CURATORIAL MODELS I

MODELS, COUNTERMODELS, ALTERMODELS

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CCA CURATORIAL PRACTICE –– CURPR 604-01

Fall 2011
Tuesdays 12–3pm, Hooper One–GC1

Instructor: Andrew Weiner

Contact: a_weiner3@cca.edu
Office Hours: Wednesdays 10am-12pm, or by appointment
80 Carolina, Room 249

Course Description

It has become increasingly common to claim that the history of modern and contemporary art is
best grasped as a history of exhibitions. While such an approach has obvious advantages,
particularly for curators, its implications are less clear. How might it differ from accounts that
privilege artists, movements, mediums, or contexts? What sort of critical, aesthetic, and
analytical criteria should structure such an undertaking? How can a history of exhibitions avoid
the pitfalls of canonization? And what relevance might pre-existing models of curating retain for
contemporary practices?

This seminar will investigate such questions by collectively analyzing a selection of test cases
drawn from the history of exhibition-making. Our work will be directed by the following
objectives: to trace important developments in the evolution of exhibition forms and curatorial
practices; to register the ways in which these histories have conditioned recent artistic production
and exhibition making; and to critically assess the rhetoric of the art exhibition as a form of
public communication.

The course is divided into three sections. The first of these, entitled “Models,” surveys important
moments in the development of the exhibition in Western modernity, ranging from the private
collection, the state museum, and the salon to the modernist musem, the travelling exhibition,
and the international biennial; it also attends to avant-garde activities in Central Europe and the
former Soviet Union. The second section, “Countermodels,” seeks to trace some of the many
ways in which experimental art and exhibition-making positioned itself against these historical
precedents in the decades following 1945. While this section will cover such influential museum
exhibitions as “Information” and “When Attitudes Become Form,” it will place equal emphasis
on gallery shows, demonstrations, para-museal installations, and work in distributed media. It
will further examine developments at the periphery of established North Atlantic centers. The
last section, “Altermodels,” engages contemporary developments that mean to further reinvent
the exhibition. Here we will look closely at the complex transformations grouped together under
the term “globalization,” before examining recent tendencies in durational and social production,
closing with an evaluation of the changing status of curatorial labor.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES: In addition to the objectives stated above, the course also aims to
develop the various analytical capacities relevant to the study of modern and contemporary art
exhibitions. Methods: Critical Analysis, Interdisciplinary; Skills: Discipline-specific techniques;
Understanding: Visual Literacy, Ethics; Communication: Oral, Written; Program-Specific
Concepts: Historical Understanding.

Requirements

The primary course requirements are two pieces of critical writing: (1) a short exhibition analysis
(1000 words); (2) an extended essay (2500 words), to be completed in two stages (proposal and
final). We will discuss research and writing techniques on several occasions. Seminar members
will present their essays to the group on the last day of class.

Students will also be expected to make numerous informal presentations on the course readings.
These will typically consist of a summary of a text’s argument and analyses, followed by a
critical response. Evaluation will also be based on participation in seminar discussions.

Texts

Readings for the seminar include a mixture of primary and secondary sources, ranging from
artists’ statements and interviews to historical surveys and contemporary criticism. For most
sessions background readings are also assigned. These are either primary texts or brief articles
providing relevant information on significant exhibitions, artists, movements, and contexts.

All course readings will be available for download via the course Moodle site. Please come to
class with that day’s readings on hand, whether in print or on a screen.

•
COURSE SCHEDULE

Section One
Models: From the Wunderkammer to the White Cube

September 6 Introduction: Exhibitions as Agents of Persuasion

September 13 Early Paradigms: Collection, State, and Salon

Readings Weschler, “Inhaling the Spore.”

Bennett, “The Formation of the Museum.”
Crow, “The Salon Exhibition in the Eighteenth Century.”

Background Altshuler, “Salon des Refusés,” “The First Salon des Indépendants.”

September 20 Industrial Modernity and the Historical Avant-Gardes

Readings Doherty, “Berlin.”

Foster, “Outmoded Spaces.”
Kiaer, “Rodchenko in Paris.”
Passuth, “The Exhibition as a Work of Art: Avant-Garde Exhibitions in
East Central Europe.”

Background Altshuler, “0.10,” “Worker’s Club,” “Dada Fair.”

Foster et al, “1915,” “1916a,” “1920,” “1921,” “1923,” “1924,” “1926.”
Selected texts by Huelsenbeck, Hausmann, Brik, Breton.

September 27 Institution and/as Ideology

Readings Kozloff, “American Painting During the Cold War.”

Phillips, “The Judgment Seat of Photography.”
O’Doherty, “Notes on the Gallery Space.”
Grasskamp, “For Example, Documenta.”

Background Altshuler, “Cubism and Abstract Art,” “The New American Painting.”
Selected texts by Barr, Greenberg.
Section Two
Countermodels: When Attitudes Become Formless

October 4 Neo-Avant-Garde I: New Realism, Happenings, Fluxus

Readings Buchloh, “Plenty or Nothing.”

Tomii, “After the ‘Descent to the Everyday.’”
Smith, Fluxus: The History of an Attitude (excerpt).

Background Foster et al., “1961,” “1962a,” “1964a.”

Kaprow, “Happenings in the New York Scene,” “The Happenings are Dead.”

EXHIBITION ANALYSIS DUE IN CLASS

October 11 Neo-Avant-Garde II: Conceptualism, Site-Specificity, Institution Critique

Readings Rattemeyer, “Exhibiting the New Art” (excerpts).

Allan, “Understanding Information.”
Haidu, “History.”
Alberro, “A Media Art: Conceptualism in Latin America in the 1960s.”

Background Foster, et al., “1969,” “1970,” “1971,” “1972a,” “1972b.”

Buchloh, “Conceptual Art 1962-1969.”
Selected texts by Meireles, Buren.

October 18 Mediation and Distribution: Film, Video, and Magazines

Readings Iles, “Between the Still and the Moving Image.”

Joselit, “Feedback.”
Allen, “The Magazine as Medium.”

Background Foster, et al., “1973.”

Graham, “My Works for Magazine Pages.”
Antin, “Video: The Distinctive Features of the Medium.”
October 25 Alternative Spaces in New York and Elsewhere

Readings Moore, “Artists’ Collectives.”

Sorkin, “The Feminist Nomad: The All-Women Group Show.”
Gonzalez, “Phantom Sites”

Background Foster, et al., “1976,” “1977,” “1980.”

Group Material, “Caution! Alternative Space!”
Crimp, “Pictures.”

November 1 White Cube/Black Flag: Activism and Aesthetics

Readings Mesch, “Institutionalizing Social Sculpture.”

Meyer, “This Is to Enrage You.”
Avgikos, “Group Material Timeline: Activism as a Work of Art.”
Weiss, “Performing Revolution.”

Background Foster, et al., “1987.”

Crimp, “AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism.”

Section Three
Altermodels: Exhibitions and the Vicissitudes of the Contemporary

November 8 Globalization I: Global Village or Integrated Spectacle?

Readings Stallabrass, “A Zone of Freedom?”

Meyer, et al., “Global Tendencies: Globalism and the Large-Scale Exhibition.”
Smith, “Going Global.”
Filipovic, “The Global White Cube.”
Basualdo, “The Unstable Institution.”

Background Foster, et al., “1998,” “2003.”

FINAL ESSAY PROPOSAL DUE IN CLASS

November 15 Globalization II: Subaltern Modernities and the Promise of the Local

Readings Farver, Global Conceptualism (excerpts).

Weiss, Making Art Global (excerpts).
Enwezor, “Black Box.”
Hanru, “Towards a New Locality: Biennials and ‘Global Art.’”

Background Foster, et al., “1989.”

November 22 Encore: Re-Enactments, Re-Curation, and the Institution of Performance

Readings Lütticken, “An Arena in Which to Re-enact.”

Hoffmann, “The Curatorialization of Institutional Critique.”
Lambert-Beatty, “Against Performance.”
Bryan-Wilson, “We Have a Future: An Interview with Sharon Hayes.”
Texts by Fraser, Bik Van der Pol.

November 29 Social Practice and Participatory Aesthetics

Readings Kester, “Dialogical Aesthetics.”

Jackson, “Quality Time: Social Practice Debates in Contemporary Art.”
Frieling, “Toward Participation in Art.”
Foster, “Chat Rooms.”

Background Lacy/Labowitz, “Feminist Artists: Developing a Media Strategy.”

December 6 Role Reversals: Curator as Artist as Curator...

Gingeras, “Interview with Thomas Hirschhorn”; Basualdo, “Bataille Monument.”

Vidokle, “Art Without Artists.”
Bojan et al., “Eleven Responses to ‘Art Without Artists.’”
Raqs Media Collective, “X Notes on Practice.”

December 13 Conclusion

Course Wrap-Up, Final Presentations

FINAL ESSAY DUE

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