Hirshhorn curator Anne Ellegood on 'Directions'

A couple of weeks ago, in writing up the Hirshhorn's Amy Sillman 'Directions' show, I complained that the exhibition resembled a commercial gallery show: The paintings were fresh out of the studio, that the installation didn't provide any specific Sillman-related context, and that the Hirshhorn show was essentially indistinguishable from how Sikkema Jenkins would show fresh-from-the-studio work. In a succeeding post, I discussed that this was a broader, substantially unexamined museum issue. Last week I talked with the Art Institute of Chicago's Lisa Dorin about these contemporary mini-shows here and here. Today: Three posts with the Hirshhorn's Anne Ellegood, who curated the Sillman show.

MAN: I think readers are probably familiar with the Hirshhorn's 'Directions' rubric. Tell us how you pick artists for these shows.

Anne Ellegood: Several curators on staff propose artists, so the program is not envisioned by one curator. The idea is to work with an artist who is not super-established, but I'm reluctant to use the word 'emerging' because I'm not sure what that means anymore. The series presents a combination of U.S.-based artists who haven't yet exhibited substantially in Washington and international artists who typically haven't exhibited much in the U.S. Because they are small, these projects are meant to be a bit more nimble, a bit more responsive, than our other large-scale exhibitions, which can take years of research and development to implement.

Amy Sillman is an interesting example. She's quite well known, particularly in New York where she has lived and shown for years, and she's probably further along in her career than most of our Directions artists. She's someone who has a certain amount of visibility. But, the reason we were interested in her was, in part, because she's had few museum shows. So, here is this artist who's been operating without a lot of museum attention and without the kind of critical inquiry that goes along with that.

Part of the challenge for us is that there are many, many artists who we'd like to work with and there are only so many Directions slots a year. The exhibitions don't have to focus on a single artist, but they tend to. Often when you get into a group show format, an exhibition tends to become a bigger project outside the scope of Directions. I'd be interested to see us do some two- and three-person Directions shows.

Continued: Part two, three.