In Conversation… An interview with the Curatorial Advisors prompted by the Graduate Curatorial Fellows (GCF)
May 5 - 10, 2020 Prompt 1: In relation to the process of working with GCFs: • What were your goals as a Curatorial Advisor to the fellows, or what do you hope the graduate fellows take away from this experience into their professional careers? • Were there any general thoughts or feelings you derived from the studio visits that gave you surprising insight into the potential future of art-making, for instance, popular use of materials, digital formats? • The curatorial model used to organize SAIC’s MFA Show is the only of its kind in the country. What has it meant to participate in this show? While serving as advisors, what have you learned from this experience?
Daniel Tucker: From the start of our working relationship, my goal in engaging the GCFs was three
fold: to engage them around their interests and backgrounds, to model and share certain tactics and approaches within a curatorial process, and to be their advocate and liaison when needed. Ultimately they were on the ground at the school working hard with the Exhibitions staff and meeting with MFA artists much more frequently than I was around. So they were really driving the process within the framework that had been developed over the years at Sullivan Galleries. We met pretty frequently in the fall, but it was really our studio visits that allowed us to spend the most amount of time together.
Caitlin Mattia: This is a fear I heard echoed by artists - that it would, by nature, end up feeling like an art fair. I do believe that it encourages relationship-building and a certain type of generosity, or at the very least, an academic openness. I found that I felt pushed to understand the relationships between differents artists and works even better simply because I wanted to ensure that it really was a conversation, a constellation, a whole organism as opposed to pods, and that was the clearest way I saw. Accountability is a good word for this, and I saw it in my fellow GCFs and in the artists. It was a constant exercise in trust, communication, and accountability, only possible thanks to this specific model, and I feel you, the GCAs, carried a lot of weight in allowing us to develop that trust between artists and curators early.
In that process the GCF students also had many insights into the MFA works and the conversations were dynamic and moved between broad research interests, formal concerns, and a lot about installation issues. The range of work was incredible, which is really one of the qualities of the graduate programs at SAIC—that there is such formal diversity. We talked to many artists about their desires in terms of how people move through the space and around the artworks, the choreography of both bodies and also intentionally designing encounters with artworks. Beyond that I tried to do some modeling of certain kinds of engagement with MFA students if they were being overly vague, overly specific or if they just seemed like they were frustrated or cynical about how the exhibition would be useful/interesting for them. We did some debriefing for them to understand how that resonated, and I was happy to hear that they all noticed how those mood/conversation shifts were facilitated. This felt important because so much of the interactions in these spaces are rather vulnerable and can be kind of tricky. We talked some about how this might be different in an exhibition where the curator commissions something, versus one where someone invites someone to show existing work, or when the curator might be more on the line to ensure quality and might have to cut or disinvite participants or to work with them to improve unresolved ideas. But MFA exhibits are very particular, in that everyone moving through the experience is ensured participation and that can make it have more of a “showcase” quality akin to an art fair. This can really alter the role of the curator, but I think that the elaborate series of steps that the GCF program allows for does increase the accountability for everyone involved to have to continuously articulate themselves and their vision. For me as an educator that works with graduate students at Moore College of Art & Design, this dance of being supportive while also anticipating potential issues is a big part of the work. In my faculty role I’m not ever considered the exhibition curator despite teaching many curatorial courses, and so this role had a slightly different quality.
Elizabeth Reed: As a GCF in Daniel’s curatorial group, one of the most intriguing and valuable outcomes that I derived from our studio visits came out of a meeting with one artist who shared this sort of concern regarding the fit of their work, or their artistic practice in the MFA Show at large, and not only observing how Daniel navigated this moment, but also how it influenced the progression of the artist’s project thereafter. Simply providing insight to his own experiences working with social practice artists, which aligned with this MFA artist’s work, evidently inspired a new perspective for the artist and eventually totally transformed the way they intended to present their project in the physical show. Among the learning outcomes from this, for me, was the importance of developing the practice as a curator to constantly engage with networks of thought, practice, materiality, etc. in the world of art and cultural production at large, whether as a resource for insight to share with other artists or to inspire myself to consider new modes of thinking in my own work.
Krina Mehta: The role that GCFs played definitely dictated “accountability.” With this program we became the mediators between artists and the exhibition department. It was interesting to make sure that artists are comfortable enough with us about their project and requirement of space. Also keeping in mind that we communicate individual cases to the department to find the suitable space for the artists.