If I can make it down to Wilmington in the next few months, I’ll be stopping in at the Delaware Art Museum to see “Exposed! — Revealing Sources in Contemporary Art.” It’s a home-grown
exhibition that began on Aug. 15 and, as you may have guessed, explores the use of existing images, either in quotation or appropriation, in paintings, photographs and prints.
Drawing on the museum’s collection and loans from collectors, the exhibit juxtaposes 27 works alongside the works they borrowed from. Aside from poster-boy Richard Prince, whose Nurse paintings (inspired by book jackets) have had a stunning runup in prices over the last few years (and recent decline, no doubt), artists in the exhibit include Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Glenn
Ligon, Grace Hartigan, Ellen Gallagher, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Colescott.
Heather Campbell Coyle, curator of American art at the museum,
organized the show, which runs until Oct. 4. She also started an exhibition blog on Aug. 3, which she claims to be having fun doing. One entry: she spent a mere $163.48 on exhibition source materials, buying comics, pulp novels, a paper-doll book and other emphera mostly from eBay and Abebooks (and possibly crossing swords at one point with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, over a certain Vogue needed for its “Model As Muse” show).
Heather agreed to answer my Five Questions.
1) What specifically prompted this exhibition, other than your stated interest in appropriation?
At the end of 2007, we were given a large photograph by
2) Have you discerned any evolution in appropriation, or are today’s artists closely following those of the 60s and 70s?
One trend I’ve noticed is the growing interest in historical source materials. Artists like Glenn
Ligon and Ellen Gallagher, as well as Richard Prince in his Nurse paintings, are reworking archival rather than contemporary sources.
3) Is appropriation overused nowadays?
I don’t think so. Appropriation doesn’t seem particularly dominant among emerging artists, at least not in this region. I certainly encounter some less-than-interesting appropriation art, but then I see something like Ellen Gallagher’s DeLuxe, 2004-05, and I’m completely blown away.
4) Is this the museum’s first exhibition blog? How did it come about, and what’s the purpose?
It’s the
our recent exhibition Ancestry and Innovation, but it was mostly used as a comment book. We got nice feedback about the show. I really wanted to try to make this more of true blog, and I thought that the practice of appropriation was controversial enough that visitors would want to respond–to say some of it is plagiarism.
5) Will blogging, or more direct communication with the public, become part of a curator’s job in the near future?
I think it’s a great opportunity to encourage conversation, answer questions, and share some of the fun but tangential facts that don’t make it into the wall text and labels. Looking at the installation photographs, one visitor commented that it was great that we were using a blog to “create transparency and maintain the ‘exposed’ theme throughout this exhibition.” I wish I’d thought of that. Of course, I can’t imagine how blogging works at a big museum, where a whole editorial team would be required to approve every post.
Photo Credits: From top, cover for Runaway Nurse, 1964; Runaway Nurse, Richard Prince, 2006; installation of Eleanor of Acquitaine, Grace Hartigan, 1983; Great Empresses and Queens Paper Dolls in Full Color, © Tom Tierney, 1982. All courtesy Delaware Art Museum.