Curating.info

The document below, being circulated by the Kamloops Art Gallery in Canada, poses some incisive questions that many cultural institutions, not just museums in small cities, are facing. Input from curators on some of these issues would greatly benefit this study. Full text follows:

Dynamic Art Museums in Small Cities
The Board of Trustees of the Kamloops Art Gallery, a not-for-profit art museum located in the interior of British Columbia in western Canada, met recently to consider its future and to address our considerable responsibilities to various communities.

The Board hopes to develop a new paradigm, an ideal model that emphasizes the compatibility of popular success, scholarship and museological responsibilities that can be used to benchmark our future outcomes and achievements. It also intends to look at the vital and critical role of the "small city gallery" within the global environment.

To these ends, our Trustees would like to know about art galleries in similar small communities with a population between 50,000 and 150,000. It is inviting museum professionals and scholars to define what constitutes a successful small city art museum. How, for example, are historical/traditional and contemporary art programming integrated? What are the inherent responsibilities that come with being recognized as a rigorous institution committed to research and scholarship? What is the potential of small art museums as learning hubs, especially given the opportunities available through the use of new technologies? And lastly, the Board is trying to determine how art museums make a difference in their own immediate and diverse communities and how success is defined in these terms.

The first part of this multi-faceted project is to compile a list of small-city art galleries world-wide that are recognized as leaders in their field. The next step is to refine this list and prepare case studies of 20 to 25 of these institutions for inclusion in a publication about the challenges and possibilities facing the small city gallery. We would appreciate receiving your opinion on the most outstanding galleries based on the objectives of the study outlined in this email. Please forward them to jlmb @ kag.bc.ca

We would also appreciate if you would take the time to forward this inquiry to your email list of colleagues in order to expand the search for outstanding art galleries in small cities. Please include your full name, title and work affiliation for reference and follow-up.

Thank you for your time.
Jann LM Bailey
Executive Director, Kamloops Art Gallery
101-465 Victoria Street, Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada V2C 2A9
t 250 3772412 / f 250 828 0662

[Via Christine Castle, on behalf of Jann Bailey. Please respond to her directly at jlmb @ kag.bc.ca. Anything posted in the comments will also be forwarded to Jann.]

Internationally renowned Turkish curator Fulya Erdemci joins New Zealand's Danae Mossman to form the curatorial partnership for Art & Industry's 5th SCAPE 2008 Biennial of Art in Public Space.

The Art & Industry Biennial Trust with Director Deborah McCormick are delighted to announce the pairing of Fulya Erdemci and Danae Mossman. Fulya Erdemci brings a wealth of international experience to this position and as Director of the International Istanbul Biennial for 7 years, (she directed the 4th, 5th, 6th and partly 7th Biennials) as well as curator of "Istanbul Pedestrian Exhibitions"� (Istanbul Yaya Sergileri) - "the first exhibition designed for pedestrians in public space in Turkey" - she has an impressive background in art in public space.

Local curator, Danae Mossman whose presence at Christchurch project space The Physics Room has been hugely influential, comes to SCAPE as one of New Zealand's most promising curators. As well as two international curatorial residencies (Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne and DAAD, Berlin) Danae recently co-curated TRANS VERSA, (Museo de Arte Contemporaneo / Matucana 100 / Galeria Metropolitana) in Santiago, Chile.

Like the last biennial in 2006, SCAPE 2008 will be developed in conjunction with Christchurch's major cultural stakeholders and will be located within the Cultural Precinct. The SCAPE 2008 Hub and Indoor Exhibition will once again feature at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, as major partner of SCAPE it will become an important venue for symposia, discussion and lectures. With site-specific interventions by participating artists from around the world, SCAPE 2008 will propose "a new culture of space" to reinvent the democracy, equality and "publicness"� through the unique space, place and locality of Christchurch City. As well as visiting artists, SCAPE will attract speakers, arts professionals and new audiences to Christchurch, stimulating and questioning the way we experience and enjoy the pubic space.

This unique curatorial pairing is supported through funding from Creative New Zealand, the Arts Council of New Zealand. SCAPE 2008 will be the 5th biennial organised by the Art & Industry Biennial Trust, New Zealand's only international biennial dedicated to contemporary art in public space.

I'm proud to announce the (semi-recent) launch of my latest curatorial effort.

In-Site Montreal is a collection of site-specific art presented on the portal pages of five wireless internet hotspots in the Ile Sans Fil network. Artists Nicolas Fleming, Maria Legault, and Virginie Laganiere have created art works that can be viewed simply by logging in to the Ile Sans Fil network at the selected hotspots. Though the project is best viewed in-situ, you can also view the works produced by the artists for the hotspot locations at the In-Site Montreal micro-site.

I have produced a curatorial text for the project, which I would be grateful for your feedback on, my cherished readers.

The concluding paragraphs of the essay include the following statements:

The virtual spaces that In-site Montreal inhabit are amorphous areas around several accepted gathering places such as cafes, galleries, markets, and bars. They are perhaps places where as an internet user, you may intend to use the opportunity of connectivity to the network to look outward, to read news of distant places or connect with friends far away through e-mails and online social networking sites. The art practice of telematics in particular addresses the creative possibilities when two parties are connected over distance to communicate. In some way, the pieces presented on the portal pages of Ile Sans Fil's network as part of the In-Site Montreal project present something that is almost anti-telematic, in that the works look inward rather than outward. In the case of this project, a connection to someone across the globe is not sought, it is shunned in favour of a further examination and rumination on the details of the local environment.

I'm interested in this idea of the inverse-telematic, the inward-looking, the intensely-local, especially using a tool such as Wi-Fi that we are so accustomed to associate with an outward-looking, nearly-anonymous roaming of virtual terrain.

Thanks to Year Zero One for producing the project, the Canada Council for the Arts for funding the project, Ile Sans Fil for hosting the project, and Rita Godlevskis for designing the map and visual identity of In-Site Montreal.

Two articles came out over the weekend featuring two curators: Fumio Nanjo and Douglas Fogle. Nanjo is the curator of the Singapore Biennale that opened today. Fogle is the curator of the 2008 Carnegie International. Both articles had the curators speaking about the influence of the city on the shows they curated (or in Fogle's case, the show he is still developing).

Fumio Nanjo says, in the interview portion of the article:

"In the beginning, we were talking about the location of Singapore, so we thought maybe (we should) refer to content. Then we visited many places in the city, 60 different locations, to look at the space for art. Then we visited many temples, shrines, churches. We thought this is quite interesting, the first time (in Singapore) art is being placed in religious sites."

Towards the end of the article on Douglas Fogle, he has this to say:

"We're not just transporting this show in from Mars. I'm hoping it will connect with Pittsburgh. It's such a wonderful city, with such a great history, and such a great history of the International." [...] "it's about doing a really interesting show."

It's excellent to hear curators of high-profile exhibitions like these discussing the impact that host cities will have on their shows. Biennales don't happen in bubbles, and it will be interesting to see how their awareness of their respective locales manifests in the final exhibitions. I wish I could be in Singapore right now to see some of the examples that Fumio spoke of.

Article on Fumio Nanjo in The Star (Malaysia).

Article on Douglas Fogle in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.