Margaret Price: Transforming Access

Take me back to the origins of Climate Changing and where the idea came from.

The seed of it started in thinking about the slot the exhibition was to occupy. It was supposed to open May 29 of 2020 and was to be the final exhibition in the Wexner Center’s 30th anniversary year. I wanted to use that position to think about the past as much as the present and future of the institution and to introduce some self-reflexivity by asking, “What are museums for? Whom are museums for?”

How did you arrive at the title Climate Changing?

We wanted a name that was active, a call to arms that would speak to not only the urgent issue of climate change but also to the need to create a climate for change. The title is an acknowledgment that the world is changing fast, and we have a role to play in that.

One of the major components of the exhibition is the restaging of Chris Burden’s Wexner Castle (1990). Why resurrect that work now?

The piece was originally created for the final exhibition of the Wexner Center’s inaugural year. Burden transformed the south facade of the museum into a castle by crenellating the smoothed-over brick sections of Peter Eisenman’s deconstructivist architectural design. The decision to mount the work 30 years later was very measured. My intent was to use it as a launchpad to ask a series of questions, like whether the museum is a fortress or castle to protect cultural objects or a platform for producing new ones.

Was Burden asking those questions 30 years ago?

He was really framing that work more as a beef with Eisenman and his architectural design for the Wex, which was pretty daring because it was a formidable building. A New York Times critic called it “the museum that theory built.” Burden said in an interview at the time, “I can’t believe they’re letting me do this.”

Burden was taking issue with Eisenman, but do you think he was also making a statement about the “museum as fortress”?

I can’t help but think that by calling it “Wexner Castle,” he was leveling a critique. If you look back at his previous works, you’ll see a trajectory that deals with institutional critique. With Exposing the Foundation of the Museum (1986–88) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles’ Temporary Contemporary, he dug into the ground around the building to expose its foundation and what’s holding the museum up. With Samson (1985), installed at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, he employed a 100-ton jack attached to a turnstile that pushed on the walls of the museum. Every time someone entered the museum, it threatened to bring the building down.

I imagine the Wexner Center itself is not exempt from this critique. Are we boldly taking on our own institution here as well?

I did want to take on the Wex itself and institutions more broadly in the way that a lot of museums have been doing in the past five

Margaret Price on Accessibility

MELISSA STARKER CREATIVE CONTENT AND PUBLIC RELATIONS MANAGER

Ask Margaret Price the question, What is accessibility? and you’ll get an answer that goes beyond neat definitions. “Access is not Margaret Price, photo © Sandra Costello. something you achieve and then say, ‘Look! I made an accessible space; there’s the interpreter, there’s the ramp, we’re good to go,’” she says. “Access is unfolding, it’s situational, it’s not something you finish—it’s very much a practice.” Margaret Price: Transforming Access

An Associate Professor of English and the Director of Disability MARY ABOWD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Studies at Ohio State, Price served on Climate Changing’s faculty advisory committee, a group of five professors (including Dan Ask Ohio State’s Margaret Price the question, “What is accessibility?”

DiPiero, Erica Levin, Maurice Stevens, and Lucille Toth) from a and you’ll get an answer that goes beyond neat definitions. “Access range academic disciplines whose creative thinking on themes is not something you achieve and then say, ‘Look! I made an of accessibility, shared space, and the future of institutions like accessible space; there’s the interpreter, there’s the ramp, we’re museums informed the exhibition and its related programming in good to go,’” she says. “Access is unfolding, it’s relational, it’s not profound ways. something you finish—it’s very much a practice.”

Since coming to Ohio State in 2014, Price has worked with An associate professor in the Department of English and the colleagues on the Transformative Access Project, an initiative that director of its Disability Studies Program, Price served on Climate reimagines access as a collective process centered in race, ethnicity, Changing’s faculty advisory committee, a group of five professors gender, sexuality, disability, and class. “Transformative access is from a range of academic disciplines whose creative thinking more than who can get in the door safely and comfortably,” she on themes of accessibility, shared space, and the future of says. “To quote [leading disability theorist] Tanya Titchkosky, it’s ‘an institutions like museums informed the exhibition and its related interpretive relation between bodies.’” programming in profound ways.

Price’s forthcoming book, Crip Spacetime, which grew out of a Since coming to Ohio State in 2016, Price has worked with study of disabled university faculty, incorporates principles of colleagues on the Transformative Access Project, an initiative that transformative access and draws on quantum physics to forge a reimagines access as a collective process focusing on race, ethnicity, new theory about accessibility in higher education. gender, sexuality, disability, and class. “Transformative access is

Though her findings target university campuses, they also apply more than who can get in the door safely and comfortably,” she to museums. So what, to Price, makes a museum accessible? says. Quoting leading disability theorist Tanya Titchkosky, she adds, “The absolute number one, nonnegotiable thing is to have an it’s “an interpretive relation between bodies.” engaged group of users/designers who are constantly practicing Price’s forthcoming book Crip Spacetime, which grew out of a transformative access for and around that space,” Price says. “The study of disabled university faculty, incorporates principles of museum could have 20 steps up to the front door, and I would transformative access and draws on rhetorical theory, critical still think that the users/designers who are engaged in a constant geography, and architecture to forge a new theory about practice of access would be more important.” accessibility in higher education.

Read more by and about Margaret Price on our blog at wexarts.org. Though her findings target university campuses, they also apply to museums. So what, to Price, makes a museum accessible? “The absolute number one, nonnegotiable thing is to have an engaged group of users/designers who are constantly practicing transformative access for and around that space,” Price says. “The museum could have 20 steps up to the front door, and I would still think that the users/designers who are engaged in a constant practice of access would be more important.”

Read more by and about Margaret Price at wexarts.org/blog.

years, but in an accelerated and much more intense way in 2020 and 2021. The business-as-usual of museums is being upended during the pandemic with the mass uprisings that have occurred over social and racial injustice. There’s an agitation and a desire for change that’s being pushed like never before.

The time seems perfect to be asking these questions because so much is being questioned—from defunding the police to the need for universal health care.

This year has shown just how inadequate so many of our institutions are, and how little work they’re doing to represent and serve people, especially the people who need it the most and who are the most vulnerable. These questions have always been important and urgent and present, but this year is demonstrating the fragility of the social environment that we share and also the need to think about care and how we show up for one another. The museum is a space we can use to reflect and think about that; it’s a place that produces knowledge. There’s a lot of responsibility with that.

Can you talk about this idea of access? There are so many dimensions to that term.

I was thinking a lot about the social space of the museum and what access means in that space. I really got into a book by Tanya Titchkosky, The Question of Access: Disability, Space, Meaning (2011). She talks about access as a form of perception, and one that can organize social and political relations between people in a shared space. So for me that was very exciting, the idea of not thinking about access just as an end goal—you build a ramp and then there’s access—but as a perceptual phenomenon that’s always being negotiated by different people and different spaces together based on needs. Access plays an important role in thinking about participation—who is the museum for, who gets to be here? I kind of shy away from the idea of inclusion because that entails bringing people in and saying “Oh, we’re opening the door to you, to the same old structure, and now you’re welcome in.” I think the whole structure needs to be undone and rethought. It needs to be liberated.

What are the biggest challenges in achieving that more liberated space?

Museums are built on problematic foundations of colonialism and exclusion, theft and looting, social hierarchies and privilege. It’s a challenge to come to terms with that. To look at that in the face and see it, and then ask, “How do we become an anti-racist institution?” It’s a lot of work. It requires a lot of rethinking. Plenty of institutions have remained mum about it.

What kind of work is involved in becoming an anti-racist museum? What are some of the first steps that need to be taken?

I think asking a lot of questions—and maybe questions that don’t have answers. I think it involves more than just dictating what those things are. It involves a lot of listening and work with colleagues within but also outside the museum. Museums are for publics. They’re about people and for people. What’s inside the museum has to start to look more like what’s outside the museum.

Abraham Cruzvillegas is one of the artists who have been commissioned to make new work for Climate Changing. His approach is one of extending access. Can you discuss what he’s doing?

Abraham made these simple line drawings that he asked people in [Columbus] to interpret and make into sculptures. These works are grounded in a theme in his work called autoconstrucción, which means self-building. Where he grew up outside of Mexico City, families would build homes based on whatever they had that was around. In the past he’s worked with museum employees or preparators or artists in the community. I was thinking about this idea of self-building and how that’s very much happening for artists who are in Ohio State’s Master of Fine Arts program, and wouldn’t they be excellent candidates to interpret these sketches? Abraham was very interested in undoing authorship of the work. He’s credited them and their interpretation of his sketches. They aren’t unseen fabricators. The work you see in the gallery is very much by them. It’s a wonderful gesture in terms of inclusion or access, and it’s a different way of thinking about how we can work together. That’s what a lot of the artists in Climate Changing are dealing with in different ways—thinking about systems but also about relationships and bodies and the potential of interdependency, as well as of improvisation.

Tell me about the faculty advisory committee you established to inform the exhibition. Why did you decide to bring this committee into the process?

We’re so fortunate to be on Ohio State’s campus and have such brilliant minds all around us. Because the exhibition deals with such a broad range of social issues and ways in which artists are working, I wanted to bring together faculty from different disciplines to speak about these broad-ranging issues and how they intersect and overlap. I found some thinkers I was excited about—including Dan DiPiero, Erica Levin, Maurice Stevens, Lucille Toth, and Margaret Price. Their perspectives were really influential for me in writing my essay and thinking about the programming and interpretive work for the exhibition. You can find a roundtable discussion with the committee in the exhibition’s gallery guide, which is available in the galleries and on wexarts.org.

This conversation has been edited for length.

Climate Changing: On Artists, Institutions, and the Social Environment is on view in the Wexner Center’s galleries, now extended through August 15, 2021. Gallery admission is free after 4 pm on Thursdays and all day on Sundays courtesy of American Electric Power Foundation.