The Nation. - Department of Government at Cornell University

804 The Nation. June 5. I995SCHOLARLY BOOKLET PROVE3JESUS NEVER EXISTED!Conclusive proof Flawus Jokphus creaed flctlonal Jesus, authored Gospel’AMAZING but ABSOLUTELY INGOlTROVERTIBLE! Send $5 to AbelalReuchltnFoundallon, Box 5652-8. KelWA 98064 For delals please send SASIRISH STUDIESSummer CoursesTrinity College DublinJulyLiterature History TheatrePolitics Visual ArtsTel: Orlaith O’Dowd(212) 663-5435Fax: (212) 663-5513NATION CASES AND BINDERSOrgantze and protect your back Issues of The NatmnBoth cases and bmders are covered In anattractwe dark red leatherette with a gold Namnlogo 1 case or binder holds 6 months (1 volume)Cases $1.95, 3 for $21.95, 6 for $39.95.Blnders $9.95, 3 for $27.95, 6 for $52.95.Add $1 per unll for potbpelhandllng.Send order toThe Natlon, Jesse Jones Induslnes, Dept N499 E Erle Ave , Phlladelphla, PA 19134Malor credlt cards accepted for orders over $15To charge call 1-(8CtO) 825-6690Allow 4 to 6 weeks tor dellvery.Forelgn orders add $2 5Wun1t Payment In US currencyPa resldents add 7% sales tax1Ido, take place outside museums: I amthinking especially of two remarkable exhibitionsorganized by the independentcurator Mary Jane Jacob-“Places Witha Past,” in which works were commissionedspecific to certain sites in Charleston,South Carolina, during the SpoletoUSA Festival; and “Culture in Action,”in which a variety of groups in Chicago,each at a great social distance from theart world, were encouraged to produce“an art of their own.” But even within themuseum, the primary advantage of havinga collection today 1s to have controlof artworks one may use as bargainingchips in getting loans from other institutionsfor the exhibitions one wants tomount. The first school explicitly dedicatedto curatorial studies has been founded,like so many other innovative things,at Bard College. The Center for Curator-ial Studies there IS built on what onemight call a training collection, consistingof works of contemporary art thatserve the students as a base for organiz-mg exhibitions, the nature and content ofwhich are limited only by the fledglingcurator’s imagination. Curatorial studiesare but distantly related to art historicalstudies, and the sorts of shows projectedare remote indeed -from those that fallunder the standard categories of the arthistorian, though conceivably the newexhibition formats may change the wholeway we look at art history. One would notexpect the new curators to mount themonographic sorts of exhibition devotedto single artists or groups of artists. Instead,If I may restrict myself to an actualexample that 1s scheduled at Bard, thereare plans for a show dedicated to the artof the Diaspora, wluch will bring togetherworks from various dlasporlc peoples indifferent periods In the hope of seelngwhat art means for people under thatrootless condition, and what it means forthe rest of us.On the basis of publicity such as thatconferred by the cover of The New YorkTimes MQgazme, Kertess’s name is almostcertainly more widely known than that ofany of the artists in the show he put together,evidence of the transformed statusof the curator. Whether his current famewlll survlve the next fifteen minutes, touse the somewhat cynical phrase of theTmes headline, is probably up to him.But the conditions are In place for curatorialreputation to exceed, perhaps by aconsiderable degree, artistic renown; andwhile it cannot have been with the intentionto glamorize hls staff that DavidRoss, as newly appointed director of theWhitney Museum of American Art, decidedto put the Whitney Biennial into asingle palr of curatorial hands, it is difficultto resist the view that his decisionreflected those conditions. Up to then,the composition of Biennials was the collaborativeproduct of a group of Whitneycurators. But when the tlme came for designingthe 1993 Biennial, the idea of theexhibition as a work of art in its ownright, with a meaning, a unity and evena message of its own, and of the curatoras a kind of artist who expressed himselfor herself in the medium of works ofart that inevitably resonated against oneanother In the framework of the otherworks selected, had begun to establish itselfin art-world consciousness.The Biennial used tobe aprobe that gavesome sense of wherematters stood in theworld of art.y tradition, the Biennial had a mean-B ing and a message that gave a basisfor cntic~sm of the show: It was to repre-sent the state of art in America in the twoyearInterval since its previous mounting,giving viewers some sense of trends andmovements, of what kind of work, in collectivecuratorial judgment, had attaineddistinction or shown promise of that, andIn particular which artists were or oughtto be of major interest to other artists, aswell as to other art professionals of variouskmds and orders. And the inevitableresponse, which took the form of askingwhy this or that artist was left out or included,why there was so little or so muchabstraction, installation, assemblage andthe like-or, m recent years, why the proportionof women artists or artists of colorwas as it was-served, in the manner ofdialogue, to modify the picture in such away that by the time the dust settled,there was some overall sense of how matterscurrently stood in the world of art.The Biennial was a probe that, togetherwith the elicited discussion. came as closeto an objective representation as one waslikely to get-a far better representation,say, than an army of social scientists,equipped with questionnaires, could posslblyarrive at. And the use of the curatorialteam was close to an ideal means of