My group WIRE, an MA international program in Critical Writing and Curatorial Practice, just finished the course “No Patron, No Project”, run by artist and Konstfack professor Ronald Jones and free lance curator Stella d’Ailly.
During this course we had to create a new art institution plan (including vision for the future, mission statement, marketing plan, education program, and the press tactics), which could please Peter B. Lewis, the ex-patron of Guggenheim.
We plan it as a research organisation where exhibitions are curated by the teams, including artists, craft people, designers, scientists from different fields as well as everyone who can contribute into the project.
The aim – try to go around the contemporary art dilemma: either to be too commercial – gallery and fair petted art, or to fall too much into social criticism, which depends on tax money and grants that is controlled by the state.
During our exam the art life in Stockholm stopped since most heavy weight art professionals came to evaluate our work: David Neuman (director of Magasine 3), Magnus af Petersens (Moderna Museet curator), Lovisa Lönnebo (Moderna Museet head of marketing and communication), Maria Morberg (Moderna Museet PR), Ulf Eriksson (Moderna Museet education program).
The case study was totally fictional.
My question to the jury was – why do we practice to think about imaginary institution if there are many real once in Stockholm. And should museums in our days take a responsibility to run a serious, academic level program in cooperation with universities and colleges? Especially in the such a practice oriented field as curatorship.
Of course I did not get any answer, but I hope at least it was taken in consideration.
Creating the institution
April 26, 2008 by Anja Kharkina