Pablo Helguera, The Juvenal Players, Grand Arts, 2009
This is Not a Panel Discussion: Pablo Helguera's Pedagogical Follies
Lyra Kilston
11th July 2009
I recently witnessed the following exchange at a panel discussion on the life and work of the artist Juvenal Merst. The dialogue was between two curators: Sonja Stillman, a discreetly dressed, intellectual woman in her late 40s, and the panel's moderator, Clifford Barnes, a slick and fashionable man in his early 40s. After a long-winded disagreement about Merst, their dialogue devolved into this:
Barnes: I don't define what art is, I just show it as it is.
Stillman: I won't even bring up your current associations with commercial galleries, which I see as a huge conflict of interest as a curator. What good is professional honesty as a curator if your commitment has been to treat art as an unthreatening, uncritical product, as a happy and pleasurable and entertaining thing to the market?
Barnes: Why should I apologize if the artists I work with are successful? That's ludicrous. You, in contrast, treat artists as game pieces of bogus curatorial hypotheses that try to be a soothing balm to our social problems. Not only does it not work as exhibition premise – it is also bad art.
Stillman: It's bad art for those, like you, who do not wish to think of the world at large.
Barnes: It's bad for everyone beyond your tiny circle of friends at Bard.
Stillman: I'm sorry – I can't do this anymore. [She stands up and starts to walk away from the panel.][1] Read More...>
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