MAN Q&A: Olga Viso, part two

Part one of MAN's Q&A with Hirshhorn director Olga Viso is directly below this post.

MAN: Why do you think conservation is the right analogy for realizing the work of a deceased artist?

Olga Viso: We have a piece we don't honestly know what to do with. It's the great Fishman by Paul Thek (left). The last time we showed it we knew it would be the last time we'd be able to show it because it was completely disintegrating.

The thing that's interesting is that our conservators are consulting with somebody in Europe. In Germany they have the same piece from the same year and it hasn't disintegrated the same way ours has. They're all talking to hear how it was stored, what was the climate, and such. (It was in a collection before it came to us, which creates variables.) The big question was: Do we cast it, make a duplicate for study purposes even as it disintegrates? It would be destroyed in the casting process - but it would be destroyed anyway.

So people have different opinions about that. There's a Paul Thek retrospective coming that might clear some of this up. [Ed.: The Thek retro will be at the Whitney. There's also a Thek show at Alexander and Bonin this spring.]

You can also look to the conservation model for when the institution does intervene or make a value judgment. It has to be clear about what it's doing. In conservation-speak it means that if you make an alteration it's reversible, especially if it's not clear because the critical opinion could change 20 years from now or there could be science that gives options that aren't available now. If it's that invasive you have to be clear about it, that this is what it is or the piece has been restored to allow you to gain a sense of the work

To underscore, I think the questions are just bigger now, more complicated just because of the way artists worked.

Are we going to see more of these kinds of issues in the coming years?

Yes. I think that as we're looking at artists of this generation, these issues just come to the fore a lot more. Because of the nature of the way these artists work, the site-specificity of a lot of this work, the fragility of a lot of this work, the ephemerality of a lot of the work -- all these issues and questions are just harder I think, and more frequent.

This issue has come up a lot in the past in a way... How many posthumous casts are there? I was just contacted by a gallery who did a posthumous cast of a Modigliani. I don't think it's such a new issue -- I think it's a new set of questions and problems that arrive because so many artists resist the question of their art being institutionalized.

I think a museum, as an institution and as a curator, I think one responsibility is to hear all those voices and perspectives, and to weigh them. You have to weigh a lot of things, the long-term [health] of the piece, making it available. To me the most paramount thing is respecting the artist's intent and the originality of the work.

Also as a museum, we think it's important to interview the artist when the work comes into the collection, and to ask, 'If this happens to the piece, do you feel comfortable with that?' Because down the line, when none of us are here, we want to make sure there's as much clarity as possible. Sometimes artists haven't thought through that.

What do you do when there's less documentation?

I think in the case of Gene Davis that was the issue. There was no clarity in terms of text or words that he left behind as it relates to that particular piece. I think I was convinced that there was as a translatability of the stripe paintings to different venues, but there was something about the Kennedy Center and that site and the circularity that I think is site-specific. It just wasn't clear to me that the circularity should translate into a different context. If you look at the original site plan it was made for a place with that circularity to it. If he were alive and that site were to be discussed, would he have carried over that circularity? For me that's impossible to know. For me that's a judgment call and it wasn't clear enough to make an authoritative decision on.