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http://www.jstor.org
In
August
1997 fifteen
curators from Africa, Asia, Australia,
Latin America,
Europe,
and the United States met at the Rockefeller Foundation's Conference
and
Study
Center in
Bellagio, Italy,
to consider the
rapidly developing
field
of
international
contemporary
art exhibitions. Conceived
by
Noreen Tomassi,
director of Arts International,
and Tomas Ybarra-Frausto, associate director of
Arts & Humanities at the Rockefeller Foundation, the conference
was
designed
to enable curators
struggling
with the
extraordinary
and in some
ways unpre-
cedented
challenges posed by
international
contemporary
art exhibitions to
share their ideas and concerns. The moderator was Kinshasha Holman Conwill,
director of the Studio Museum in Harlem,
who
helped shape
the
program.
Each
curator made a
presentation,
as did
Betye
Saar,
representing
the artists'
per-
spective,
and Saskia Sassen,
professor
of urban
planning
at the
University
of
Chicago
and an
expert
on
globalism.
Tomassi asked if I would be interested
in
attending
the conference and then
writing
a
report
that would be made
available that fall to the
participants,
as well as to other curators and funders.
Michael Brenson
The Curator's Moment
Tomassi knew of
my
interest in international exhibitions
when I worked for the New York Times
(1982-91).
In
Barcelona in
1993
I had attended
Crossing
Cultures,
one
of several international conferences Arts International
has
organized
to consider
pressing
issues in art and cul-
ture. I had written on the issue of art and
community
and had worked as a consultant for the Rockefeller Foundation,
which financed
the
Bellagio
conference, an event that was remarkable in its
thoughtfulness,
intensity,
and candor.
Introduction
After
listening
to heads of international biennials and triennials
speak
with one
another for three
days
about their
hopes
and concerns,
it was clear to me that
the era of the curator has
begun.
The
organizers
of these exhibitions,
as well
as other curators around the world who work across cultures and are able to
think
imaginatively
about the
points
of
compatibility
and conflict
among
them,
must be at once aestheticians,
diplomats,
economists, critics, historians,
politi-
cians,
audience
developers,
and
promoters. They
must be able to communicate
not
only
with artists but also with
community
leaders,
business executives,
and
heads of state.
They
must be comfortable with
people
who have devoted their
lives to art and culture,
with
people
who neither like nor trust art, and with
people
who
may
be
willing,
if
they
are convinced that art serves their interests
or is
sufficiently
connected to their lives,
to be won over
by
an artist or an
exhibition. As much as
any
artist, critic,
or museum director,
the new curator
understands, and is able to articulate,
the
ability
of art to touch and mobilize
people
and
encourage
debates about
spirituality, creativity, identity,
and the
nation. The texture and tone of the curator's voice,
the voices it welcomes or
excludes,
and the
shape
of the conversation it sets in motion are essential to
the texture and
perception
of
contemporary
art. The focus on Catherine David
throughout
the one hundred
days
of her
1997
Documenta X was not an aberra-
tion. For the foreseeable future,
the ambitions, methodologies,
and
personal
styles
of the curators
responsible
for
major
international
contemporary
art exhi-
bitions will be as essential to their content as
any
artist's work.
Throughout
the
16 WINTER
1998
three
days
of
meetings
in
Bellagio,
Germano Celant, cura-
tor of
contemporary
art at the Solomon R.
Guggenheim
Museum and the commissioner of the
1997
Venice
Biennale,
insisted that the
language
and
identity
of the
curator be considered with a new kind of seriousness. He
was
right.
In the midst of the recent
chapter
in the
history
of
museums that was
largely
defined
by
the ethnic- and
identity-based
exhibition, Mari
Carmen Ramirez, curator
of Latin American art at the
Jack
S. Blanton Museum
of Art in
Austin, Texas,
and another
participant
in the
Bellagio meetings, recognized
the
importance
of curators
working
across and between cultures. In her
1994 essay
"Brokering
Identities: Art Curators and the Politics of
Cultural
Representation,"
an
analysis
of the
history
of
Latin American and Latino exhibitions in the United
States,
she noted the "transformation of the curator of
contemporary
art from behind-the-scenes aesthetic arbiter
to central
player
in the broader
stage
of
global
cultural
politics."
If this transformation was evident to her in
1994,
how much more
complete
it must have been in
1997,
the
year
of five international
biennials-Cairo,
Havana, Venice, Istanbul, and
Johannesburg-as
well as
Documenta. Look at the issues embedded in these exhibi-
tions: nationalism versus internationalism or transnation-
alism;
indigenous
cultures versus
global
media; handmade
traditions versus
technological
networks;
respect
for the
intimate
experience
of art versus a belief in curatorial
interventions that can make the artistic
message,
and
sometimes even that
intimacy
itself,
broadly
accessible;
belief in the intrinsic value of art versus an
obligation
to
put
art in the service of
extraordinary
social and
political
needs. The
urgency
of these issues underlines the chal-
lenges facing
the curatorial
profession
to think
deeply
about
multiple
audiences and to allow individual curator-
ial
perspectives
to be
invigorated by radically,
even shock-
ingly,
different
experiences
of
space
and
time,
memory
and
history.
These unframable
high
stakes biennial
pro-
jects
do not reward curatorial business as usual. Like the
independent
curator
Mary Jane Jacob,
whose
public
art
projects
outside
galleries
and museums
propose reimagin-
ing
the site, the audience for, and
perhaps
even the nature
of the art
experience,
the biennial curator cannot succeed
without a hands-on involvement in
every aspect
of his or
her
program.
For the new curator, the clear-cut division
of
responsibilities
between the curatorial, administrative,
education, marketing,
and
public
information
departments
that has been a
reality
in
large
museums in the United
States for well over a decade-a division that has tended
to detach
many
curators from their audiences and blind
them to the nonaesthetic interests their museums are serv-
ing-is
inconceivable. If this division
exists,
meeting
their
responsibilities
is
impossible.
While
large
international
contemporary
art exhibi-
tions are
helping
to
expand
the roles and
responsibilities
of the curator,
many
artists find themselves
having
to
develop
in aesthetic and
political
climates of
increasing
suspicion
and constraint.
Throughout
the United States the
political right
is
ridiculing
artists, and even the idea of the
artist; within the art
community,
there is
widespread
con-
tempt
for
any tendency
to romanticize the
individuality,
personality,
hand, and heroism of the artist.
Monograph
and
biography
are now the most
disparaged
forms of art
history.
Not
surprisingly,
much of the most
respected
new art in
Europe
and the United States is defined
by
a
noticeable
degree
of self-effacement. It is intended to
draw attention to
ideas,
processes,
and situations-not to
itself as an
object (if
that is what it
is)
or to its makers.
In October
1997 I
heard
Kristaps
Gelzis,
a
young sculptor
in
Riga,
Latvia,
say
that he liked Documenta X because "it
was not concerned with the artist but with
process,"
and
Andy Goldsworthy,
an
English landscape sculptor,
remark,
while
constructing
one of his
delicate,
undulating
walls
of unattached
stones,
at the Storm
King
Art Center in
upstate
New
York,
that he wanted to make work that
"would take credit for itself." In other
words, as the cura-
tor becomes a more and more visible
player
in the world
of
contemporary
art, more artists are
concealing
their
egos
to
prove
to the art
community,
to the
general public,
and
to themselves that
they
are
worthy
of
respect.
At the same
time, the
presentation
of art is more
dependent
on the curator than ever. There seems to be
a consensus that when art from one culture is shown in
another,
it cannot
speak
for itself. Because of the inevit-
ably
loaded nature of the
responses
of a
museum-goer
in
New
York, let's
say,
or
Washington,
D.C.,
to
contempo-
rary
art from
Zaire, Colombia,
or
Cambodia, the idea of a
museum's
presenting
an
object
from one culture in such
a
way
that it would offer an
intensely private object-to-
visitor encounter to someone from another culture, in
which no one or
nothing
else is welcome and viewers
are free to
respond
as
they please,
is
increasingly
unac-
ceptable
in the United States. Sufficient clues must be
given
to enable viewers to orient themselves to the work
and to
provide viewers unfamiliar with the conditions in
which it was created at least some sense of what it means
17 art
journal
to
appreciate
it on its own terms. Hand in hand with an
awareness of the
challenges
of
presenting
art from one
culture in a
very
different cultural context is a
growing
awareness within museums that art exhibited in
any
museum is seen
by many people
who feel
they
have little
or no access to it and that
they
need to be
encouraged
to feel that the aesthetic
experience belongs
to them as
much as to
anyone
else. The
perplexing
combination
of
curiosity
and
distrust,
respect
and
exploitation,
that
defines
many
institutional
approaches
to audience cannot
be
explored
here. What needs to be stated is that the
increasing
institutional awareness of the
importance
of
the audience has made curators more visible as mediators
between art and its
publics.
The
increasing centrality
of the curator has also been
reinforced
by
the
emergence
of installation as the stan-
dard form in which
contemporary
artists around the
world are
working.
Installations involve
selecting
and
arranging
in a
space
often shared
by
visitors.
They may
also involve
writing
and
educating.
Installations were
designed,
in
part,
to contextualize and therefore
empower
themselves
by inscribing
within them an awareness and
even the look of a
gallery
or museum.
By
so
doing,
however,
they implicitly acknowledge
the
curator's
in-
escapable authority. Blurring
the line between artist and
curator builds into the
experience
of art a
heightened
awareness of the curator's
reality.
I would not be
emphasizing
the
importance
of the
curator if I did not believe that in a decade that has
blurred the distinction between artists and curators, cura-
tors have become more like artists. What
gives
biennials
their emotional and intellectual
pressure
is the sense of
curatorial mission. The candor with which
many
curators
are
willing
to reveal their doubts as well as their certain-
ties
gives
these spectacles
some
possibility
of a human
scale. The
ability
of curators to see these doubts as
sources of creative
energy gives
their exhibitions some-
thing
of their
hopefulness
and freedom. Their concerns
for the wounds of countries
trying
to use culture to
rebuild and reinvent themselves
gives
some biennials
poignancy.
And the inevitable solitude of curators
throughout
the
development
of their exhibitions, despite
the teams
they assemble, suggests
to me that their situa-
tions are not unlike those of
many
of the most
significant
artists of the twentieth
century,
whose abilities to
bring
something necessary
into the world
required
not
only
vision but also an inexhaustible
supply
of belief, focus,
resiliance, and nerve.
I am not
saying
curators are identical to artists.
Because of the
fragile
institutional
machinery
most bien-
nial curators must work
within, which
prevents
them
from
taking anything
for
granted,
and the nationalistic
needs to which
every major
international exhibition, even
Documenta, must
respond,
these curators cannot be as
independent
as
artists,
some of whom are free to make
work that can
support
or offend
anyone
or
anything.
It
goes
without
saying
that curators cannot create an exhibi-
tion
experience
that offers the
intimacy
and
intensity
of a
painting, sculpture,
or
photograph.
However,
they
can
bring
into their
projects,
and to the issues that drive
them,
many,
if not
all,
of the emotional and intellectual
components
of the artistic
process.
The curatorial and the
artistic
imaginations may
not be
identical,
but the border
between them has become harder to define.
Yet I have so
many questions.
How did we reach the
point
where we
expect
art to
respond
to the needs and
aspirations
of
peoples
and nations? Are there limits to
what art can be asked to do?
Why
have the
expectations
for art increased at a time when the individual artist is
feared,
not
only
in the United States but in
many
other
countries as well,
and the artist's voice is
being systemati-
cally
deconstructed? What are the
political implications
of
approaching
art as a means to an end,
rather than an
end in
itself,
or both a means and an end? What is the
responsibility
of the curator to ensure
respect
for the
integrity
of a work of
art,
which can survive,
miracul-
ously,
even if the art
points everywhere
but toward itself
and all the walls between it and the world around it seem
dissolved? At what
point
does
approaching
a work of art
in terms of what it can
do,
rather than in terms of what
makes it unlike
any
other work,
or indeed
anything
else,
bring
to mind
nightmares
of instrumental
thinking?
Several times in the last
couple
of
years,
after
listening
to
people speak
about the
profound representational
and
national needs art is
expected
to
meet,
I have found
my-
self
yearning
to curate an exhibition about an eccentric
visionary
tradition in U.S. art that includes loners like
Forrest Bess and Albert York, whose small
paintings
are
obsessive, hypnotic, intensely personal
worlds. I have
also dreamed of an exhibition in which materials are
approached,
not as
things
to be used, but as realities in
themselves that allow artists to
physically
enter the
per-
ceptual process
and to introduce themselves and their
audiences to the
intimacy
and otherness of matter. I am
profoundly
committed to the effort to
reintegrate
art
with life, or, in cultures where
they
have
always
been
18 WINTER
1998
integrated,
to continue to articulate and
expand
their
connectedness,
but I believe the
particularity
of art must
be
respected.
Sustained attention to the life of an
object
is no less of a moral act to me than sustained attention to
situations and communities artists enable me to enter.
Biennials cannot succeed unless
they engage
their com-
munities and make
enough
sense within them that the
communities infuse the exhibitions with a vibrant and
almost
palpable
sense of
place;
but
respecting
artists who
are determined to retain their
independence
from audi-
ences and
categories,
and
being
able to
argue
for the
importance
of this
resistance,
are also essential to a bien-
nial's
potential
for
growth.
I believe the best
way
to write
concretely
about the
issues that affected me with the most
immediacy
in the
Bellagio meetings
is
by responding
to the curators' for-
mulations,
to their anxieties and
insights,
to their
eager-
ness for
exchange.
Since I am a writer,
this
commentary
was
shaped by my response
to
language,
in
particular
to
words the curators used that continue to
occupy
a
great
deal of
space
in
my
head. The
intensity
with which I
have lived with these words since
leaving Bellagio
located
my personal struggle
with the
meanings
of the confer-
ence. I am aware of the mistakes that can result from
basing
a
commentary
on discussions of some of these
exhibitions rather than on firsthand
experience
of the
Johannesburg,
Havana, Istanbul,
or Dakar biennials. I
realize that the curators'
understanding
of some of the
issues I discuss
may
be
very
different from or far more
developed
than mine. I also realize that the
primary
concerns of some or
many
of the curators
may
be
only
peripherally
related to those addressed here. Even when
this is the
case,
I
hope
this
commentary
will make it eas-
ier for those who read it to
respond
better to their own
situations,
to our situations,
to the situations of so
many
people trying
to come to terms with the
meanings
and
possibilities
of art and culture in a
post-Cold
War,
post-
colonial, fin-de-siecle moment,
in which I am
surely
not
the
only
one who feels he is
continually picking up
and
losing
the threads of the conversation,
absorbing
and los-
ing
its voices, believing
it is
my
conversation while won-
dering
whose conversation I'm in.
Transparency
The discussions in
Bellagio
underlined the
importance
of
several related constellations of words. The constellation
that includes
impurity, partiality,
and
incompleteness
suggests
the
rejection
of
any assumption
of absolute
authority,
conclusive
knowledge,
or human or cultural
essence. Another constellation includes words like
hybridity, reciprocity, negotiation,
and reconciliation,
suggesting
the
pressing
need
many people
feel to listen
to one another and to
acknowledge
and communicate
with realities different from their own. These constella-
tions are familiar and,
among many
cultural communities
in the United States,
widely accepted.
Their usefulness in
helping people
to consider themselves and their relation-
ships
to others in an
increasingly
decentralized
yet
inter-
connected world is,
to me,
incontestable. These constella-
tions of words
clarify
not
only
the attitudes of curators
but also the
complexity
and the
general goals
of
many
of
the
big
international
contemporary
art exhibitions. It was
apparent
from the
meetings
that all the biennials are
hybrids, shaped by
different interests,
some of them
competing. Many
are conceived within a nationalistic
framework intended to
develop
national confidence and
pride, yet
the art
they present may argue against
nation-
alism and even
against
the idea of a nation. It was also
apparent
that if it were
possible
to
produce
a cross sec-
tion of the structure of
any
of these exhibitions,
it would
show
layer upon layer
of
negotiation
and reconciliation.
And
many
of the curators want the actual exhibitions to
inspire
both local
dialogues
and
dialogues
with other
biennials and nations.
What concerns me here is a third constellation. It
includes words like
self-consciousness,
openness,
and
transparency
and
phrases
such as
"declaring yourself."
Several of the curators
emphasized
the
importance
of
self-consciousness,
which
implies
a
sophisticated
aware-
ness of the histories and
implications
of the ideas
they
are
working
with and of the economic and
political sys-
tems
they
are
working
within,
as well as an
ability
to
build this awareness into their curatorial
presentations.
Vishakha N. Desai,
director of the
galleries
at the Asia
Society
in New
York,
asserted that curators must "own
up
to taste,"
define their
positions,
and
explain
where
they
are
coming
from and what
they
cannot
yet
under-
stand. She
spoke
about
"recognizing
our own
fallibility"
and
sharing
that
recognition
with audiences. "We are as
much
products
as creators," she said. For Okwui
Enwezor, the artistic director of the
i997
Johannesburg
Biennale, "part
of the
responsibility
of the curators is to
say,
This is what I am
doing,
and it is not the final
word." In a
private conversation, Enwezor
spoke
about
"creating
a
space
of
vulnerability."
This wonderful
phrase
reflects the wish of
many
of these curators to conceive an
19 art
journal
ANN
.... ... ...
rol
~seN
A.;
.. . .. . .
................
....... .... .... ...
... .........
.
.. .
.. .
15A.i
. .
. . . . . .
-I ~ III~rr ~ I ~.
. . . . . . . . . .
.~ ~
. . ..... li t
Alexis
Rodriguez
Duarte.
Untitled, 1997. Color
pho-
tograph
from the forth-
coming
book
May
1997.
Taken in Havana in
May
1997,
this
photograph
shows the
city during
the
Bienal.The
capitol
build-
ing
is to the left and a
billboard
advertising
the
Bienal is to the
right
of
center.
20 WINTER
1998
exhibition
experience
in which
intimacy, accessibility,
and self-disclosure are welcomed, and audiences are
encouraged
to
express
their ideas and
feelings by partici-
pating
in the collective
production
of
meaning.
The
importance
of
participation
and
interactivity
in Docu-
menta X
helped
convince some of the curators in
Bellagio
that,
in the words of
Virginia
Perez-Ratton,
the director
of the Museo de Arte
y
Disefio
Contemporineo
in San
Jose,
Costa Rica,
"Documenta was
coming
into another
century
with this show." This constellation of words
indicates how much the
generation
of curators now com-
ing
into
power
believes in
responsibility
and
generosity.
It also reveals how essential
hospitality
and trust have
become to the success of most ambitious cross-cultural
curatorial endeavors.
The issue for me is not the
spirit
of these words or
their
importance
to this artistic moment. The issue is
ensuring
that the
difficulty
of
being
self-conscious,
of
making
oneself
transparent,
of
declaring
oneself,
is
understood. When I
recently
heard U.S.
politicians
at an
economic conference talk about the need to be more
"open
and
transparent,"
it was clear to me how
easily
these words can become conventions. One of the
prob-
lems is that words or
phrases calling
for
greater openness
and
transparency
tend to be understood
politically,
eco-
nomically, sociologically,
or
aesthetically. Rarely
are
they
understood to be
meaningful
within all of these frame-
works. Even more
important, rarely
are
they
understood
psychologically.
The confidence with which the words
are now
being
used in the field
suggests
less an
unending
process
in which
any
sense of control is
ultimately
illuso-
ry
than
finality,
as if it is
possible
to declare oneself once
and for all in that moment,
or as if it is
enough
to be
able to declare oneself in such a
way
as to
get
what one
desires from a
specific
situation. As a
result,
these words
tend to
promise
the
relinquishing
of
authority
without
delivering
it. If the
difficulty
of the words is not acknow-
ledged,
then their use can become
pat
and
manipulative.
When this is the
case,
they
do not become a
way
of
sharing power-or,
in the words of the Brazilian artist
Mauricio Dias, of
"exchanging
territories"-but rather
simply
of
reinforcing power
at the curatorial, institution-
al, or
political
end.
The
currency
of words like
openness
and
transpar-
ency
leads me to ask, How much can we reveal and how
much must we hide, and how does the line between
revealing
and
concealing
structure the tone and conversa-
tion curators are
trying
to create? How much does
being
open
and
transparent challenge power
and how much
does it reinforce it? What is the relation between trans-
parency
and
mastery?
What kind of
sharing
of
power
is
really
desirable,
or
possible,
within an exhibition that
must communicate
authority
to be credible? Which
artists, curators, and
peoples
are
likely
to
support
these
words,
and which are not? Is a curator
trying
to
put
a
biennial on the
map
in a
part
of the world
largely
re-
moved from the immediate
possibility
of economic and
political power
more or less
likely
to
argue
for these
words than a curator in a
country
where such
power
is
taken for
granted?
What does it mean to "declare
yourself'?
Does it
mean
being up
front about the
goals
of a show? And is
that
possible
when the
goals
of these exhibitions
may
be
manifold,
from
supporting
art and artists in one
place,
to
providing
an overview of the
contemporary
art
situation,
to
putting
an entire
culture,
country,
or even
part
of the
world on the international art
map?
Does
"declaring
yourself"
mean
defining
taste when an exhibition driven
by
both transnational awareness and national needs will
always go beyond
individual taste? Does it mean
sharing
with audiences the
ideological premises
and aims of an
exhibition
likely
to overflow
any ideological
framework
in which
anyone
tries to
put
it?
Arguing
for a
particular
kind of art and for
thinking
about it?
Situating
the exhi-
bition within the
history
of exhibition
approaches
and
curatorial
methodologies? Historicizing
the exhibition
and its
place
within the tradition of that biennial and of
the
city
itself, as Paulo Herkenhoff did in
Bellagio
in his
cogent
overview of the
1998
Sdo Paulo
Bienal,
of which
he is chief curator?
Discussing funding
sources and defin-
ing
the
problems
and
compromises
that are inevitable in
biennials,
and how these
compromises
end
up shaping
the show?
What about the
personal implications
of
openness
and
transparency?
Do these words mean
defining
oneself
in
race, class,
and
gender
terms-terms that are
evolving
all the time? Do
they
mean
defining
oneself in terms of
geography,
of
family history,
of the
psychological
and
social formation of one's
style?
What about individual
ambition? How is that talked about? And the kind of
obsessiveness and narcissism that, as Herkenhoff indicat-
ed, are inextricable and indeed
necessary components
of
most
meaningful
curatorial ventures?
In short, while words and
phrases
like
"declaring
yourself"
and
"making yourself transparent"
can
help
establish a climate of
exchange
and
engagement, they
do
21 art
journal
not,
in
themselves,
lead to what I think most of the cura-
tors want to
encourage
but are also somewhat
wary
of
encouraging:
risk. In
addition,
they
do
not,
by
them-
selves,
acknowledge
that the candor and
honesty many
of
the curators were
calling
for
depend
not
only
on intro-
spection
and
goodwill
but on
performance
and
style.
In
the best
memoirs, which have become one of the domi-
nant
literary
forms of this
time, candor is
always
both
exposure
and creation.
Openness
and
transparency
must
have a form to
inspire people
to believe in
them,
and
when
they
have that form
they
are
already
both an un-
masking
and a transformation.
Just
as
important
as the
will to be
open,
then,
is the form in which a curator is
able to be
open.
This form, in
turn,
will affect the tone
and texture of the exhibition. The
ability
to be
open
and
transparent
in
ways
that
inspire
trust and risk is one of
the talents that can link curatorial and artistic creation.
The ultimate test of the form
may
be
whether,
and in
what
ways,
it allows itself to be
open
to
question.
As Desai
recognized,
these words lead
directly
into
the
identity
issue.
"Making transparent
and self-conscious
brings identity
to the
fore," she said. At the same
time,
the words
expose
the immense
complexity
of the
concept
of
identity. Anyone using
this constellation of words
is,
in
effect,
acknowledging
this
complexity.
He or she is
also
suggesting
that words like
negotiation,
reconcilia-
tion,
and
hybridity apply
not
just
to
people's
relations
to others and to the world around them but to the
pro-
cesses of
everyone's
inner life. These words and
phrases
-openness, transparency,
self-consciousness,
declaring
yourself-therefore
have the
potential
to restore the radi-
cality
that has been
largely
lost from the other two con-
stellations of words. When the difficulties of these words
emerge,
the
meanings
of
hybridity, negotiation, reciproc-
ity,
and
partialness
become dramatic. Self-consciousness,
openness,
and
transparency
call attention to an
instability
and
danger
that seems so much of the moment and
yet
so basic to the human condition that it is both
topical
and
primal.
At the same
time, these words
pose
a
ques-
tion
many
artists and curators are
struggling
with: How
can awareness and
acceptance
of
instability
and uncer-
tainty
become a source of
community, knowledge,
won-
der, and revelation?
Heroic/Nonheroic
Although
the constellations of words that
shaped
the dis-
cussions of curatorial
identity
in
Bellagio
are
insistently,
even
adamantly, nonheroic, the exhibitions discussed are,
with the
exception
of the Venice Biennale and the
Carnegie
International, both of which have been around
since the nineteenth
century,
heroic at their cores. In the
biennials that have
emerged
since the Havana Bienal was
inaugurated
in
1984,
art is a means that enables curators
to work toward
breaking
the isolation of their
peoples
and
regions
and
redefining
national and international
relationships.
In most of these
exhibitions,
art is also seen
as a means of
improving society
and
making
the world
better. Enwezor
expressed
his
hope
that the Second
Johannesburg
Biennale would be "a celebration of South
African
independence"
that worked toward the "recon-
nection of South Africa to the world." Remi
Sagna,
the
secretary general
of the
1998
Dakar
Biennial, defined one
aim of his show as
making
Dakar a
pan-African
center.
Herkenhoff said the
goals
of his
1998
Bienal included
"the
formation of the
gaze
of
young
Brazilians" and re-
forming
Sdo Paulo's institutions. "It's not for art's
sake,"
he said. "It's for the sake of the education of
society."
Caroline Turner, the director of the first Asia-Pacific
Triennial of
Contemporary
Art in
1993,
in
Brisbane,
spoke
of the
importance
of
educating
Australians about
the
changing identity
of
Australia, "which
is no
longer
a
Western
outpost,"
and,
by
so
doing,
to
"change
the
way
Australians see the
region through
the art." For
Llilian
Llanes
Godoy,
the director of the Centro Wifredo Lam in
Havana and the
organizer
of all five Havana
biennials,
"art
is
very important
for the survival of
humanity."
She
is convinced her biennial and other exhibitions of this
genre
can contribute to
"the
construction of a more
balanced world."
For the curators in
Bellagio,
as a
group,
a more bal-
anced world is not
possible
without more
equal repre-
sentation in the corridors of cultural
power. Margaret
Archuleta,
curator of fine arts at the Heard Museum in
Phoenix,
made clear that her
responsibility
at the meet-
ings,
"and it's a
heavy responsibility,"
was to
speak
for
Native Americans who are almost
always
excluded from
the most
prominent
international artistic events. "How
do
they get
to
participate
in this arena?" she asked. This
was a
question,
she
said,
that she had to answer to her
people. Ramirez, too, like several others, raised the issue
of
representation.
Part of her
job
as a curator and scholar,
she said, is to understand
why
artists from Brazil, let's
say,
are often included in these shows while artists from
Bolivia are left out. For her, it is
imperative
to render
visible the
dynamics
of those international circuits that
give
artists in some countries, and from certain ethnic
22 WINTER
1998
backgrounds,
a
greater
chance of
being recognized
inter-
nationally
than others.
Curators did communicate their
passion
for art and
the
importance
of standards.
Llanes:
"Our aim is to show
the best art in our
country."
Perez-Ratton: "I have been
traveling
for
years,
and I am sick of all the bad Central
American art I saw. . . . We have to
try
and
get
the
qual-
ity people
into these shows." Enwezor: "We have to deal
with issues of art." His
responsibilities
in
Johannesburg,
Enwezor said,
included
making
distinctions in
quality
and
clarifying
the different
ways
in which
"artist"
is defined.
Being
an artist is not the same in Africa as it is in the
United States,
he said,
and not the same in
Nigeria,
where he was born,
as it is in South Africa,
which he
described as "a divided
country, horribly
wounded,"
where the "situation of the artist is a life-and-death
matter." Enwezor indicated his discomfort with
any
cura-
torial or critical
language
that does not allow for the
pos-
sibility
of
using passionate
words,
like love and
beauty,
to describe the encounter with art.
One of the reasons that the Havana Bienal is so
widely respected among
biennial curators is that the aes-
thetic and the
political
were
inseparable
and
equal
in it
from its
inception.
Llanes believed in Cuban and other
Latin American artists. She wanted to
provide
a
space
for
artists "who do not have
space
in the world." She want-
ed to enable countries and
regions
that were
strangers
to
understand one another better. In biennials that
emerged
in the nineties, however,
the
relationship
between aesthe-
tic and
political
needs has been less seamless. The need to
empower
and connect
regions
and
peoples
can seem so
great,
in
fact,
that the first
message
sent out
by
recent
biennials as a
group
is not: see what the art in them and
in their countries or
regions
has achieved and has to
say
to the world,
but rather: consider what the art in them is
intended to do. The issue here is
tricky.
The same
politi-
cal needs and circumstances that define the
urgency
of
these exhibitions-if
they
were
just surveys
of
good
art,
few
people
in other countries,
and
perhaps
even in the
countries where the exhibitions were held,
would feel a
desire to visit them-can also make them seem contrived
and
manipulative.
The same needs that convince some
people
to take these exhibitions seriously
make others
uneasy
with them.
The conflict between a commitment to art and a
commitment to
using
art to serve other
agendas
is not
just
a biennial issue. In the
fiercely
contested
yet
unfor-
gettable "Magiciens
de la terre," in Paris in 1989, its
curator, Jean-Hubert Martin,
in his effort to reveal to the
West the
continuing vitality
of artistic traditions in non-
Western cultures,
installed almost all the non-Western
works in an exhibition context that had little or
nothing
to do with the intentions of the artists who created the
works and the traditions
they
served. In
many
of the
multicultural,
identity-based
exhibitions of the
early
nineties,
there were
layers
of
disjunctiveness:
between
the art
(non-Western
in
origin)
and the site
(often
de-
signed
for
modernism),
between the art and
many
of its
audiences,
between the
personal
nature of some of the
art and the
representational
or liberation causes the cura-
tors were
asking
the exhibition to serve.
While the new biennials
grow
out of the climate that
produced
exhibitions like
these,
they
also reflect the con-
flict between the commitment to and the use of art in
museums whose narrowness
helped
make multicultural
exhibitions
necessary.
In New York,
hardly anyone
in-
formed about art institutions is under the illusion that
any
of the
city's big
museums cares first and foremost for
art,
no matter how brilliant and
sustaining
their exhibi-
tions
may
be or how
exemplary they may
be in
caring
for the art entrusted to them. Curatorial
programs
serve
institutional and board interests and
agendas
that are eco-
nomic, social,
and
political
as much as
they
are aesthetic.
These interests,
more than the needs of artists,
or of
contemporary
art,
are at the forefront of exhibition
pro-
gramming
in
powerhouse
museums in the United States.
Using
art in the service of causes that
may
not be its own
is a
complicitly accepted part
of U.S. museum life. The
news media not
only
refuse to
question
the
ideological
structures of
big
museums,
but hold
up
some of them as
models of aesthetic
responsibility.
The more blatant con-
flict that can exist in biennials between commitment to
art and commitment to
using
art should be considered
with this recent exhibition
history
and with museums
in mind.
The first biennial issue is
legitimation.
"The entire
debate about
legitimation
is at the center of what interna-
tional biennials are
trying
to
do,"
Enwezor said. What is
being legitimated?
Art?
Artists? Curators? Institutions?
Traditions? Cultures? Communities? Cities?
Regions?
Nations? What is the
process
of
legitimation?
It
certainly
involves
giving
exhibition
space
to local and national
artists and
showing
the
people
who live in those loca-
tions what the artists can do. It involves
showing people
from different
parts
of a continent and from other conti-
nents what the artists, cultures, and inhabitants of a
23 art
journal
region
are
capable
of.
By becoming
a
recognized
event,
covered
by newspapers
and art
magazines
and attended
by
people
from the
region
and
perhaps
from all over the
world, the local is validated in a
way
in which a few local
cultures
anywhere-not
even in urban centers like New
York,
Los
Angeles,
Berlin,
or
Tokyo--can
now validate
themselves. While
perceiving
the local's desire and claim
for international
recognition,
international and transna-
tional communities are not
only pressured
into
focusing
attention on the local but
they
are also
given
evidence of
their own
authority by recognizing
the
power
of their
legitimizing machinery
in the local's
eyes.
In this aston-
ishingly complex
and
frequently
collusive
game
that
demands as much self-consciousness as
possible,
the
local,
the
regional,
and the international can
legitimate
one
another.
What
legitimates
most? Is it that art from a
region
appears
in an international exhibition? Is it that a
region
that
may
have been
previously
unidentified in
technologi-
cally
advanced nations with
contemporary
art, and,
as a
result,
with
modernity,
mounts such an exhibition and
therefore takes its
place
in its own
eyes,
and in the
eyes
of the
world,
as a nation with a
rightful
claim to the
pre-
sent? Is it critical
acceptance
and
appreciation? By
whom?
Is it market interest that enables local and
regional
artists
unknown before a biennial to enter
major
collections and
participate
in other international exhibitions? Is it the
effect of the exhibition
two, five,
and ten
years
later on
the artistic life of the
region?
If the Dakar
Biennial,
as
Sagna
defined
it,
has
multiple goals-including making
known the art in Africa without
ghettoizing
Africans,
pro-
viding
a
place
where African artists can meet and debate
with one
another,
and
generating
interest in African art
outside Africa-what most determines success or failure?
If the Havana Bienal is,
in Perez-Ratton's words,
a
"legiti-
mator of Latin American
art"-an
exhibition
many
artists
from Africa and Latin America attend to understand what
other artists from these
regions
are
doing-with
minimal
attention from the mainstream Western news and art
media,
is the biennial nevertheless
enough
of a
legitimat-
ing
force that it should
require,
in its own
eyes
and in
the
eyes
of all those who
depend
on it, no other form
of
legitimation?
What does the value still
placed
on the
machinery
of
recognition
in Western
Europe
and the
United States mean in
postcolonial
exhibitions born from
liberation
struggles?
"What is it we are
making?"
Madeleine
Grynsztein,
curator of
twentieth-century
art at the
Carnegie
Museum
of Art and the director of the
i999 Carnegie
International,
a triennial
exhibition,
asked.
"Why?
For whom?"
While the burden of
legitimation
is
enough by
itself
to
suggest
the heroic nature of the new
biennials,
just
putting
these shows
together
is heroic as well. The
leg-
work,
tenacity,
tact, forbearance,
flexibility,
assertiveness,
and
cunning
demanded of a biennial curator are
startling.
Many
must
negotiate
with unreliable funders and
fight
for
their artists and ideas within
chronically
unstable
political
conditions.
"Every day
the
government changes,"
N.
Fulya
Erdmeci, director of the International Istanbul
Biennial,
said. In
every city
that is the site of a
developing
biennial,
the art infrastructure is limited at best. Erdmeci
spoke
about
asking
for
help
from
everyone, including
her
brother and other
family
members. Her
photographer
was her best friend. She herself
helped
to
pack
the art
"like babies." Llanes
spoke
about the absence of a
budget
from the Cuban
ministry
of culture in the last two Havana
biennials and
"solving problems day by day."
She
got
help
from the
mayor,
institutions,
the
army.
After listen-
ing
to her talk about the
physical
and mental exhaustion
she has felt after her biennials
ended,
describing
her effort
as heroic seems like an understatement.
While
trying
to understand the nature of
biennials,
it
is
important
to consider the contrast between the heroic
nature of most of these exhibitions and the
language
of
modesty
and
humility
curators use to define an
appro-
priate
curatorial
style.
It is also
important
to consider
the contrast between a
profound suspicion
of
religious
responses
to art in some of the curatorial
presentations-
and of the kind of
theological language
that was com-
monplace
not too
long ago
to describe the encounter with
a
painting
or
sculpture-and
the
widespread
faith in the
transformative,
even
healing power
of biennials. Herken-
hoff,
who was incredulous when he cited an
example
of
the eucharistic
language
with which the encounter with
modernist art has sometimes been described,
nevertheless
asserted that the Sdo Paulo Bienal has the
ability
to
give
its
city
a "soul."
Many
of the curators would be
extremely
wary
of
any
messianic view within an artist's work,
yet
many
biennials have a messianic dimension. While the art
many
of the curators in
Bellagio support
is conscious of
itself as art and limited in its
spiritual claims, the causes
the art are intended to serve
may
be as idealistic and
grand
as those served
by early
and
mid-twentieth-century paint-
ings
and
sculptures inspired by spiritual
or
utopian
beliefs.
Is the conflict between faith and
knowledge
still
appropriate
in an
age
in which the
nearly
irresistible
ap-
24 WINTER
1998
peal
of the new
technology
seems to be its combination
of information and
magic? Any large
overview of con-
temporary
art is
likely
to
swing
between faith and con-
sciousness,
balancing
either toward
skepticism
or belief
but never
entirely eliminating
the other side.
Certainly
no
biennial can afford to dismiss the
spiritual
and
hope
to
appeal
to
multiple
audiences. Soon after the
Bellagio
con-
ference,
I visited a
sculpture park
near Vilnius built after
Lithuania's
independence
in
i991
called the
Sculpture
Museum of the Centre of
Europe.
On a
Saturday
after-
noon,
two
couples
came to the
park directly
after their
weddings. They
wanted to touch the
sculptures
and be
photographed
around them.
Clearly they
believed the
sculpture
and the
park
blessed them. I asked its
founding
director,
thirty-year-old
Gintaras Karosas,
how often this
occurred. He
answered,
"All the time." Whether it is in
the art shown or in the belief in what art can
accomplish,
the biennial curator, however
strong
his or her insistence
on self-consciousness and
context,
takes the human faith
in artistic
magic seriously.
The
contrasts,
or
tensions,
within the
languages
of
the
curators,
or between their words and their exhibi-
tions,
lead me to what I see as one of the
major
unre-
solved issues in the new biennials: modernism. In the
three
days
of
meetings
at
Bellagio,
modernism was a
purely negative presence.
It was
acknowledged
as the
driving
cultural force when the Venice Biennale, the
Carnegie
International,
the Sdo Paulo
Bienal,
and Docu-
menta were founded. Once this
acknowledgment
was
made,
declaring
the need for a new biennial model
inevitably
followed. The kind of faith that characterized
the
responses
to a
great
deal of modernist art
by many
people
devoted to it was assumed to be antithetical to
the kind of
engaged, questioning response many
of the
biennial curators are after. Modernist exhibitions like
"Qu'est-ce que
la
sculpture
moderne?" in Paris in
1986
were cited as
examples
of the kinds of narrow and exclu-
sionary
museum
surveys unacceptable
now. For these
curators as a
group,
modernism,
with its essentialism and
its
totalizing, unifying impulses,
was so
objectionable
in
today's postmodern
world that it had to be either ostra-
cized or
singled
out as an
enemy
to be overcome.
But I can't
imagine
these shows without modernism.
Only
in modernism do I find a
comparable
concentration
of belief in
progress, education, healing,
and transforma-
tion.
Only
in modernism do I
consistently
find that acute
awareness of
vulnerability
and limits combined with
heroic ambition and will that is
shaping
the identities of
a number of the biennial curators. This combination has
been a decisive feature in some of the best
European
and
U.S. art from Paul Cezanne and
Jackson
Pollock
through
Bruce Nauman and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
Thinking
about the
identity
of the biennial
curator,
I can't
help feeling
the
presence
of
Joseph Beuys,
even
though
the consensus
among
curators is that he is no
longer
relevant. This
may
well be true for
younger
art-
ists,
and in an exhibition like Documenta X that was
relatively
free of nationalistic
aspirations
and of
any
responsibility
to
represent
the
struggles
of
peoples
and
nations,
Beuys
can,
perhaps,
be
relegated
to the
past.
In
her conversation with Robert
Storr,
curator of contem-
porary
art at the Museum of Modern Art in New
York,
published
in the
May 1997 Artforum, Catherine David
compared Beuys
with Marcel
Broodthaers,
the
highly
self-conscious
artist/curator,
or
curator/artist,
who was
one of the
signposts
of her
show, and made it clear that
Broodthaers,
not
Beuys,
was an artist of this moment.
"I think it's
very
difficult these
days
not to
privilege
Broodthaers'
vision,"
David said. "I think Broodthaers
was not
romantic, but radical and sometimes
cynical.
He
was
very
attentive to
superstructures,
to the limitations of
aesthetic
practice.
. . .
[T]hese days
it's harder to show
Beuys."
She
may
be
right-for
the
purposes
of her show.
In some of the biennials outside the
West, however, it is
Beuys-with
his
concept
of social
sculpture,
concern for
education and
political
activism,
commitment to total
societal
change,
and awareness of the wounds that result
from
fragmented perspectives
and
depersonalized
behav-
ior-who seems to me the more irrefutable
figure.
By raising
the issue of
modernism,
I mean to be nei-
ther
provocative
nor
accusatory. My
aim here is to
try
and make it easier for curators at the end of the
century
to use whatever art and ideas are available to
help
them
develop
and
clarify
their
positions.
I don't think it is
pos-
sible to understand the level of
hope
and faith in these
shows-to understand how curators reached the
point
where
they
believe art can meet such
overwhelming
needs-without
being open
to the
many
sides of mod-
ernism. The curators of these
extraordinarily hybrid
shows cross
many
worlds.
Any
attitude or
position
that
prevents
them from
using any
of the art in this
century
to
clarify
their aims and
develop
their ideas, and to
make sure this
hybridity
can be rendered visible and
ap-
proached
as a source of
knowledge
and
strength, particu-
larly
in countries where modernism has never been seen
in
depth,
is not
helpful.
25 art
journal
The Future
Despite
all the crucial
questions they
raise,
and also
because of these crucial
questions,
biennials born from
deep
cultural and
political
needs will make a difference.
They
will be festivals for art in which all those who
attend will find
something
that
pleases
or moves them.
They
will create new audiences and new bases of infor-
mation.
They
will introduce different
regions
to unfamil-
iar
approaches
to art and
people
in art-world centers to
unfamiliar
regions. They
will foster debate about the
meanings
of national and international and about what it
means to be an artist at the end and at the
beginning
of
a millennium.
They
will
encourage
other cities and
countries to consider
building
artistic and cultural infra-
structures.
They
will make clear that
many
cities and
countries are
capable
of
being
seats of cultural
power.
These exhibitions will also
help
build
respect
for
art and culture
throughout
the world.
Perhaps
the most
important message
of the biennials as a
phenomenon
is
that the curators who
organize
them and the
organiza-
tions that
sponsor
them believe in the future. The newer
biennials
argue implicitly
that the
places
and countries
that house them have a future,
that the future is there to
be built
collectively by people
of
goodwill everywhere
who want to
join
in,
and that in the
process
of
concep-
tualizing
the future,
art matters.
If this
message
is so
moving
to me,
it is
partly
be-
cause
my country
does not seem to believe either in art
or in the future. In the United States,
only
a
relatively
small number of
people
believe that art can have an
impact
on the world. The assault
against
the National
Endowment for the Arts,
the
government agency
that has
given
a limited but decisive amount of
funding
to the
arts since
1965,
has been relentless for nine
years.
The
United States Information
Agency,
which for
years
sent
U.S. artists abroad and enabled them to establish connec-
tions with other artists and
bring
the lessons
they
learned from their contacts back home,
now
provides
almost no
money
for cultural
programming
and
largely
defines U.S. culture in terms of
Hollywood
and the
entertainment industry.
The assault on art and artists in
the U.S. media, and the
exploitation
of the anxieties
about artists
by
conservative
political interests, has made
it
impossible
for the United States, as a nation, to view
art with confidence. It will be a
long
time before the
United States is
remotely
comfortable with artists, con-
temporary art, and the artistic
imagination.
In short, at the moment when
many
other countries
with little or no immediate
possibility
of economic and
political power
have set out to realize dreams of
gaining
power through
art, the
government
and mass media of
the United States have been
trying
to evict art and artists
from the American Dream. One of the
telling
ironies of
this discomfort with art and artists is that it is
helping
to level the
playing
field
internationally. By inhibiting
the
ability
of U.S. art to function as an
aesthetic,
eco-
nomic,
and
political
force, the
government
and media
have ended
up serving postcolonial
cultural
aspirations
outside the United States. As a citizen of this
country
who believes in the artists here,
who has
spent years
fighting
for them,
and who will
always fight
for
them,
I
find this situation
painful
on
many
levels. But it must be
acknowledged.
And curators in other countries must
know that while there is an
extraordinary
breadth of
knowledge
and
experience among
art
professionals
in
the United States,
and while art and artists here will con-
tinue to be essential
players
on the world's artistic and
cultural
stages,
the art
system
in the United States can no
longer
dominate as it did. The
eruption
of biennials is
evidence of a historic
change.
Three interrelated issues must continue to be debat-
ed if the new biennials are
going
to be clear about what
they
are and what
they
want to achieve. The first issue is
legitimation.
To what
degree
are the sources of
legitima-
tion for the biennials that have
emerged
since
1984
determined
by geopolitical
conditions?
By practical
necessity? By
emotional and
psychological
needs? If exhi-
bitions do not
depend
at all on Western
goodwill
and
support,
like the Asia-Pacific Triennial,
which looks
toward Asia,
do
they
become more or less
necessary
and
desirable in other
parts
of the world? Where? To whom?
Can biennials with shared histories and
goals help legiti-
mate one another? What
legitimates
most? What needs
most to be
legitimated?
The second issue is audience. It came
up constantly
in
Bellagio
without ever
being engaged.
It
inspired
some
fertile remarks. Llanes's statement-"a lot of artists I
detest,
but I
respect
the audience"-made sense on
many
levels. It reminded me of all the artists I now
value whose work I did not like or
respond
to for
years,
but whom I
kept
in the back of
my
mind because of
my
respect
for their
supporters.
It reminded me that art can-
not
gain
a real foothold
anywhere
unless it is
engaged
by
the communities who live with and around it,
regardless
of whether the curators are
sympathetic
with
the tastes and aesthetic assumptions
of community
mem-
26 WINTER
1998
bers. Is it
possible
for curators to have
candid, even con-
tentious discussions with
colleagues
about the
many
audiences
they
are
trying
to
reach,
which ones
they
feel
most and least
responsible
to and
why,
how to build last-
ing relationships
with
them,
and how these
relationships
shape
the
understanding
and
possibilities
of art within an
exhibition or museum?
The final issue is the one that will not
go away:
quality.
The
language
in which art from non-Western
cultures is
being
defended is still often one of
representa-
tion. The focus of attention is not on what a work has
to
offer-poetically, thematically, psychologically, philo-
sophically,
and
politically-but
the cause the artist serves
and the
political struggle
with which he or she is identi-
fied. Biennials offer an
opportunity
to transform the
chasm between the
language
of
representation
and the
language
of
quality
into a
space
in which
many
of the
people
demoralized
by
this
split
can make a
place
for
themselves. We have to
begin
to talk about art in
ways
in which
everyone
has
something
to lose.
People
have
to write and lecture about art in
ways
that leave them
exposed.
If a critic were asked to
argue
for an artist in a
public
event in an unfamiliar
country,
it would all but
oblige
him or her to
think
in terms of issues and words
that could cross cultures. Both the
positive
and
negative
responses
to the
presentation
and to the artist would be
revealing.
If cross-cultural debates about art and artists
continue to be
part
of the
programs
of
biennials,
and if
these debates are
published, perhaps
in some collective
biennial
publication, they
could
help
locate the words
and the
approaches
to
language
that now
carry
maximum
feeling
and
thought.
The biennials can
help develop
a
poetics
for
contemporary
art that has not been
recognized
or that does not
yet
exist.
Michael Brenson is a critic and curator. Recent
publications
to which he
has contributed include
Maya
Lin:
Topologies
and Conversations at the Castle:
Changing
Audiences and
Contemporary
Art. He is also
contributing
a
major essay
to a
forthcoming
book on the
history
of the National Endowment for the Arts
Visual Artists
Fellowship Program.
Participants
in the
Bellagio
Conference
Margaret Archuleta, Curator of
Twentieth-Century Art, The Heard Museum,
Phoenix; Rene Block, Director, Museum Fridericianum, Kassel; Michael
Brenson, New York; Germano Celant, Curator of
Contemporary Art,
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New
York; Kinshasha Holman Conwill,
Director, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Vishakha N. Desai, Director
of the Galleries, Asia
Society,
New York; Okwui Enwezor, Artistic Director,
Second
Johannesburg Biennale; N.
Fulya Erdemci, Director, International
Istanbul Biennial; Lillian Llanes
Godoy,
Director, Centro Wifredo Lam;
Madeleine
Grynsztejn,
Curator of
Twentieth-Century Art,
Carnegie
Museum
of Art, Pittsburgh;
Paulo Herkenhoff, Chief Curator,
FundaCgo
Bienal de Sdo
Paulo; Virginia Perez-Ratton, Director, Museo de Arte
y
Disefo
Contempor-
aneo, San
Jose,
Costa Rica; Apinan Poshyananda,
Associate Director, Centers
of Academic Resources,
Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok; Mari Carmen
Ramirez, Curator of Latin American Art, Jack
S. Blanton Museum of Art,
Austin; Remi
Sagna,
Secretaire General, Dakar Biennale; Caroline Turner,
Deputy Director, Queensland Art
Gallery,
Brisbane
27 art
journal