Highlights of the Contemporary Art Museum in St Louis

CURATORS AT Contemporary Fine art institutions must not only appoint with the question of how all-time to distill today's broad realm of artistic activity but as well ensure that their solution pleases a bifurcated audience: the full general public and the art experts; the local community and the biennial-hoppers. Founded in 1980 to bring art to the city'south downtown, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis has navigated this situation adroitly, specially since its reopening in a new, larger building in 2003. Director Paul Ha has overseen a mix of solo surveys (William Pope.L, Alexander Ross, Janaina Tschäpe), group exhibitions (African artists working exterior Africa, women artists engaged with identity), and project shows with younger practitioners; located in a urban center more than one-half of whose population is black, the museum has featured numerous African and African-American artists. Four years ago, the Contemporary—which has no permanent drove—launched the Great Rivers Biennial, which gives awards and exhibition opportunities to local artists; the institution as well sponsors community initiatives such equally citywide open-studio events and a visiting critic and curator series.

Now, a year after Anthony Huberman left the Palais de Tokyo in Paris to join the Contemporary as chief curator, the institution is inaugurating a completely overhauled program. What marks this attempt as unique is its try to address the two-audience dilemma explicitly, by placing exhibitions and programs in collagelike juxtapositions rather than subsuming them within a seamless projection of the museum's identity. Huberman, who was also a curator at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center and at SculptureCenter, both in New York, has divided the exhibition plan into two streams that operate at different speeds. A gallery just inside the museum'southward entrance, newly christened the Front end Room, will nowadays "contained voices from around the earth" in a rapid-burn down and improvised series of exhibitions, performances, screenings, and events; information technology has already featured vii shows in three months. "The Forepart Room should be flexible, responsive," explains Huberman. "I desire to be able to see something in Chelsea and present it in Saint Louis the very adjacent month." Earlier this year, while the Not bad Rivers Biennial featured 3 local artists chosen past a jury of curators from effectually the country, an array of other regional endeavors were given menu blanche in the Front Room: White Flag Projects, an alternative space in the city's Grove neighborhood, immune visitors to exist photographed while existence slapped; Snowflake/Citystock, an arts venue and design store, installed a fettle eye for artists; Maps Gimmicky Art Infinite, located in nearby Belleville, Illinois, presented four-day-long previews of its upcoming solo exhibitions; and Apop Records, a local independent record shop, created a merchandise booth featuring "oddities from the fringes of underground civilization."

This month, Huberman's plan for the chief galleries launches with an exhibition of piece of work by John Armleder and Olivier Mosset, eminent Swiss artists who are less known in the United states (where Mosset now lives). The duo will present a jointly conceived exhibition blending old and new artworks; at the outset of the show, the Front Room will feature artists affiliated with Cinema Zero, a collective that takes its logo from Mosset'due south signature motif, the circle. Huberman intends artist pairings to grade a basic structure for the bigger exhibitions, although the ways in which the participants relate to one another will vary: For instance, there might be two unrelated solo shows, as in the autumn 2008 presentations of single-aqueduct videos past Aïda Ruilova (curated past Ha) and artworks past Lutz Bacher (curated past Huberman), or a ii-creative person exhibition with a curatorial conceit.

The primal, according to Huberman, is adjacency: "Not a equals b, merely a aslope b," he says. "I want the institution to exist characterized past its lightness of touch, past its ability to encourage associative links amid what'south on view, and then by its willingness to stand bated and allow attending shine upon the artists." He emphasizes that repeat visits to the exhibitions in the main galleries will nigh e'er offer new experiences, by virtue of their irresolute relationship with what'south in the Front Room.

Rules are, of course, made to be broken, and in a little more than than a year Huberman plans to present a larger group exhibition. Only by that time, he hopes that the structuring conceit of creative person-focused "pairs and parallels" volition have become a kind of calling card for the museum, i that distinguishes information technology in the minds of art-world denizens and fits neatly into the visual-art landscape of Saint Louis: The city boasts an encyclopedic institution, the Saint Louis Art Museum; a privately funded blue-chip museum, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts; a university gallery, the Mildred Lane Kemper Fine art Museum at Washington University; and numerous smaller artist-run spaces of the kind featured in the countdown Front end Room presentations. Taking its place among them, the Contemporary is positioning itself as a kunsthalle that is relevant to both local and larger audiences.

Brian Sholis is editor of artforum.com.

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Source: https://www.artforum.com/print/200805/the-contemporary-art-museum-st-louis-19952