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is the main screen of the software that allows Click here for more visuals and a virtual walk through of the show. |
Shown at Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art, (MASS MoCA) North Adams, Massachusetts. January 26 - May 19, 2002.
The following text is taken from the "art card" that accompanied this exhibition.
(Your Show Here) invites gallery visitors to use computer software to create their own exhibition. Visitors are invited to sit at the computer terminal, browse a databae of twentieth-century art images, choose up to five, write a curatorial statement, and title the show. The digital images are instantly projected at the sacle of the original art pieces, creating a gallery of virtual art works at the click of a button. The exhibition's duration is fleeting, since each show is replaced by that of the next "visiting curator", but a print-out of your selections can be posted on the bulletin board near the gallery entrance.
Ultimately, (Your Show Here) reveals the power of images to tell vastly different stories and disclose conflicting truths, highlighting the subjectivity inherent in arranging, presenting, and finally, viewing works of art. In this case, viewing is not static, passive, and scripted, as it often is in the museum context. Instead, without the active participation of the visitor there would be nothing to view.
The power of museums to create history by the authority of their presentation has been pointed out by both critics and artists. The art historian Mieke Bal, for example, posed the question "Who is speaking?" in a critique of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and African-American artist Fred Wilson answered her question, after a fastion, with a loud "I am" in his installation Mining the Museum at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore in 1992.1 Speaking in his voice rather than that of the Historical Society, Wilson displayed various objects in the Society's collection to underscore histories of racism and slavery. In a vitrine entitled "metalwork", for example, Wilson juxtaposed a silver soup turine with a pair of shackles from the same period. He used objects to make a powerful historical point. Museums often do the same thing, if less provocatively, and with less transparency.
(Your Show Here) has taken this transparency debate to a new level, in which MASS MoCA relinquishes curatorial authority to its audience. In assuming the role of curator, you will have to contemplate what to show (and what to leave out), how to juxtapose and place images, and what your exhibition's theme is. Pictures do not appear on gallery walls, and installations do not materialize in rooms, without reflecting factors such as aesthetic taste; monetary and symbolic value; educational, social, and political agendas; and, in contemporary art institutions, perhaps, a preference for the new and the hip.
While the responsibility, gratification, and, of course, fun of organizing an exhibition now lie with the visitor, the apparent freedom of choice (Your Show Here) offers is constrained by the 140 images that comprise the database. This archive has been selected - with the same bias mentioned above - according to specific criteria. These images interact well while retaining some eclecticism and range from modernist icons to obscure and peripheral works of the twentieth century. Limits on this database include one image per artist, a time frame of 1900 to the present, and the spatial limits of the projected fields, which mandated works no larger than 6 x 8 feet.
This exhibition was funded by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in suuport of MASS MoCA and the Williams/Clark Graduate Program in the History of Art.
Thanks to Chris Pennock for creating the software that has made this project a reality. MASS MoCA also gratefully acknowledges the conceptual and technical support of Chris Pennock and his associates, Nina Dinoff in New York City, who also contributed the graphic design for the interface and project logo, and Scott Paterson, information architect.
1. Bal, Mieke. "Telling, Showing, Showing Off." Double Exposures: The Subjects of Cultural Analysis. New York: Routledge, 1996, p. 16.
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Massachusetts Museum
of Modern Art, North Adams, Massachusetts Nina Dinoff, Graphic
Designer Scott Paterson, Information
Architect |