University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Museum programming and the educational turn

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Museum programming and the educational turn

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Content Museum Programming and The Educational Turn By Rachel Keller A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF CURATORIAL STUDIES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE May 2017 Keller 2 CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..3 Potentiality, Actualization, and Pedagogy………………………………………………………...6 A Turn Toward Education……………………………………………………………………….11 Case Study: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art…………………………………………….15 Case Study: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive…………………………………..28 Case Study: The Broad Museum………………………………………………………………...35 Conclusion: Live Art as Conduit, for Better or Worse…………………………………………..44 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………...47 Keller 3 INTRODUCTION In asking what we can learn from the museum beyond what it sets out to teach us, we were not focused on the museum’s expertise, what it owns and how it displays it, conserves it, historicizes it. Our interests were in the possibilities for the museum to open a place for people to engage ideas differently– ideas from outside its own walls. So the museum in our thinking was the site of possibility, the site of potentiality. 1 —Irit Rogoff The Academy project, organized by curator and cultural theorist Irit Rogoff in 2006 at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, asked something of the viewer. It asked them to think about the museum as a site for questioning, rather than a site for answers. It asked, how can the art institution function as a space for fallibility, revealing new possibilities through an audience’s embodied experience? The above quote is pulled from the article “Turning” Rogoff wrote for e- flux in 2008, which traces a perceived “educational turn” in curating that blurs boundaries between exhibition planning, curatorial research, pedagogy, artistic intervention, and audience participation in museums. 2 As a combination of these interests, public programs can be seen as the conduit through which educational initiatives at museums meet with curatorial departments. Also often termed “audience engagement,” “public engagement,” or even “discursive programming”, I am interested in, and question, programs that take place inside the museum. How can public programs transform traditional galleries into sites of community activation that trouble the structures that dictate the collection, display, and education of contemporary art? Can museums facilitate meaningful interactions between art objects and viewers that place participation and education at the forefront of the museum going experience, through temporal artistic intervention within the confines of the institution? How might public programming point 1 Rogoff, Irit. "Turning." e-flux. 2008. Accessed May 04, 2016. http://www.e- flux.com/journal/turning. 2 Ibid. Keller 4 to a larger interest in the intersection of education and curating, and the educational turn? I position these questions within the framework of a growing interest in public programming at museums, and the desire on behalf of administrations to address how diverse audiences can engage with artworks on view. 3 To begin, I will trace a brief history of the educational turn in curating, a shift that has gained traction over the last ten years from scholars across fields of museum studies, curatorial practice, visual culture, and critical studies. I will map this curatorial interest onto three California-based case studies in public programming: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s (SFMOMA) Performance in Progress series, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive’s (BAMPFA) Full Moon series, and The Broad Museum’s Tip of Her Tongue feminist performance art series. These are all ongoing performance and engagement initiatives that have continued from 2016 through 2017, though their implementation has roots in museum projects beginning as early as the 1970s, garnering even more visibility in the 1990s. Programs, residencies, and events that bring the artist’s body and practice into art galleries are almost ubiquitous now, with some museums codifying their interest in time based programming through the development of departments dedicated to live art, performance, and intermedia. Beginning roughly in the mid 1990s and gaining more recognition in the early part of this decade, there has been a shift in focus on the part of museum administrations toward public programming. California based art museums have been at the forefront of public engagement, 3 Though Rogoff is based in the United Kingdom and her interests center on European institutions, her writing can be applied to other types of curatorial methods within museums in the United States that engage publics in a way that is pedagogically minded. My thesis will examine museums as sites of possibility, facilitated through public programming. I will apply participatory and pedagogical curatorial models, similar to those discussed by Rogoff in her article, to what I see is a current desire on behalf of museums to focus on the development of public programming and audience engagement initiatives. Keller 5 incorporating residencies, public participatory events, and performative interventions in galleries, spanning from SFMOMA’s exhibition The Art of Participation from 2008, to Mark Allen’s Machine Project residency at The Hammer in 2010-2011, to MOCA’s MOCAtv begun in 2012. There is also a long history of alternative art spaces and smaller galleries whose exhibition and programming schedules have been artist-driven, such as at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), The Armory in Pasadena, and LA><ARTS. Each of the institutions I will discuss have various goals and structures, and examining them next to one another will provide useful insight about how differing cultural sites are currently exploring public programming. SFMOMA exemplifies a familiar museum typology: it houses a large collection with rotating exhibitions and has a long institutional history. Its goals are associated not only with the board of trustees and major donors, but also the city of San Francisco and its residents. Museums like SFMOMA posit an interest in representing the immediate communities surrounding them, sometimes hosting events, programming, and exhibitions that reflect issues that are important to city residents such as California and Bay Area histories and contemporary gentrification. The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive similarly is dictated in part by a board of trustees and donors, but it is also associated with a large public university, and serves the needs of its educational community. Academics from all departments at UC Berkeley are invited to speak, host programs and workshops, and consult on exhibitions. Students can use the museum and archives as a resource for research and study. Finally, The Broad museum is an institution that houses a personal collection and foundation, that of Eli Broad, founder of two Fortune 500 companies, and his wife Edythe. The Broads are now full-time philanthropists, and have amassed a collection of post-war and contemporary art that spans over 2,000 works. The museum opened to the public in September Keller 6 2015 and is fully endowed by The Broads. It thus provides free general admission and does not have a membership or donation program, although it limits the number of people who are able to gain entrance at any one time through a system of timed ticketing and stand-by lines. The museum straddles an interesting, and sometimes troubling, line between presenting one man’s artistic interests, while also providing a space for innovative cultural practice exemplified by its exhibitions and programming teams. I chose these case studies to reflect on how performance art and time based practices are showcased in museum spaces under the auspices of public programming, and to illustrate the tensions revealed through these projects’ intersections across fields of curating, museum education, and audience engagement. POTENTIALITY, ACTUALIZATION, AND PEDAGOGY Discussions about how public programming is developing in relation to curatorial initiatives in art institutions beg the question of how and whether such programming works. In returning to Rogoff’s analysis of the Academy project, we find a useful model for exploring this idea through the concept of “potentiality.” Rogoff’s article begins by noting a marked shift in curating that takes education into account. She explains that knowledge production and self- organized pedagogies often get muddled in cultural institutions that seek to make education a foregrounding principle of specific programs, exhibitions, and events. 4 Academy is an example of a non-traditional method of pedagogy that is invoked through a curatorial model. Taking place at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, it was part of a series of exhibitions, projects, and events housed across a number of institutions throughout Europe. This portion of the project was 4 Rogoff, Irit. "Turning." e-flux. 2008. Accessed May 04, 2016. http://www.e- flux.com/journal/turning. Keller 7 comprised of a collaboration between 22 participants and the staff of the Van Abbemuseum, and addressed the question, “what can we learn from the museum?” 5 As a whole, Academy referenced a type of learning that could take place beyond the objects and resources within the walls of the art institution. Here, the notion of the “academy” was referred to as a moment of education that happens within the protected space of the academic institution. The initial question that grounded the program concerned whether the idea of the academy could be seen as a metaphor for processes of speculation, inquiry, and investigation divorced from the imposing demand of quantifiable results. 6 The project asked if this metaphorical academy could operate as a space of experimentation and if these principles could then be applied to our lives outside of a cultural setting; it also asked how we might apply them to other institutions within which we operate. Academy also speculated on how the museum, art school, or university can move beyond their current functions. 7 Rogoff points out that by asking participants to question whether these institutions could be more than what they currently are, the facilitators were not implying that museums and universities should be larger or operate more efficiently. Instead, Academy sought to explain that the reach of these institutions could be broader, and that they can be seen as locations for doing more than just presenting static displays of art on gallery walls. Specifically, the interests of Rogoff and her co-organizers were in exploring the possibilities for museums to provide spaces for visitors to engage with ideas differently, especially those that develop outside the institution. In this way, Academy demonstrated the museum as a site of possibility and potentiality, and also stimulated thoughts about such potentiality within broader society. One of the project’s main 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. Keller 8 goals was to counteract the growing professionalization and privatization taking place within schools, universities, and museums throughout Europe in the early 2000s. Two important terms were invoked in the planning and implementation of Academy: potentiality and actualization. When applied to this project, potentiality is defined as a possibility of creating an action that is not limited to one’s technical ability or skill. Potentiality always maintains an element of fallibility, or the concept that the act of creating could end in failure. 8 Actualization implies that certain meanings that are embedded within objects, situations, and individuals have the potential to be liberated. 9 Crucial to Rogoff’s understanding of actualization is the notion that social processes, educational models, and individual personal histories cannot be separated from one another. For Rogoff, both of these terms are imperative to initiating new pedagogical models, in or outside institutions, because they allow participants to expand notions of what is possible within these spaces. Both actualization and potentiality encourage individuals to understand learning as being able to take place at sites or institutions that don’t necessarily prescribe educational activities. 10 Academy consisted of five teams made up of different cultural facilitators who had access to various aspects of the museum’s collection, administration, and public activities. Each of these teams helped participants think about what they could learn from the museum beyond the objects and information on display and through traditional educational programming. As a whole Academy provoked several participants and organizers to think about how these questions 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. Keller 9 posed by the museum could promote self-organized and activist initiatives on behalf of visitors interacting with the project. 11 Ultimately, Academy posits that education happens in and of the world, and is not merely a response to crisis. Learning processes participate in the increasing complexity of the world at large. Rogoff notes towards the end of her article that in recent years there has been an emergence of numerous self-organized educational forums beginning outside of institutions. Most of these non-traditional educational practices that emerged during the run of Academy and continuing after, were not easily categorized. But we are clearly beginning to see large institutions implementing these types of experiences that bridge education and artistic display in gallery spaces. Performance work that is displayed in the museum provides another lens through which visitors can interact with an overarching collection, exhibition, or architectural space. At the risk of instrumentalizing live art to serve a specific need on behalf of the institution, performance practices when they are staged in contemporary museums can certainly interrogate an audience’s relationship to a cultural site. If museums can be seen as spaces for potentiality and actualization, performance art seems like an interesting way to display how the social context of the museum, one’s personal history, and individual narrative are all inextricably linked to exhibition practices. A discussion of temporal projects that take place in museums offers methods to see how the museum can open itself up to self critique and dialogue between viewers, artists, and cultural facilitators through embodied experiences in galleries. Ideas about how the museum can function as a site for pedagogical exploration have undoubtedly expanded since 2008 when Rogoff originally published her article in e-flux. The 11 Ibid. Keller 10 introduction to the 2014 book, Beyond Pedagogy: Reconsidering the Public Purpose of Museums edited by Brenda Trofanenko and Avner Segall, traces how the museum can be thought of as site for “pedagogical ambiguity.” 12 The authors begin by noting that, ordinarily, the pedagogical function of a museum is understood through the ways in which exhibitions serve to inform an audience about culture, art, history, and the natural world. Similar to canonical museum studies theorists like Carol Duncan, Trofanenko and Segall note that when we view the Western museum as an exemplar of colonialism, we can link its development to a history of slavery, immigration, the building of empires, and the interaction of national and international networks. The resulting institution is a fusion of knowledge that insists on the development of the identity of the ideal citizen that is extremely exclusionary and divisive. To conceptualize the museum as a colonial endeavor is also to understand the ways in which its pedagogical strategies have often been utilized by museum administrations and governing boards to invite visitors to adopt certain assumptions about the external world and its inhabitants, including questions about who matters and why, and what values modern citizens should live by. 13 As we will see, contemporary museums like SFMOMA, The Broad, and BAMPFA run the risk of replicating the colonial endeavor through their collection, exhibition, and programing practices. However, more recent understandings of pedagogy that emerge from fields like cultural studies define it in broader terms. Trofanenko and Segall explain that pedagogy should not only be understood as what happens in school settings but can also be defined as a way of making sense of the external world. In museums, all curatorial decisions are essentially choices about what types of knowledge are given importance, and by exploring pedagogy in art museums, we 12 Trofanenko, Brenda, and Avner Segall. "Introduction." In Beyond Pedagogy: Reconsidering the Public Purpose of Museums. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers., 2014. Pp.1 13 Ibid. Keller 11 can examine how audiences are implicated, constructed, and invited to form opinions about the world in various ways. 14 Museums can act pedagogically by supplying audiences with selectively organized images containing social, cultural, and political subject matters, providing viewers differing positions from which they might perceive the world beyond the museum. 15 Trofanenko and Segall cite a lack of agreement about how museums understand their individual relationships with the public realm, and how they implement educational programming. However, by conceptualizing museums as locations where learning can emerge, many new educational models are privileging interdisciplinary perspectives and programming. Additionally, by combining curatorial knowledge, visitor engagement expertise, and educational tools, there can develop what Trofanenko and Segall call a “pedagogy of shared authority,” which can mobilize publics to think about the museum as a location for learning that is dictated by each individual visitor. 16 A TURN TOWARD EDUCATION The case studies presented in this thesis pinpoint specific tendencies in the linking of curatorial models and mechanisms for public engagement. The many scholars, curators, and museum professionals who have cited a turn towards education in curating within the last ten years, provide a useful platform for understanding how performative discursive events in museums can drastically alter a visitor’s conception not only of the institution, but of their role within it. The book Curating and the Educational Turn written in 2010 and edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson is an anthology of writings on public engagement initiatives at 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., 2 16 Ibid., 4 Keller 12 galleries and museums, and traces a marked shift towards pedagogy within the field of curating. 17 In their introduction, O’Neill and Wilson explain how educational programs, terminologies, and processes have become extremely influential to both curating and the production of contemporary art in general. The discussion of an educational turn began in part through the implementation of pedagogical strategies, articulated through curatorial schemes and participatory art projects. It is important to note that many of these initiatives were not only generated by curators but also by artists who were invited into the museum in the form of residencies. This shift is not only based on the desire of curatorial departments for more discursive programs, but also that crucially, this interest in pedagogy is intrinsic to many contemporary artists’ practices as well. At museums, panel discussions, educational programs, and discursive events have played an important but subordinate role to art exhibitions, but more recently, these initiatives have become central to cultural facilitation at arts institutions. 18 Rather than supporting events that converse with larger exhibitions, these programs have become the main event. However, they are often seen through the lens of pedagogy and learning, and at many museums there is still an effort to distance these programs from other established departments like education. 19 O’Neill and Wilson explain that when artists, curators, or cultural organizers dabble with what the authors call, “a counter institutional ethos,” these programs can trouble authoritative outcomes in favor of durational and dialogic processes. Merely through visitors at events engaging in a conversation, the audience becomes co-producers of a new line of questioning about the structure of an institution. 20 Many 17 O'Neill, Paul, and Mick Wilson. "Introduction." In Curating and the Educational Turn. London: Open Editions, 2010. Pp. 12. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., 13-14 Keller 13 public engagement projects favor dialogic processes, rather than emphasize a precise ending, and as was mentioned through Academy, discuss the value in ideas about potentiality and resistance to prescribed outcomes. This, and other analyses of the educational turn in curating, lead us towards a discussion of a solidifying interest in public engagement at museums, through the implementation of administrative departments that deal with discursive events specifically. Sally Tallant’s chapter “Experiments in Integrated Programming” from Curating and the Educational Turn argues that when artists create work that involves other people as collaborators, participants, subjects, or organizers, they are able to pose questions about the complexity and possibilities of authorship. 21 Traditional museum staffs are divided into departments, each with distinctive functions and areas of focus. As O’Neill and Wilson cited as well, education and public programming initiatives are often thought of as secondary to exhibitions. Tallant notes that a hierarchy develops that creates distances among curators, educators, and arts administrators. 22 Using a term borrowed from social science, “new institutionalism,” Tallant discusses how curatorial endeavors propose ways to alter the art institution from within its administrative structure. This approach often uses dialogue and open-ended methodologies to plan events and process-based artwork, and places equal focus on all museum departments. It is these types of initiatives in museums that lead to the development of reading rooms, archives, residency programs, panel discussions, and new mechanisms for the display of artwork in galleries. The idea of museums transforming into sites for experimentation and learning has been embraced by curators, artists, and educators alike, all interested in programming that favors 21 Tallant, Sally. "Experiments in Integrated Programming." In Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O'Neill and Mick Wilson. London: Open Editions, 2010. Pp. 187. 22 Ibid. Keller 14 dismantling boundaries among departments. 23 Through the integration of education and curating, for example, possibilities arise for the facilitation of events like talks, screenings, and performances that make it possible for the institution to re-establish itself through varying models and by engaging different audiences. 24 There are still however, many instances when curatorial departments distance themselves from educational work. Tallant explains that some curators still want to create a pedagogical aesthetic in the exhibitions and projects they organize, but often the resulting program can be seen more as a spectacle rather than an educational experience for viewers. The difference here lies between a participant in an educational program being directly involved in a pedagogical endeavor or event, rather than as a passive viewer. Ultimately, Tallant asks how curators and educators might develop new collaboration strategies. In the end, she calls for a combination of curatorial knowledge and educational expertise to create new possibilities for the art institution, and in turn, their visitors. 25 Most of the writing discussed here comes from the early to mid 2000s, but it is important to note that the increased interest in public programming and the intersection between curating an education really took hold in the United States in the mid 1990s. It was during this time that charitable arts and humanities foundations were creating funding opportunities for museums to initiate audience development plans that would extend their reach beyond traditional art viewing publics. For example, in 1994 the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis received a programmatic grant in the form of $1.25 million from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund. 26 The grant supported a series of projects spanning five years called “New Audiences/New Definitions,” that 23 Ibid., 188 24 Ibid., 189 25 Ibid., 190 26 Halbreich, Kathy. "Mission: More Than a Museum." Walker Art Center Annual Report. 1999. Accessed March 26, 2017. http://annualreport.walkerart.org/1999/director.html. Keller 15 aimed to expand the accessibility of the museum’s permanent collection to new audiences. Some goals of these new initiatives involved making their education department a full partner in planning programs, utilizing new technology to engage audiences, and strengthening their programs to include, “previously underserved audiences, including people of color, low-income families, and teens.” 27 At this same time, many curators (both at the Walker and elsewhere) were brought in to run education departments and vice versa. An overall blurring of divisions, administratively, between education and curating was taking place at many museums. It will be important to bring in some of the concepts outlined in the preceding chapters when analyzing current public programming initiatives. In what follows, I will question how performance based ancillary events at SFMOMA, BAMPFA, and The Broad demonstrate an intersection of education and curating, ideas about potentiality and actualization, and an overarching interest on behalf of the museum to encourage visitors to question the governing structures that create meaning and importance at cultural sites. How can temporal, artist driven practices involve viewers in rethinking what the museum can do for its audiences, and how can these projects question a museum’s individual institutional history and future goals? Finally, do these events position museums as spaces that can facilitate dialogue about reconceptualizing structures of power in which visitors find themselves in their lives, day to day? CASE STUDY: SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART SFMOMA: History The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), located on Third Street in downtown San Francisco, occupies a new building opened in 2016 that contains seven floors of 27 Ibid. Keller 16 exhibition space as well as 45,000 square feet of what the museum tellingly calls “art-filled public spaces.” 28 In 1935 the museum’s first iteration opened on the fourth floor of the War Memorial Veterans Building on Van Ness Avenue under the direction of Grace McCann Morley. At that point titled the San Francisco Museum of Art (it added the word “modern” to its title in 1975), the collection consisted of several hundred works donated by Albert M. Bender, and included pieces by artists such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, which established the permanent collection. 29 Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the museum expanded its collection with special attention to Fauvism and photography. The museum continually hosted large scale exhibitions featuring Jackson Pollock throughout the 1940s, and in 1951 established a bi-weekly television program called Art in Your Life, revealing early on the institution’s commitment to technology and new media as a form of audience development and engagement. 30 In 1988 the museum secured the Third Street location for its new building, and hired Swiss architect Mario Botta to design the facility. The Van Ness space officially closed in 1994. 31 In 1995, one year following the opening of the new building, SFMOMA launched their public website, becoming one of the earliest museums in the world to create a web interface. The late 1990s saw SFMOMA’s collection rapidly expanding, with major acquisitions of works by Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Sol LeWitt placing the institution as a significant repository of postwar artwork. 2002 marked the opening of the Koret Visitor Education Center, which at its outset was one of the first educational facilities at an American modern art museum to offer year-round programming and educational activities, as well as access for drop in 28 SFMOMA. "Free to See." Accessed February 13, 2017. https://www.sfmoma.org/visit/free-to- see/. 29 SFMOMA. "Our History." Accessed February 13, 2017. https://www.sfmoma.org/read/our- history/. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. Keller 17 patrons. 32 The Koret Center is still central to the museum’s educational initiatives today, and visitors use the center to ask questions about artists and exhibitions, explore interactive multimedia stations, and view film screenings. The Koret Center is staffed with arts educators to field visitor inquiries, and contains a lecture room, resource space for teachers, community gallery, and studio to facilitate school groups. The center fulfills the traditional functions of museum education by gearing its resources towards K-12 teachers and students. John Weber, the former Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs at SFMOMA, noted in the press release detailing the opening of the Koret Center that, “Reaching one in every five visitors to SFMOMA—literally hundreds each time we’re open—is remarkable. Our ultimate goal, of course, is to reach every visitor, and I am greatly encouraged that, over time, we will get there.” 33 Such commitment to education and community engagement still lies at the crux of SFMOMA’s structure. Critical to note is that John Weber was a curator hired to bridge the curatorial and educational functions in the museum. His hiring came during this change in the mid 1990s mentioned earlier, that involved curators taking on roles in education departments, as well as the dispersal of various grants to develop public programming initiatives at museums. In 2008 SFMOMA launched Live Art at SFMOMA, a series of public programs that were designed to embrace event-fueled contemporary performances. 34 Through promoting public interaction with temporal artworks, the museum revealed its enduring interest in a form of public engagement that spans understated and intimate artist collaborations to large scale spectacles. 32 SFMOMA. "SFMOMA's New Koret Visitor Education Center Off to Strong Start Unique Facility Reaches 20 Percent of Visitors in First Month." Accessed February 13, 2017. https://www.sfmoma.org/press/release/sfmomas-new-koret-visitor-education-center-off-to/. 33 Ibid. 34 SFMOMA. "Our History." Accessed February 13, 2017. https://www.sfmoma.org/read/our- history/. Keller 18 The museum, by creating this initiative, sought to foster interactions between artworks and communities that activate exhibition and gallery spaces in creative ways. Events in the series included workshops with Allison Smith, and projects by William Kentridge, New Humans, Fritz Haeg, and Eve Sussman. The following year in 2009, SFMOMA announced its plans for a large expansion that would provide new gallery and public spaces, as well as a larger library and new state of the art conservation facilities. The expansion was spearheaded by the architecture firm Snøhetta, and incorporated new audience focused designs, including galleries on the street level and new spaces dedicated to education and public programming. 35 SFMOMA acquired a $1.75 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2014 to fund The Artist Initiative, which fosters collaborations between living artists to create innovative structures for conservation and collections research. 36 The Artist Initiative consists of a series of interdisciplinary research projects that unite curators, conservators, art historians, and artists to create new approaches to the conservation, display, and interpretation of contemporary art. Since its inception, the program has fostered collaboration with artists including Ellsworth Kelly, Vija Clemins, and Julia Scher; it has included study of photography from the 1970s and 1980s, as well as investigations into high tech design and new media. 37 Teams assigned to each field work with artists and academics to explore distinctive methodologies surrounding the preservation and exhibition of touchstone works in SFMOMA’s collection. 38 The initiative hosts 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 SFMOMA. "The Artist Initiative." Accessed February 13, 2017. https://www.sfmoma.org/artists-artworks/research/artist-initiative/. 38 Ibid. Keller 19 workshops, educational events, and provides access to artworks that are not currently on view at the museum. 39 Performance in Progress at SFMOMA Administratively, SFMOMA is organized into three overarching departments, Administration and Finance (which handles finance, the museum shop, events, building operations and facilities, and information technology), External relations (teams that deal with development and communications and marketing), and Curatorial Affairs (which includes various curatorial departments in addition to a digital engagement team). These three areas are all under the supervision of the Director’s Office. In addition, SFMOMA has a completely separate team outside of these areas dedicated to what they call Education and Public Practice, which is most similar to public programming and audience engagement departments at other museums. Education and Public Practice is also under the purview of the Director’s Office, and is comprised of three sets of programs: School Initiatives, Public Dialogue, and Performance and Film. Each of these portfolios are grounded in public events and artist collaborations, and they all aim to contribute to the intersection of education and artistic practice in and beyond California. SFMOMA’s performance initiatives are facilitated by the Performance and Film team. Responsible for organizing live and temporal art events, Performance and Film builds partnerships with various San Francisco based cultural institutions, such as the San Francisco Film Society, to program film series and commission new performances and workshops for visitors of varying ages. These events primarily take place in the newly designed Gina and Stuart Peterson White Box gallery and the Wattis Theater—two flexible spaces that can accommodate a 39 Ibid. Keller 20 variety of performances, screenings, and other events. Dominic Willsdon, the current Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs was appointed in 2005. In a phone interview from September 2016, Willsdon cited changes in the curatorial field that were happening from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s, as the role of the artist within the museum was beginning to shift. 40 There were now opportunities opening up, through the implementation of residencies and audience facing engagement initiatives, for artists to conduct their own projects in museums. This created a tension between annual traditional museum programming versus intimate, project based work dictated by the interests of individual artists. Additionally, he noted a new space emerging within museum administrations for hybrid curator/educator positions, which was in line with artists coming out of MFA programs whose curricula were based in conceptualism and performance (as is the case with schools like CalArts). There was in turn a developing interest in organizing programming that was intensive, immersive, and personal. In fall of 2016, SFMOMA embarked on a performance program called Performance in Progress, signaling a few key concepts as discussed by Willsdon. Announced in August 2016, two months after the museum re-opened after its expansion, this series brings both local and international artists into the museum to create new live work. 41 One of the goals of the performance series is for audiences and artists to both investigate the artistic process and participate together in creating new work. In this inaugural year, artists involved included Desirée Holman, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, and Jacolby Satterwhite. The series is built from two seasonal components, whereby artists are invited to the museum in the fall to conduct site visits that are open to the public, and then return in the spring 40 Dominic Willsdon, phone interview by Rachel Keller, Los Angeles, September 7, 2016. 41 SFMOMA. "SFMOMA LAUNCHES NEW PERFORMANCE IN PROGRESS SERIES THIS FALL." News release. Sfmoma.org. Accessed February 13, 2017. Keller 21 to stage or showcase their completed works. Throughout the series, visitors are encouraged to participate in rehearsals, previews of works, artist talks, panel discussions, and “meet and greet” events with the artists. Allowing audiences to be both viewers as well as active participants in development, SFMOMA revealed to the public the processes involved with creating a large-scale performance art project. Themes that are addressed through each artists’ work involve topics that are especially relevant to Bay Area residents as well as global audiences. Discussion of queer identities and diasporic communities, for example, are among some thematic inspirations for various performances. 42 All of the artists featured in this inaugural year of programming—Holman, Rincón Gallardo, and Satterwhite—find inspiration from the story structure and aesthetic of science fiction and fantasy to propose alternative realities. 43 They each construct their performance narratives by using personal histories, both fictional and nonfictional characters and locations, rather than out of this world superhero figures, spaceships, and outer space imagery associated with blockbuster films and television shows from recent decades. For example, Satterwhite uses a cappella recordings of his mother to create an immersive dance floor universe. Rincón Gallardo illustrates the transformative path of assassinated Mixtec activist Alberta “Bety” Cariño’s journey through the underworld. Finally, Holman investigates Northern California mysticism through passing tenets of current civilization down to a newly formed human race. Each of these projects creates a fictional landscape through performance, whereby the artists demonstrate innumerable possibilities to re-conceptualize the real world. Throughout both the fall and spring seasons of the Performance in Progress series, these artists explore the relationships formed between images and live encounters. Each piece is 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. Keller 22 formed by either expanded cinema or an installation-based performance work, all taking place in SFMOMA’s Gina and Stuart Peterson White Box Gallery. Visual art, music, and movement mingle with contemporary and popular film to create fantasies of future worlds. Holman, Rincón Gallardo, and Satterwhite use music—varying from concert pieces to conceptual albums—as touchstones that pinpoint moments in each performance’s plot, ultimately driving the narratives forward. Echoing harmonic beats and sound repetitions that are often found in music venues or on dance floors help each artist build unique and utopian narratives that are multidisciplinary. Preview weekends for each performance were held from September through November 2016, with debuts of the work open to the general public during a festival weekend March 16 through 19, 2017. Desirée Holman is an Oakland-based artist whose fall iteration of Performance in Progress took place at SFMOMA from September 8-11, 2016. In her previews, Holman used dress rehearsals, costumes, and props to represent complex social groupings that are in states of various transformation. 44 Holman’s piece was called Sophont in Action, and took the form of a video and performance exploring extraterrestrial sightings, theosophy, New Age mysticism, and California utopic theory. Sophont in Action utilizes three character types conceived by Holman— elder time travelers, adult Ecstatic Dancers and Indigo Children—to present a mysterious society that engages in rituals of initiation and inter reality transmission. Each of these character groups hold one another’s hands, balancing the body's’ weight, while distributing and sharing knowledge to present possibilities for future societies and methods for communication and interaction. Sophont in Action first took the form of a live procession that marked SFMOMA’s 44 Ibid. Keller 23 2013 building closure in preparation for the museum’s expansion. The performance has returned to SFMOMA’s reopened building in this new iteration. The Indigo Children, for Holman, represent a utopian future. Drawing from the history of science fiction acting as a space where injustice, inequality, and the anxieties of modern life can dissolve, Sophont in Action presents an alternative universe. Throughout the performances’ preview weekend, Holman hosted rehearsals and workshops that fostered discussions about both non-Western and non-traditional religions, models for experimental living, and racial fantasies that have become common in many forms of science fiction, including in Sophont in Action. The preview weekend provided opportunities for viewers and participants to engage with these issues through direct communication with Holman and the cast. Additionally, SFMOMA held screenings of Holman’s complete video practice, including the films Sophont (2015), Heterotopias (2011), Reborn (2009), The Magic Window (2007), and Troglodyte (2005). Another artist featured in Performance in Progress is Mexico City-based Naomi Rincón Gallardo, whose project’s preview was held on September 29 through October 2, 2016. 45 Working in both performance and video, Rincón Gallardo is interested primarily in reworking historical narratives to create new radical fictions that explore non-traditional belief systems. Often using music as a primary medium, she finds inspiration from DIY aesthetics and queer identities to re-contextualize and re-investigate Mexican and Mesoamerican political circumstances. Because Rincón Gallardo is both an artist and educator, she grounds her work in feminist and radical theory in order to create new forms of social interaction and notions of play. For Performance in Progress, Rincón Gallardo presented The Formaldehyde Trip, which is a new combination of performance and video work that brings together pre-Columbian 45 Ibid. Keller 24 cosmology, lesbian theory and activism, and indigenous women’s struggle to reclaim their land in the face of post-colonialism. Co-curated with Galería de la Raza, this project was created as part of her PhD in Practice at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and features the story of a murdered Mixtec activist named Alberta “Bety” Cariño, following her journey through a fictional underworld where she encounters mythological warriors, animal guardians, and god figures such as the Aztec moon goddess Coyolxauhqui, as well as the god of the dead Mictlantecuhtli. During the preview weekend, visitors were able to meet the artist, staff from Galería de la Raza, and the cast and crew of The Formaldehyde Trip. Additionally, SFMOMA presented Rincón Gallardo’s video works Odisea Ocotepec (Ocotepec Odyssey) from 2014, and Utopias Pirata (Bootleg Utopias) from 2012. The final weekend of Performance in Progress displayed work by New York based artist Jacolby Satterwhite, which took place from November 17-20, 2016. With a background in painting, Satterwhite is influenced by his mother’s own artistic practice, as well as 3D animation to formulate fantastical dreamscapes. 46 Satterwhite’s new work, commissioned by SFMOMA, involves a collaboration with the musician Nick Weiss (Teengirl Fantasy). Together, Weiss and Satterwhite created a visual album called En Plein Aire: Music of Objective Romance, which was inspired by the studio and musical practice of Satterwhite’s mother, Patricia. Throughout the late 1990s, Patricia Satterwhite recorded over 155 a cappella songs using cassette tapes, which fused genres like R&B, country, gospel, new age, and folk music. En Plein Air maintains the original lyrics and melodies of the cassette recordings, but infuses them with electronic house, club, and noise music. Satterwhite’s accompanying videos for each song are complicated performative 46 Ibid. Keller 25 investigations, as he mixes varying poses with his mother’s voice, and scenes from dance clubs are presented with otherworldly characters. Satterwhite was inspired by the action adventure and musical film Interstella 5555, created by Daft Punk and Liji Matsumoto. En Plein Air uses the medium of a visual album in order to create an aesthetic and musical narrative. Additionally, the cinematic structure employed in the work is extended through the development of a virtual reality (VR) based performance for Satterwhite’s on screen characters. In one moment, the artist moves out of the VR scene to DJ a remix that changes beats and musical schema in real time. For Satterwhite’s preview weekend, SFMOMA displayed for the first time excerpts from this VR work, and hosted screenings of the artist’s video pieces, Reifying Desire 1-6 from 2012-2014, and The Matriarch’s Rhapsody created in 2012. Because SFMOMA invited these three artists to engage in a year long series at the museum, there is much to be said about the opportunity to create a durational project that develops and morphs based on the changing needs, demographics, and demands that govern such a large art institution. This schema provides the chance for the artists to engage deeply with the varying audiences that visit the museum, viewing first hand the changing visitor demographics through the lens of these diverse installations. The performances are all undoubtedly placed in dialogue with SFMOMA’s permanent collection and traveling exhibitions, which occupy the museum’s other gallery spaces, allowing visitors to reconceptualize the collections and other shows. Through activating a largely static museum space in a performative way, each artist urges audiences to recontextualize other works on view. Even if the visitors who attended these performance weekends came solely for these specific events, it is important to note how Holman’s, Rincón Gallardo’s, and Satterwhite’s interventions in the space transform the museum Keller 26 as a whole. Through the embodied experience of the visitor meeting these artists, taking an active role in the formulation of a work in progress, and seeing the development of large scale and multidisciplinary performances pieces, audiences might feel motivated to rethink the art museum’s goals, and its role outside of the art community. Rather than taking a tour, listening to an audio guide, or engaging in a passive consumption of a conventional art exhibition, the museum goer interacts with the performance works through the direct relationship they form to the artist, cast, and crew, opening up new methods for understanding the art museum as a space of active participation for both visitors and artists. These performance initiatives showcase what type of creation is possible within a traditional art gallery, activating the museum as a space that can function beyond one dedicated primarily to conservation and display. Each of the artists provoke questions for viewers such as: how can we engage with ideas surrounding queer theory, radical mythology, and the reconceptualization of historical narratives in a large museum that is supposed to represent a specific city’s dedication to art? Can we, for example, view SFMOMA’s collecting and exhibiting practices within the context of Rincón Gallardo’s relationship to Aztec mythology, Satterwhite’s explorations of virtual reality and club counterculture, or Desirée Holman’s interest in extraterrestrial communication? By allowing audiences to take part in the creation of a time based artwork, they physically contribute their bodies into the performance itself (if only temporarily), seeing themselves in the implementation of the piece. Visitors view their own subjectivities inside the museum walls not only as consumers of culture, taking in visual information the way museum staffs organize it for them, but as initiators of thought, action, and critical perception. They are allowed to engage with the internal structures of the museum and take an intimate look at one Keller 27 artist’s creative process, including how a performance is formulated and then staged. Taking on a collaborative role alongside the artists, visitors can contribute to the overall vision of the piece. It is important to question though, if these performances are instrumentalized by way of how they function for audiences. Often, performances are seen as dynamic and interactive for viewers in the way they utilize the body, often sound elements, and in some cases audience participation. So the issue arises, do ideologies presented in these temporal artistic practices align with overarching education, curatorial, and museum initiatives that are often driven by grant fulfilment, reaching quotas, and bringing in diverse visitors? It could be the case then, that time based projects can be seen as a conduit between education and curating, emerging in the form of public programming. Irit Rogoff’s ideas about potentiality are crucial to bring up here. Potentiality allows for the interactive performance works not to be subsumed back into the institutional structures of the museum, that many of these projects bring into question in the first place. Because potentiality always comes with the possibility of failure, visitors see first hand how these performances may or may not fit within SFMOMA’s larger framework. Thinking critically about each of the projects calls into question the museum as a dictator of aesthetic and cultural value. Rincón Gallardo’s ghostly journey, Satterwhite’s queer club aesthetic, and Holman’s new age mysticism are all given ample space in the museum, revealing how these interests, narratives, and histories are often cast off in favor of traditional exhibitions that usually tell a very specific story of contemporary and modern art. The potentiality of the visitor, the artist, and the museum are all activated as these projects broaden understandings of what experiences are possible within a cultural site. The durational model of Performance in Progress also relies on fallibility as a pedagogical model. By Keller 28 providing each artist with a year long time line, in which their works are both formulated and implemented using the museum’s built in audience as a resource, SFMOMA lays bare the possibility for failure. Potentiality and fallibility are both tools for public engagement, encouraging visitors to participate in projects that are by nature in flux and evolving. The concept of the museum as a solidified site that dictates and displays cultural value, is transmuted into an amorphous idea that can grow and change. These performances demonstrate actualization, as they all have the potential to demystify the meanings that are entrenched within the objects and structures of power that organize the museum. By using multi-disciplinary performance methods, each of these artists reveal how pedagogical tools, personal histories, and social interactions cannot be separated from one another, both inside and outside of the museum. CASE STUDY: BERKELEY ART MUSEUM AND PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive: History The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), is housed at the University of California Berkeley, and serves as the hub for visual arts study and display at the university. Through its collection of film and art, the museum seeks to inspire critical dialogue and analysis by engaging students and audiences from the UC Berkeley campus, Northern California and the Bay Area, and beyond. BAMPFA hosts more than twenty art exhibitions, 450 film screenings and programs, and many performances, panels, lectures, tours, and symposia throughout the year. 47 The film collection, in addition to visual art housed and exhibited at BAMPFA is central to the institution. Often, temporary art exhibitions are planned in 47 BAMPFA. “About BAMPFA | BAMPFA.” Accessed February 13, 2017. http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about/about-bampfa. Keller 29 conjunction with the film archive, and the museum has mounted installations with subject matter ranging from classical Asian art to contemporary projects by living artists. Programming spans thematic exhibitions to retrospectives, as well as the annual UC Berkeley Department of Art Practice MFA exhibition. Artists whose work has been featured at BAMPFA solo shows include Joan Brown, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Eva Hesse, Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Nauman, Peter Paul Rubens, and many others. Among BAMPFA’s initiatives is the MATRIX Program for Contemporary Art, which serves as a support system to display works by emerging artists since 1978. This program combines a small scale and short term format with the resources of an internationally renowned academic institution. MATRIX has been specifically committed to artists who work in the medium of digital art, and has featured work by Doug Aitken, John Baldessari, Louise Bourgeois, Sol LeWitt, Shirin Neshat, and Nancy Spero. 48 The MATRIX program additionally seeks to introduce Bay Area residents and surrounding communities to art being made both internationally and nationally, with the goal to create dialogues about contemporary practices that are dynamic and sometimes challenging. MATRIX troubles traditional exhibition and curatorial practices to encourage new methodologies for analysis, in order to provide an experimental schema to create an activated interaction between artist, museum, and viewer. Public engagement initiatives at BAMPFA were in play as early as 1979, when then chief curator David Ross established weekend video screenings. The first program of its kind to take place in a 48 BAMPFA. “MATRIX | BAMPFA.” Accessed February 13, 2017. http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about/matrix. Keller 30 museum setting, this series displayed video works by Ant Farm, William Wegman, and Joan Jonas among many others. 49 In addition to BAMPFA’s exhibition schedule, every year the museum programs around 450 film screenings in order to provide insight into film production around the globe. 50 These screenings range from classic films, historic projects by international filmmakers, silent films with live symphony accompaniment to experimental, animation, and new media works. Some screenings are coupled with lectures, panels, and discussions with directors, writers, critics, and academics, who engage with audiences about particular topics specific to various films. 51 Thematic film series have been held based on the work of Michelangelo Antonioni, Jacques Demy, Claire Denis, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, and many others. The museum also hosted from 2009 until 2014 an after-hours performance series called L@TE: Friday Nights, started by Lawrence Rinder, Director and Chief Curator of BAMPFA who was appointed in 2008. Musicians, dancers, and performers from varying backgrounds working across diverse media were invited into the lower gallery of the museum’s original space on Bancroft Street to construct intimate performances that interacted with the museum’s architecture. Performers were often asked to respond aurally and physically to the acoustics and spatiality of the gallery. This series featured an array of performers including Terry Riley, Ellen Fullman, Chris Kubick, and Francis Wong among many others. Serving in some ways as a 49 Lewallen, Constance. "BAM/PFA - Commitment." BAMPFA. 2004. Accessed March 26, 2017. http://archive.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about/aboutnotedetail.php?Nickname=TXT0011. 50 BAMPFA. “Exhibition History | BAMPFA.” Accessed February 13, 2017. http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about/exhibition-film-history. 51 Ibid. Keller 31 testing ground for future public programs at BAMPFA, this series pushed, questioned, and expanded the architectural limits of the museum. BAMPFA was originally housed on a large plot of land on Bancroft street across from Berkeley’s main campus. San Francisco based architect Mario Ciampi and associates Richard L. Jorasch and Ronald E. Wagner designed the building—a large and dramatic concrete structure that contained cantilevered galleries and an expansive central atrium. The museum occupied that location from 1970 through 2014. However, the original 101,000 square-foot concrete building was deemed unsafe due to current seismic regulations and the museum relocated to a new structure in Downtown Berkeley in 2014. The new building was designed by the architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro and combines a 48,000 square foot Art Deco style building with a 35,000 square feet new addition. The museum houses two theatres, a performance forum, café, four study centers, a reading center, an art and education lab, and various gathering spaces. Sherry Goodman, Director of Education and Academic Relations has worked at BAMPFA for over twenty years, and has thus witnessed the transition in the museum’s programming from its original space to the new one. She notes that the new building maintains an emphasis on participatory, hands-on, and informal activities geared towards youth, families, and students, through spaces for performance, a reading room, and art lab. 52 She feels that there is a belief amongst museum educators that doing activities in gallery spaces reinforces a visitor’s experience in a museum, giving participants a different perspective of the art on view. In this way, museums can be seen as forums for communication. 52 Sherry Goodman, in person interview by Rachel Keller, Berkeley, August 26, 2016. Keller 32 Full 2017 Full Moon Performances at BAMPFA The public programming initiatives at BAMPFA are wide ranging in part because the museum has a relationship to UC Berkeley, and the museum thus serves as a space for research and education across the fields of art history, film studies, museum education, literary studies, and more. Throughout the year, BAMPFA hosts various workshops, film series, and audience development initiatives that engage museum visitors with differing goals and interests. In addition to guided tours, BAMPFA facilitates hands on workshops, readings, gallery talks, panels, lectures, family events, and a music and performance art series called Full. Full Moon Performances, programmed consistently at the museum over the last two years, invites innovative and diverse performers into BAMPFA’s gallery spaces to enliven the building with music, dance, theatre, singing, and other types of performance on the night of every full moon. Visitors can simultaneously see and hear these showcases while perusing the galleries and various exhibitions on display. 53 Full: Shift took place on January 12, 2017 and featured a night of improvisational music, dance, and performance art. Programmed by Shinichi Iova-Koga, BAMPFA invited Ruth Zaporah, founder of Action Theater, UK dancer and artist Yael Karavan, and East Coast based performance artist Cassie Tunich, to perform pieces inside the gallery and public gathering spaces at the museum. 54 Additionally, the ROVA Saxophone Quartet and Charles Gurke provided improvised music throughout the evening. Ruth Zaporah is known as one of the key players in the Bay Area’s experimental theatre community in the 1970s and 90s, and her career spans over fifty years. Action Theatre, a genre she developed, combines Eastern and Western 53 BAMPFA. "Full 2017 Music & Performance." Accessed February 13, 2017. http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/program/full-2017-music-performance. 54 BAMPFA. "Full: Shift | BAMPFA." Accessed February 13, 2017. http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/event/full-shift. Keller 33 performance traditions and improvisation to address a multitude of expressive acts including movement, speech, and vocalization. Zaporah has always been interested in how the body can serve as a vehicle to transmit communication. Yael Karavan was born in Israel, raised in Italy and France, and has lived in the UK since 1997. She is an award winning dancer and director, and similarly to Zaporah has developed a choreographic style that brings together Eastern and Western methodologies and includes elements of acting. She has been the artistic director of the company Karavan Ensemble since 2009, and her work bridges gaps between Butoh, dance, miming, clowning, and classical theatre. 55 Cassie Tunick was raised in California but is now based between New York and Boston. She founded the performance company Second Nature, and is a teacher of Ruth Zaporah’s Action Theatre. The musical elements of Full: Shift brought ROVA Saxophone Quartet and Charles Gurke into BAMPFA’s galleries. ROVA Sax Quartet was founded in 1978, and explores the blending of creative improvisation with classical music composition, through creating scores that combine varying genres. ROVA is inspired by pop music from Africa and Asia and American Blues music. With roots in free jazz, 20 th century new music, and rock and roll, ROVA is also influenced by contemporary dance, visual art, and poetry. Finally, Charles Gurke is a composer, saxophonist, and music educator who is active in the jazz and latinx music communities in the Bay Area and his ensemble, Gurkestra, often performs at festivals and venues throughout San Francisco. The performances primarily took place in BAMPFA’s performance forum, which features amphitheater like wooden benches surrounding a central concrete stage space. The 55 Ibid. Keller 34 benches serve as convivial seating and meeting areas during normal museum hours, outside of performances. Similar to the way the L@TE series asked performers to respond to the museum’s architecture, BAMPFA’s new building certainly lends itself to a discussion about how visitors interact with a museum space, as well as how temporal and live art projects can enliven the structure in new ways. In keeping with the goals established through the museum’s long history of incorporating performance works into their programming, the Full series brings together an interdisciplinary conversation. BAMPFA’s programming contrasts interestingly with SFMOMA’s Performance in Progress series in part because of the resources afforded to BAMPFA through its relationship to the academy. While visitors might not have the opportunity to contribute to the performances directly, as is the case at SFMOMA, hearing music, seeing bodies dance and perform in a gallery space creates new opportunities for conversation and reflection about the works on view. The collection and exhibitions are pulled into a dialogue with the performing singers, musicians, and dancers, allowing audiences to think of the gallery space as a location for these types of multi- sensory and cross disciplinary discussions. There is on the one hand the obvious conversation that emerges about how works on a wall inform or inspire the performers located in each galley, but also a dialogue about how auditory and bodily expression can respond directly to certain artists’ exhibited work, and how these media push against one another to create tension. This tension can be welcoming, chaotic, immersive, and energizing for viewers, and it ultimately disrupts the traditional museum dynamic of artwork and viewer. Through what Brenda Trofanenko and Avner Segall call a “pedagogy of shared authority,” BAMPFA’s enduring interest in implicating the physical structure of the museum through performance programming reveals how the galleries are activated as sites where learning Keller 35 is directed by individual visitors. By bringing interdisciplinary perspectives into the museum, the intersection of curating and education emerges as a methodology that mobilizes visitors to think about the cultural institution as a space for interactivity. Dispersing authority amongst curators, visual artists, performers, educators, and cultural programmers further dismantles hierarchical structures that traditionally govern arts institutions. When a museum’s departmental system presents a willingness to breakdown barriers between fields, it opens up the opportunity to discuss what new kinds of learning can emerge in gallery spaces. These events all call authorship into question, as Sally Tallant argues, revealing the complexities of and possibilities for renegotiated horizontal pedagogies in museums. CASE STUDY: THE BROAD MUSEUM The Broad: History The Broad Museum opened to the public on September 20, 2015 after expanding from a smaller location in Santa Monica which housed the Broad Art Foundation collection, and was for many years accessible by appointment only. Transitioning from hosting some small invitation only events at the Santa Monica space, to a large scale public museum presented a new opportunity to showcase the Broad collection to wider audiences. The new contemporary art museum exclusively houses the personal collection of Eli and Edythe Broad, philanthropists and art enthusiasts who, since the late 1960s, have amassed a collection of postwar and contemporary art that spans over 2,000 works. Eli Broad is a developer who founded a home building corporation called KB Home, as well as the insurance company SunAmerica, accruing a fortune of over seven billion dollars. The museum, located on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, offers free general admission and boasts around 50,000 square feet of gallery space. The building Keller 36 itself is 120,000 square feet and cost around $140 million to complete; it was designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. In addition to its exhibition spaces, The Broad also contains The Broad Art Foundation’s international lending library which has loaned works of art from the collection to art institutions and museums around the world since its inception in 1984. In its first year The Broad has received an extremely large attendance. Over one million people visited the museum since its opening, and the average age of museum goers is 33. 56 From the outset, The Broad sought a non-traditional approach to constructing a museum experience. There is no admissions desk. Tickets for daily entrance and for most events are distributed outside the building. There are no regularly stationed security guards in the galleries. Instead, Joanne Heyler, Chief Curator and Founding Director implemented a Visitor Services Associate (VSA) program. I was among the first group of people to be hired as a VSA in the summer of 2015, about two months before the museum opened to the public. We had to go through an extensive training process, which incorporated visitor engagement and teaching techniques, contemporary art history, and gallery safety tools. Each VSA is part guard, concierge, and educator; VSAs roam the galleries fielding questions and concerns, as well as facilitating dialogues about the work on view. Some more seasoned VSAs give public and private tours of the special exhibitions on the first floor and permanent collection on the third floor (I am included in this group). Pop-up talks are also offered by trained VSAs in specific galleries. In developing such an approach to museum administration, The Broad set in motion a series of interactions between visitors and staff members that is highly unique. The ways 56 The Broad. Marketing and Communications. "THE BROAD MUSEUM ATTRACTS 820,000 VISITORS IN INAUGURAL YEAR." News release, Los Angeles, CA, 2016. Keller 37 audiences relate to one another and to the space as a whole are orchestrated by the structure of the building itself, the artwork on view, as well as the presence of the VSAs in each gallery. The Broad exemplifies a museum whose administrative transactions (ticketing and visitor services being the most visible) were designed very deliberately to resemble a retail dynamic. Similar to the way Apple stores were designed without desks and feature employees that walk around rather than stand behind checkout counters, The Broad has mentioned several times modeling their visitor/gallery attendant interactions to resemble those that might take place in an Apple store. 57 Additionally, the museum appears much more desirable and full at all times, due to the fact that their ticketing lines are placed outside. The appearance of people waiting outside the building replicates a supply and demand structure: the perception of incredibly high demand (swaths of visitors outside), and a limited or selected supply (based on the capacity of the museum’s galleries). I do not point this out here for the sake of cynicism, but rather to discuss that the image the museum sets up for itself in its administrative functioning is one that has undoubtedly contributed to its large crowds. An interesting dynamic takes hold here, between the museum offering free admission and wanting to provide access to the arts for as many people as possible, while also displaying itself as an in-demand, highly sought after cultural site that you may be lucky enough to experience if you are willing to wait for it. The Broad is public and open to all, while still showing individual visitors how privileged they might be to actually have gotten inside the space, creating an aura of excitement and cultural cache on the outside. 57 Boehm, Mike. "The Broad doesn't want museum guards between you and the art." Los Angeles Times. September 17, 2015. Accessed March 26, 2017. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-broad-museum-logistics-20150912- story.html. Keller 38 Here is where the complexity of the museum lies. The dynamic the museum sets up for itself before visitors even enter the building allows the institution to think through their programming and educational initiatives in critical ways. The Broad’s experience for viewers would remain based in notions of superficiality if not for the educational programs it has in place, such as the implementation of Visitor Services Associates in the galleries, public tours and pop up talks, and the way its employees are trained as interlocutors and facilitators of conversation. Their public programming also importantly mitigates this somewhat vapid retail consumerist structure. Tip of Her Tongue at The Broad In 2015 The Broad implemented a feminist and queer performance art series called Tip of Her Tongue, curated by UC Riverside Performance Studies and American Literary and Cultural Studies professor, Jennifer Doyle. This series facilitated events like a performance by artist Karen Finley and a performative lecture given by Martine Syms. In one iteration of the series held in April 2016, Xandra Ibarra, also known as La Chica Boom, and Cassils were invited to perform works at various locations throughout the museum. Here the artists were tasked with engaging directly with the works on view as well as the The Broad itself. Ibarra’s performance began in the central gallery on the third floor, in front of a sculpture by Jeff Koons, (Tulips, 1995-2004) and a large scale installation by Christopher Wool (Untitled, 1990) that takes up three walls. Ibarra’s work, Nude Laughing (2014), began with the artist nude, save for dragging a nylon cocoon that was filled with blond wigs, ballet shoes, pearls, and fake breasts, all traditional signifiers of white womanhood. As Ibarra moved through the gallery she shed the nylon casing while laughing maniacally and dragging the accoutrements behind her through the building, audience following. Keller 39 Ibarra investigates the complicated relationships people of color (and people who are often racialized) may form not only to their own race but also to their notions of whiteness and white femininity. The title of the work draws from John Currin’s painting Laughing Nude (1998), another artist heavily collected by the Broads. Just as the artworks by Jeff Koons and Christopher Wool dominate the space of the central gallery, so Ibarra reclaims the entirety of the museum, traversing it nude with an audience following her, her laughter echoing through the building. Ibarra recoups an institution created to feature primarily immortalized, white, male artists, but now their works fade to the background, even if just momentarily. Cassils’ piece, The Powers That Be, first performed in 2015, took place in the parking garage. Audience members were led to the performance site by VSAs who aggressively yelled orders at them (this was a crucial component of the work that participating VSAs were asked to rehearse prior to the event). Viewers were corralled in small groups down to the darkened parking level and told to stand near or sit on five parked cars whose headlights shone on a central space similar to a boxing ring. Cassils, who was fully nude, then mimed a wrestling match against an invisible partner. Throughout the performance the car stereos played a soundtrack composed of static noise and sampled radio sounds. Audience members were encouraged to film the performance on their phones and take photos. Much of Cassils’ work deals with struggles associated with the transgendered body, and this piece displays how certain forms of trauma and violence are unrepresentable. Cassils questions the fluid roles of aggressor, victim, and witness mediated through disseminated forms of popular media and images. Additionally, Cassils activates a utilitarian space within the museum structure by staging their performance in the parking garage, revealing underrepresented labor dynamics that contribute to the functions of a large scale cultural site. Placing a Keller 40 performance artwork in the basement of the museum, the industrialized space of the garage, interrogates where art should and should not be shown, and how contemporary art functions dependent on varying contexts. By asking their audience members to take photos and videos of the performance, not only does Cassils raise important questions about ownership and distribution of violent images (as well as the contested space of the non-binary body) but they also comment on the insatiable need that many visitors at The Broad feel to take photos of the artwork on view at the museum. In this performance, Cassils’ body becomes an object similar to the art in the upstairs galleries, consumed constantly via social media. At these Tip of Her Tongue events the audience that fills the museum is academically focused and usually involved with professional art and performance study. These visitors have an extremely critical stance about the works on view and certain curatorial choices. Here is where a conflict arises for me: because I am simultaneously a part-time employee at The Broad as well as a graduate student, I have had to reconcile my own feelings about the museum, its curatorial shortcomings, and collecting practices as discussed in my graduate courses with my professors and colleagues. However, as an employee who sees such extreme variations in museum visitors, I also meet those who experience The Broad with nothing by joy and enthusiasm, and who do not interact with the collection with as much criticality. I could write (and have written) at length about my struggles with the intersection of these two often opposing conceptualizations of the museum that I notice almost every day. 58 It is quite unique for a museum to see such variation in audience demographics as The Broad does—ranging from those who have little experience in contemporary art museums, a 58 See other writing, “Engaging New Subjects: Rethinking Public Programming at The Broad Museum” (2015), “Broad Oversights: An Analysis of The Broad Museum’s Inaugural Exhibition” (2015), “When Worlds Collide: The Broad Museum and its Audiences” (2016), all by Rachel Keller. Keller 41 distinctly academically focused crowd, and collectors and donors exploring the space through their own relationship to the contemporary art market—especially within the first year of its opening. Herein lies the potential power The Broad wields. The interactions among visitors utilizing the museum as a location of public space, those seeing it as a signal for art market trends, and those who understand it as a site for critical academic intervention, are what could drive The Broad towards a future of truly diverse audience engagement. When I began working at The Broad, I often angrily lamented that the museum administration needed to quickly decide what type of space it “wanted to be.” Is the goal to attract as many visitors as possible through relentless social media strategy, and by filling the inaugural exhibition with large, bright, and photogenic artwork? Is The Broad just a tax shelter for two mega-rich philanthropists who wanted to egomaniacally control the future of every work in their collection, rather than donate their holdings to art institutions worldwide? Or is the museum a space for radical performance and queer and feminist theory that represents interest in identity politics and creative place making? I believe that the answer is all three. By staging these avant-garde performances inside the galleries rather than in the multi- purpose auditorium (called the Oculus Hall), or outside the museum on a stage, the performing artist engages in a direct conversation with the artwork on view. Immediate tension arises between the subject matter of Cassils’ and Xandra Ibarra’s work and the location in which they are performing. In Ibarra’s case a direct conversation emerges, not only about the works she is performing in front of (Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, and others), but also The Broad’s entire exhibition program. For Cassils, the parking garage at the museum becomes a space that places performance at the literal foundation of the building. The project questions whether Cassils’ performance and the conversations it brings to bare (for better or worse) should be situated as a Keller 42 foundational necessity that this institution needs to respond to in future exhibitions and programs. Using the parking garage as the setting for a conversation that might not be happening in the upstairs galleries asks viewers if a non-gallery space is the only location where these dialogues can take place. The tension here lies between the traditional exhibition structure The Broad has scheduled thus far, and these multi-faceted performative experiences facilitated by artists at the front of the conversation about intersectional feminism, queerness, trans inclusivity, and racialized bodies, to name just a few interests touched on by participating artists in the Tip of Her Tongue series. Both of these performances bring to mind what Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson refer to as a “counter institutional ethos,” as these programs reveal an interest on behalf of The Broad’s audience engagement and curatorial teams in disrupting traditional authoritative notions of what visitors should and should not take away from their museum experience. Rather, by incorporating artists who may question the works on view, and the collection as a whole, The Broad shows an interest in how temporal projects can promote dialogic interactions with the institution, opening itself up for critique and questioning. In this way, audiences engage with a new series of questions about the structures of power that govern the museum, from its collecting practices, to its exhibitions, to its visitor services initiatives. These projects also place more value on potentiality and a resistance to pre-calculated outcomes, placing power with the viewer to analyze the museum’s shortcomings, while also provoking questions about the external world. Through these public programming initiatives, The Broad has the potential to invigorate their audience and to promote creative engagement at the museum. These public lectures and performances can take place more frequently, creating more opportunities available for a larger volume of visitors to attend these events. The Broad could invite more artists to interact directly Keller 43 with the museum (as SFMOMA and BAMPFA do)—perhaps through a residency program where emerging artists are encouraged to create a site specific artwork or performance that responds to the collection in some way. This could range from interactions with individual works on view to more general musings about The Broad as a whole, the building, its architecture firm, or surrounding neighborhood. The museum could also commit to engaging the immediate community in a distinct and thoughtful way. Aside from partnering with schools and planning family weekend workshops (as The Broad does every so often), the museum could form meaningful and lasting relationships with varying non-profits and smaller alternative art spaces throughout Southern California or in the Downtown LA area. In October 2016, held in conjunction with the USC Roski School of Art and Design, the museum facilitated a discussion between Broad collection artist Julie Mehretu and UCLA professor of African and African American Art History, Steven Nelson. At this particular event, guests ranged from museum employees, scholars from USC, UCLA, and other institutions, as well as many undergraduate and graduate students from both universities. This was the first time since The Broad opened that they have made a distinctive effort to collaborate with a university. By pairing an artist from the collection with a highly respected and well-known professor, the museum offered visitors an interesting glimpse into future possibilities for interdisciplinary and cross-institutional outreach. The museum also gains through these types of events, the attention and respect of an art and university audience that is actively engaged in developing critical studies and visual culture curricula. By demonstrating an interest in complex subject matter that is brought to the fore by certain performance artists, guest speakers, and scholars, The Broad illustrates a concern with interrogating their own collection and exhibition program. Keller 44 Through utilizing the inherent and unique opportunities afforded by attracting varied audiences, The Broad can develop into an institution that takes its community into account, while also creating a space for mixed social and artistic interactions. While the sample of the collection that is currently on view traces a very specific history of contemporary art (that it is dominated by white, male artists), the strength in the institution lies in the programming possibilities brought to bear through the interests, motivations, and backgrounds of those who visit the museum. By planning events and initiatives that are guided by artists’ and audiences’ responses to the collection, The Broad could place itself at the forefront of community driven public engagement. CONCLUSION: LIVE ART AS CONUIT, FOR BETTER OR WORSE The way I have traced these case studies shows that public programming must be treated on a case by case basis, specific to the community within which the museum exists. Each museum discussed is representative of a current desire on behalf of art institutions to reach out to broader publics and activate gallery spaces in new ways. Live art, temporal projects, and performances in museums work through some questions about the artworks on view and also about the ways visitors respond to large collections in traditional art spaces, as is the case in particular with The Broad and SFMOMA. The projects mentioned undoubtedly display the concerns and goals of the cultural site in which they are shown. For example, in the case of BAMPFA, bringing in a multi-disciplinary slate of programs utilizes the broad resources available to the museum through its being associated with a large academy. Ultimately, the educational turn discussed at the outset of this text can trace for us the merging of interests across administrative fields within the museum, to address questions Keller 45 brought up through the needs of its visitors. Can public programs adequately engage audiences to think about the museum as a space to work through issues that emerge outside of its walls? In each of the case studies, live art is a means to disrupt the ways in which museums may unintentionally replicate structures of power that dictate the external world. If public programming can act as a way to promote inclusivity, it must not just reflect the interests of the museum in attracting a wider attendance. It must also place agency in the hands of performers and viewers equally, to reconstruct the museum experience in a way that dismantles hierarchies, while also being open to the idea of failure and disruption. The museum can, and should critique itself, by involving temporal projects in exhibition and programming schedules. Public reception to live art takes into account notions of potentiality in a way that is more difficult to achieve through static exhibitions. Interest in live performance and participatory projects in the museum signals not only the way museums have changed throughout the 21 st century, but also a desire within many institutional frames in the art world such as the academy, art schools, art history programs, and alternative cultural platforms, in engaging with a new insistence on pedagogy. It is not as though these processes had not taken place before the last decade. One can think of the 1979 Available Light exhibition at MOCA, MOCA’s MAP Arts initiative, and the exhibition The Art of Participation at SFMOMA in 2008, as salient examples that place performance, participation, and audience engagement at the front of museum interest. However public programming has now become codified in the administrative structures of many museums, with greater attention given to reflecting different forms of pedagogy and engagement. Educational and curatorial departments circulate within one another because artistic practices have changed and interests have shifted. There is clearly an issue that arises for contemporary museums as younger artists are engaging with bodily and temporal experiences in their work. Keller 46 How does one find a space for the production of a performance piece? The site of production has moved in many instances (especially when projects deal with a direct interaction with an audience) from the artist’s studio to interventions in institutions. This is made especially clear through the works displayed in SFMOMA’s Performance in Progress series. Now, the museum is both the site of production and presentation. Live art and performance might be the bridge between educational and curatorial departments, so long as performance pieces that are brought into the museum are not flattened to serve the immediate needs of the institution. Public programming must strike a balance between maintaining the artists’ interests and intentions for the piece so that it is not subsumed into the overarching strategy of each museum. They should still be seen as ancillary discussion that engages audiences, but in a way that still legitimizes the practice of live art as something that can and should belong both inside a museum and function outside of the structures of the art market. Museums could support the work of emerging performance and inter-disciplinary projects by providing exhibition and performance space, so that the gallery becomes a testing ground to work through a piece. So many museums use artist residency programs as the fulcrum to bridge programming and curatorial departments, so it makes sense to allow artists to use interactions with large audiences at places like The Broad, SFMOMA, an BAMPFA as a resource to work through their practices. In turn, audiences are able to test out the boundaries of their own thought and their relationships to the external world, by using artworks, performances, and interactions facilitated by museum programming. A mutual, collaborative relationship between artist, visitor, and museum administration calls into question the cultural institution itself and its many roles. Keller 47 WORKS CITED BAMPFA. “About BAMPFA | BAMPFA.” Accessed February 13, 2017. http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about/about-bampfa. BAMPFA. “Exhibition History | BAMPFA.” Accessed February 13, 2017. http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about/exhibition-film-history. BAMPFA. "Full 2017 Music & Performance." Accessed February 13, 2017. http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/program/full-2017-music-performance. BAMPFA. "Full: Shift | BAMPFA." Accessed February 13, 2017. http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/event/full-shift. BAMPFA. MATRIX | BAMPFA. Accessed February 13, 2017. http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about/matrix. Trofanenko, Brenda, and Avner Segall. "Introduction." In Beyond Pedagogy: Reconsidering the Public Purpose of Museums. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers., 2014. Boehm, Mike. "The Broad doesn't want museum guards between you and the art." Los Angeles Times. September 17, 2015. Accessed March 26, 2017. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-broad-museum-logistics- 20150912-story.html. Halbreich, Kathy. "Mission: More Than a Museum." Walker Art Center Annual Report. 1999. Accessed March 26, 2017. http://annualreport.walkerart.org/1999/director.html. Keller, Rachel. Phone interview with Dominic Willsdon. Los Angeles, CA. September 7, 2016. Keller, Rachel. Interview with Sherry Goodman. Berkeley, CA. August 26, 2016. Lewallen, Constance. "BAM/PFA - Commitment." BAMPFA. 2004. Accessed March 26, 2017. http://archive.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about/aboutnotedetail.php?Nickname=TXT0011. O'Neill, Paul, and Mick Wilson. "Introduction." In Curating and the Educational Turn. London: Open Editions, 2010. Rogoff, Irit. "Turning." e-flux. 2008. Accessed May 04, 2016. http://www.e- flux.com/journal/turning. SFMOMA. "Free to See." Accessed February 13, 2017. https://www.sfmoma.org/visit/free-to- see/. SFMOMA. "Our History." Accessed February 13, 2017. https://www.sfmoma.org/read/our- history/. Keller 48 SFMOMA. "SFMOMA LAUNCHES NEW PERFORMANCE IN PROGRESS SERIES THIS FALL." News release. Sfmoma.org. Accessed February 13, 2017. SFMOMA. "SFMOMA's New Koret Visitor Education Center Off to Strong Start Unique Facility Reaches 20 Percent of Visitors in First Month." Accessed February 13, 2017. https://www.sfmoma.org/press/release/sfmomas-new-koret-visitor-education-center-off-to/. SFMOMA. "The Artist Initiative." Accessed February 13, 2017. https://www.sfmoma.org/artists- artworks/research/artist-initiative/. Tallant, Sally. "Experiments in Integrated Programming." In Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O'Neill and Mick Wilson. London: Open Editions, 2010. The Broad. Marketing and Communications. "THE BROAD MUSEUM ATTRACTS 820,000 VISITORS IN INAUGURAL YEAR." News release, Los Angeles, CA, 2016.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This thesis investigates ideas surrounding current public programming and public engagement initiatives at museums, linking the development of public programming with what Irit Rogoff refers to as the “educational turn” in contemporary art and curating. This project examines participatory and pedagogical curatorial models, applying these to a current desire on behalf of museums to focus on the development of public programming and audience engagement. As a historical framework, the text analyzes how issues regarding public funding for museums in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States marked a shifting interest on the part of art institutions in reaching out to broader audiences. This project investigates how new or re-opened museums are structuring their programming initiatives in 2016 through 2017 based on ideas about participation and audience engagement, as well as the role of the artist intervening in traditional museum spaces. This discussion centers on public programs at three museums that all bring the artist's body into the gallery space: The Broad Museum’s Tip of Her Tongue series, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Performance in Progress, and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive's Full Moon series.

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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Asset Metadata

Creator Keller, Rachel (author)

Core Title Museum programming and the educational turn

School Roski School of Art and Design

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere

Publication Date 04/19/2017

Defense Date 04/18/2017

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag audience development,audience engagement,BAMPFA,Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive,contemporary art,Critical Studies,curatorial studies,museum education,museum programming,museum studies,OAI-PMH Harvest,pedagogy,performance art,public engagement,public practice,public programming,public programs,San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,SFMOMA,The Broad,visual culture,visual culture studies

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Jones, Amelia (committee chair), Campbell, Andy (committee member), Moss, Karen (committee member)

Creator Email rachelemilykeller@gmail.com,rekeller@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-360172

Unique identifier UC11258374

Identifier etd-KellerRach-5230.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-360172 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-KellerRach-5230.pdf

Dmrecord 360172

Document Type Thesis

Rights Keller, Rachel

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA