Alternative exhibition spaces,
alternative futures (1992)
artdesigncafé | Creative Business & Entrepreneurship | Published 11 February 2011
This article was previously published with the title “Alternative futures” in Organizing Artists: A Document and Directory of the National Association of Artists’ Organizations. Washington, DC: NAAO, 1992, pp. 57-61).
Alternative spaces were born and have survived because of the need felt by artists to take control of their own work, their own lives. In the ’90s, this mandate will force artists’ organizations onto the front lines of other struggles as well. Make no mistake: Congress’s recent attempt to censor the arts is not primarily about art; it is about the imposition of a single, unified culture by a (European male conservative) minority onto the entire country. They are simply coming after artists first. Artists’ organizations can stay on the front line in this struggle or they can be overrun— there is no other option. If alternative spaces are to be maintained only out of inertia or out of nostalgia for the ’60s and ’70s (as the only surviving institutions of the counterculture), then they are not worth the effort. If, on the other hand, artists’ organizations engage with contemporary artistic and social concerns, if they serve contemporary artists’ needs, media, and goals, and if they make possible a reimagining of society and human life that neither the right wing’s unified culture nor the art world’s museum culture is capable of, then their survival is indeed crucial, not only to the art world but to the wider society as well.
A number of important questions about artists’ organizations have been raised in the last decade. Among them are: 1) does the institutionalization of these organizations contradict their “alternative” mission? 2) what are the prospects for funding truly alternative organizations, given the current social and political climate? 3) are the original ideals of the movement still relevant and maintainable today (do the words “experimental,” “cutting-edge,” “risk-taking,” and “opportunity to fail” still mean something, or are they just marketing and grantwriting catchwords)? And 4) is the movement destined to serve merely as a farm system for commercial galleries and larger artworld institutions?
These themes have a common thread: they all question whether the original model according to which artists’ organizations were constructed can or should accommodate differences between society and the art world, differences that are themselves different from those that reigned during the movement’s founding era. Are we nostalgic or realistic when we talk about the necessity for survival? At each symposium, in every article on artists’ organizations, the comment is made that we never know how much longer we can depend on public funding; that question is more pressing today than it has ever been. And each symposium and every article has demanded that we find viable alternative funding sources. Most of us have still not found them. What can we do to bring our institutions into creative confrontation with these ongoing problems, with current social factors, and with contemporary artists?
We can recognize that we are now and have been (whether we like it or not) deeply political, and with that awareness we can better act as an opposition force within society rather than a counterculture that pretends to live outside it. If there are no new funding sources, then we must find effective ways to lobby the old ones so that they respond to our needs and recognize our value. We can confront cultural differences and biases in our own curating and criticism and make our audiences aware of cultural multiplicity. We can constantly refocus ourselves on art and artists, not exhibition schedules or grants or maintenance or the other hard facts of our daily lives. We can reject the persisting myth of the eccentric, bohemian artist who can’t be trusted in positions of responsibility. We can confront the reality of our institutionalization and critically examine its consequences. We can educate our audiences, the mainstream media, and politicians about the importance of art (in an era when sympathetic legislators and newspaper columnists can agree with even a fragment of what the radical Right says about art and public support of the arts, this is possibly the most important thing for us to do).
Alternative exhibition spaces: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
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