RESEARCH - EVENT AND WORK

From Thursday, March 10 to Sunday, March 13, Independent Curators International, the New Museum, and the Ph.D. Program in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center collaborated to present an international conference, The Now Museum: Contemporary Art, Curating Histories, Alternative Models. The conference drew a diverse collection of international curators, students, art historians, scholars and artists, all interested in interrogating the central question: “What do museums of contemporary art stand for today?” MoCADA’s Curatorial Fellows were in attendance to explore related themes and think about the politics and emerging practices of developing innovative curatorial models specifically for a museum dedicated to contemporary art of the African Diaspora. 

The third day of the conference was organized under the umbrella topic, Expanding Infrastructures. The first panel discussion, Platforms & Networks, chaired by Kate Fowle, Director of Independent Curators International, New York, facilitated dialogue on how the international arts community is utilizing collaborations and innovative structures to create new frameworks for thinking about, engaging with, and producing art, exhibitions and scholarship. The panel was comprised of Zdenka Badovinac, Director of Moderna Galerija in Ljubljana; Anthony Huberman, Director of the Hunter College Artist’s Institute in New York; Maria Lind, Director of Tensta Konsthall in Stockholm; and Lu Jie, Director and Chief Curator of the Long March Project in Beijing.

Lu Jie’s talk on the Long March Project stood out as an excellent case study for examining emerging curatorial practices, conceiving new models for community involvement, and combating capitalistic practices of traditional museums. The curatorial mission of the 2004 project was to bring contemporary international and Chinese art to the rural and working classes of China to combat issues of access, while also challenging dominant modes of artistic production and display. In the spirit of Mao Zedong’s Long March, a historical symbol for the spread of Communist ideals to the Chinese proletariat, Jie discussed the importance of drawing connections between visual culture and regional social, economic and political realities.

Jie focused much of his presentation on The Great Survey of Paper-Cuttings in Yanchuan County. The project was a means of archiving the works of over 15,000 local paper cutting artists from the birthplace of the Chinese Communist revolution. The works were collected over a period of nine months, and the curatorial team recorded oral histories to be archived at the Long March Space in Beijing, in the form of text, film, and image along with the original works of the artists. At its root, the Long March Project was a collaboration with a community typically relegated to the outskirts of the Chinese contemporary art world. The process and resulting exhibition raised questions of tradition, community engagement, and the definition of contemporary art.

Later that afternoon, Eungie Joo, Director and Curator of Education and Public Programs at the New Museum, chaired the second panel of the day’s program, Bricks & Mortar. The session delved into questions of the politics of physical and imagined museum space. The panelists, Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; curator and artist Gabi Ngcobo of Johannesburg; and Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Director of Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPS) in New York and Caracas, represented a range of institutions who conceptualize exhibition space in vastly different ways.

While the other panelists were representing institutions with multimillion dollar budgets and years of international recognition, Gabi Ngcobo brought a much needed local, grassroots perspective to the discussion. Ngcobo discussed the fact that South Africa is home to a number of large, historic, and well endowed museums and art institutions, including the South African National Gallery (est. 1930) and the Johannesburg Art Gallery (est. 1915). However, because these venues were built to aid apartheid and the colonial project, history is steeped in their very structure. Ngcobo explained that South African museums do not currently meet the needs of many Black artists and curators interested in utilizing the arts for justice and representing contemporary South Africa and its people.

Ngcobo discussed the lack of Black leadership in these institutions, and noted that this has a direct impact on the kinds of works and exhibitions on view in these galleries. The Johannesburg Art Gallery first exhibited work by a Black artist in 1940, and not again until over thirty years later in 1972. In addition, the nation is home to a collection of institutions built to commemorate the struggle to end apartheid. Ngcobo urged the audience to think carefully not only about the intention of these projects, but also about the outcomes that they produce. What are the political implications of freezing a moving struggle that continues in the present day into a physical manifestation such as a monument or a permanent museum collection?

In contrast to these traditional institutions, Ngcobo introduced the audience to the Center for Historical Reenactments (CHR), established in 2010 . The nonprofit arts organization is located in Johannesburg, and is a platform for using artistic production to deconstruct one-dimensional historical narratives. Ngcobo affectionately referred to the space as a ‘play center,’ home to discussions, contradictions, film screenings, parties, research, performance and exhibitions. The main project currently taking place at CHR is Xenoglossia, a multimedia research and art series about how language has caused misunderstanding. One event in this series was a book launch focused on Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual by Hlonipha Mokoena. In conversation with Khwezi Gule, Chief Curator of the Hector Pieterson Memorial Museum, participants discussed the work about Magema Magwaza Fuze, the first Zulu-speaker to publish a book in the Zulu language.

Overall, The Now Museum conference offered a much needed opportunity for members of the international arts community to come together to contemplate the future of the museum in a time characterized by rapid change. Both Lu Jie and the Long March Project and Gabi Ngcobo and the Center for Historical Reenactments offer challenges to the traditional museum as a place of display and utilize the arts to affect social and political change in their respective countries. Like these spaces, MoCADA sees itself as an example of an emerging model, specifically dedicated to examining the history, arts, and cultures of the African Diaspora through its mission, programming, and multimedia curatorial model. The concept of the museum is not static, and its physicality, indivisible from its ideology, is also constantly in flux. As Ngcobo stated simply, “The ideal museum is currently under construction all over the world.” As MoCADA enters its second decade of operation, you can expect cutting-edge exhibitions and a new curatorial model, international partnerships that emphasize diaspora and movement, and don’t be surprised if you see the museum popping up in unlikely places in 2011.

Contributed by: Isissa Komada-John, Curatorial Fellow

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