Carlos Basualdo: The Unstable Institution

Our second guest author, Carlos Basualdo offers his view on the new situation for curators in the age of globalization. He stated that it arose from the new phenomenon of biennials and other large-scale shows in today’s world.

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In 1531 Titian bought a house with a garden near the lagoon on Venice’s north side from which he could, on a clear day, make out the mountains surrounding his hometown of Pieve di Cadore. Biri Grande, in the parish of San Canciano, no longer exists. The Fondamente Nuove, a half a mile of docks along the island’s northern edge, was built in its place just a few years after the artist’s death. Unprepared pedestrians walking along the docks might take the possibility of seeing the Alps as an amusing happenstance. And to be sure, the smog and air pollution seem to conspire in order to limit the landscape to the classical silhouettes of Italian cypresses in the San Michele Cemetery and some campanile or other on Murano island. But nevertheless, they were there. I can guarantee that the day we left Venice, from the vantage point of the boat that took us to the airport with all our baggage, we were deliciously surprised to see the silhouette of the Alps.

Even things that are most categorically evident can occasionally seem invisible. Not because they do not exist, but rather because, at particular moments, some act of intellectual conjuring, some configuration of actions and thought is able to hide them from the horizon of perception. Paradoxically, I have the impression that something similar happens with large-scale international art exhibitions. lt is not that they literally become invisible, since they are precisely a staging of enormous mechanisms of visibility, but rather that the singularity of their meaning seems to conceal itself from the myriad of journalists, critics, historians, and pundits who, as one might imagine, come to be their privileged spectators¹.

Of course, I am not saying that these events do not stir up opinions; on the contrary. Opinions abound, but not because common criteria exist that can be used to evaluate this genre of events. For example, reviewing the critical articles that refer to the most recent edition of the Venice Biennale as well as to the latest documenta in Kassel, we may observe an enormous discrepancy, not so much with regard to the shows themselves, but rather regarding the expectations that the critical and journalistic realms seem to have formed for the events. The insistence on leaving aside the explicit intentions that — following the organizers’ criteria — try to justify the realization and the subject matter of the shows would not be so serious, especially if it were a matter of a voluntary stance; but perhaps the fact that they are analyzed from perspectives that end up making those intentions invisible should indeed be taken seriously. One gets the impression, for example, that many critics respond indignantly to any insinuation of subordination of the individual works to an overly complex thematic frame, as if the primary function of these shows were that of freeing the art from its intellectual overdeterminations. ln other cases, the absence of theme is perceived as an inexcusable lack. Only rarely is the exhibitive structure of the event itself or its frequent extra-artistic ramifications given serious consideration — and this in spite of the fact that quite often these latter are structurally constitutive elements in terms of the explicit goals of their organizers. Reviewing the bibliography might seem funny if it weren’t a truly uncomfortable, and even, at times, pathetic exercise².

Reproached for the frequent occurrence of errors and omissions, the careful reading of many journalistic reviews allows us to deduce that the author was not even able to visit the entire show. On the other hand, would have to be acknowledged that in many cases these are events that were simply not designed to be seen in their totality, both on account of their sheer size and on account of the fact that they are made up of a large number of components whose duration by far exceeds that of an average visit. Critics attempt to ignore this explicit intentionality and tend to react with disdain, without stopping to analyze their possible consequences. The lack of a frame of reference that could allow us to interpret these events becomes ever more evident as its development becomes ever more urgent. And this, by virtue of verifying that the type of specific operation that these shows carry out in the field of art and culture turns out to be hardly perceptible (if at all) through the opinions of a large part of their commentators. Titian’s mountains blend into the mist that conceals and disguises them. From the printed page, only the repeated, interchangeable silhouettes of the cypresses can be discerned.

With regard to the rivers of ink that these shows release, both in the specialized press and in the mass media, the academic critical literature that specifically tackles these events is relatively scarce: barely a dozen books, divided into two or three languages, largely published in the last decade³. Perhaps both phenomena are related. Shows like documenta or the Venice Biennale have acquired an unprecedented visibility in the area of contemporary art — a field of culture that, until recently, almost exclusively interested a more or less limited group of specialists. That same visibility suddenly turns them into desirable and even, occasionally, income-generating instruments for the political and corporate sectors. At the same time, it makes them anathema for the very intellectual spheres whose analytical capacity should (supposedly) help to elucidate their current meaning and possible potential. The majority of the few voices stemming from the circles of academic critics that mention these events tend to be unanimously discrediting. ln most of their views, it is a case of an epiphenomenon of mass culture, of the indisputable symptoms of the assimilation of the project of the avant-garde by the culture industry. Pure and simple spectacles whose logic is nothing more than that of capitalism in its late stage; that is, the progressive suppression of the multiple system of values and its translation into a universal equivalent, namely, exchange value. ln a certain way, this direction of analysis seems to imply that the oppositional nature, which characterizes the critical project in modernity, would be largely foreign to these kinds of shows that are unequivocally associated with the realms of marketing and consumption. Following this line of reasoning to the end, we may conclude that the apparent lack of criteria that journalistic criticism underscores when referring to these kinds of events, as mentioned above, is nothing more than a symptom of the expiration of its traditional function in this specific stage of the development of the culture industry.

Art criticism emerged in a fashion parallel to the formation of an international circuit in which artists, galleries, and museums each found their own place. It is obvious that academic criticism, linked to universities (and overwhelmingly to the discipline of art history), finds its place in this same system as another of its institutional moorings. Artistic modernity is thus presented as a constellation of specific practices and institutional settings charged with discerning — and assigning — the relative values that incorporate them. The ensemble is determined by a certain way of representing the singularity of its own history and of articulating the value system that it produces. These institutional instances regulate the relationships between the individual parts that constitute them, at the same time as they restrict their degrees of freedom.

Naturally, the assembly is not synchronic; it was not produced all at once. Instead, it is a more or less unstable product of a series of historical processes that, like sedimentary strata, wound up pairing off slowly in order finally to produce an impression of totality. For their survival, institutions require the illusion of everlastingness, since this is what, in the final analysis, safeguards them against their contingent character. ln Western countries, modern art was thought to be structured around the relative balance between a number of institutions founded on a common history or histories; that is to say, on shared values. ln this order of things, the tension between production and the market would have something like referees of criticism and museums⁴. We could say, very schematically, that the duty of criticism had been that of inscribing production into a symbolic field in a way that simultaneously made it accessible to the effects of the mechanisms of production of exchange value; and the duty of art history was that of recovering the specific differential in the work that hinders its complete subordination to exchange value. Between the two, the Museum — an institution that from its origins has had a fundamentally ideological character — sanctioned the value of the work as an exchange value, but not without first disguising this, hiding it in the folds of a particular historical narrative that it would supposedly be in charge of preserving and intensifying⁵. Obviously, it is not difficult to imagine that a case of exhibiting and producing works that is not immediately associated with either galleries or museums — and although it maintains a dialogue with both the market and history, nevertheless does not exactly respond to the expectations of either — may suddenly become at least partially illegible for the system in which it should supposedly operate.

But at this point I should clarify the types of events to which I am referring. Are we dealing with large-scale shows in general? With the international biennial circuit? Perhaps more importantly, are we dealing with a characterization that exclusively concerns the size of the exhibition — that is, the size of its budget and the number of works included — or could this also have to do with other factors, such as the nature of the institutional framework from which events like these are generated? Although an archeology of the large-scale international exhibition model would have to include many shows organized by more conventional art institutions, it seems fair to argue that biennials represented them at their most exemplary. At first glance, biennials seem to have only their name in common. The Venice Biennale was carried out for the first time at the end of the nineteenth century, modeled on the world expositions that had been so popular throughout that century. lt would take five more decades and two world wars to found the Bienal de São Paulo, which, like Venice, has been taking place ever since. ln the brief interlude of fifteen years, from 1984 — the year in which the first edition of the Bienal de la Habana took place — to the present, over fifteen international biennials have been established, including those of Istanbul (1987), Lyon (1992), Santa Fe (1995), Kwan Ju (1995), Johannesburg (1995), Shanghai (1996), Berlin (1996), Montreal (1998), and others⁶. Moreover, the specific conditions in which these shows were established are as diverse as their resources and the attraction they exert, both on the specialized press and on the general media. The Venice Biennale served as a model for the Bienal de São Paulo, and the initial function of the latter show had been to set itself up in conjunction with the former and with the Carnegie International (founded in 1896) in international events able to back the position of their respective cities — and countries — on the map of modern culture. In 1984, the first Bienal de la Habana obeyed a very clear ideological goal: to stimulate communication between artists and intellectuals of the southern hemisphere, with the purpose of preventing the distribution of contemporary art from being monopolized by the centers of economic power. Havana’s success was capitalized by a number of biennials that emerged afterward, with the obvious function of granting visibility to local productions and of promoting the cities and countries in which they were carried out.

Nearly all the shows of this type rely on the official economic support of their respective countries or cities. The presence of a marketing component is therefore common to all. lt is a question of publicizing the artistic and cultural potential of a city, a country, and a particular region. The origin of few has perhaps been as ideologically marked as in the cases of the Bienal de la Habana and, of course, documenta, which since 1955 has been carried out — first every four years, and now every five — in the German city of Kassel. On one hand, documenta is a fortunate subproduct of the Cold War, and on the other, it stemmed from the need for postwar Germany to bring itself up to date with the evolution of modern and contemporary art, leaving behind the painful excesses and omissions of Nazism — which, among other things, affected the practice and appreciation of modern art in that country⁷. ln all cases, diplomacy, politics, and commerce converge in a powerful movement whose purpose seems to be the appropriation and instrumentalization of the symbolic value of art. The specific motives change — Venice originally dealt with the updating of a universalistic ideology clearly related to European colonialism; Havana, on the other hand, staged an ideological project of a diametrically opposing nature — but the type of operation is curiously the same. Another point of agreement consists in the fact that the majority of these shows emphasize the internationalist nature of cultural and artistic production. lt is not a question of a unified vision, but rather of considering internationalism a term literally in dispute, specifically interpreted in highly diverse ways. The nature of the interests that generate the events and their common commitment to a possible horizon of internationalism seems to associate these shows in an intimate way to the ups and downs of modernity — and to the range of its possible interpretations. Their unstable nature — in a certain way, tentative, incomplete, and always subject to negotiations and readaptations — does nothing more than reinforce this tie.

ln 1983, barely a year before the first edition of the Bienal de la Habana was carried out — the success of which in part led to the proliferation of these types of shows executed since then — Professor Theodore Levitt of Harvard University wrote in the Harvard Business Review: “the globalization of markets is at hand”. This was one of the first texts that used a term that would become progressively more common in following years. The globalization to which Levitt referred consisted in the extension of the logic of economies of scale to a planetary level, and it was grounded in the supposed world convergence of consumer tastes. ln an article written for the 20th anniversary of the publication of Levitt’s text, Richard Tomkins states: “Prof. Levitt’s message was simple. As new technology extended the reach of global media and brought down the cost of communications, the world was shrinking. As a result, consumer tastes everywhere were converging, creating global markets for standardised products on a previously unimagined scale.”[8] The publication of that essay coincided with a period of market openness that, although in a less pronounced way, still continues today. ln predicting a supposed convergence of consumer tastes, Levitt does not seem to take into account that, as a consequence of the spread of new technologies and the ever more decentralized use of information made possible as a result, the nature of the demand itself becomes more specialized. From the current perspective we could affirm that the value of Levitt’s thesis consists mostly of its symptomatic character. Coinciding with the information revolution associated with the use of Internet and the progressive development of communications possibilities in general, Levitt’s text foresees a period of progressive integration on a world level, although not of decentralization. ln the realm of contemporary art, that phenomenon is reflected precisely through the growing proliferation of these unstable institutions of the megashows. We could venture the hypothesis that the biennials that have emerged in the last two decades have done so completely in tune with these transformations, as a result of the contrast between the tendency toward centralization typical of the integration of the markets on a global scale and the increasing dissemination of information, which provides a growing visibility for local situations and problems. This tension is obviously essential in the case of institutions of this type whose aim, to a large extent, consists precisely of its representation and analysis.

lt is evident that these institutions have been created with a clearly instrumental purpose: to respond to the interests that brought them about; that is, to promote the contexts in which they are carried out, giving them greater visibility on an international scale, supplying them with a patina of prestige, and ratifying the supposed commitment of these different contexts to modernity in general, and specifically to the processes of economic integration associated with late capitalism. The aura of prestige that surrounds art in general, and modern and contemporary art in particular, adapts perfectly to this task. What is instrumentalized through these types of events is precisely the symbolic capital of modern art, tied to its own presumed autonomy and independence from market logic. Following this line of reasoning, we could arrive at the paradoxical conclusion that the relationship between the supposed aim of art biennials and the traditional function of museums would simply come to be one of continuity. The symbolic value created initially by museums — as a concealed affirmation of the exchange value of the objects and artistic practices — is ultimately transformed by the biennials into pure utility. Perhaps this has been (and in many cases, continues to be) the ultimately credulous reasoning of the instigating institutions of many of the biennials. And in some cases it may even be partially proved.

Nevertheless, this equation assumes a complete identity between what is exhibited in the museums and what is exhibited in the biennials. Furthermore, it assumes an agreement between the conceptual and ideological frameworks of both types of institutions. Both of these assumptions are erroneous.

The configuration of interests found at the core of institutions like biennials clearly differs from the configuration that gave rise to the institutional circuit traditionally linked to modernity in art: museums, criticism, and galleries. The commercial fate of the works, for example, is neither evident nor even strictly necessary in the case of such shows, for the simple reason that the bulk of the financing that concerns the realization of the event and the production of many of the projects is largely independent from collecting (either private or state-funded). This factor facilitates the inclusion of practices of a non-objectual nature, as well as works of an interdisciplinary nature and even practices pertaining to other fields of cultural production — such as cinema, design, architecture, etc. — and it indirectly winds up stimulating the problematization of the notion of art as an autonomous activity. The inclusion of works of an interdisciplinary nature, as well as the insistent integration of discursive elements in these kinds of events, has progressively become a constant⁹. Moreover, the sheer size of these shows — necessary to achieve the impact on a marketing level that is expected of them — makes their insertion into highly particularized interpretative systems indispensable. Without these systems, the shows would lose their ability to communicate as discrete singularities; that is, they would lack all identity. ln many cases, it is even manifestly expected that the conceptual framework charged with giving these events legibility is related to local questions — at least as far as the inclusion of elements tied to the local culture is concerned.

This gives rise to the appearance of the figure of the curator as the event’s conceptual organizer. ln comparison with the traditional role of the curator at a museum, this more recent incarnation seems to have been endowed with a higher degree of autonomy. lt is no longer a question of the discerning critic or the interpretive historian regarding a specific tradition, but rather of a relatively unfamiliar figure in charge of negotiating the distance between the value system that those other figures had traditionally established and the ideological pressures and practices corresponding to the institutional setting in which these kinds of events emerge. But the appearance of this specific incarnation of the curator is no mere accident; since this is a professional in the field of art situated in the position of responding to a number of extra-artistic conditionings and questions, her work is necessarily different from that of the figures that preceded her¹⁰.

The type of knowledge that s/he puts into practice becomes less and less retrievable from the perspective of the critic or art historian, even if we are still dealing with a highly particular and specific knowledge. The chain of meanings that will make sense of the group of practices gathered for a show of this type will, then, necessarily be constructed around an interrogation of the local histories and contexts, always in terms of their possible relationship to a presumed internationalist horizon. The curator’s work is riddled with and overdetermined by these kinds of problems. Perhaps we could say that the curator’s ability to produce a highly differentiated form of knowledge is related to the degree of fidelity that ties her to the ensemble of unique situations around which s/he develops her practice. This type of work thus implies the articulation of a reflection capable of linking forms of local culture and history with, that horizon of internationalism that appears as one of the founding elements in these events. Finally, partially freed — or better yet, made independent by force — from the constrictions associated with the supposed autonomous nature of artistic production, the curator finds herself in the position, and with the need, to expand not only the canonical apparatus that articulates the historical narratives linked to the production of modern and contemporary art, but also the very definition of that which constitutes an artistic practice in a specific context¹¹.

The supposed instrumental nature of biennials may thus serve, paradoxically, to try out a series of operations whose scope is largely radical when considered within the institutional context traditionally linked to (Western) modern and contemporary art. We could synthetically classify these operations into two types: on one hand, those of a revisionist sort, which lead to a reconsideration of the canonical mechanisms established in the historical narratives produced almost exclusively in Europe and the United States; on the other hand, the exploration of the position of the artwork in a wide cultural context in connection with a variety of symbolic practices to which it would supposedly not be related. An exhaustive revision of the canon and a reexamination of the autonomous nature of the work of art are actually two sides of the same coin, since an inquiry into the mechanisms that structure art history’s narrative will inexorably lead us to consider historical discourse as highly ideologized and, therefore, the inevitable result of the intersection of heterogeneous and diverse practices and interests. The relationship with the local context, which is usually mandatory in these events, becomes an opportunity to exercise the historical revisionism that, in the final analysis, inescapably ends with a questioning of the ideological base that articulates the institutions of artistic modernity. With respect to the traditional institutional structure, the events to which I am referring carry out a sort of surreptitious short circuit. Their supposed instrumentality, signaled by a sector of academic criticism as a function of their dependent relationship with the culture industry, would conversely be revealed as the juncture that facilitates the expansion of the canon and the exploration of an expanded notion of that which would set itself up as an artistic practice in a specific context. Needless to say, although this range of possibilities appears inscribed in the very institutional structure of these types of events, it is no guarantee of their realization.

The figure responsible for actualizing this range of possibilities is, inevitably, that of the event’s curator. And this is because the determinations that could guarantee the effectiveness of her practice — in the case of this type of show — are in no way predetermined by the institutional framework in which that practice is carried out, unlike what happens when the curator joins the traditional structure of the museum. The curator’s inevitable lead role in such shows has recently given her an exaggerated, and clearly equivocal, level of visibility in the cultural field. lt is a question of a misunderstood celebrity status. Between a mere instrument of the culture industry and one of the most recent incarnations of the model of the independent intellectual, the possible range into which the curator’s decisions are introduced is, at once, remarkably vast and dangerously undefined.

The invisibility to which I referred at the beginning of this text is clearly related to the position that these shows occupy with respect to the traditional circuit of criticism, the museum, and galleries. They never completely belong to the system of art institutions in which they are supposedly inscribed, and the range of practical and theoretical possibilities to which they give rise often turns out to be subversive — let’s not forget that museums are first and foremost Western institutions, and that the global expansion of large-scale international exhibitions performs an insistent de-centering of the canon and of artistic modernity. ln a growing fashion, one has the impression that the vitality of these kinds of shows seems to be a direct function of the number of visitors that they attract and the dissemination that they achieve in the media, and in inverse relation to the appreciation of specialized criticism — in terms of the politics of exclusion historically enacted by the institutions of modernity, large-scale international exhibitions, as was the case with theater in the High Renaissance, could perhaps be considered as “a force for the breakdown of class distinctions, even for democratization”¹². However, that vitality is undoubtedly the best guarantee of their survival. To a large extent, the conceptual horizon that shows such as the two latest editions of documenta or the first Bienal de la Havana have opened still remains largely unexplored. There is no doubt, however, that many aspects tied to these kinds of events have been partially absorbed and recycled by museums and galleries — a process that is not at all recent, although it has visibly sped up over the last decade. One instance is exemplified by the fact that in that short span of time a significant number of artists have effectively been incorporated into the canonical narrative of the postwar period. Many conventional museums have resourced to the implementation of biennial or triennial showcases as a way to increase the number of their visitors and attract the attention of the press. ln some cases, a clear and direct influence of these types of shows on the traditional institutional circuit is confirmed; in others, it is more a question of partial coincidences in the development of independent — though without a doubt, simultaneous — processes, as that form of internationalism that has been labeled “globalization” increasingly determines the financing and programming of a large part of the museums in Europe and the United States.

Beyond these transformations and a sense of growing interdependence among traditional modern institutions and these types of shows, the implications of the latter do not yet seem to have found a framework of appropriate analysis. These events are insistently evaluated in terms of the logic of the institutions of modernity and not in relation to the challenges that they embody. A proper historic account of the emergence of these institutions is still required. A clearer understanding of their implications in terms of an interrogation of the canon and the modern notion of the autonomy of art is equally needed. Although the project of the formulation of alternative versions of (Western) modernity seems to have been a driving force for many of these institutions from their very beginning, the implications of such a radical move remained yet to be theorized. The development of large-scale exhibitions can be associated with the economic and informational transformation of late capitalis — like the expansion of tourism at a global scale and the concurrent rise in the number of museum visitors worldwide; in sum, a growing process of democratization of culture that is caracterized by an increasing intermingling between education and entertainment. Large-scale exhibitions could be referred to as one of the possible responses to these phenomena from the cultural field. Nonetheless, there is little understanding of their position in terms of the cultural industry and the institutions of artistic modernity. Their contribution to the cultural field has barely been accounted for. Perhaps it is precisely in an inquiry of this nature where we could find the possibility of giving the kind of visibility to these events that would allow us, among other things, to articulate an effective reform of the institutions of modernity¹³.

¹ lt is important to note that one of the motives for this text stems from my participation, in various capacities, in three of the exhibitions mentioned: as a panelist in the “100 Days/ 100 Guests” at documenta10, and as a member of the curatorial teams of documenta11 and the 50th Venice Biennale. In particular, my work in the latter two events allowed me to interact intimately with both their organizational and their conceptual aspects.

² For a paradigmatic historical example of this kind of coverage see: Brice Kurtz. Documenta 5: A Critical Preview, in: Arts magazine, Summer 1972. Vol. 46, No. 8, p. 30, which contains, in a nutshell, most of the usual misunderstanding about these kind of events.

³ Although there is certainly a profuse bibliography on museums, there seems to be no single publication on the subject of large-scale international exhibitions alone. Some of the most recent publications on the subject of exhibitions/ curatorial practice are: Bruce Altshuler. The Avant-Garde in Exhibition: New Art in the 20th Century (New York: Abrams, 1994); Emma Barker (ed.). Contemporary Cultures of Display = art and its histories; 6 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne (eds.). Thinking About Exhibitions (London/ New York: Routledge, 1996); Bernard Guelton. L’Exposition: Interprétation et Reinterprétation (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998); Anna Harding (ed.). Curating the Contemporary Art Museum and Beyond (London: Academy Editions, 1997); Susan Hiller, and Sarah Martin (eds.). The Producers: Contemporary Curators in Conversation l, Ill, IV (Gateshead: Baltic, 2000-2003); Bern Klaser, and Katharina Hegewisch (eds.). L’art de l’exposition: une documentation sur trente expositions exemplaires du XXe siècle (Paris: Éditions du Regard, 1988); Carin Kuoni (ed.). Words of Wisdom: A Curator’s Vade Mecum on Contemporary Art (New York: Independent Curators International/ D.A.P., 2001); Paula Marincola (ed.). Curating Now: Imaginative Practice/Public Responsibility (Philadelphia: Penn, 2001); Dorothee Richter, and Eva Schmidt (eds.). Curating Degree Zero: Ein internationals Kuratorensymposium (Nürnberg: Verlag für moderne Kunst, 1999).

⁴ A complementary account of the tension — concerning issues of taste and value — between the audience and an institution devoted to the public education and promotion of art can be found in: Seth Koven. The Whitechapel Picture Exhibitions and the Politics of Seeing, in: Daniel Sherman, and Irit Rogoff (eds.). Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).

⁵ See: Theodor W. Adorno. Valery Proust Museum, in: Prisms (London/ Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1982).

⁶ See: Paula Latos-Valier. Biennales Big and Small, in: Info (bulletin of the 25th Biennial of Graphic Art in Ljubljana (2003).

⁷ For a discussion on the connection between the first documenta and the “Degenerate Art” show see: Walter Grasskamp. ‘Degenerate Art’ and Documenta I: Modernism Ostracized and Disarmed, in: Daniel Sherman, and lrit Rogoff (eds.) Museum Cultures: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1994). For Grasskamp, the tension between documenta as an exemplary art institution of post-war Germany and the questions posed to Modern art by the Nazis would ultimately only be acknowledged in their fulI implications by the curatorial team of documenta5 in 1972.

⁸ Richard Tomkins. Happy Birthday, Globalisation, in: Features, Financial Times, May 6, 2003.

⁹ Suffice it to mention the examples of ’’100 Days/ 100 Guests” at documenta10, the four “Platforms” at documenta11, and the events surrounding the “Archive of Contemporaneity” at the 50th Venice Biennale.

¹⁰ See: Karsten Schubert. The Curator’s Egg: The Evolution of the Museum Concept from the French Revolution to the Present Day (London: One-Off Press, 2000). In several chapters of the last section of his informative introductory account of the history of museums in the West, Karsten Schubert tackles on the changes experienced by the role of curators in the last three decades. Although his observations are primarily concerned with curators working at museums, they nonetheless seem inspired, or at least parallel and certainly more pertinent, to the transformation of the curatorial role as it takes place in regards to large-scale international exhibitions.

¹¹ The consideration of art as an autonomous activity certainly leads to the inclusion of highly specialized practices in historical narratives. When this framework disappears as a prime intellectual motive, it becomes possible — and to a large extent, compulsory — to explore an expanded field of cultural production, since it would be a matter of understanding artistic practices in their relationships to the economic, political, and social context. To a certain extent, we could say that documenta10 thematized precisely this process of canon revision.

¹² William J. Bouwsma. The Waning of the Renaissance: 1550-1640 (New Haven/ London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 131. An interesting parallelism could be established between the emergence of theater as a cultural practice in the High Renaissance and the position that large-scale international exhibitions occupy in today’s cultural landscape. Both originally distrusted for their connection to spectacle and commerce, their artistic evolution being partially function of their growing popularity, are examples of a complex relation between culture and spectacle that the institutions of modernity traditionally rejected.

¹³ A number of institutions founded in the postwar period and dedicated to exhibiting modern and contemporary art shared — at least if we take their original intention into account — several aspects in common with the events to which I am referring. One particularly remarkable example is that of the Georges Pompidou Center, established as an interdisciplinary laboratory for research on modern and contemporary cultural production. Although the Pompidou’s activity under the administration of Pontus Hulten seemed headed in the direction of satisfying these aims, it later began to transform progressively into a more or less conventional modern art museum. On rare occasions, some exhibitions still conserve an interdisciplinary and revisionist nature that nevertheless does not dominate the entire program.