Hirshhorn curator Anne Ellegood, part three

Talking with Hirshhorn curator Anne Ellegood about museo-mini shows of contemporary artists. Continued from parts one, two...

MAN: So it's not a commercial gallery show simply because there was interaction between the artist and the curator(s)? The differentiating factor is something that happens between the artist and the curator(s) and not between the art and the viewer, that is, the difference isn't in the presentation of the exhibition itself?

Anne Ellegood: Well, context is crucial. I think viewers understand the difference between a commercial space and a museum space, particularly because an exhibition like Amy Sillman's Directions show is not the only thing on view. At any given time, the exhibitions we do are surrounded by other exhibitions and collection galleries. [Sillman's 2007 L, is at right.]

Showing new work is something we've often done with the Directions series, although these shows have also focused on existing works, or a combination or new and existing works. It really depends on the project. Institutionally and curatorially, showing new work has to do with our desire to work with artists in a very intimate way and to support artists in their endeavors, sometimes in direct relationship to the museum, as in site-specific projects. So this sometimes means getting behind them when they are doing something new and supporting them in this process -- I think that's been an important component of the series.

The comparison you made between Jim Lambie and Amy... What Jim did was site-specific in terms of the floor piece but he, too, made new works for the show. It's interesting that this work doesn't get read as a commodity, or the show read as a 'gallery show,' when a painting show does.

MAN: Well, my point wasn't that paintings are commodities. I was merely saying that site-specificity is one way that an institution can provide an artist with an opportunity. [On April 17 I posted, "All of the work is from 2007 and 2008. The museum does not place the artist in any kind of context, not within [Sillman's] own 25-year body of work, not within the work of her contemporaries, and not with her historical antecedents."]

AE: Amy's show is in a museum that has several other galleries of other paintings that are in the collection that contextualize the work that she's doing much differently than you would have in a gallery. I also think that the obvious fundamental difference is that nothing we have on view is being sold. You can't just dismiss that. [At left: An untitled 1959 de Kooning from the Hirshhorn collection.]

I could have re-hung the nearby collection galleries in conjunction with Amy's show but felt that there were several existing galleries that complemented Amy's show well and added to the discussion about painting. [The galleries that 'bracket' Sillman in the Hirshhorn donut are Ellsworth Kelly and Clyfford Still. Willem de Kooning is one gallery away and Arshile Gorky is nearby.] As you know, we've been making particular selections of collection works to display in conjunction with exhibitions. It's something that many of the curators are interested in doing and many of the artists we work with are interested in doing.

There are certain pieces I could have put up near Amy's show that would have been great--it would have been great to see the work with Richard Diebenkorn and Guston -- but I feel like, in the history of painting, Amy's commenting on and quoting so many people that we had great connections already at play, particularly with de Kooning and Gorky on the same floor. I felt that to have her work in the context of what already existed in our galleries was sufficient.

MAN: You have those two galleries there of key abstract artists: One that Sillman consciously rejected (Still) and one that she has obviously embraced (de Kooning).

AE: It's not like we want to hit people over the head, but it's just the very obvious point that her show is in a museum context where you can see a number of works from the history of 20th century painting, and a show at Sikkema Jenkins doesn't have that. That's kind of the beauty of being in a museum that has a collection like ours: Those relationships are visible and you don't have to spell them out too much with an abundance of didactic texts.

One thing I wanted to bring up that might be interesting as a kind of counterpoint: The flip side of this contention that museums are doing gallery-like show is that so many galleries are doing museum-style shows. Did you see the Flavin show at Zwirner & Wirth? They recreated this wonderful 1964 Green Gallery show. The consistency, of course, is that the original show was in a gallery, but it still seems like something that a museum could do. And there are other examples of galleries doing, sometimes quite large-scale, exhibitions of an artist's work made up primarily of pieces borrowed from institutions and private collections that are not for sale.