Mark Morris Curatorial Statement… A Day in the Life of Hartell Gallery ArtForum carried a critics’ picks review of “James Casebere: Scales + Dimensions” yesterday. This was a big deal. College galleries, particularly those in the wilds of upstate New York, generally don’t get much coverage in the press. I sought out Casebere knowing his work would link architects, artists, planners and landscape architects. I visited his Brooklyn studio over the summer to meet him, select photographs for the show and look at his scale model archive. As we opened box after box of the models used to create the landscapes, housing developments and interiors that typify his work – work I first encountered when writing my dissertation – I realized we had to have the models come to Cornell and be part of the exhibit. He wasn’t so sure. “But I don’t usually show the models.” “Ah, yes, but we’re a university. Different audience, enthusiastic model-makers, students and faculty as interested in how you work as in the work itself.” “But some of them are oddly constructed. We only carefully craft the portion of the model in view, the rest is left ragged and wild. Several are burnt.” “Give us your ragged, your wild, your burnt! Their sidedness, their Potemkin village quality, is precisely what makes them interesting.” “Alright. Let’s show them. Let’s show them all!” And so we did. Casebere came to Ithaca weeks later to hang the show and organize the models with me. Faculty and students stopped in the galleries and asked questions. The associate dean brought in a group of incoming freshmen. With some hired help, we carried impossibly large and heavy framed work around the gallery. We built a mountain of pedestals and indexed the models by scale and type. The exhibition title grew out of this exchange. He changed his travel schedule to stay on a bit longer; he just enjoyed being part of the college community. I took him on a tour of campus and then the Hotel School bar. He wanted to do a gallery visit and workshop with students; presto, it happens. I will formally introduce Casebere next week at his evening lecture for the college, which is also drawing some alumni and guests, but the process has been cheerily informal, full of spontaneity and seeing him make personal connections with students and faculty. My role is hardly that of a pure curator, far from it. I am equal parts curator, host, budgetary miser, staff supervisor, press agent, catering consultant and bellowing master of ceremonies. I teach a range of seminars, lectures and studios alongside this and enjoy my work in both directions immensely.
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