Curating on Campus: A Dialogue

Transcription

1 Public Art Dialogue ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: Curating on Campus: A Dialogue Andrée Bober & Amanda A. Douberley To cite this article: Andrée Bober & Amanda A. Douberley (2017) Curating on Campus: A Dialogue, Public Art Dialogue, 7:1, , DOI: / To link to this article: The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis. Andrée Bober and Amanda A. Douberley Published online: 19 May Submit your article to this journal Article views: 343 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

2 Public Art Dialogue, 2017 Vol. 7, No. 1, , CURATING ON CAMPUS: A DIALOGUE Andree Bober and Amanda A. Douberley How do you build a model program for campus art from the ground up? This is the question Andree Bober faced a decade ago as founding director of Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas (UT) at Austin. The program stems from a 2005 university policy that aimed to engage the campus community by presenting works of art in the public realm. Bober s vision not only transformed the university s landscape, but also established Landmarks as a leading public art program in the country. Today the collection consists of 40 works of art, including 28 sculptures loaned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many additional projects underway. UT alumna Amanda Douberley spoke with Bober for this special issue of Public Art Dialogue. Amanda A. Douberley (AD): When I entered the graduate program in Art History at UT in 2002, the majority of art on campus was figurative and bronze. By the time I left Austin in 2008, 28 sculptures by modern and contemporary artists were headed from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to UT, where they would help launch Landmarks. It is just short of unbelievable how much the campus has changed in recent years, thanks in large part to your efforts. What was the biggest challenge you faced in establishing Landmarks? Andree Bober (AB): The number of complications and challenges were myriad at the beginning, in large part because nobody had done anything like this before at UT. There was strong leadership that championed the program, but there were also people with ideas about how it could or should be done; there was everything from ambivalence to opposition. Some felt that spending money on art was a frivolous waste of university resources. I could understand that: I mean, I can see why the dean of a major science department would want that money to go to her lab. The other challenge is that when you talk to people about abstract ideas, it s hard to get traction. When you show them tangible things, it s much easier. AD: So how did you do that? Where did you start? AB: It was tough because there was no rulebook. Looking at other public art programs, you realize how long it takes to establish a solid collection, because no matter how much funding you have available, it just can t be built in a few years. Copyright Andree Bober and Amanda A. Douberley. Published with license by Taylor & Francis. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License ( which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

3 I imagined borrowing a group of public sculptures from somewhere that could provide a foundation upon which we could build. Whatever form the collection would take, I felt it had to closely serve the interests of people concerned with the study of visual art. The objects also had to support the university s research function, providing opportunities for real learning and not just campus decoration. Through a colleague I learned that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York had just such a group of works, which they started collecting around the time they started the rooftop sculpture program. The president, vice-president for University Operations, and my dean all agreed it was a promising start, which opened the door. AD: How did you approach the Met? AB: A lot of people ask me how I got the Met to make such a loan and I say, I asked! [laughs] I was fortunate that Gary Tinterow, the curator at the time, was intrigued by the proposal and that his team members were willing collaborators. Of course the museum was keeping this collection in good condition, but it was static; there wasn t anyone actively working on it and there wasn t the real estate to exhibit it. So, to have art where so many people see it every day, along with scholarship and conservation, created an opportunity for Landmarks and the Met that has benefited everyone. AD: A fantastic start to the program. AB: It s the bedrock of the entire group, and we couldn t have purchased those pieces. They re not available for sale. And at the end of the day someone may not personally like the Donald Lipski sculpture, but you can t argue that he s not a great artist, that he hasn t had a stellar career that has produced fiercely interesting work and that the Met shouldn t have acquired his work (Figure 1). You don t havetolike it, but you have to respect the fact that there is a community of people who agree it has merit. AD: So you began talking to people at the Met in... AB: The first time I reached out to them was July AD: And when did the sculptures arrive at UT? AB: In the fall of I didn t sleep for a year! AD: Wow. Clearly the Met was enthusiastic to have made something like this happen so quickly, I am thinking of all that is involved when you have art works going out on loan that have been in storage. 91

4 Figure 1. Donald Lipski. The West Painted steel, corroded copper pennies, and silicone adhesive. Photo by Marsha Miller. Courtesy of Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin. AB: Yes, and probably the biggest complication was trying to transfer works that had been acquired for a museum environment with security and controlled access to a public space where they are on view 24/7. That guided a lot of the decisionmaking. There were things that could have been wonderful but were just impractical. Maybe they had glass pieces that would have been too fragile, maybe they had sharp edges. We had to look at the art through the lens of what would happen if it were just left alone for people to interact with: would they impale themselves? [laughs] AD: The timespan for the artworks you ended up borrowing date from the 1950s through Was that an important consideration once you were finalizing the list? AB: Absolutely. The idea from the outset was to create a group that demonstrates many different artistic trends through time. Like I said, they re not just there to ornament, they re also there to educate and be a source of discovery. To have a great example of abstract expressionism, a great example of minimalism and many other movements is a tremendous basis for the study of visual art. What could be more appropriate to an academic institution? AD: Another thing that seems to be important is that you didn t just decide to site sculptures outdoors. AB: Right because public spaces are not all outdoors. They can be inside atria and other indoor places where people gather naturally. In recent years we ve purchased and commissioned indoor works, and sometimes there s a complementarity between a work outside and a work inside. 92

5 AD: What s an example of that? AB: There s a Sol LeWitt wall drawing in the Computer Science complex that corresponds to his concrete block structure in front of the building. Inside there s also a mural we commissioned by Casey Reas that occupies two walls, sandwiched between the two LeWitt pieces a deliberate choice, because Casey s work is deeply influenced by LeWitt. So one thing that is embedded in the range is lineage, because many of the artists studied with, or were influenced by, other artists in the collection, and you begin to see those relationships. You have them between generations and between artistic styles and ideology. To me, that s as interesting as the works themselves. AD: People walk around campus every day as a student or a staff member or faculty, so they have a unique opportunity for the art to unfold. It s different from a museum experience. You re building a collection where people can really live with it and see some of these connections, and forge new ones as the collection changes over time. AB: That s right. I think of acquiring each piece as a lifelong commitment. As the collection grows, our relationship to the works shifts and deepens. That s why each selection is crucial and not just weighed on individual merit, but in relation to the whole. Early in the process of establishing the public art program at UT, some administrators felt there should be a committee where everyone votes and whichever project was the favorite would win. There was a push to have a facilitator lead the program, not a curator. I argued that by taking a curatorial approach, we could craft a collection that would be cohesive as a group; and that was the direction we took. AD: The distinction between a curator and a facilitator is an important one to think about Landmarks as a collection rather than a bunch of individual projects. AB: Without question! I believe the approach has a lot to do with the overall success of public art programs. AD: Let s talk about the new works that Landmarks commissioned and sited across UT s campus: that part of the program debuted at the same time as the Metropolitan loan in 2008, correct? AB: Yes, we installed Mark di Suvero s Clock Knot (2007) in the College of Engineering that September a great project, right out of the gate (Figure 2). It came about because Linda Henderson was curating an exhibition for the Blanton Museum of Art about the Park Place Gallery in Soho during the 1960s, and di Suvero was one of the artists within that collective. He was an artist I wanted to work with, and the timing with the Park Place show was perfect. The next thing was to convince the College of Engineering that this was a good idea. The dean, 93

6 Figure 2. Mark di Suvero. Clock Knot Painted steel. Photo by Paul Bardagjy. Courtesy of Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin. Ben Streetman, convened all the department chairs and invited me to make a presentation. I was struck by how carefully they listened. Then Ben led the discussion and said the school had been trying to expand the horizon of the students so they would understand their education was about more than engineering. He said having such a sculpture right in the heart of their complex would be a visual reminder that the world is a bigger place he was all for it. To my amazement all the chairs backed him. It was an auspicious beginning. AD: The sculpture really activates the landscape. That s an instance where if you tried to think of the space before, you d remember nothing. Clock Knot gives it a visual identity and provides a reason to linger. The Landmarks project after Clock Knot was quite different, though. Could you talk about it? AB: David Ellis was our next project, and challenging because it was part of the renovation of the Art building, an existing structure. The budget was quite modest that was one issue. The second was selection. How do you choose a single work of art that is going to be the hood ornament for the entire Department of Art and Art History? The most convincing idea was that it needed to be a work about process, because whether the experts in the building liked the piece or not, I knew they could at least relate to that. And that s exactly what David Ellis work is about. But rather than have his video be on 24/7 for eternity, I realized we had a chance to introduce a whole new program and turn what would have been a single work of art into a platform and so we used a portion of the budget to create the media station at the art building. That was the birth of Landmarks Video, in Now about 3000 students see this form of art every day that they wouldn t have otherwise. I don t know about you, but when I studied video art I learned about it from essays and stills in books, and I think it s not so different now. Most students 94

7 don t have the resources to travel around the world and see video art in exhibitions or in galleries, and it s largely not online either. Our installation places video art as a genre alongside the more traditional arts that have been taught here, and we hope it inspires students to learn more about it. AD: Speaking of new media, what about the work by Ben Rubin? Is it part of the video collection? It looks like a projection (Figure 3). AB: It looks like a video, but it s in real time. Ben Rubin is a pioneer of data art. We learned that the plaza at the College of Communication was going to be dedicated to Walter Cronkite, who went to UT and whose archive is at the university s Briscoe Center for American History. Ben took that as his inspiration. His piece is called And That sthewayitis(2012), and it draws from two sources of information. One is the Cronkite archive, which has a huge database of news broadcasts. The other is closed captioning from five major news networks. Ben developed an algorithm that pulls out certain constructions in the language that are related. You re watching a live amalgam of what is being broadcast at that very moment. So if we were to go there today, we would probably see Syria a lot, or Trump. But despite the immediacy, the Cronkite archive vignettes make the space strange. So if you read something that says, The United States has escalated the war effort and the president expects a thousand more troops to be added, you ask yourself, Are we Figure 3. Ben Rubin. And That s The Way It Is Six-channel video projection. Photo by Paul Bardagjy. Courtesy of Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin. 95

8 talking about Vietnam, or Afghanistan? There s a blurring of time that for me is very provocative. AD: It strikes me that with the three pieces we ve been talking about, siting is critical. Were they placed with a certain relationship in mind? AB: Starting Landmarks required a lot of diplomacy. Especially at the beginning, when not everyone bought into the process. And so we tried to find ways to make the work relate metaphorically to where it was being located, to make it relevant to the different university programs. We still do that to a degree, but I think there seems to be a greater acceptance now that allows for more flexibility. Take the project we re working on with Ann Hamilton for the Dell Medical School: I guess you can look at her photography and say, Well, this has nothing to do with healthcare, but then it does it has plenty to do with it. What I wouldn t want is an overly strict program. If an area or a site calls for a direct kind of relation, that s great. If something more ambiguous is viable, that should be fine too. AD: With commissions, you hope to get the artist s best work. But if you always had to say, We need the work to fit this building or this department, it could easily become a constraint. AB: Right and that relates to part of my job, which is to get people to be enthusiastic about the work. The best way to do that is to argue from the artist s own creativity. Take Mark Quinn s sculpture at the Dell Medical School (Figure 4). Why on earth would they want a massive bronze conch shell at the entryway, as the banner for their college? Considered one way, it makes very little sense. But I explained it in terms of the artist s interest in natural form and the human body as a central subject. What is a shell? What does it do? One answer is that a shell is a complex structure that protects delicate organisms. That made sense to the dean of the college because in the medical profession, they protect delicate organisms too. So all of a sudden, there s a bridge. Could I convince the Law School to adopt the same sculpture? [laughs] I m sure there d be a way. That s part of what public art administrators do. We figure out how to help people make sense of what they re looking at. The object is to get great art that complements the collection but also makes that firsthostaudience feel pride and appreciation. AD: Well, between their proximity to the work and the matter of funding, they have a sense of ownership, and it must help to offer people a way of beginning to think and talk about the art. AB: I ll share an example of the value of an opening narrative, from James Turrell s Skyspace (Figure5).ThereweresomanyreasonstohaveaTurrell on campus, but what everyone latched onto was that the Student Activity Center needed a reflection room. I looked at the plan for the SAC and a reflection 96

9 Figure 4. Michael Ray Charles. (Forever Free) Ideas, Languages and Conversations Wooden crutches, steel armatures and steel cables. Photo by Paul Bardagjy. Courtesy of Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin. room was already part of it, something the students had requested. So I said, I have an artist who can do this for you. Is that why we chose Turrell? No; we chose him because he s a fantastic artist, and I knew a work of his would be outstanding for the campus community and the collection. But the narrative necessarily gets reduced down to the most digestible morsels achallengeweallshare. AD: This reminds me of Claes Oldenburg. In writing about all the different projects from the 1970s and a little later, he talked about the difficulty of responding to the demands of a particular location while still just making the work he wanted to make. He was like a salesman with a big sack full of sculptures, and then he had to figure out how could he pitch them to the people in charge. 97

10 Figure 5. Nancy Rubins. Monochrome for Austin Stainless steel and aluminum. Photo by Paul Bardagjy. Courtesy of Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin. AB: Well I don t have a sack of sculptures but I do have a mental list of artists that I imagine working with. It s just a question of time and circumstance. I do feel that in the beginning it was important to begin with artists of high stature, in part because as a young program Landmarks needed to build credibility. Now that we are more established, it feels right to begin exploring artists who might not be so well known but whose work is of the same distinction. Michael Ray Charles is a great example. The project that we just finished with him is dazzling, and looks very different from the kind of work he s done before (Figure 6). Nancy Rubins is another surprise (Figure 7). Who could have imagined 10 years ago that UT would embrace a sculpture made from 70 canoes? AD: How did that come about? What is the usual process for these commissions? Who s the first group of people that you start talking to about specific artists? AB: The process begins when a unit on campus starts a capital improvement project. One of the first tasks is to create a conceptual budget. The project managers outline all the different fees and line items they think will have to be accounted for 98

11 Figure 6. Mark Quinn. Spiral of the Galaxy Bronze. Photo by Paul Bardagjy. Courtesy of Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin. throughout the project. One of those line items is Landmarks, which constitutes at least 1% of the budget by university policy, the allocation for the acquisition of public art. Once the project managers have clarified that with the building users, Landmarks starts to get involved. I try to learn as much as possible about the program, to find out more about the teams interests, their stakes in the project. At some point we craft a proposal, and most critically, I talk to my advisory committee we kick around ideas. Sometimes I have a clear vision and chiefly just want their support and vetting, to make sure I m not doing something stupid. Sometimes I m looking for inspiration what do they think could work? Great projects have naturally come out of those conversations as well. Either way, a lot of people have to get behind the idea before anything moves forward. In that way, I liken the work I do to that of any museum curator who has to vet proposals up through the director and board. So, besides the consent of the advisory committee, I ve also got to get the dean and whoever else is on the client s team interested. Only then would I bring the project to the Campus Master Planning Committee. If they endorse it, they send a letter to the president of the university and his Facilities and Space Council. The president typically gives final approval or the board of regents, under some circumstances. AD: That s a lot of people. AB: Well it takes a lot of people to make a program like Landmarks a success alot of talented and committed people. They include university presidents and vice presidents. Pat Clubb, who headed University Operations, led the effort from the outset, and Doug Dempster oversees the program now as dean of the College of Fine Arts. Then there are members of the Campus Master Planning Committee, the 99

12 Figure 7. James Turrell. The Color Inside Black basalt, plaster and LED lights. Photo by Florian Holzherr. Courtesy of Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin. 100

13 Landmarks Advisory Committee, our indispensable staff, and scores of volunteers who all give their time and talent to bring each project together. Every project needs hundreds of people to get behind a single idea. It sounds daunting, but if the idea emerges from a lot of different people and a lot of different perspectives, then that reduces the number of mistakes along the way. It also insures that people throughout the community get involved and understand what the work is about. That s useful because the greater number of stakeholders who are enthusiastic and informed, the more receptive their constituencies are. A lot of times when people are really puzzled by something, they look to leadership to express how they should feel about it. If you have a dean who is excited about a work of art and can speak intelligently about its merits, then other people are more likely to take their cue. AD: The people on the Landmarks Advisory Committee, are they from across the university? AB: Yes. One member is a museum curator, one is an art historian. There s an artist, a landscape architect, and a student representative. The head of the Subcommittee of the Review of Art (SRA) also serves. Seven people including me. AD: What is the SRA? AB: When Landmarks began, it seemed sensible to have a subcommittee whose sole job it would be to evaluate volunteer proposals not proposals made by Landmarks, but proposals from any other quarter. The SRA follows the same process that we do in terms of review and official university approval, but they have a separate charge. That way, when someone says, I want a 40-foot bronze astronaut in front of the aeronautical engineering building, the proposal goes to the SRA and we stay out of it. But we have representation on each other s committees so there s overlap and we stay informed about each other s movements. AD: This seems a good moment to make it clear that not all the public art on campus is Landmarks doing or responsibility. AB: That s right. Campus memorials and honorific sculptures are overseen by Facility Services and have never been part of Landmarks mandate. In the 1990s, there was a push to have more diversity because only white males had been memorialized before that time. So three sculptures went up: Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez and Barbara Jordan. The proposals started snowballing, and eventually the board of regents placed a moratorium on the effort. It was a pretty bold step, but I think it was the right one: we were heading toward a kind of Madame Tussaud s theme park. My feeling is, if you re trying to honor a person from a minority or of minority values, why would you borrow a formula established more than 2000 years ago in Western culture? There are so many more dynamic ways to bring those ideas into public dialogue, and I think the Michael Ray Charles piece 101

14 that we ve installed is a brilliant example of that. It deals with issues of race and class and minority cultures, but in a way that is completely new and surprising, and that gets people thinking more than they would if they were just looking at a bronze sculpture of a black person. When you look at Michael Ray s piece you think, What is that? Who did it? Why is it here, what does it mean? Nothing is circumscribed by this kind of art, and curiosity is inescapable. That s the beginning of learning and understanding. AD: As we wrap up, do you have any advice for a university that wants to start a public art program? AB: If you re working with public funding, then it s critical to have strong and supportive leadership. These projects are enormously complex; they include hundreds of people, can take years to mature, and rarely have enough resources. It takes the top ranks affirming and reaffirming the importance of the program just to stay on track. Also, I d say successful programs encourage input from wide-ranging perspectives and subject-matter experts at every stage. These conversations help troubleshoot potential issues and build support, ensuring the best possible outcome. And there s no substitute for establishing a clear curatorial vision and adopting a process to support it. AD: Any parting thoughts? AB: Just that after many years now, public art continues to intrigue me and be deeply gratifying. I feel lucky to be surrounded by so many talented people who are passionate about their work. I like learning from them. The best part is seeing how our combined efforts end up enhancing people s lives and shaping their perceptions of the world. That s so rewarding, and also an extraordinary privilege. 102

15 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Andree Bober is a curator and arts administrator who founded Landmarks at The University of Texas at Austin. Building upon a long-term loan with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she has acquired and commissioned major works by artists such as Ann Hamilton, Marc Quinn, Nancy Rubins and James Turrell. Bober also created Landmarks Video in 2010, an ongoing series of video art. Prior to Austin, Bober led the Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati through the successful completion of its Zaha Hadid-designed facility, after which the architect won the 2004 Pritzker Architecture Prize. As deputy and then acting director, she curated the exhibitions SPRAWL (2002) and Susan Unterberg: A Retrospective (2004). Bober studied art history and museology at The University of Texas at Austin, practiced painting conservation in Vienna, Austria, and earned an MA in Arts Administration from Columbia University, Teacher s College in New York. Her recent publications include The Collections: The University of Texas at Austin (2016) and Landmarks (2015). She lives with her family in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Amanda A. Douberley holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin, and a BA in Art History, as well as English Language and Literature, from the University of Virginia. She has received numerous fellowships and grants, including pre-doctoral fellowships from the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Henry Luce Foundation. Amanda s research explores the intersection of mid-twentieth-century American sculpture, architecture, design and urban planning. Her writings and reviews have appeared in Art Journal, Art Papers and Nierika: Revista de Estudios de Arte, and she has contributed to Chris Taylor and Bill Gilbert s Land Arts of the American West (University of Texas Press, 2009), Harriet F. Senie and Cher Krause Knight s A Companion to Public Art (Wiley Blackwell, 2016) and Charles A. Birnbaum s Pioneers of American Landscape Design (University of Virginia Press, forthcoming). She teaches in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 103