wrong clothes. Two missing dummies in Milwaukee at the same time? Perhaps the people (frat boys from across the street perhaps?) changed his clothes before a night on the town? So curious...

Lots of issues came up: institutional responsibility to the public, the artist and the art work; extending art's social engagement with contemporary issues; the role of documentation in preserving visual history in a community's life--these were all embodied in the figure of Kenneth.

Although these types of temporary sculptures do not garner the type of long-term iconic status of a Tour Eiffel, I find the gesture more direct and invigorating. Perhaps with the state of the art market, we'll see more of these gestures.

More on the Middle East

© Ahmet Ogut detail "Somebody Else's Car", 2005, two-screen slide projection

Since my first trip to Egypt, in 1997, to curate Nancy Spero's participation in the 1998 Cairo Biennial, I have returned to the region almost every year since, traveling to Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco and Turkey for studio visits, conferences and arts festivals. From these experiences I have worked with artists as diverse as Ahmet Ogut (in the work above, Ogut transforms a private white car into a police vehicel, and a red car into a cab, the two ubiquitous vehicles found in Turkey), Halil Altindere, Mona Marzouk and Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, who represent the dynamic range of artistic practice in the region. Last year I attended Ashkal Alwan's electrifying conference Home Works IV in Beirut, and invited architect Bernard Khoury to Phoenix as a result to speak about his work. The connection? How to balance the development (or redevelopment) of a city core where public good has a place inside of private benefit (a huge issue in downtown Phoenix, while Beirut continues to recover from the schisms of a civil war).

The growth of resources for the artists and institutions in the Middle East has exploded since 1997, and international attention--mostly from Europe--has allowed for an expanded cultural exchange across political and social traditions. As the US tries to undo much of the harm done over the past eight years by the previous administration, I see organizations such as Townhouse Gallery in Cairo as pivotal in creating a platform for meaningful intellectual dialogue.

Naked or nude

© Kent Monkman "Si je t'aime prends garde a toi," 2007 (top)

© Rebecca Belmore "Extreme," 2003 (bottom)

I attended a day-long seminar with First Nations Canadian artist Kent Monkman and Dr. Gerald McMaster, a First Nations curator / artist, and currently curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The topic was the male Indian body in contemporary art. Monkman undoes cliches about landscape and indigenous peoples in 18th and 19th century American and European paintings, adding an exquisite homoerotic twist to his newly-minted tales of love and lust in the forest.

Of course the meaning of the female Indian body in contemporary art is the companion piece to the discussion, and Anishinabe / Canadian artist Rebecca Belmore's installations and performances explore issues of identity, borders and gender. Like many other indigenous artists working around the globe, Belmore and Monkman investigate urgent, relevant social issues while making gorgeous objects.