ARTWORK: Maddy Brown 45.
The Ethics of Exhibiting By Vy Tsan
In 1969, the Guerrilla Art Action Group (GAAG) drenched themselves in bull’s blood and laid in the lobby of the Museum of Metropolitan Art to protest the Vietnam War. Today, we are left to wonder why Toche and Hendricks chose to protest at the MOMA, an art museum, rather than a government office or a university. This is because the museum should be viewed as an archive, acknowledging the political power it has to legitimise and immortalise certain objects deemed to be valuable enough to have to be passed onto next generations. Art museums serve as institutions which not only legitimise canons in art, but also validate our collective memory. Monopoly of this authority by privileged groups has too often resulted in the delegitimisation of artworks by women,
First Nations artists and those of diverse ethnic backgrounds. This erases important narratives from our history. To exhibit an object in any museum is to make a value judgement, placing it above others of its kind to form an archive. That is, a place in which historical records are stored and possibly made available to the public for generations to come. Art museums serve this purpose by preserving and collecting artworks which are in turn are deemed as priceless artefacts. But in developing an archive, we must establish what is archivable through the process of curatorship.
