Shotgun Review: The Role of the Art Institution in Community Engagement

Panel members included:

Nato Thompson (Moderator)
Jeff Nye (Dunlop Gallery)
Tina Olsen and Stephanie Parish (Portland Art Museum)
Danielle Abrams and Students (University of Michigan)
Elizabeth Cline (The Hammer Museum)

At the beginning of the panel, Nato Thompson set the tone, “Capitalism wants you to do things for free and die.” He encouraged audience members to make heard their anti-institutional thinking and their suspicion of formalized pieces of power. “We can get things done here. We can build things to make things better.”

During the panel, each speaker had a substantial amount of time to tell their story, followed by a brief q+a. Each speaker or group illuminated both the dilemmas and innovations their art institutions have undergone while trying to engage with their community.

Danielle Abrams leads a course at University of Michigan called Why Does Everyone In Ann Arbor Want to Make Work in Detroit? During the panel, her 4 students talked about how they engaged with Detroit. They made it clear that they didn’t go to Detroit to “fix it”. Rather they went they to get to know the community: its history, its people, and movements, “The city will teach you what you need to know.” They applauded University of Michigan, which is located 1-hour drive from Detroit in Ann Arbor, for setting up the Detroit Center. However, they rightfully criticized the University for making the center akin to a gated community: you can only enter the center by swiping a University of Michigan ID Card, which makes the center inaccessible to Detroiters. Historically, they touched on projects of Detroit artists: Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project, Scott Hocking’s Urban Decay photograph series; and facts about Detroit: Detroit’s incinerator is the largest in the world, unemployment in Detroit is 30% to 50% vs. the national average of 9.7%. They also talked about contemporary organizations: the Powerhouse Project which is encouraging dedicated people to move back to Detroit, the Matrix Theater Company, and Earthworks which is an urban farm supplying local food to “food deserts” areas lacking a grocery store. One of the students lived and volunteered at Earthworks and made it clear that he was there to learn, “Who am I as a member of a powerhouse research institute or as an individual without that?” Abrams defended the fact that the students did not produce art projects as part of the class; their coursework resulted in research and community engagement. She said the University is unclear of how to deal with this as a result of an art class.

Elizabeth Cline of the Public Engagement Department at the Hammer Museum talked about how her institution supports social practice. The museum has just started a social practice artist in residency program, which has featured artists like Edgar Arcenaux of the Watts House Project. The Hammer welcome social practice artists in residence to point out the downfalls of the institution and propose creative solutions. Process is made transparent as problem solving occurs in public. This residency works well with The Hammer’s goal to amplify the museum as a civic space and shift expectations of what happens at a museum. The Hammer has held events featuring the tabla and mycology; currently, they are considering a clothing optional night. In addition, an artist council oversees the activities of the museum and its relationship to the larger community, the councilors are endearingly nicknamed the innies and outies. I look forward to seeing how The Hammer’s open-minded and invested approach to social practice develops, it seems like they are off to a good start and may set the tone for how institutions nationally deal with social practice artists.

Jeff Nye, Assistant Curator of the Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, touched on some of the unique circumstances of the gallery and innovations they’ve made to bring more social practice into the gallery. The gallery is in the same building as the public library and shares a large glass wall. When Nye arrived, he helped replace the security guards that patrolled the gallery with interested community members, now called “gallery facilitators.” He also helped reorganize and museum make the museum more cohesive by having curators and educators schedule together. Similar to the city, the gallery is a space of pragmatic socialism contrasted with conservatism. When Nye first started introducing social practice into the gallery, the audience was unclear about which shows were interactive and which were not. Currently, Nye is pondering the value of short-term verses long-term relationships with community involvement.

Tina Olsen and Stephanie Parish of the Portland Art Museum discussed and showed a video of “Shine A Light”, a evening of social practice art interventions in the museum, orchestrated by Portland State University’s Art and Social Practice students and instructors, Jen Delos Reyes and Harrell Fletcher. Shine A Light, similar to their view of Portland’s art scene, is homespun and done on the cheap. To them, the purpose of the event was to rethink what a museum can do and what it means to experience a museum. They saw the event as emancipating visitors by giving them participatory roles in the museum, animating objects beyond text panels, empowering docents as social practice artists, exploring art history while exploring art context, and questioning “What is an exhibition? What is a performance?”

Although the intention of the discussion was in the right place, I’m not sure how much was substantially accomplished. This may have to do with the fact the panel was at the Portland Art Museum versus a community space and did not have anyone on the panel from outside the institution critique it (an “outie”, if you will). At the same time, I also feel like the audience could have done a better job seizing the moment to ask the panelists some challenging questions about the institutionalization of social practice and community engagement.

The same day as the panel, an activist group in London called Liberate Tate released oiled slicked, dead birds and fish tied to helium balloons into the Tate’s high ceilings. This was protest of the Tate’s acceptance of funding from British Petroleum (the oil company responsible for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico) and the museum’s refusal of letting exhibiting artists at the Tate speak out against BP. I wonder what kind of questions those artists would have posed to this panel.