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Public engagement and activating audiences in Los Angeles museums
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Public engagement and activating audiences in Los Angeles museums
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PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT AND ACTIVATING AUDIENCES IN LOS ANGELES MUSEUMS
Ani Ohanessian
Curatorial Practice and the Public Sphere
Master’s Degree
University of Southern California
May 13, 2016
2
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
A Brief History on Participation in Museums 5
Museums in Los Angeles 8
Research and Goals 8
Chapter One 12
Fallen Fruit at LACMA – Fruit as a Source of Activating Visitors (2010)
Chapter Two 19
Machine Project Reinvents the Hammer Museum (2009-2010)
Chapter Three 27
MOCA’s Engagement Party – Collaborations with Emerging L.A. Artists (2008-2012)
Conclusion 37
Los Angeles Museums as Centers for Public Engagement
Bibliography 40
3
Introduction
In the book It’s All Mediating, art historian Kaija Kaitavuori introduces the art museum
as an arrangement of various professional and personal interests, suggesting that the museum is
“a place of contemplation, education, entertainment and commerce living side by side in the
same institution.”
1
Art museums serve the interests of many visitors yet can be limiting in
engaging those who are unfamiliar with the culture of museums (this includes all types:
contemporary, encyclopedic, natural history, university and others). In this context, Kaitavuori is
focused on visitors who have had minimal introduction to or interactions with art. Audiences
who have limited familiarity with art have different experiences than those who are constantly
exposed to museum culture; they are often times unfamiliar with the historical background,
social context and the artist’s motives, ultimately limiting their understanding and experience of
the artwork.
This thesis will explore how from the 1990s to the present day museums have developed
new strategies to engage different audiences to experience art. This results from the need to
expand their public to include multiple audiences—not only those who are already familiar with
the arts, but also families of different economic and educational backgrounds, students, tourists,
and those who have minimal or no previous exposure to art. Many museums have moved away
from simply developing exhibitions in which audiences are “passive consumers”
2
towards
developing exhibitions and programs in which they become active participants. Some of the
strategies include performances, workshops, or daylong events. With these programs, museums
have been transformed from spaces that educate and engage visitors to spaces that invite them to
become active participants in artistic experiences of different formats.
1
Kaija Kaitavuori, It's All Mediating: Outlining and Incorporating the Roles of Curating and Education in the
Exhibition Context (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), xi.
2
Nina Simon, The Participatory Museum (Museum 2.0, 2010), 5.
4
In this thesis I examine three case studies that represent a new model of artist generated
projects. These programs were executed in collaboration with both museum curators and
educators, and were aimed towards public engagement and audience development goals. The
case studies I focus on are: The Fallen Fruit’s EATLACMA (2010), a three-part project at the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Mark Allen and Machine Project’s residency at the
Hammer Museum (2009-2010); and Engagement Party (2008-2012) at the Museum of
Contemporary Art (MOCA). In these three case studies artists endeavored to intervene into the
museum’s physical space, interact with the permanent collection, and/or produce activities that
call on visitors to become directly involved in programs.
I have specifically chosen to look at the EATLACMA project at LACMA to understand
how the Los Angeles-based art collective Fallen Fruit’s public practice of bringing communities
together through foraging and growing of fruits could be placed within an institution. I examine
how they worked with the curators to organize a permanent collection installation in the
LACMA galleries and to produce a day-long outdoor festival with other artists who also work
with fruit and food. With the Machine Project residency at the Hammer Museum I explore how
an artist-run collective engaged a range of audiences within an institutional setting and worked as
a problem solver for the larger institution.
3
Machine Project and their collaborators also worked
within the museum to create surprising and engaging interventions relating to their own practices
and created different kinds of opportunities for audience engagement. Lastly, I analyze the
Engagement Party at MOCA to understand how different museum departments engaged with
local Los Angeles artist collectives to create different public engagement projects such as
workshops, performances, dance parties and dinners in order to engage new audiences. Although
3
Allison Agsten, Machine Project Engagement Artist in Residence Report, “Getting Started: Public Engagement
A.I.R. at the Hammer,” (Hammer Museum Report, 2013), 7. As a part of the residency at the Hammer Museum,
Machine Project was invited to develop projects that would solve many ongoing visitor service problems.
5
there was extensive collaboration between artists and museum staff within each of the three case
studies, it was not the curators who developed project ideas—rather the artists created and
brought their own practices into the institutions.
A Brief History on Participation in Museums
It is through the types of public engagement initiatives exemplified by Fallen Fruit,
Machine Project and Engagement Party that artists bring more participatory and interactive work
into the museum, making audiences become active agents in experiencing art. Traditionally, art
objects are not to be touched, but are displayed as static objects. More direct interaction with
artists through concerts, performances, workshops and other kinds of programs can be
transformative in creating a new experience in understanding and interacting with art.
In her 2012 text Artificial Hells, art historian Claire Bishop focuses on differentiating
‘participatory art’ from ‘socially engaged art.’ Bishop understood theories of participatory art in
the 1990s as “art that requires some action on behalf of the viewer in order to complete the
work.”
4
Participatory art is understood as the “involvement of many people as opposed to the
one-to-one relationship of interactivity avoiding the ambiguity of social engagement, which
might refer to a wide range of work.”
5
Rather than simply looking at the physical gallery space,
the audience member needs to experience the space with the work in its entirety.
Within the past two decades a number of artists have worked to engage museum
audiences and communities in a new manner that requires audience participation in order to
complete the work. Although not historically imbedded in museum practice, several movements
from the 1950s to the 1970s––such as Happenings and Fluxus––could only be completed
4
Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (Verso Books, 2012), 1.
5
Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Les Presses du réel, 2002), 13.
6
through audience participation. A turn took place in the early 2000s where museum curators
began to question how these practices could be invited into the institutions.
Within the past decade there have been a number of museum exhibitions throughout the
United States that create spaces of experimentation and active engagement for audiences. For
example, in 2010 the Walker Art Center invited San Francisco-based collective Futurefarmers to
work in the garden space outside their institution. Futurefarmers founder Amy Franceschini
believes there is a fundamental problem in how museums are working with audiences. Through
this project the collective created events at the Walker to encourage “people to explore the idea
of self-expression.”
6
The one-month series, A People Without A Voice Cannot Be Heard,
included film screenings, talks and workshops that were implemented to create a space of
conversation about social, political and environmental issues. Futurefarmers used the Walker’s
space to bring people together to communicate and engage with one another in producing a
collective voice, observing that through this shared voice a “collective energy emerges that
creates new forms of public interaction and space.”
7
In 2010, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago opened Without You I’m Nothing:
Art and Its Audience. This exhibition explored the history—and the increasing need—for artists
to work with and engage their audiences, including the works of Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman,
Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Liam Gillick and Andrea Zittel. This exhibition took a historical
look at the development of viewer participation. In conjunction with the exhibition, the Museum
6
“Future Farmers,” Open Field at the Walker Art Center, accessed March 20, 2016,
http://www.walkerart.org/openfield/programs/futurefarmers/.
7
Ibid.
7
also hosted a number of programs, including workshops and activities that asked audiences to
interact with material through recreating the work on display.
8
Another example of how a museum works to engage their audience through participation
within an exhibition is exemplified in Lygia Clark’s retrospective, The Abandonment of Art
1948-1988, (2014). This exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art was the first
expansive exhibition of the artist’s work. Clark’s work focuses on themes of participation and art
as a form of therapy. As a number of Clark’s projects were participatory, the curators of the
exhibition recreated a number of her sculptures and projects for audiences to touch and interact
with. The museum provided facilitators and volunteers within each gallery to help audiences
experience these sensorial objects.
9
In addition to exhibitions and projects that engaged visitors to participate with art works,
a number of museums also developed new public programs with the goal of expanding
audiences. For example the Education Department at MoMA hosts an annual Artists Experiment
event that invites a number of contemporary artists to have conversations with visitors and
educators of the museum in developing new programs for surrounding communities. Through
this event the artists and museum administration are able to engage with local visitors to develop
programs, allowing for audiences to become active participants in program development. The
program titled It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq, which took place at the Hammer
Museum from April 21, 2009 through May 17, 2009, invited artist Jeremy Deller to host talks
with individuals who had first-hand experience with the war in Iraq, whether veterans,
journalists, scholars and so on. Although this program did not require the audience to physically
8
“Without You I’m nothing: Art and Its Audience,” Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, accessed March
20, 2016, https://mcachicago.org/Exhibitions/2011/Without-You-Im-Nothing-Art-And-Its-Audience/.
9
“Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948-1988,” Museum of Modern Art, accessed March 20, 2016,
http://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1422?locale=en/.
8
participate in completing an artwork, the audience was asked to partake in the opening of a new
space of dialogue through the act of listening and asking questions.
Museums in Los Angeles
The Los Angeles museums researched in this thesis invited artists into their space to
collaboratively work to bring in new audiences and to create new ways of utilizing art.
Collaborative relationships between the education and curatorial departments were formed in
order to promote and market the museum as a cultural center that engages non-traditional
audiences. Furthermore, during the 1990s these practices allowed for museum departments to
collaborate and accommodate forms of social practice within their institutions. In doing so, the
museum education departments deviated from using traditional education methods such as
didactics and docent-led tours to creating opportunities to engage non-traditional art audiences in
non-traditional ways. The ways in which the museum curators collaborated with artists in the
museum shifted the curator’s role from that of a caretaker of art to a facilitator and mediator
between the artist and community.
Research and Goals
During my extensive research it became evident that very little has been written about
curators, educators and those who work in the field of public programming; however it is
through examples such as these case studies that new forms of public engagement can be
documented. Each of these public engagement projects has produced printed and online
publications. This includes LACMA’s online database of Fallen Fruit’s EATLACMA; the report
to the Irvine Foundation regarding the Public Engagement Artist in Residence: Machine Project
9
Hammer Museum project; and Engagement Party: Social Practice at MOCA 2008-2012, a text
compiled of interviews and essays for MOCA’s Engagement Party publication. Additionally I
have conducted interviews with museum staff including former LACMA Assistant Curator of
Contemporary Art Michele Urton, former Senior Education Program Manager of MOCA
Aandrea Stang, and Hammer Museum’s Director of Public Programs and Education Claudia
Bestor. I have also interviewed Fallen Fruit’s collaborators, Austin Young and David Burns. My
primary goal in this thesis is to examine these specific case studies of new types of innovative,
participatory experiences that artists generate for visitors through their public engagement
projects.
Fallen Fruit at LACMA intervened in the museum’s permanent collection and brought
their ideas of fruit and food to LACMA’s outdoor spaces by installing gardens and organizing
outdoor festivals. In working with the museum’s curators, Fallen Fruit worked inside the
galleries to combine their own practices with art historical representations of fruit and food found
in the museum’s permanent collection. Outside the museum’s spaces, Fallen Fruit collaborated
with a number of art collectives to create installations that would activate different public spaces,
including: The Finishing School’s project M.O.L.D, Machine Project’s the Electric Melon Drum
Circle, a watermelon eating contest, and a tomato fight. I believe that Fallen Fruit was interested
in encouraging visitors to think critically about the role of fruit and food in our lives as well as its
representation in art.
Machine Project at the Hammer Museum developed from the museum’s vision of having
the artist work as a problem solver, as exemplified by the first project, The Giant Hand. Between
the first and second year of this collaboration Mark Allen moved away from taking on this role
to make interventions that were more related to Machine Project’s practice. They invited
10
collaborators to do small-scale, unusual projects and events such as turning the coat-room in the
museum lobby into the Little William Theater which hosted weekly performances for an
audience of two, or the HousePlant Vacation, where audiences could drop off their plants for a
vacation at the museum’s terrace. These events, which utilized different gallery and ancillary
spaces in the museum worked to surprise, excite and engage audiences throughout the museum’s
spaces.
More than the two other case studies, I believe Engagement Party at MOCA aimed to
engage new audiences. Using a new internal model, the Think Tank included different levels of
museum staff who came together to invite various artists and collectives to create events,
performances, workshops and parties that would attract younger and local audiences to the
museum. Programs included Knifeandfork’s Emptiness if Form (Golf and Donuts), in which
participants were asked to use a golf club to knock a golf ball to various locations throughout the
museum, and once in a specific hole, participants would receive an update via text about the
nature and surrounding of the hole. For example, if the golf ball made it into the women’s
restroom, a participant would receive a text message describing the interior bathroom space.
Engagement Party also included MOCA Grand Prix, where a number of racetracks were placed
throughout the galleries, and audiences could race cars as they walked or raced through the
space. These are just two examples of how these projects endeavored to appeal to younger and
new audiences who are interested in different subjects, such as cars and sports as ways to attract
them to the museum.
All three of these examples demonstrate ways that museums worked with Los Angeles-
based artists and collectives whose practices involve participatory and socially engaged art. By
doing so, these museums gave visitors the opportunity to engage the museum beyond its
11
traditional role as a space of reflection, while museum staff and artists could develop new forms
of engaging and activating publics.
12
Chapter One: Fallen Fruit at LACMA – Fruit as a Source of Activating Visitors
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, originally the Los Angeles Museum of History,
Science and Art, was established in 1910. In 1965 part of the museum moved to their current
campus and established itself as an art-focused institution. Categorized as an encyclopedic
museum, the museum’s six buildings contain over 120,000 art objects and artifacts, a collection
that spans from pre-historic to contemporary art, including works from several regions and
culture groups. LACMA’s mission is to “serve the public through the collection, conservation,
exhibition and interpretation of significant works of art from a broad range of cultures and
historical periods, and through the translation of these collections into meaningful educational,
aesthetic, intellectual, and culture experiences for the widest array of audiences.”
10
LACMA has
presented exhibitions that range from a local to international scope.
The museum’s education department serves a number of functions, including training and
educating docents to present gallery tours, providing wall texts, developing family programs,
developing extensive teacher and student programs (such as evenings for educators), providing
art classes and art camps for kids and adults, and developing a number of programs for
community outreach. However, most of these programs do not invite audiences to physically
interact with or be a part of the process in creating the artwork, due to the types of artworks that
are typically displayed—traditional works of art, such as paintings and sculptures and other
cultural artifacts.
EATLACMA (2009-2010) included David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young,
who conceived the artist collective Fallen Fruit in 2004.
11
Fallen Fruit’s activities began with in-
person walks and mapping exercises that documented the fruit trees growing around various
10
“LACMA Mission Statement,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, accessed March 9, 2016,
http://www.lacma.org/overview#ms/.
11
Matias Viegener left Fallen Fruit in 2013.
13
properties throughout the city of Los Angeles. Fallen Fruit uses “fruit as a material or media, the
catalogue of projects and works reimagine public interactions with the margins of urban space,
systems of community and narrative real-time experience.”
12
Fallen Fruit has expanded to create
site-specific installations and public “happenings” throughout cities, working to re-imagine
public spaces and urban streets.
Inviting Fallen Fruit to collaborate with LACMA was inspired by an earlier project. In
2008 Charlotte Cotton, former curator of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at
LACMA, pioneered the one-day project with Machine Project, an artist collective that was
invited to create A Field Guide to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The project included
performances, workshops, events and installations. For one year, Mark Allen and Jason Brown
of Machine Project studied the various spaces of the museum to find locations that could be
activated by performances and installations. The one-day event, which was initiated on
November 15, 2008, was created to provide audiences with new ways of understanding the
museum, to create spaces “where unexpected events are encountered within a space that usually
serves another function.”
13
With a large permanent collection, the museum used the collaboration with the art
collective to foster a feeling of discovery and new encounters between the museum’s spaces,
objects in its collection, and the audience. This one-day event included a number of
performances and installations including a work by Matthew Nu who recreated Machine
Project’s studio space on LACMA’s plaza. Nate Page’s Mission Control Bunker worked as the
center for the entire project— it was constructed from waste material found around the museum
12
“Fallen Fruit Presents EATLACMA,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, accessed March 9, 2016,
http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/fallen-fruit-presents-eatlacma/.
13
Mark Allen, Machine Project: A Field Guide to LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2008), 13.
14
and displayed at the museum’s Grand Entrance. This project was the inspiration for Cotton to
further invite art collectives to develop public engagement programs at the museum.
In 2009, LACMA was one of fifteen museum recipients of a one million dollar Museum
and Community Connections program grant from the MetLife Foundation.
14
This grant was
given to art programs and museums that focused on reaching new and diverse audiences in
producing and discussing art without any boundaries. The MetLife Grant required LACMA to
contract with an art collective to produce an original project which would then be acquired by the
institution. Following from the previous collaboration with Machine Project, Cotton was
interested in inviting Fallen Fruit to activate the museum space. EATLACMA was a yearlong
exploration into food, politics, art and culture, curated by Cotton, with former LACMA Assistant
Curator of Contemporary Art Michele Urton and LACMA Associate Curator of Special
Initiatives José Luis Blondet.
Fallen Fruit was to use the museum’s collection and space to
activate the campus through the creation of three projects that explored the social role that food
plays in Western culture.
The first project within this collaboration was an exhibition entitled Fallen Fruit Presents
The Fruit of LACMA (June 27 - November 7, 2010) using LACMA’s permanent collection to
demonstrate how art and the cycle of producing food intertwined and also the representation and
display of food in art history.
15
Examining the role of food as a common ground, the artistic
collective explored the social role of art and ritual in community and human relationships.
16
For
this exhibition, rather than having the museum curator select the work, Fallen Fruit mined the
14
Fallen Fruit receives funding from a number of sources, including the Pasadena Art Council’s EMERGE
program, which grants art projects financial assistance. In 2013 they were awarded a grant from Creative Capital and
from the Muriel Pollia Foundation.
15
“Fallen Fruit Presents The Fallen Fruit of LACMA,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, accessed March 9,
2016, http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/fallen-fruit-presents-eatlacma/.
16
Ibid.
15
museum’s collection to find 19
th
- and 20
th
-century artworks that depicted images of fruits and
vegetables. These chosen artworks were displayed in the gallery space against a newly
commissioned wallpaper as the backdrop.
17
Through this project different mediums of artwork,
whether painting, objects and drawings were displayed together through the common thread of
depicting food. Fallen Fruit intervened in the museum’s collection to create a new way of seeing
the collection and bringing their ideas of fruit and food to audiences. Rather than physically
engaging with their audiences, this gallery space worked to foster a new space of dialogue about
the museum’s collection and the various ways fruits and food are depicted through an art
historical lens.
The second project of EATLACMA included a number of curated art gardens throughout
the museum’s campus. A number of artists were invited by the museum staff and Fallen Fruit to
plant their own gardens throughout LACMA’s outdoor campus, including the Metabolic Studio
(Jules Rochielle Sievert and Lauren Bon), Didier Hess (Jenna Didier & Oliver Hess), the
National Bitter Melon Council (Hiroko and Jeremy Liu), and Roots of Compromise (Karen
Atkinson, John Burtle, Ari Kletzky, and Owen Driggs). The largest art garden was a potato field
installed within the courtyard between the Art of the Americas Building and the Ahmanson
Building. The staff of Fallen Fruit and LACMA worked collaboratively to face a number of large
concerns, ranging from issues of audience participation to maintaining the art gardens.
Adequate water drainage and appropriate disposal of fruits and vegetables grown on-site
were among the primary practical concerns the museum had during this phase of the project.
Furthermore, these art gardens took an extensive amount of time to grow, so staff and artists had
to consider how museum visitors would see and interact with what had been planted and grown.
17
This signature wallpaper has become a consistent logo for their collective.
16
Through an interview with David Burns it was clear that they did not want the audience to have
the responsibility of caring for the gardens; rather it was the institution’s and the collective’s
responsibility to plant and maintain the different types of vegetables and fruits.
18
This process
was to show audiences the multiple and creative ways of cross-pollinating while introducing new
conversations about the process of growing different types of fruits and vegetables under various
circumstances. For example, collective member Didier Hess created a garden and planted
bamboo with melons (donated from the National Bitter Melon Council) hanging from the
branches, allowing the plants to cross-pollinate as they grew together. Through this project, the
staff of Fallen Fruit and the museum worked collaboratively to develop the most efficient and
effective methods in constructing and planting these art gardens, bringing attention to new ways
of cross-pollinating and to the museum’s overlooked outdoor spaces.
On November 7
th
, 2010, the closing day of the exhibition, Fallen Fruit and LACMA
organized Let Them Eat LACMA, an all day event in which they invited fifty artists to create
interventions in museum’s outdoor plazas, the sidewalks and the park behind the campus that
highlighted the importance of food and gardens. Fallen Fruit asked each artist to pick a public
space within the museum’s campus and to develop new projects. Jonathan Gold, a food critic for
the Los Angeles Times, read a text about Spam to accompany Ed Ruscha’s work Actual Size
(1962) on view in the Ahmanson Building. Singer/songwriters Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, and
Phranc attended the museum and sang for their meals. Machine Project’s Mark Allen and
collaborator Liz Glynn developed projects along with new works created by The Finishing
School, all of which called for audience participation. Machine Project created a one-day event
titled Electric Melon Drum Circle where visitors could join the Melon Drum Circle to experience
a tomato fight, partake in a watermelon-eating contest, learn about the history of utensils (knife,
18
David Burns, phone interview by Ani Ohanessian, Los Angeles, March 2, 2016.
17
spoon and fork), or sample the food given to prisoners in California jails.
19
The Finishing School
developed the project M.O.L.D. —a workshop that engaged visitors in “critical conversation(s)
about the quality and safety of the food consumed.”
20
The Finishing School also set up tents
outside of the Art of the Americas Building at LACMA with various activities to test the effects
of chemicals on the food we consume. Jennifer Rubell’s work titled Old-Fashioned occupied a
gallery space filled with donuts hanging on the walls, where visitors were asked to approach the
installation and eat the donuts off of the walls. Artist Jenna Didier created the Food Pyramid, an
installation resembling a pyramid that included the components of making a tilapia fish taco.
Through the development of the installation and on the final day of the exhibition, the artist
worked with volunteers and other artists in making fish tacos for audiences.
21
The development of the Public Fruit Theater (2010) occurred alongside these events,
which was Fallen Fruits garden at the museum, designed by Marco Barrantes and Michelle
Matthews and constructed by La Loma Development Company. It was an outdoor theater with a
citrus orchard planted in the center. The “theater is the durational performance of the fruit tree in
its seasonal cycles, as well as the spectators watching each other watch the tree grow.”
22
This
project commented on the history of the specific site, which was once filled with citrus trees but
is now just a space covered in concrete. Public Fruit Theater brought together audiences to talk
about the historical significance and importance of fruits and their origins, while also bringing
attention to non-spectacular public spaces.
19
“Electric Melon Drum Circle at Let Them Eat LACMA,” Machine Project, accessed March 15, 2016,
http://machineproject.com/2010/events/electric-melon/.
20
“M.O.L.D.,” Finishing School, accessed March 15, 2016, http://finishing-school-art.net/M-O-L-D-2009/.
21
“Food Pyramid,” Jenna Didier, accessed February 20, 2016, http://www.jennadidier.com/the-food-pyramid/.
22
“Let Them Eat LACMA! November 7
th
at LACMA, Fallen Fruit, Fifty Artists Explore Art, Art, Food, Culture
and Politics in Let Them Eat LACMA,” Fallen Fruit, accessed January 15, 2016, http://fallenfruit.org/let-them-eat-
lacma-november-7th-at-lacma/.
18
The collaboration between Fallen Fruit and LACMA was not targeted towards a specific
audience—rather it was open for the museum’s ongoing visitors and the surrounding Los
Angeles community. The projects developed at LACMA were less about targeting a specific
demographic and more about bringing people together through the histories and displays of food,
a topic that is understood by all audiences. By inviting more than 50 artists to partake in the
activities, audiences experienced these artists’ works in a different and new institutional context.
Fallen Fruit works engage their surrounding community by intervening and highlighting
spaces that grow fruits and vegetables throughout the city. Fallen Fruit’s mission at LACMA was
to engage with visitors while also engaging with the museum’s space and collection—although
not simultaneously, as this was accomplished in different ways throughout the three projects. The
Fruit of LACMA allowed for Fallen Fruit to mine and engage with the museum’s permanent
collection; the EATLACMA gardens occupied various public spaces throughout the museum in
highlighting unnoticed public spaces and the final project; and Let Them Eat LACMA engaged
the various publics in becoming active agents through the implementation of workshops both
inside and outside the museum. Lastly, Public Fruit Theater created a public site for reflection of
the role, preservation and history of agriculture in today’s food culture. All these projects have
been documented on LACMA and Fallen Fruit’s websites, and although there is no finished
catalogue for this project, there is substantial photo-documentation provided by both groups.
Rather than solely working to physically engage their audiences, Fallen Fruit worked to
create a new space of dialogue for LACMA’s visitors. The collective challenged the expectations
a visitor would have in attending a public program at the museum. Although not all three
programs implemented by Fallen Fruit physically engaged their audiences, the projects did open
new spaces of dialogue amongst visitors, the art collectives, and the museum staff.
19
Chapter Two: Machine Project Reinvents the Hammer Museum
The Hammer Museum, a museum associated with the University of California, Los
Angeles, was founded in 1990 and works to introduce audiences to new ways of imagining art
and its importance in making a change in the world.
23
The Hammer Museum is one of the three
public art units of UCLA’s School of Arts and Architecture. The museum “champions the art and
artists who challenge us to see the world in a new light, to experience the unexpected, to ignite
our imaginations, and inspire change.”
24
The Hammer Museum occupies the space of the former
Occidental Petroleum Corporation headquarters, founded by Dr. Armand Hammer, after whom
the museum is named.
25
In 2009, the Hammer Museum’s Artist Council, a group of artists who advise the
museum on various topics, were faced with a major issue: the museum felt “corporate and
hollow.”
26
These concerns led the artist council to help the museum staff think about how artists
could resolve this problem, and evolved into the invitation for artists to collaborate with the
museum towards the goal of creating a different atmosphere within the museum, specifically a
dynamic and collaborative space for visitors. To achieve this, the museum applied for, and in
June 2009 was granted, a one million dollar Arts Innovation Fund through the James Irvine
Foundation. With the support of these funds, the museum endeavored to create new modes of
visitor engagement, bringing artists, curators and the education departments to work with one
another to develop strategies and programs that could be reused within the museum.
27
The main
function of this grant was to establish a Public Engagement Artist in Residence Program (A.I.R)
23
In 1992, the Hammer Museum began discussion with UCLA and in 1994 the partnership was finalized.
24
“Machine Project at the Hammer Museum,” Machine Project, accessed February 12, 2016,
http://machineproject.com/projects/hammer/.
25
“Occidental Petroleum Building/UCLA Hammer Museum,” Los Angeles Conservancy, accessed February 12,
2016, https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/occidental-petroleum-buildingucla-hammer-museum/.
26
Mark Allen, Machine Project Engagement Artist in Residence Report (Hammer Museum Report, 2013), 7.
27
“Hammer Awarded $1 million Irvine Grant,” Hammer Museum, accessed February 12, 2016,
http://hammer.ucla.edu/blog/2009/06/hammer-awarded-1-million-irvine-grant/.
20
that “encourages contact between visitors, artists, and Museum staff, and activates the Museum
in unexpected ways.”
28
The director of the Hammer Museum, Ann Philbin, saw this project to be
fitting in her goal to move the Hammer towards a more “artist-driven institution.”
29
As this
project developed, Allison Agsten was hired for a new position as curator of public engagement
at the Hammer.
Claudia Bestor, current director of Public Programming and Education at the Hammer
Museum, informed me that the staff of the A.I.R. program at the Hammer were engaged in
discussions that revolved around having artists be more engaged within the museum space and
for the museum space to be more of a place of risk-taking and problem solving.
30
Within the first
year of the residency, the primary objective of the A.I.R project was finding new ways of
engaging already existing audiences within the Hammer Museum. These existing audiences
include the surrounding community, UCLA students, the daily passersby, and museum members,
not specifically focusing on any age group.
The first artist-in-residence in 2009 was Machine Project led by Mark Allen, who had
previously been engaged with LACMA the prior year. During his residency, Mark Allen
conducted research at the Hammer Museum, examining audience demographics, methods of
audience engagement and other forms of educating the public. From November 2009 to
December 2010, Machine Project developed a number of on-site programs at the Hammer
Museum, including: House Plant Vacation, Bells at the Hammer and The Giant Hand.
31
In total
28
Mark Allen, “Introduction,” Machine Project Engagement Artist in Residence Report (Hammer Museum
Report, 2013), 8.
29
Ibid., 8.
30
Claudia Bestor, phone interview by Ani Ohanessian, Los Angeles, February 8, 2016.
31
“Machine Project at the Hammer Museum,” Machine Project, http://machineproject.com/projects/hammer/.
21
over twenty-six projects were completed in association with Machine Project’s initiative,
involving over 300 artists all working at the Hammer Museum.
32
As part of the Public Engagement Artist in Residence Program (A.I.R), Machine Project
was invited to the museum to rethink what could be developed within the museum to better
engage with audiences, and further, how these audiences could further relate to the art culture of
museums. Allen occupied the museum space during his residency, and although he did not live
within the museum, he was there for over a year planning with his collaborators, was present for
most public events, and worked closely with his collaborator Liz Glynn alongside museum staff
including Allison Agsten and Elizabeth Cline. Developing public programs is complex and about
developing experimental exercises; there is no definite or assumed outcome, however, there were
goals set both by the James Irvine Grant and Allen “to encourage contact between visitors,
artists, and Museum staff, and activate the Museum in unexpected ways.”
33
Allen believed that
the most challenging aspect for an artist was understanding how to work with the museum in
testing the limits of the institution to understand how much change was necessary and desired.
34
Limitations at the Hammer included how much the administration (besides those that were part
of the A.I.R. program) wanted the artist and the art collectives to intervene in the museum’s daily
practices and physical space.
There was a shift in the approach in developing projects between the first and second
year of this collaboration. The first year of the residency saw the artists engage with the museum
as problem solvers, where as the second year saw the artists engaged in developing more
process-oriented projects that were more experimental for both the artists and the audiences.
32
Mark Allen’s final report to the Irvine Foundation, titled Public Engagement Artist in Residence, provides
information about each project, collaboration and shift that took place during the residency.
33
Allison Agsten, “Getting Started: Public Engagement A.I.R. at the Hammer,” in Machine Project Engagement
Artist in Residence Report (Hammer Museum Report, 2013), 7.
34
Ibid., 12.
22
Within the first year of the residency, one of the biggest concerns that needed to be addressed
with the help of Machine Project was to find new ways to “address many of the ongoing visitor
service issues the Museum had been grappling with…the Museum’s lobby still felt corporate and
hollow.”
35
The goal of this project was to fix the way in which the museum greeted and
interacted with their audiences. In doing so, the museum also worked with the art collective to
occupy and transform the physical museum space, while also dealing with developing better
audience engagement strategies. This approach brought “the Museum’s operational concerns out
of the offices and into the galleries.”
36
One of the Hammer Museum’s issues was signage, and
how it was helping or hindering visitors as they navigated the museum and sought out specific
exhibitions and spaces within.
This process revealed a number of concerns for the museum administration. A
challenging aspect for the Museum was the idea that internal, administrative issues were being
discussed for the public to see. Allen raises the question that so much of a museum’s “labor goes
into making a singular voice – what happens when the voice of the museum gets all messed
up?”
37
From the perspective of the museum, the artist’s creativity is necessary in their role as
problem solver in resolving operational museum issues, wherein operational refers to the daily
procedures including proper museum signage and guiding visitors into the main lobby. As
mentioned, although Allen’s projects for the first year were focused on the museum’s practical
issues, there was a shift in the second year in their approach to developing artist projects.
Allen refused to understand his role as problem solver and rather believed the role of the
artist was to experiment within the museum, similar to Allen’s perspective of what position an
35
Ibid., 7.
36
Ibid., 12.
37
Mark Allen, “Interview with Allison Agsten,” Machine Project Engagement Artist in Residence Report,
(Hammer Museum Report, 2013), 41.
23
artist should hold in the Machine Project collective. Between the first and second year of the
residency, Mark Allen and the staff at the Hammer (Allison Angsten) changed the process for
artist projects, switching the model to be more “project based or proposal based.”
38
In doing so,
the projects became more about engaging audiences directly, creating more intimate experiences
and affecting a small number of audiences rather than engaging all visitors.
The staff of the museum understood the role of public engagement initiatives to directly
create change for their audiences and saw the artists and collectives to work as problem solvers.
Mark Allen and his Machine Project collaborators saw their role as opening up the museum’s
concerns to the general public, to question and investigate the museum’s issues through creating
artworks that would also have audiences question their role and presence within the museum
space.
39
While the museum staff saw the artist’s role as one to come into the space to fix or
address the museum’s problems, the artists saw their role within the museum to be co-
investigators.
40
For the Allen and the artists involved this collaboration with the Hammer, the
goal was to create projects that engaged audiences to question their own positions in the
museum, to construct their own experiences and work collaboratively to question the role of a
museum—what types of programs can be presented in the space? What types of experiences are
developed from these encounters?
Within the first year, the museum staff and Mark Allen both developed and implemented
projects which positioned the artist as problem solver. However, within the second year Mark
Allen moved away from this to implement his own creative projects that surprised, excited and
engaged audiences. Through his practice, Allen’s approach was to explore innovative ways of
engaging with art in various cultural and institutional models facilitating “collaborative and
38
Allen, “Interview with Allison Agsten,” 38.
39
Allen, “Introduction,” 9.
40
Ibid., 11.
24
participatory approaches to art-making [to] foster an environment that is welcoming to amateurs
and enthusiasts.”
41
Furthermore, Allen approached this collaboration with the museum in a
different manner, rather than seeing his role as a problem solver, he believed his role was to
“facilitate collaborative and interdisciplinary work on the basis of its potential to generate
unexpected ideas and experiences.”
42
Although there were several projects developed during Allen’s residency, the three
described within the next section explore how audiences were engaged in new ways to develop
their understanding of what art could be, and further to understand their presence within the
museum space.
The Giant Hand, designed by Mark Allen and Maria Mortati, fabricated by Matt Jones,
and programmed by Ben Dean, was placed at the lobby of the Hammer on September 21, 2010.
The installation was a large hand that pointed visitors in the direction of their choosing. The
Giant Hand provided visitors with five options and helped them navigate the museum, finding
“the stairways, elevator, theater, café, and yourself.”
43
There were buttons to press, and once the
visitor chose which destination they wanted, the hand would direct them towards it. This project
was developed by Machine Project to address issues of way-finding throughout the museum.
The HousePlant Vacation ran from July 31 to August 28, 2010. This project invited the
public to give their houseplants a vacation: literally, audiences were asked to drop off a
houseplant at the museum. Throughout the month the participants’ plants were installed in a light
room on the Lindbrook terrace within the museum, and reading performances and musical events
were staged there every Saturday from 1:00pm – 4:00pm. The events included creating portraits
41
Mark Allen, “Working With Museums,” in Machine Project Engagement Artist in Residence Report (Hammer
Museum Report, 2013), 11.
42
Ibid.,13.
43
Ibid, 20-21.
25
of the plants painted by artist Lisa Anne Auerbach. Furthermore, the museum developed a “one-
way auto-answering phone line connected to a loudspeaker”
44
to have audiences who donated
their plants to have time to speak to their plants.
Everyone In A Place: Sounding Bells at the Hammer was a public a daylong sound
installation composed by Chris Kallm, taking place on July 16, 2010. In an exchange of wearing
a small bell for free admission visitors became noisemakers as they walked through the gallery
and outdoor museum spaces (all visitors except for two opted into this event). This event
generated the most non-regular museumgoers, due to a number of factors, mostly attributed to
the free admission. Along with visitors making noise as they walked through the museum,
Machine Project also introduced an African bell ensemble, circulating ice-cream trucks and film
and robotic bells found within the Hammer’s coatroom. Audiences were introduced to a new
way of experiencing art with a loud backdrop, challenging the conventional quiet space of the
museum by introducing senses that are usually neglected within such private spaces.
Through conversation and collaboration the museum staff and the artists understood the
importance of public programming as an experiment in engaging existing audiences and more
importantly multi-generational audiences. Although there were goals set by the museum and
Allen, there was no definite or expected outcome by either party. Rather this collaboration was
about trying new ways of experimenting with the physical museum space to create exciting and
new experiences for audiences. It is through collaboration where new ideas develop. The
audience for the Machine Project residency at the Hammer was diverse; the intended audience
was the existing community at the museum, daily visitors and existing members. However, each
project engaged with a diverse group, and some projects resonated with specific audiences more
than others. The project Sounding Bells at the Hammer had the most non-museum audiences due
44
Allen, “Working with Museums,” 14.
26
to free admission and increased marketing that was done ahead of time by the institution.
Projects like Valentines Day Songs of Triumph or Heartbreak was an intimate performance for
only two people at a time. There were also programs that only engaged staff from the museum
and Machine Project, such as the Machine Project in Residence in Ann Philbin’s Office and the
Staff Birthday Poetry Readings and Personal Concerts. It can be understood that artists were
working closely with individual audiences, creating experiences and new ways of engaging on
very intimate levels. As Angsten states, “I felt like people began to think of the Residency as
their program because some of the experiences were so intimate, and they just kept coming.”
45
It
is through this form of intimacy where audiences are asked to physically partake and collaborate
with other museumgoers that create spaces of dialogue in redefining the role of the artist, the
administration and the audience. Within the Hammer Museum, and through these types of
socially-engaged projects, having a one-on-one interaction with audiences allowed for more
effective and memorable ways of understanding the museum as a space of experimentation.
Furthermore, a one-on-one interaction allowed for relationships to build between new audiences
while also creating new experiences for existing ones.
The Machine Project collaboration with the Hammer Museum worked to fulfill the goals
of the A.I.R. project in creating new relationships between artists, museum staff and audiences in
new ways. The collective was successful in occupying and transforming the museum from a
space that displays experimental work to a site of experimentation. Ultimately, the Hammer’s
collaboration with Machine Project allowed the artist collectives involved in occupying the
museum to transform and activate both the museum’s public and private spaces.
45
Allen, “Interview with Allison Agsten,” 40.
27
Chapter Three: MOCA’s Engagement Party – Collaborations with Emerging L.A. Artists
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles has three locations throughout the city:
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, MOCA Grand Avenue, and MOCA Pacific Design
Center.
46
MOCA focuses on collecting and exhibiting contemporary artwork from the 1940s to
present day. Their mission statement indicates that their role is to support contemporary artists in
creating new and challenging artwork. Through the Engagement Party Series, a program that
took place from 2008 to 2012,
47
the museum opened itself to working with artists to alter the role
of the museum space to create a new way of experiencing art for their viewers and to engage new
and younger audiences.
The Engagement Party was part of a larger project called Think Tank that looked to
engage artist collectives to create projects that allowed audiences to interact with the museum’s
collection in innovative ways. Featuring projects of California-based artists and collectives, the
program was designed to demonstrate how a new meaning of art and experience could be
produced through collaboration amongst audiences and between artists, museum staff and
visitors. In this sense, the selected artists were free to create any style of art, performance, lecture
or workshop they desired. Each collective had a different background; their practices included
anything from politics to environmentalism. Furthermore with the Engagement Party, MOCA
challenged the “the conventions of the museum as a collecting institution by providing a
platform for artist collectives who create socially based art and participatory art within a museum
setting.”
48
46
The first of the three spaces is the Temporary Contemporary, opening in 1983 Little Tokyo, renamed the Geffen
Contemporary at MOCA in 1966 after a donation by the David Geffen Foundation. The second location, MOCA
Grand Avenue designed by Japanese architect, Arata Isozaki in central Downtown, Los Angeles, developed out of
the 1-billion dollar redevelopment project of Bunker Hill which included a space dedicated to exhibiting art. In
2000, MOCA at the Pacific Design Center was opened to display art that focused on design and architecture.
47
“Museum of Contemporary Art Events,” MOCA, accessed March 9, 2016, http://sites.moca.org/party/.
48
“Engagement Party: Social Practice at MOCA, 2009-2010,” E-Flux, accessed March 10, 2016,
28
In 2007, the James Irvine Foundation invited MOCA to apply for the Arts Innovation Fund
Grant, asking the museum administration to propose a project that mandated innovation within a
creative space, and would develop collaboration within the museum’s managerial and structural
departments. Again, the Irvine Grant was looking to encourage how institutions in Southern
California could engage their audiences, and create new platforms for dialogue about the
definition of art practice. Simultaneously, Aandrea Stang, MOCA’s Senior Education Program
Manager, was attempting to figure out what place social engagement and practice had within a
contemporary institution—if it had one at all.
49
Stang was questioning how the developing field
of social practice could be placed within the museum space while also agreeing to the board of
trustee’s aesthetic tastes. Stang states that even though “the socialist in [her] believe[s] that art
was for the public good, for all people,”
50
art within the institution should move away from
solely being placed for purposes of art market profits. However, this was difficult due to the fact
that the director at the time, Jeffrey Dietch, was an art dealer and had an interest in “hot-ticketed”
exhibitions, going against the views of Stang.
Stang did what she thought would be effective and interesting in sustaining a relationship
with local and contemporary artists and was looking at the programs being developed by other
large Los Angeles institutions, specifically LACMA and the Hammer Museum. Similar to other
programming, her practice at MOCA was geared towards inviting artists to develop engaging
and participatory art that created new forms of engagement for existing audiences while
simultaneously developing new audiences.
http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/engagement-party-social-practice-at-moca-2008%E2%80%932010/.
49
Throughout my research, I interviewed Aandrea Stang to learn about her professional background and her
contribution to this project. Stang’s professional background is embedded in art history and museum education
focusing on social practice and engagement. Stang spent 7 years at MOCA, within the Public Programming
department, a subsection of the Education Department.
50
Aandrea Stang, phone interview by Ani Ohanessian, Los Angeles, January 11, 2016.
29
A grant of $900,000 allowed the museum to develop Think Tank, which involved a group
of young individuals from different MOCA departments. Weekly meetings for the overall project
were held to discuss how the museum could work with collectives to create new ways of
interacting with existing art objects from the museum’s collection, while simultaneously
attracting new visitors and developing innovative ways of engagement. Each Los Angeles-based
art collective would occupy a designated space in the museum (either indoors or outdoors) for a
3-month long series (the typical length of a traditional exhibition in the museum), and each artist
collaborative was asked to develop three different events that actively engaged audiences.
Think Tank developed as a way to engage various staff members in reimagining what
social practice could look like within a contemporary and collecting art museum. Rather than
having a senior staff member lead this project, who Stang feared would dictate the projects, she
was interested in inviting various museum staff at the junior level to lead the projects. For Stang,
the whole point of this project was to put the administration and management at an equal level
with the staff. Ultimately, the staff that participated in Think Tank included individuals from the
education department, a curatorial assistant, and members of the development and marketing
departments. Stang worked to give a number of people leadership roles to see what interesting
conversations would develop from these new collaborations. Similar to the way artists were
working collaboratively amongst their communities within the realm of social practice, Stang
wanted to create collaborative conversations amongst staff within the museum.
The purpose of this project was to “build and sustain engagement with the politically,
environmentally, aesthetically and ideologically diverse citizens of Los Angeles.”
51
The artists
chosen presented an “eclectic collection of artists and participatory programs: dance
51
“Art Innovation Fund: Case Studies,” James Irvine Foundation, accessed January 20, 2016,
http://interactives.irvine.org/aiflearning/docs/AIF-casestudies-2012NOV30.pdf /.
30
performances, lessons, dancing in the galleries, do-it-yourself technology activated by audience
participation and guided hikes through downtown Los Angeles.”
52
Diverse in medium and
subject matter, these collectives were all connected by the main theme of physical audience
participation in developing the artwork.
Once the parameters of the exhibition were decided, Stang and her team began to look for
local and emerging artists collectives working in the realm of ‘social practice.’ Stang and her
staff approached the development of these projects and the process of selecting works similarly
to the way a curator would with an object-based show with emerging artists: they conducted a
number of studio visits, attended performances, looked for small artist-run spaces and so on. A
specific criterion of these artists was that they were emerging, as Stang saw them to have “less of
a relationship to traditional art-world institutions.”
53
Since these artists’ practices had until then
been experienced for the most part outside of institutional spaces and very little had been written
about their individual practices at that time, bringing them into the museum space created new
considerations for both the collectives and the museum administration.
The participating artist collectives included the Finishing School, KnifeandFork, OJO,
Slanguage, My Barbarian, Lucky Dragons, Ryan Heffington + The East Siders, The League of
Imaginary Scientists, Neighborhood Public Radio, The Los Angeles Urban Rangers, Liz Glynn,
and CamLab.
54
There were a number of projects that demonstrated how contemporary issues of
culture and politics are activated through community practices of social engagement. These
projects included The Finishing School’s Little Pharma Drug Run, where participants were
invited to create costumes that represented their favorite pharmaceuticals and were worn during a
52
Ibid.
53
Aandrea Stang, “An Introduction to Engagement Party,” in Engagement Party: Social Practice at MOCA 2008-
2012 (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2012), 12.
54
“Engagement Party: Social Practice at MOCA, 2008-2012,” E-Flux, accessed March 10, 2016,
http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/engagement-party-social-practice-at-moca-2008%E2%80%932010/.
31
bike tour, which took participants throughout the city of Los Angeles to a number of publically
and privately owned pharmacies, including Rite Aid, a marijuana dispensary and a Chinese
herbalist. In doing so, the collective worked with participants to discuss alternative methods of
healthcare and to consider diverse paths to wellness.
55
The League of Imaginary Scientists, a
society for creative scientists and artists who work to deconstruct the seriousness of both subjects
in developing humorous projects, developed the Zephyr Experiment at the MOCA, which
included a number of projects that commented on the long history of humans interested in
building objects that allow them to fly. The collective set up stations throughout the museum to
develop a series of projects including Experimental Flight Build Station, which offered
audiences lightweight supplies to build flying objects that could be tested in the museum’s
outdoor plaza or the Learn to Fly/Flight Station, which asked participants to make hand cut-outs
and attach wings of glued feathers that, when projected, would make it seem as though
participants were flying.
56
Another project developed by the Los Angeles Urban Rangers that
engaged audiences to question the politics of the museum’s surrounding community was the
Critical Campout, where participants were invited to bring their tents to campout for one night in
the museum’s plaza. The goal for this project was a “campfire program that explored the full
spectrum of habitation options in downtown Los Angeles.”
57
Participants, along with members
of the Los Angeles Urban Rangers, discussed the physical separation between the very corporate
and cultural buildings in that location on Bunker Hill, and how just a few streets away
on Skid Row “thousands of homeless occupy their own similar tents,” commenting on the
geographic closeness but also the separation of people based on their economic standing.
Throughout the Engagement Party, Stang and her team invited the art collectives to create new
55
Lily Siegel, “The Finishing School,” in Engagement Party, 29.
56
Catherine Arias, “The League of Imaginary Scientists,” in Engagement Party, 139.
57
Emily Bliss, “Los Angeles Urban Rangers,” in Engagement Party, 173.
32
work that took the forms of events, performances, screenings, artist-run workshops and lectures,
all with the goal of engaging new audiences different than those who had been coming to the
museum to see their exhibitions.
While LACMA and the Hammer Museum were interested in sustaining audiences who
already attended the museum and building stronger ties with their surrounding communities,
through the Engagement Party, MOCA focused its attention on connecting with a new audience,
specifically those who were college or recent college graduates and those who had never visited
the museum before. The audience varied based on the artist or collective occupying the museum
space at a certain time as each brought a number of their own followers. There were also a
number of passersby. Members of Think Tank made it a point to keep all galleries open during
nighttime performances, although for operational and safety reasons certain pieces were closed
off.
Two installations that asked visitors to physically engage within the museum setting,
KnifeandFork’s Grand Prix and Liz Glynn’s Loving You Is Like_ _ _ _ _ _ _ The Dead, also
succeeded in attracting different age groups into the museum. KnifeandFork’s Grand Prix was a
set of four modified radio controlled racecars; for this installation they placed a number of race-
tracks throughout the museum, each with a video-camera that transmitted live feed to the
projectors throughout the museum. Audiences were invited to race these cars and see the projects
of their activities projected throughout and onto the museum walls. The MOCA staff built a
wooden guarded racetrack throughout the museum, while museum staff dressed in “pit-crew”
attire stood around to help audiences. This references Stang’s theories of moving away from an
elitist space to engage diverse audiences to reframe the meaning of museum space. In
transforming the museum space to a place of active engagement, this project invited audiences to
33
physically participate with the art on display while also questioning how the medium of this
project constitutes art and more so what can be considered to be art within a museum context.
Through the use of projections and loud noises, this installation moved the visitors away from
the traditional meaning of a museum as a space of reflection and transformed the experience into
a lively and performative one. This project engaged a wide range of audiences, including
adolescents, teenagers, and adults, each participating with the installation in a different manner.
According to Stang, while the younger participants seemed more interested and engaged with
racing cars throughout the galleries, the adults seemed more interested in participating in the
project but also paying much more attention to the artworks throughout the galleries. More so,
audiences who were new to the museum could attend to just interact with KnifeandFork’s
installation or could simultaneously interact with the project while also exploring the museum’s
permanent collection throughout the galleries.
As part of Engagement Party, Liz Glynn developed a trilogy for the series titled Loving
You Is like _ _ _ _ _ _ _ the Dead. Her work was presented at MOCA Grand Avenue on the first
Thursday evening of October, November and December in 2011. Glynn works closely with
Mark Allen and Machine Project in exploring new ways of looking at art, performance, science
and literature in most commonly working with museums. With the series, Loving You Is like_ _ _
_ _ _ _ the Dead, Liz Glynn draws from imagery of the late 19
th
century that suggests the birth of
the modern museum and public art. This work explores the role of cultural institutions in a
contemporary lens throughout Europe and the United States. The work is divided into three parts,
while each work “reflects on the mandate of museums to preserve and interpret culture, as well
as the failure of modernism to solve social problems through technology and rationalization.”
58
58
“Welcome Liz Glynn to Engagement Party,” E-Flux, accessed February 20, 2016, http://www.e-
flux.com/announcements/welcomes-liz-glynn-to-engagement-party/.
34
This series deconstructs the historical understanding of a museum space, moving away from a
sacred space or mausoleum. Glynn deconstructs and reconstructs the museum space,
transforming the museum to be a corpse that must be revivified.
59
For the first work, ON THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE (MUSEUM
ON FIRE), Glynn brought charred remains and scattered them throughout the museum to have
audiences walk through ruins, while also projecting a film of the burning MOCA ARCO Court.
The evening was divided into three movements, “each signaled by a changing musical score
composed specifically for the project by experimental percussionist Corey Fogel.”
60
Glynn and
her collaborators began with a presentation of fire and wreckage, performing a “metaphorical
resurrection” of the MOCA Grand site. They created an “improvised, kaleidoscope performance
using light and colored glass with a palette inspired by Paul Scheerbart’s technic-utopic novel
The Grey Cloth.” This performance led into a participatory choreographed dance where
audiences partook in the formation of the work.
The second work of this trilogy, LIKE A PATIENT ETHERIZED UPON A TABLE (MOCA
GOES DARK), offered audiences a “sightless” tour of the museum. For this project, visitors were
blindfolded and asked to blindly walk through the galleries, deconstructing the typical manner in
which a visitor would experience the museum. Security officers in the galleries read various
passages of modernist poetry to guide audiences throughout the galleries. This project worked to
transform the museum space from one where the audience only visually experiences the art on
the walls, to a space where the audience could physically experience the galleries while having a
heightened sensory experience as guards recited poetry.
The third work, All the Arms We Need—A Dinner Party in Three Acts, was a dinner party
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid.
35
at the Geffen Contemporary. This dinner invited a limited number of guests, incorporating 19th
century “anatomical theater to explore notions of desire and embodiment.”
61
The dinner table
was arranged to resemble a “sacrificial tableaux” with various meat dishes. Around the table
Glynn placed a number of cards with trivial questions, dares and performances—acted out by
guests throughout the course of the evening.
Liz Glynn’s work challenges the conventions of what can be done within an institution.
Her practice takes up what has become known as institutional critique, an investigation and
commentary on the museum as a site, including a critical assessment of relationships between the
artist and the production of the artwork, the physical museum space and the administration.
Glynn’s work challenges the museum space and also works to deconstruct boundaries of what is
deemed acceptable. Although she sets up a stage for audiences to experience and interact with
the artwork and the physical museum space, she asks participants to develop their own
experiences within the institution.
To assess the success of the Engagement Party Series the staff of Think Tank attempted
to document the audience experience as best they could by collecting surveys. In return for
filling out a survey, audiences were given a catalogue of the permanent collection Stang
considers the success of the Engagement Party to be the number of audience members that were
first time visitors to the museum. Based on data received from surveys, the team understood that
there were about 7–10% of audiences who had attended multiple events. Stang said that a
number of new visitors came to the museum, whether through friends of the artist collectives,
daily passersby or through advertisements through social media. Most of these events were
61
“Welcome Liz Glynn to Engagement Party.”
36
publicized and documented through MOCA’s website.
62
Each artist collective was required by
the museum to create their own blog-site on MOCA’s website. Other ways of hearing about
these events were through word of mouth or from friends and followers of the artists involved.
The Engagement Party can be viewed as a conceptual and practical success in that the
museum was able to engage with a number of new audiences, specifically younger visitors.
63
It
was the result of the collaborations with artists and collectives that the museum had such a
diverse turn out. Ultimately, for MOCA, at the end of 2011 there was a change in leadership and
without the funding from the Irvine Foundation there were radical changes that made it nearly
impossible for the museum to continue developing such large projects. Yet this project worked
as a cornerstone towards the museum’s goal in inviting emerging artists and collectives in
developing and reaching new audiences. Through these projects the museum was able to move
away from a white cubed gallery space to a place that demanded the audiences participation in
completing the works on display. The development of Engagement Party at MOCA
demonstrated how wide reaching museums can be in inviting social engagement practices that
comment on the surrounding community’s politics and culture.
62
The MOCA website was recently re-launched and much of the documentation from this project is no longer
available to the general public. In regards to promoting the event, each artist collective was given a press release and
at the beginning of each artist residency there was an e-flux announcement, promoting the projects just like an object
show would be at the museum.
63
Aandrea Stang, “An Introduction to Engagement Party,” in Engagement Party, 12.
37
Conclusion: Los Angeles Museums as Centers for Public Engagement
The three case studies explored throughout this thesis demonstrate how museums
generate participatory and innovative experiences for visitors. Throughout the specific
collaborations addressed in this thesis, I argue that rather than having curators develop projects
for artists to execute, the artists came into the museum space and brought their own practices to
either engage with the collection or space or to bring in new audiences. Through my case studies,
I ultimately argue that museum curators are no longer caretakers but rather facilitators and
mediators in collaborating with artists to help them produce projects that transform audiences
from passive viewers to active agents.
My research outlines the transition that has taken place in the art world in the 1990s and
how museums began to engage with these practices in the early 2000s. Over the past two
decades, artists increasingly have moved away from more traditional art forms to more
participatory and interactive forms of art, what has come to be known as social practice.
Curators working in museums, in turn, have looked for ways to integrate this type of work into
their exhibition programs and collections.
In exploring the three case studies, I understand that although the curators were inviting
the artists and art collectives into the museum space, it was the artists who brought in their own
practices, developed projects and invited other artists to engage with audiences and ultimately
transform the museum space. As mentioned, each collective focused on a specific project,
engaging with the museum’s collection, activating and transforming the physical museum space
and/or engaging new audiences. By doing so, all of the projects and workshops developed by the
artists and collectives demanded that audiences participate in order for the artwork or project to
be complete. The three case studies and the examples of engagement in this thesis lead me to ask
38
larger questions about how museums are working to engage audiences. I question how these
practices can become permanent parts of the museum’s programming, especially as various
examples presented were funded by short-term grants? If museums continue to bring these types
of non-art practices into the museum how will it change the nature of this type of work? Does it
defeat the purpose of what these art collectives were trying to do in their original work with the
public? Finally, how is the museum space impacted by inviting these practices into the museum?
Ultimately, I believe that these three case studies have transformed the role of the
museum as a site for art viewed only from a distance to a site that demands its audiences to
participate in more interactive ways. In doing so, the museum becomes a site of experimentation,
rather than a simply site of display. Currently, museum curators and educators are working
towards developing new ways of engaging audiences and opening the museum to all publics.
This can be done through developing new departments specifically for public engagement within
museums, which bridges the gap between curatorial agendas and education initiatives. It is also
evident through workshops and symposiums, such as the Hammer’s “Engage More Now” that
invites artists, curators and other museum administrators to participate and contribute to the
larger conversation of expanding and further activating audience participation.
64
That museums
are hosting symposiums, lectures and talks about public engagement suggests an interest in
developing new platforms for creating dialogue among various groups in discussing the
effectiveness of audience engagement, while simultaneously developing new and innovative
ways through which museums might transform their programs and approaches in order to
accommodate this transition. In conjunction with these kinds of public programs, the three case
studies discussed in this thesis demonstrate how prominent Los Angeles museums have already
64
“Engage More Now” was a symposium at the Hammer Museum that introduced innovative ways museums and
artists can engage with the public, whether through workshops, performances or exhibitions. This symposium
explored how the institution and artists can work with social engagement both inside and outside the museum.
39
begun to make the transition of moving away from traditional sites of displaying art and
engaging with audiences in a passive manner to collaborating with local artists and inviting
audiences to become part of the process in developing artworks, simultaneously opening the
museum space to become a site of experimentation that engages in new conversations about the
enduring importance and adaptability of art in today’s culture.
40
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Abstract (if available)
Abstract
This thesis will explore how from the 1990s to the present day museums have developed new strategies to engage different audiences to experience art. I examine three case studies that represent a new model of artist generated projects. During my extensive research it became evident that very little has been written about curators, educators and those who work in the field of public programming
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Ohanessian, Ani
(author)
Core Title
Public engagement and activating audiences in Los Angeles museums
School
Roski School of Art and Design
Degree
Master of Arts
Degree Program
Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere
Publication Date
04/22/2016
Defense Date
05/13/2016
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
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Tag
cultural,engagement,Engagement Party,Fallen Fruit,hammer,LACMA,MOCA,museums,OAI-PMH Harvest,participation,public,social
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Steiner, Rochelle (
committee chair
), Moss, Karen (
committee member
), Silver, Erin (
committee member
)
Creator Email
ani.ohanessian@gmail.com,aohaness@usc.edu
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