Contemporary Art: Public and Institutional Perceptions

Philip Aubrey MacLeod

A Capstone in the Field of Museum Studies

for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies

Harvard University

Extension School

March 2021

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Table of Contents

List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. ii

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1

What Is Contemporary Art? ............................................................................................................ 7

Contemporary Art and Audiences ................................................................................................ 16

Fundamentals of Exhibition Design .............................................................................................. 21

The Museum of Fine Arts Boston ................................................................................................. 26

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston ................................................................................... 34

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum ......................................................................................... 39

Conclusions and Recommendations ............................................................................................. 42

Works Cited .................................................................................................................................. 48

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Mark Dion, American, born 1961. Neukom Vivarium. design approved 2004;

fabrication completed 2006. Artstor, library-artstor-org.ezp-

prod1.hul.harvard.edu/asset/ASEATTLEIG_10312599207 ......................................................... 14

Figure 2: Lord, Barry, and Maria Piacente. Manual of Museum Exhibitions, 2nd ed., Rowman &

Littlefield, 2014 ............................................................................................................................. 24

Figure 3: Gallery View, Nishida Jun. MacLeod, Philip. Photograph of Nishida Jun Gallery at the

MFA Boston. 15 November 2020. Authors Personal Collection. ................................................ 28

Figure 4: Annotated Map of MFA. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Map. Museum of Fine Arts

Boston, https://d1nn9x4fgzyvn4.cloudfront.net/2020-11/mfa-map_2020-12.pdf . Accessed on 15

December 2020. Annotated by Philip Aubrey MacLeod. ............................................................. 29

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Introduction

Views about the nature of Contemporary Art vary greatly from individual to individual

be it scholar or a person entering a museum for the first time. Academic attempts to pin down a

notoriously nebulous subject can be full of art historical terminology and technical jargon. What

Contemporary Art is can be a contentious and tricky thing to define. The more casual viewer

might be put off by the often confrontational and conceptual nature of Contemporary Art and

form gut reactions. It is not uncommon for viewers to feel lost or overwhelmed when looking at

many of today’s museum’s collections of Contemporary Art. While these two views of

Contemporary Art by no means represent the full spectrum of ideas on the subject, they do

highlight an often-persistent problem in the world of Contemporary Art. It is important for

museums to understand how the display and collection of works of Contemporary Art, a

movement that is itself often hard to define, bridges the gap between academic knowledge and

public reaction and interpretation.

The following research and investigations into museum exhibitions aims to provide a

series of useful insights meant to guide museums in how they navigate the collection and display

of Contemporary Art. Firstly, the research will define what is meant by Contemporary Art in the

context of this project. Secondly, it will look at how exhibitions are put together and how

audiences perceive Contemporary Art in a broad context. Finally, the project will analyze three

specific museums and demonstrate how they treat their Contemporary Art collections with

differing modes of interpretation. Through defining Contemporary Art and analyzing how this

manifests in the three museums a more holistic approach to Contemporary Art exhibition will be

brought forward, as well as a better way to engage audiences within this framework.

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A museum has the power through its exhibition design, collecting practices, and other

institutional functions to not only preserve and interpret art, but to impart new meaning into it or

emphasize certain aspects to highlight meaning. The museum must use this to their advantage

and take a proactive stance in the meaning produced in works of art, rather than being a passive

vehicle for the Contemporary Art on display. By observing and analyzing how three current

museums are collecting and interpreting Contemporary Art one can better understand how

museums do and do not do this successfully. The answers provided will not only shed light on

the state of Contemporary Art and Contemporary Art collecting as it exists today but will also

create a context for better engaging with today’s social issues, as much of Contemporary Art

does in one way or another.

While museums have changed and evolved over the years their mission statements show

an indication that they exist to not only collect and preserve art, but to serve the public as well.

The Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MFA) states, “The Museum of Fine Arts houses and

preserves preeminent collections and aspires to serve a wide variety of people through direct

encounters with works of art (“Mission Statement”).” The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

(ISG) adopted its current mission statement in 2014 which in part reads, “to engage local and

global audiences in a sanctuary of beauty and the arts where deeply personal and communal

adventures unfold (“Mission statement and Board of Trustees”).” According to the Institute of

Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) its mission is in part, “public access to art, artists, and the

creative process (“Strategic Plan: Radical Welcome”).” All three of these museums have

provided a commitment to serving the public as well as the art they collect. The phrases

“engage,” “direct encounters,” and “public access” ring out in these statements. But how does

the museum affect these public engagements with their collections of art beyond simply

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providing access to them? Engaging with art, contemporary or otherwise, by either making or

observing it, can often be viewed as entering a grand historical conversation. The project then for

the museum must be to the best of the institutions ability to make sure that all the parties

involved in this conversation, the art, the artist, the viewer, and the ghosts of history, have an

equal footing. While seemingly a daunting task, it is one that most museums will find themselves

already engaged in, a task that can be observed at work in different aspects of numerous

museums to various degrees of success. Using three museums as case studies, each with wildly

different methods for collecting or exhibiting Contemporary Art, this research will aim to

establish a better understanding of how museums create meaning in their collections as well as

how to better serve the public with these new meanings and interpretations.

As mentioned above, the MFA, ICA, and ISG are three museums with similar goals

about serving the public. They are also ideologically different collecting and exhibiting

institutions. With these three museums as case studies and guides, by observing what and how

they collect as well as how they interpret it, it should become clear that where and how a work of

art is displayed has an impact on the meaning that is imparted to it through the museum. This

impact can not only work to help the public better understand and comprehend a work of art it

can also work with the museum’s broader public goals. By making a statement of service to the

public the museum should be committed to addressing contemporary and historical social

injustices. In her book Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating curator and arts

writer Maura Reilly observes:

Despite decades of postcolonial, feminist, anti-racist, and queer activism and theorizing,

the art world continues to exclude ‘Other’ artists—those who are women, of color, and

LGBTQ. Discrimination against these artists invades every aspect of the art world, from

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gallery representation, auction-price differentials, and press coverage to inclusion in

permanent collections and solo exhibitions programs. In most mainstream museums,

visitors are still required to actively search out work by them. (17)

Issues like discrimination of artists within a collection, representation and better reflecting the

actual make-up of the public at large, are ongoing projects that most museums are already

publicly engaging with. The issue then is how they can not only work with the community

proactively but also make sure their collections and exhibitions do not adhere to older models, so

dependent on the western canonical view of art history. An institution can better address its

stated goals by having a clearer understanding of how their own collections and exhibitions of

Contemporary Art are affected by the decisions of the museum. Not only is diversity and

inclusion of collections a deliverable outcome from this analysis, but the museum will also be

better poised to engage with current global trends and ideas, as well as gain a better

understanding of its own voice and hopefully eliminate the notion of institutional neutrality.

All these issues are interconnected, diversity and inclusion are a global issue as well as a

local one, the notions of social justice transcend borders. This interconnected nature is something

that is not only integral to the practice of Contemporary Art but also should be a large factor in

how the museum interprets its collection. By observing three collections, seeing where they

succeed or struggle in these regards, it is possible to not only gain a better understanding of how

these forces work within a collection but also provide concrete actionable steps that an art

museum can take to develop its Contemporary Art collections more in line with the notions of

the Contemporary. To improve on service to the public with a collection of Contemporary Art

the museum must first better serve its own collection of Contemporary Art. Better internal

practices with regards to exhibiting Contemporary Art will lead to better public appreciation of

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Contemporary Art and a collection/exhibition that is more in line with the museums mission

statement. These suggestions and guidelines will be based on observing three museums in the

Boston area.

The museums analyzed in this research were chosen for their differences in structure and

institutional practices as well as for their shared commitment to display or collect Contemporary

Art. The MFA is a universal survey style museum in that it attempts to present to the public the

broad historical narrative of a global art history. Containing more than 1,500 works from across

the globe and with a focus on works produced since 1955, the collection of Contemporary Art at

the MFA is mainly contained to its own wing (“Contemporary Art”). This positioning of

Contemporary Art within a broader global context and how it functions (for better or worse) will

provide valuable insight into how Contemporary Art exhibition functions in a general sense.

The next institution to be observed is the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston or ICA.

Established as the Boston Museum of Modern Art in 1936, the ICA has gone through numerous

changes in both name and location while eventually landing today in its current location, a new

building built in 2006 by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (“Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

History”). As a museum dedicated to Contemporary Art, and has more recently become a

collecting museum, it provides unique insight into how a singular focus in a sense effects the

exhibition and interpretation of contemporary works of art.

The final museum to be looked at is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum or ISG. While

it is not a collecting institution as far as Contemporary Art is concerned, it is also in general

another unique case study. The museum was begun as a home for Mrs. Gardner’s personal

collection and upon her death she stipulated in her will that no objects in the museum were to be

moved or changed (Hawley et al. 53). As she was dedicated to collecting and fostering the arts of

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her time, the museum now finds ways to display and encourage Contemporary Art while in

keeping with the spirit of her wishes. According to their website the ISG, “Today, we strive to

continue Isabella’s legacy of cultivating talent and supporting artists. The Museum’s New Wing,

with its openness and transparency, is a signal of the institution’s commitment to artistic

practices of the present and to welcoming new audiences (“Contemporary Creativity”).” The ISG

provides a valuable insight into how a museum with a unique goal and mission, and not a

straightforward collecting practice for Contemporary Art can still engage with the art of today

and the global and local social issues that often come with it.

The focus of how these observations will be made is looking to the past ten years in the

history of the museums and seeing what Contemporary Art exhibitions they have had on display.

Within that ten-year window the focus will again narrow to observe which of these exhibitions

produced published catalogs or other materials. Analyzing the material chosen to represent the

exhibits on display by the museum itself will help to paint a picture of how the museums view

and would like their collections to be viewed. In a good portion of these exhibition materials the

artists also speak about their own works and collections, this gives further context to how the

works were envisioned to be seen in most cases. Finally, external reviews and observations will

provide a counter point to how the museum would like to be seen by contrasting it with how the

public often sees the museum. All these observations will be contextualized within a theoretical

background drawing from past art historical and museum studies scholars.

Using the methods stated above this research will outline the trajectory of Contemporary

Art and define it for the purposes of this work, speak to the broad movements in the field of

exhibition design, analyze the three museums for the past ten-year period, and provide insights

and recommendations for museums going forward. At a time in the world when art can be seen

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as an afterthought or a luxury it is important for this work to not only speak to the power that

Contemporary Art can hold, but the power that is wielded by the museums themselves. Through

the study and analyses of the Contemporary Art collections of these three museums it will

become clear that museums are not neutral sites, and as such much do a bigger and better job of

combating social injustice through exhibition programing and all related activities. In doing so

perhaps some of the old ideas of how and why museums functioned might need to be shed, but

as museum scholar Stephen Weil has said, “I will propose that the relationship between the

museum and the public must be understood as a revolution in process, a revolution in the most

fundamental sense of that term” (195). This revolution is happening whether museums like to

admit it or not, and at an accelerated pace it seems recently, it is important now more than ever

for museum to not be left behind in the past.

This revolutionary attitude is also often found within Contemporary Art. Before moving

forward, it is of the utmost importance to figure out what exactly gives the art we define as

contemporary this quality. It is impossible to understand how museums engage with

Contemporary Art without understand how Contemporary Art functions in the world, and what it

is in fact that one is referring to when discussing Contemporary Art.

What Is Contemporary Art?

Contemporary Art is a difficult subject to define. For the most obvious of definitions, it

can be a reference to art that is made during one’s own time. For in this sense all art has been

contemporary. This notion becomes important when viewing the overall collecting history of a

museum and how it engages with the art of its time but can unnecessarily historicize

Contemporary Art and cause it to lose some of its immediacy. It then becomes increasingly

important that an attempt is made to try and define the art of today, when this research is taking

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place, as a historical moment. In art historical terms this would mean much the same as defining

Modern, with a capital “m,” as a movement in the history of art rather than just a descriptor, of

which it can confusingly be both. This Contemporary Art with a capital “c” is just as tricky and

slippery and confusing to pin down but will provide valuable insight into why it is so important

to the museums of today.

A bit of historical background is necessary to ground some of this conversation, the

movement of art from Modern to Post-Modern and into what we will be defined as

Contemporary provides insight into how these terms become solidified. It is important to note

that these terms are used as guideposts to help us easier study and discuss art in general. No one

wakes up at the turn of the century and calls all the artists together and says, “All right we are

doing modernism now!” These definitions and boundaries are fluid and should be viewed as such

whenever there is a discussion regarding what to call the art of today. People are still making art

in Baroque and Modern styles alongside people practicing Contemporary and Post-Modern art.

These terms are descriptive and not prescriptive, they help us to better communicate not to

impose a neat and linear narrative on the trajectory of art history.

The most important part of tracing the history of Contemporary Art is looking backwards

towards the prominent periods that gave birth to it. This means looking to the movement from

Modernism to Post-Modernism and how Contemporary Art defines itself in relation to, and in

retaliation to, both historical periods. Modernism arose out of a desire to question and in some

instances reject what had come before it, one of the most prominent art critics of his time,

Clement Greenberg defined modernism as an avant-garde culture that “uses art to call attention

to art” (193). While a western and euro-centric view of Modernism, and particularly interested in

American Modernism, it is a valuable insight into how and why Post-Modernism responded to

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these statements. When the Post-Modern came along, as they have become to be defined,

objected to this formalist highbrow versus lowbrow cultural limitation that the previous

definition seemed to put into place. Seeking to question those who had begun to question the

history and canon of art, they began to try and revitalize the ambiguous, pluralistic, and

amorphous nature of art that they felt had been lost (Doss 13). With both concepts in mind the

nature of Contemporary Art can be understood, much as Modernism and Post-Modernism were,

as both a reaction to and a reimaging of the Post-Modern and Modern ideals.

Then comes the moment when the contemporary shifts into Contemporary Art as a

defined category. One of the other main challenges of defining this moment is the resistance of

many scholars to define in historical terms an ongoing art movement. While some believe that it

is too new and they are too close to the subject to properly define it, the notions of what has

constituted Modernism and Post-Modernism have run dry in attempts to apply them to notions of

contemporaneity, thus the need for new definitions when discussing the art of today (Smith, “Art

to Come” 13). As stated above this notion is not to pin down and limit what is Contemporary, but

rather as a tool to more accurately, and across broad global audiences, have discussions about

what is happening in the art world today. This is incredibly important as the audience is not only

globally and socially diverse, but as the art market takes on more and more aspects of the

capitalist free market.

Both views of art historical periods can be seen as conversations with artists of the past

and with the past itself. To understand the importance of Contemporary Art it is imperative now

to place it and what defines it within this grand conversation. Thankfully, a precedent has been

set and it is not necessary to start from scratch like a detective piecing together the clues to

recreate this conversation. There are individuals who have begun this work for us. For the

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purposes of this research, the art historian Terry Smith becomes a important voice to listen to.

Smith is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the

University of Pittsburgh. He studies and researches, among other things, the Contemporary Art

world, and the impacts it has on society and how society in turn impacts it (“Terry Smith”).

Smith begins his investigation to the definition of Contemporary Art with an important look into

the contemporary moment. Smith contends that it is the global, ever changing nature of the

world, the immediate moments that define the contemporary. Within this contemporary moment

emerges a Contemporary Art (Smith, “What is Contemporary?” 5-6).

The joining factor in this wonderfully diverse and global collection of artists and art

historians that defines the contemporary moment and makes up Contemporary Art is laid out by

Smith in three defining factors. Terry Smith himself states, “The immediate, the

contemporaneous, and the cotemporal,” are the three defining factors that make up the

Contemporary Art and congeal it into a historical moment rather than simply the art of the time

we exist in (“What is Contemporary?” 4). That the immediate is the first defining factor is not a

coincidence. In this context the immediate nature of Contemporary Art is its use of ongoing

social issues, world events, and the ever-changing notion of contemporary history. The modern

world with its globalization, neo-liberal capitalism, and other material conditions are the

immediate concerns of the artist (Smith, “What is Contemporary?” 7). While it is true that other

areas of art historical context have seen artists addressing their times and the historical material

conditions that it represents and presents to them, this contemporary moment positions artists

from all across the globe within an ever-changing context. The events of the world seem to be

unfolding at such a rapid pace, and constantly changing the contexts in which art is perceived,

that the very immediate nature of the work of art becomes a defining characteristic. The artists

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that come to be defined as Contemporary are responding to events that can change over the

course of an hour or a day, the world is a shifting global community and the art that it produces

will reflect that. The immediacy in Contemporary Art also leads to a plethora of art being created

in a wide variety of contexts. With global communications at a point where people can have

access to more and more every day, the art world tries to keep apace. The seemingly never-

ending supply of content and creation is, for better or worse, an aspect of the Contemporary.

The second factor of the Contemporary is the contemporaneous. This notion takes the

immediate concerns of the artist and places them within a broader contemporary context. The

notion that the artist is not alone but part of a group or collective (whether literally or

figuratively) becomes central to the work of art. Terry Smith directly addresses this notion by

stating, “It circulates internationally through the activities of travelers, expatriates, the creation of

new markets. It predominates in biennales. Local and internationalist values are in constant

dialogue in this current—the debate is sometimes enabling, at other times disabling, but always

unavoidable (“What is Contemporary?” 7).” The structures of the world, and the material

conditions that have led to them, have become an intrinsic part of the works of art that define the

Contemporary. The contemporaneous nature of Contemporary Art is not only in its name, it is

the way in which artists, whether they like it or not, are forced to be in conversation with each

other. Now more than ever no work of art is seen to be simply standing by itself. A work of art in

the Contemporary movement is seen to be part of a larger whole, a part of a market, a part of a

collective, a part of a political ideology, all these parts working together or separately come to

define the aura around a contemporary work of art.

The final defined aspect of the Contemporary is what Smith refers to as the “cotemporal.”

This notion is in some respects a synthesis of the first two, as well a means of putting

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Contemporary Art within the broader historical concepts of art history. As defined by Smith the

cotemporal is the nature of Contemporary Art to exist within conversations that exist in multiple

histories, timelines, and places as well as concepts of time. The artists of the Contemporary

period are working while not only addressing their immediate concerns but placing themselves

within broader contexts. An artist might be addressing the nature of ecological decline that is

specific to our time but be in contact with a rich history of people working with art that addresses

ecological problems today as well as in the past. The core concept of this term though, is the

nature of different concepts of time. As illustrated later in this research with the Mark Dion piece

Neukom Vivarium time is not a static concept. Different cultures have differing concepts of time.

There also exists the contrast between human concepts of time and scientific notions of time. For

example, ecological time scales are monumental compared to the measurements of human lives.

The cotemporal nature of art history can be summed up thusly:

These artists seek to arrest the immediate, to grasp the changing nature of time, place,

media, and mood today. They make visible our sense that these fundamental, familiar

constituents of being are becoming, each day, steadily stranger. They raise questions as to

the nature of temporality these days, the possibilities of placemaking vis-à-vis

dislocation, about what it is to be immersed in mediated interactivity and about the

fraught exchanges between affect and effect. Within the world’s turnings and life’s

frictions, they seek sustainable flows of survival, cooperation, and growth. (Smith, “What

is Contemporary?” 8)

With these three fundamental aspects of Contemporary Art in mind, it is then beneficial to look

at what structural and physical aspects make up a cohesive Contemporary Art. The first step is

understanding that a cohesive concept of Contemporary Art does not necessarily make it a

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cohesive stylistic movement. Arthur Danto, art critic and philosopher says “it designates less a

period than what happens after there are no more periods in some master narrative of art, and less

a style of making art than a style of using styles (10). This concept of “style of using styles”

refers to not only the diverse kinds of physical practices of art that is created today, but also

relates back to the cotemporal nature described above. The styles that are used become wrapped

up in the conversations across space and time that is so important to Contemporary Art. The

stylistic notions of Contemporary Art become less about the styles themselves and more about

investigating what meaning the styles have been imparted with over time. As such artists of the

Contemporary moment tend to use multiple styles and methods of working over the course of

their careers, while not unique to this moment it does take on a new significance.

The other physical joining factor for the moment of Contemporary Art is the fusion of the

conceptual notions of the immediate and the contemporaneous into a focus on the global,

diverse, and technology driven aspects of art making. The styles become the mediums through

which the message is sent, as well as the channels through which the art is sent and received.

None of these factors are again prescriptive but simply notions to be held into consideration

when thinking about what makes up Contemporary Art. To understand what makes a good

Contemporary Art collection and exhibition practice the foundational notion of what

Contemporary Art is and can be is of paramount importance. One must make a start at the

beginning of this contemporary moment to understand how to better serve it. And what better

beginning than structuring a definition of what is being discussed.

Seeing how these concepts work in unison in a piece of art will be helpful in illustrating

just what is meant by defining Contemporary Art in this manner. One such work of art that will

help make these connections is Mark Dion’s Neukom Vivarium (2006). Mark Dion is a

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Contemporary Artist who works primarily within the mediums of installation and sculpture.

Neukom Vivarium is a site-specific installation located within the Olympic Sculpture park in

Seattle Washington (see figure one).

Figure 1: Mark Dion, American, born 1961. Neukom Vivarium. design approved 2004;

fabrication completed 2006. Artstor, library-artstor-org.ezp-

prod1.hul.harvard.edu/asset/ASEATTLEIG_10312599207

The work consists of a naturally fallen western hemlock tree that the artist has placed into a

small, enclosed vivarium that has been constructed specifically for the piece. The vivarium

consists of a climate-controlled environment that is made from glass, concrete, and steel among

other materials and attempts to recreate the natural environment found around the fallen tree in

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the forest. Visitors are given magnifying glasses to observe the growing ecosystem on the

preserved ecosystem. (Erickson 59)

Mark Dion himself stated in an interview with Art21 that, “It is a memento mori—an

appreciation of decay as a process and as a tool for discourse.” This notion gets to the core of

why this piece becomes such a good example of the three aspects of the Contemporary that Terry

Smith discusses. Dion is on the surface engaging with the notion of the immediate by addressing

ideas of climate change, humanities effects on nature, and ecological collapse/preservation. All

these ideas are, whether one admits it or not, immediate concerns to the public at large and part

of the larger discourse Dion mentions. The contemporaneous spirit of this work is in the use of

multiple forms and styles that intersect with technology in a way that blurs the boundaries

between the two. The science experiment of keeping the tree in a semi-living state is pushed up

against its sculptural and installation art aspects. The ability to use decay in an artificial

environment as an artistic process and a conceptual mode is integral to this work. The

cotemporal nature is wrapped up in the concept of the “memento mori.” By emphasizing the

decay of the tree and reminding the viewer of their own mortality this work highlights a varying

array of concepts of time. The ecological time of the tree, the human time of the viewer, the

progress of science to create a space where this is possible, and individual concepts of time

among others. This work exists as an illustration of a truly Contemporary piece.

Discussion about what Contemporary Art is in the academic sense are enlightening as to

how museums think about the subject internally, but this is only a part of the equation. One of

the other major factors must be the audience. A museum is nothing more than an expensive

storage facility if the public cannot observe its collections. To truly fulfill the stated missions of

the museums an understanding and engagement with how their audiences interact with their art

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on display is essential. As this research has looked at how Contemporary Art is thought about

conceptually and more broadly, it is beneficial to apply the same lenses to how a general

audience is seen to perceive Contemporary Art.

Contemporary Art and Audiences

Contemporary Art like any visual culture relies on having an audience to perceive it for it

to reach its full potential. Whether this audience is a broad global audience, or a niche

community, the ideas being contained within the work of art only find purpose when engaged

with by an audience of some sort. An important aspect then of thinking about Contemporary Art

is how the art is perceived by its audience and who this audience is intended to be. Many of the

museums today are explicit in their attempts to reach an audience and engage with them but find

themselves a little more nebulous when it comes to defining that audience. The mission

statements of a museum are a good place to see this play out.

All three of the museums studied in this capstone project make some mention of an

audience or allude to a viewer to be engaged with. The MFA states at the beginning of their

mission statement that they attempt, “to serve a wide variety of people through direct encounters

with works of art” and continue on later in the statement to say, “The Museum has obligations to

the people of Boston and New England, across the nation and abroad. It celebrates diverse

cultures and welcomes new and broader constituencies.” (“Mission Statement”) The ICA on the

other hand has a more concise mission statement and therefore a more ambiguous mention of an

audience, the ICA proclaims, “The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston strives to share the

pleasures of reflection, inspiration, provocation, and imagination that Contemporary Art offers

through public access to art, artists, and the creative process.” (“Strategic Plan”) And finally the

ISG states plainly, “to engage local and global audiences in a sanctuary of beauty and the arts

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where deeply personal and communal adventures unfold.” (“Mission Statement & Board of

Trustees”) What all of these have in common is an attempt to establish and perhaps center an

audience that will be engaging with these works of art.

At the outset, the museum must grapple with the question that often beleaguers

Contemporary Art, “is this art?” An audience’s initial reaction to whether a work of any medium

is in fact art is a very real problem for museum exhibition designers and curators. In 2014

Martin Trondle, Volker Kirchberg, and Wolfgang Tschacher conducted a study that addressed

this very question. They created a questionnaire to interrogate the audience reactions to a piece

by Neyko Solakov in the St. Gallen Fine Arts Museum. The work in question is entitled “A

Label Level, 2009” and consists of the artist using markers to tag the walls of the museum with

small messages and insights, with no didactic materials to distinguish them as works of art let

alone a cohesive work. Visitors were asked a series of biographical and background questions

and then to decide whether the work was art or not. The study concluded that:

To sum up, we may state that, besides age, the preference for art forms and the

expectations towards the museum visit in general, and more specifically the artwork itself

(content/ topic; technique; composition; beauty), its art historical importance, its

placement and presentation, as well as the emotional response instigated in the beholder,

are the driving factors for the judgement of museum visitors. These are the essential

factors that implicitly influence the museum visitors’ opinion as to whether something

should be considered art or not. It is noteworthy that the prior informing of visitors

(informed/not-informed) had no influence on the evaluation of ‘A Label Level, 2009’ as

art or non-art. Surprisingly, this pedagogic instruction even had a negative influence on

experiencing the artwork. (Trondle et al. 328)

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This study while pertaining to a particular piece can be extrapolated to draw some conclusions

about the power the museum holds with regards to establishing the important first step as to

whether or not a viewer will regard something as art or not.

The biggest conclusion to draw from the study is that the museum has immense resources

in its power to set the viewer up for success when it comes to interacting with Contemporary Art.

The placement and presentation being of utmost important as well as the emotional connection to

the piece are just two factors that should be considered when a museum is curating and designing

an exhibit. In his article in Collecting the New, Howard N Fox curator of Contemporary Art at

the Los Angeles County Museum of Art sites an American Association of Museums study from

2001 that finds that museums are trusted sources of objective information by the public at large

(Fox 16). While this may seem like a blessing for the museum, to be trusted as a source of

objective knowledge, this also puts a great amount of pressure on the museum to live up to this

notion. This is also complicated when it comes to Contemporary Art, how are they to present art

that is not cemented in a historical narrative yet, art that is itself questioning the very nature of

objective truths and historicity, these questions must be accounted for when putting on

Contemporary Art exhibits.

Considering the audience for Contemporary Art becomes of the utmost importance for

museums because of these factors. The mission statements reinforce the audience in the mind of

the museum and the audience in turn looks to the museum for certain indicators or clues to help

better understand the works on display. Mentioned in some of the mission statements in one form

or another is the need to reach an increasingly diverse audience. Museums historically have had a

difficult time representing a diverse, global history of art, let alone Contemporary Art which is

wholly concerned with notions of diversity and global exchange, part of the contemporaneous of

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Contemporary. In her book Curatorial Activism Maura Reilly as mentioned earlier in the

introduction outlines ways in which art museums can address this. In this work she mentions

specifically a way to attack contemporary notions head on. She states “with careful juxtaposition

of works, then, curators are able to draw attention to important differences in the artist’ treatment

of similar themes. In so doing, they offer a fresh and expanded definition of artistic production

for a transnational age” (Reilly 31). This passage begins to explain how the museum can

highlight differences in a way that emphasizes a shared sense of community without diminishing

the fact that differences do exist. There is no need to point to a shared sense of self which often

has the implication that the shared sense is a western sensibility, instead the museum can point

out how beautifully diverse cultures can be and at the same time pull apart at the very notion of a

shared western ideal. With notions of contemporary global exchange taken up by Reilly and

others, there are still other ideas to address.

One such idea is the cotemporal that has been mentioned before, the focus on different

concepts of time, this too has implications for a diversity of audience. One way to enter this

discourse is to take a brief look at feminist art and how it pertains to Contemporary Art. It can

often be easy for museums to relegate feminist art to a period in the 60’s and 70’s when it came

into popular conception as a mode of art production in its own right, this though has the problem

of historicizing it and confining it to the past. In an article Rachel Haynes and Courtney Pederson

state, ““Feminist art” can become a historicizing category, a genre or period; framed as a

singular movement locked into a fixed historical moment, rather than a dynamic set of strategies

that are still potentially highly productive. This highlights the tension between archiving and

valorizing feminist artwork of previous generations on the one hand and continuing the ongoing

feminist work that is still required today” (204). This quote gets to the nature of the problem with

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presenting feminist art, and Contemporary Art at large, regarding creating historical contexts in

museum exhibition. In addressing this notion scholar Giovanna Zapperi in her paper Woman’s

Reappearance: Rethinking the Archive in Contemporary Art—Feminist Perspectives describes

how a feminist temporality can be seen in contemporary feminist art. Feminist art by engaging

with the past and the present, reimagining and shifting both, creates a new anachronical history,

by refusing to belong to either the suspension of time allows for history to be told while still

leaving room for the work that needs to be done (26). Zapperi through her papers and the

examples she provides goes on to assert that this notion of feminist temporality undergirds all of

feminist art, and more broadly is an integral part of what makes up Contemporary Art today. By

focusing on this notion, the museum can better represent women and feminist art without the

need to put on “feminist exhibitions” as such and run the risk of tokenizing women who create

art.

This notion of rethinking temporal relations regarding Contemporary Art applies to

audience reception in the way that the museum uses its position and opportunities to create

context around Contemporary Art. If the audience is looking for the museum to be a sort of

authority figure on what is Contemporary Art than as has been shown by these two small

examples it must represent what undergirds Contemporary Art itself. The global and the feminist

are but two of these aspects that are integral to Contemporary Art as defined by Terry Smith and

how it is being viewed in this project. By approaching Contemporary Art in this manner, the

audience will broaden and become more diverse as more diverse modes of thinking and art

making are represented.

Now that what Contemporary Art is, and how a general audience perceives it have been

analyzed by this research, it is important to turn to how these ideas manifest within an exhibition.

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To do this the nature of designing a museum exhibit is important to discuss. The way a museum

exhibition is created will give this research insight into how museums think about their own

collections, as well as how to integrate the ideas about Contemporary Art that have been

discussed thus far.

Fundamentals of Exhibition Design

This brief survey of exhibit design will help to answer the questions of how museums

integrate different modes of interpretation into their collections and provide a foundation for

what is analyzed in each of the three museums. The exhibition of Contemporary Art is the

common denominator between all these museums, while two are collecting museums, the ISG is

not, thus the exhibits become a strong point of comparison. An introduction to the fundamentals

of exhibit design is then a necessary stop on the way to better analyzing these museums.

Exhibitions exist as a core function of any museum. To display the collections of art and

artifacts to the public is paramount to achieving the stated goals of almost any museum’s mission

statement. The exhibition functions of art museums also often go beyond just simply fulfilling a

social contract with the community at large, they become a vital way for the museum to

communicate its values and ideals to the public as well. Often within a museum setting the main

goals for the institution are the collecting and preservation of works of art, and the research

opportunities that these activities provide. The museum exhibit can then be a synthesis of these

three values and present them to the public. The work that goes into putting on an exhibit,

whether permanent or rotating (though this research sticks to rotating exhibits), is a cross section

of all the cumulative work that occurs in any given art museum. (Lord and Piacente 7-11)

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The first steps along the way to creating an art museum exhibit are research and content

development. As most museums have become business-oriented institutions, the origins of an

exhibit can be driven by two factors, or more commonly a combination of both. The first is more

research-based ideas, an exhibition that arises from within the museum and in response to its

own collections as well as curatorial staff interests (Lord and Piacente 23). The second is a

market-based origin, an external origin that arises from current public trends and observing the

interests of the community (Lord and Piacente 24). The art museum world often finds itself at a

crossroads of both purposes, designing exhibits that satisfy a monetary market-driven interest

while maintaining a sense of academic integrity and loyalty to the collection. This paper will not

delve into which, or if, one style is more beneficial than the other, rather it is beneficial to note

that it is in the mind of the exhibition designers when they are making choices of what to display.

Once a direction is chosen, the task is then to plan and execute the exhibition to the best

of the museum’s ability. This begins with the research phase of exhibition design. As most

museums function on a long timescale, the planning and research for exhibitions is often done far

ahead of the time to when it should be installed. This calls for both a research policy, and

research plan for the museum. The curators often have the task of coming up with ideas and

doing more general research topics, while the specifics are relegated to others as the plans move

forward. The research policy that they follow is simply the written down arrangement of how

these rolls play out and the financial and personnel arrangements that are to be used to best

achieve the museums goals. (Lord and Piacente 24-26)

As soon as the research and content development are under way the next phase involves

starting the design process. The design process includes lighting design, interior design, graphic

design, and multimedia design. Much like the research phase these tasks in a larger museum are

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often handled by their own departments but under the purview of the head of the curatorial

department or whoever is nominally in charge of the exhibit. The general iterative process is to

design a concept for the space, further detail the design into schematics, and then finalize the

drawing into buildable schematics. For an art museum these can often be complicated by works

of art that are either large or unwieldy or made from difficult to display materials. (Lord and

Piacente 293-296)

Within the walls of a museum and without, this type of intensive planning and design

work is crucial to being aware of how the final exhibition will interact and be interpreted by the

public. As stated by one of the world’s leading museum planners Barry Lord, “to understand the

museum exhibition, therefore, it is necessary to see it not merely as a core function of museums,

but also as a powerful means of communication with the museum’s public. Just as with any other

communications medium, we need to appreciate the specific type of communication that is

unique to museums exhibitions” (10). In figure two below an illustration of the general types of

communication according to Lord can be shown.

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Figure 2: Lord, Barry, and Maria Piacente. Manual of Museum Exhibitions, 2nd ed., Rowman &

Littlefield, 2014

This table illustrates a broader concept of visitor apprehension, with the art museum relegated

(with a note that it is not limited to) to the notion of aesthetic contemplation. With art museum

exhibits for Contemporary Art, it is interesting to note how all these other functions can be

integrated into a design. Exhibits are often thematically linked presentations of a wide variety of

artists working in various mediums, this becomes a comprehensive communication. Some artists

work with the museum itself, and curation in general, as a medium such as the RISD Raid the Ice

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Box series (Putnam 18). This type of specimen analysis can be linked to the discovery mode of

communication. Interaction and Participatory communication can also become vital to

Contemporary Art collections. Some works of art May ask for viewers to stand in specific places

or write on slips of paper, performance art often call for live participatory communication, both

of these aspects of Contemporary Art fall under the final two styles of communication according

to Lord (Lord and Piacente 16-18).

This notion of pure aesthetic apprehension on the part of the visitor as opposed to a more

learning-oriented version is not new to the museum studies discourse. Two early American

museum scholars, John Cotton Dana and Benjamin Ives Gilman were having much this same

conversation early in beginning of the twentieth century. Gilman argued that art museums

existed in contrast to other types of museums and should be focused solely on allowing visitors

to have access to beauty and transcendental types of aesthetic apprehension (Gilman 7). On the

other side was Dana, an advocate for making learning and community engagement an integral

part of the art museum experience, the purpose of museums was not solely the aesthetic

experience but to engage and educate museumgoers as to how art functions in their day to day

lives (Dana 230).

While the art museums of the world continued to develop, they also developed alongside

the galleries that often-favored Contemporary Art. These galleries began to adopt the purer

aesthetic mode of appreciation, the “art for art’s sake” model. White bare walls and plenty of

space in between the works of art became the norm. According to art historian Carol Duncan:

Nowhere does the triumph of the aesthetic museum reveal itself more dramatically than

in the history of art gallery design. Although fashions in wall colors, ceiling heights,

lighting, and other details have over the years varied with changing museological trends,

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installation design has consistently and increasingly sought to isolate objects for the

concentrated gaze of the aesthetic adept and to suppress as irrelevant other meanings the

objects might have. (17)

While this is a more modern trend, it harkens back to an old vision of the museum, the museum

as temple. The place where the aura of the work takes over and the voice of the institution is lost.

A place to become closer to a pure aesthetic experience, not a place for learning.

Much of the tension that exists in Contemporary Art exhibition design arises from these

ideas. The ideas present, both conceptual and practical, in Contemporary Art are often at odds

with this purely aesthetic notion. The notions discussed early of the immediate concerns and the

contemporaneous nature of Contemporary Art strive to engage and educate the viewer. A large

portion of Contemporary Art is not meant to be passive viewing. Contemporary Art is often

confrontational and thought-provoking and should be treated as such in the design of their

exhibitions. This is not to say that art of the past do not carry their own messages, this is only to

say that if Contemporary Art has this nature as a defining characteristic, a unifying characteristic,

then it should be present in the design ideas of the museums that it inhabits.

The Museum of Fine Arts Boston

The first institution that will be examined by this capstone is an old and stalwart museum

in the Boston area, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. While the history of the MFA is long and

complex there are a few important points to make that pertain directly to the question of how and

why they collect Contemporary Art. The first that will become apparent quite quickly is the long

history of collecting Asian, and in particular Japanese art within the MFA. According to the

MFA website that introduces its collection of Asian art, “the MFA houses the finest collection of

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Japanese art outside Japan” (“Art of Asia”). Mainly the result of the efforts of Edward Sylvester

Morse, Ernest Fenollosa, and William Sturgis Bigelow in the nineteenth century, the collection

arose out of their personal collections amassed on travel both alone and together. Early on in

their collection they discussed the idea of the MFA being the eventual home of their items and in

1890, through gift and purchase, the MFA acquired their works and made a new wing to house

them. This historically significant collection has become a huge draw for the MFA over the years

and will relate directly to the discussion of Contemporary Art (Rogers 10).

The Contemporary Art collection at the MFA has a history dating back to the 1970s but

since 1992 it has taken on a new significance toward collecting art that has been created since

1955. Containing more than 1,500 works of all media and types, including performance art

archives, the collection of the MFA is set up in an encyclopedic style in keeping with the

collecting tradition of the rest of the MFA. The main collection of the MFA is housed in the

Linde Family wing and changes frequently, it is split into dedicated locations for craft and

decorative arts, film and new media, a large-scale installation wing, and a gallery for special

exhibitions in Contemporary Art. (“Contemporary Art”)

The MFA uses its universal survey style to attempt to historicize the Contemporary Art in

its collection by also placing Contemporary pieces alongside the museums works of various

cultural provenance. In figure three we see a display of works by the artist Nishida Jun, a

Japanese Contemporary Artist who worked with ceramics.

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Figure 3: Gallery View, Nishida Jun. MacLeod, Philip. Photograph of Nishida Jun Gallery at the

MFA Boston. 15 November 2020. Authors Personal Collection.

This work is placed at the end of a second-floor wing in the MFA and acts as a transitional space

into a wing that houses rotating Contemporary Art exhibits. As illustrated in the map shown in

figure four this space acts as a liminal buffer between the stone sculptures of the Asian past, and

the Contemporary Art of today.

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Figure 4: Annotated Map of MFA. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Map. Museum of Fine Arts

Boston, https://d1nn9x4fgzyvn4.cloudfront.net/2020-11/mfa-map_2020-12.pdf . Accessed on 15

December 2020. Annotated by Philip Aubrey MacLeod.

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By positioning this space in such a way, the MFA is leaning on its universal survey style to

create direct correlations and a through line from the past to now. This is an example of the MFA

making connections with the past with regards to Contemporary Art.

Over the ten-year period that is being analyzed in this capstone, the MFA has had several

exhibits of Contemporary Art and has engaged with their permanent collection as well. A

number of these exhibits have directly and indirectly addressed the museums previously

mentioned history with Asian art. One great example of this concept but into exhibition practice

was the show Takashi Murakami: Lineage of Eccentrics A Collaboration with Nobuo Tsuji and

the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The MFA PR description of the exhibit reads as follows:

Contemporary works by Takashi Murakami, one of the most imaginative and important

artists working today, are juxtaposed with treasures from the MFA’s renowned collection

of Japanese art. The exhibition reveals how Murakami’s contemporary vision is richly

inflected by a dynamic conversation with the historical past, framed by a creative

dialogue with the great Japanese art historian, Professor Nobuo Tsuji. Together,

Murakami and Professor Tsuji have chosen the objects on view in the exhibition,

including paintings and sculpture created by the artist in direct response to Japanese

masterpieces from the MFA’s collection, such as Soga Shōhaku’s 35-foot-long Dragon

and Clouds (1763) and Minister Kibi’s Adventures in China (12th century). (“Takashi

Murakami)

The exhibit is a kind of retrospective of Murakami’s career as an artist. An artist working within

and beyond the scope of Pop Art, he has often cited the book Lineage of Eccentrics (1970) as a

source of inspiration and a guide to how he interacts with historical narratives (Morse 23). The

exhibition functions as a longform visual conversation between the three parties, the artists, and

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the scholars. This historical conversation ties directly into the cotemporal notion of

Contemporary Art and does so in a way that benefits both the art and the institution. With an

artist so openly dedicated to studying the past and bringing it to the Contemporary moment, this

sort of historicizing works in a positive light. Murakami himself in the exhibitions artist

statement says, “I have been studying Japanese postwar culture, including anime and manga, as

well as earlier Japanese art . . . I have been contemplating how such a bizarre and eccentric

artistic ecosystem came to be, and exploring its relationship to the present” (Morse 20) These

notions of past and present and integral to how the MFA functions in its collecting of

Contemporary Art.

Another example of this attachment to the past in action can be found in the exhibit titled

Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Chinese Tradition. The exhibition is the culmination of an artist in

residence program where the MFA selected artists to come and study historically significant

Chinese works in their collections and offer interpretations of these works in the artists own

Contemporary style (“Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Chinese Tradition”). This is a direct predecessor

to the style of exhibition seen in the Murakami exhibit, although seven years prior. The

commitment on the part of the MFA to continue to connect Contemporary Art to their historic

collections finds its way into almost all aspects of the exhibition process. The exhibition catalog

for this endeavor continually uses words like “engaging,” “direct response,” “dialogue,” and

other notions of conversations and investigations (Sheng 11-13).

Historical conversations regarding the nature of art were also combined with more broad

ideas of how people engage with art, this adds another layer to the complexity of the exhibition.

Again, according to the exhibition catalog, the MFA took a bold step into what it dubs “the

speculative,” instead of selecting works to be in conversation with their collection they had

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works commissioned specifically for this exhibition “after a lengthy process of contemplation

and observation” (Sheng 15). This exhibition positions the museum as the nexus of the

conversation between past and present, the old meets the new and gives birth to the present.

Though by no means a radical position, in fact, it harkens back to older iterations of the art

museum as places to study “the great masters,” this aspect of the exhibition turns a critical eye on

the MFA’s own historicizing nature. This is a time-honored tradition in museums, it can be seen

in many universal survey style museums today with students drawing in its halls, but ultimately

does not serve the Contemporary moment as well by tying it too directly to the past, and losing

the immediacy that is so crucial to Contemporary Art.

Keeping in line with the theme of MFA exhibitions drawing on the institutions history of

having an impressive collection of Asian art and relating it to Contemporary Art practices is the

exhibition In the Wake: Japanese Photographers Respond to 3/11. This exhibition in the

spring/summer of 2015 showcased contemporary Japanese photographers working in various

styles within the medium responding to the horrific nuclear disaster and earthquake at

Fukushima on March 11, 2011 (“In the Wake”). The exhibition catalog produced in conjunction

with the exhibit contains the photographs displayed alongside the artist’s own words. In the

Director’s Foreword Malcom Rogers, the then Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA,

states, “drawing on the MFA’s long engagement with the art of Japan and with the medium of

photography, In the Wake invites viewers and readers to experience the power of art to record

and reflect on historic events by creating images that express emotions beyond words” (Morse et

al 7). This notion has the effect of historicizing an immediate and ongoing disaster and relegating

it to the recent past. In contrast to this notion the exhibition catalog goes on to emphasize in the

prologue, written in collaboration by William and Helen Pounds Senior Curator of Japanese Art

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Anne Nishimura Morse and Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Chair in the department of Photography

Anne Havinga, that the photographers and the medium of photography in general were chosen to

capture the immediacy of the moment and to highlight larger conceptual issues related to the

disaster (Morse and Havinga 12). This tension between adhering to the historical precedents set

by the MFA’s universal survey style and collecting practices and its desire to remain relevant in

a contemporary world was not lost on some. In an issue of the Winnipeg arts and culture

magazine Border Crossings, critic Kyo Maclear notes:

It is not that the other works are lacking on their own terms. But the overall atmosphere

of refinement and restraint (while offering a reflective contrast to the storm of news

images that surrounded 3/11) feels a bit too smooth and uniform. I cannot shake the

feeling that many of the images risk being absorbed within the decorative and decorous

visual grammar pervading the rest of the museum's collection of Japanese art. (A

reminder that what might possess potency when encountered individually is sometimes

blunted en masse.) The risk of showing art with such a lovely, high technical finish is that

it places what is already geographically and digestibly distant in an even more remote

frame-verging on what the historian Edward T Linenthal has termed the "comfortable

horrible." (92)

This tension functions, as Maclear points out so astutely, often to undercut the immediate and

contemporaneous notion of Contemporary Art within the MFA.

In contrast to the heavily Asian art collection inspired exhibitions of Contemporary Art

mentioned up until this point, the MFA has also striven to represent broader movements in the

world of Contemporary Art. One such exhibition put on by the MFA was Crafted: Objects in

Flux. The exhibit in the words of the MFA, “explores this moment of “flux” in the field, focusing

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on contemporary craft-based artists who bridge cutting-edge concepts and traditional skills as

they embrace and explore the increasingly blurred boundaries between art, craft, and design”

(“Crafted: Objects in Flux”). The exhibition catalog created alongside this exhibit continues to

emphasize this point, the Contemporary nature of the process, materials, and practice of craft

arts. The catalog uses the vast array of artists working in many varied styles to drive home the

point that these objects are tools for conceptual and referential frameworks that bridge

boundaries of art, design, and craft (Zilber 15). This notion of “blurring boundaries” is even

picked up on in a Boston Magazine notice for the premiere of the exhibition (“Best of the Day”).

The exhibition catalog continues to go over the works on display and provide insight into the

artists practices. It takes care to position each artist within a conceptual model, a living practice,

and sometimes a historical context, with all three of these modes of analysis working in

conjunction. The effect, when viewed with the exhibit at the MFA, has an outcome of capturing

the three notions of the Contemporary better than any of the exhibits mentioned thus far. It could

be seen as an outlier in the MFA practice, but it should also be seen as an example to follow.

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

The ICA in Boston has a history dating back to 1936 when the museum began as the

Boston Museum of Modern Art, a then sister institution to the MoMA in New York City. In

1948 when it discontinued its relationship with the New York MoMA it changed its name to the

Institute of Contemporary Art and began the life that we know of the institution today. Originally

located in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood it moved to its current location in 2006 with a new

building built by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro. With the advent of the new Building the

ICA also established its own collecting program. Throughout the 75 years of its life the ICA has

attempted to bring new and exciting artists and the work they make to the Boston area and attract

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a global and local audience. Through exhibitions and public programming, the ICA has

attempted to broaden the reach of Contemporary Art. (“The Institute of Contemporary

Art/Boston History”)

Over the course of the time reviewed in this research, the ICA has put on many exhibition

and changed its permanent collection on display to reflect changing times and ideas. The ICA

has two main modes of exhibition style for the large rotating exhibits it puts on. The first is a

survey of a particular style or idea. These include exhibitions like Art in the Age of the Internet:

1989 to Today and When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration Through Contemporary Art. The

other style is a focus on a singular artists either in a career retrospective or choosing to look at a

particular theme in their work, or perhaps both. By looking at how both types of exhibitions play

into the notions of what is Contemporary Art it becomes apparent how the ICA through a more

focused attitude serves and molds the art it displays.

Art in the Age of the Internet: 1989 to Today was the first comprehensive institutional

exhibition in the United States the strove to address the vast array or artworks across generations

and styles and create a survey of how the advent of the internet has affected art making today

(Respini 11). With a globally diverse and intergenerational range of artists the exhibition, and its

subsequent catalog, attempt to not only address how art has been created around and within the

confines of the internet but also how the internet has changed how people perceive works created

in other mediums (Respini 11). The exhibition catalog as well as the show is divided into

sections that tackle different aspects of art and the internet. The grand aim of the program is

broken down into manageable chunks and each is given its due. The language on display is one

of change and immediacy working in tandem, like the definition of Contemporary Art that has

been outlined in this research earlier.

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One such example is in a section on moving to the “post-internet” or art that is created

during a time that people are expected to be internet-aware more readily. In this section towards

the end the author, Omar Kholeif a writer, curator, and cultural historian, Kholeif says of “post-

internet” art, “a history that is still being authored, and which, in this age of expediency, requires

constant revision and appraisal. (Respini 104). Another reviewer, Jessica Citronberg of Boston

Magazine, observes, “this is not a binary distinction of good and bad. The show aims to show

the varied views of our relationship with technology and how artists have explored those ideas

through diverse mediums since 1989.” What both Respini and Citronberg are trying to illuminate

is the constantly changing identities, ideas, and questions that arise when working with a medium

and subject that is in a constant state of fluidity. This language of flux and change is present

throughout the catalog and finds itself quickly as a thematic element in the exhibition.

What can work conceptually for the institution can often sometimes be lost on the public

and quickly work to the detriment of the show. This attitude of change and an exhibition that

poses questions, many times open-ended, can be seen as relying too much on the transient nature

of its subject. As Cadence Kinsey, a critic for The Sculpture Journal in London put it, “However,

while the artworks included in the exhibition and the catalogue have much to say about urgent

topics such as surveillance or the representations of race (as well as the intersections between the

two), what any of this means for thinking about art – what it is, how it is exhibited, and what its

critical function might be – remains an open question or, as Jones puts it in the subtitle of her

essay, an ‘enduring promise’ (111).” This “enduring promise” or “open-ended” question might

prove interesting and valuable to academics and art-historians, but it might also have the effect of

seeming too nebulous for the public at large. This exhibition approaches a convenient

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synthesized version of Contemporary Art as defined by this research, but it does not stick the

landing, it tries to do too much.

When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art has a similar

structure to Art in the Age of the Internet. An exhibition organized around a thematic issue that is

relevant to the world today. Combining works by twenty artists made since the year 2000, the

exhibition strives to explore how Contemporary Art is responding to today’s crises or migration,

displacement, and immigration (“When Home Won’t Let You Stay”). The exhibition as well as

the catalog is divided into sections about each artist and how they have chosen to respond to the

crises presented to them by the world today regarding migration. The language throughout the

catalog as it describes the works, follows a similar pattern. It addresses the immediate concerns

of the artists, the contemporaneous nature of their work, and often how they work more

generally. These notions do a good job of defining the art in the context of the Contemporary,

but it seems to lack a sense of communication with past.

While it could be seen as taking a similar curatorial trajectory as the Art in the Age of the

Internet exhibition, by its design it actually wraps the more elusive nature of the works back

around into the cotemporal aspect of the Contemporary. By purposefully allowing these different

stories to comingle in the space and compare how different cultures and circumstances have

distinct concepts of time it allows the audience to think about their own place in space and time.

By contrasting these concepts of time and allowing for the audience to reflect on their own the

exhibition brings a needed breath of life to a subject that can on the surface appear to viewers as

a commonly understood albeit tragic problem. Pamela Reynolds reporting for WBUR says, “Not

only does this present a challenge in presenting a fresh perspective, but there is also the question

of what a museum can tell us about a subject that we read and hear about daily . . . From the

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perspective of artists included in the exhibition, it seems that state of not knowing may continue,

long after a migrant has reached his or her final destination” (Reynolds). Whereas in the Art in

the Age of the Internet exhibition there were too many open-ended questions posed, here the

same aspect forces the audience to see ongoing stories rather than closed narratives, which in

turn invites them to reflect on their own continuing stories and their place within a greater

context.

The two solo retrospective shows that occurred at the ICA during this time period,

Charles LeDray: workworkworkworkwork and Mark Dion: Misadventures of a 21st-Century

Naturalist both strive to put their respective artists in the context of exemplars of Contemporary

Art. By its nature, the retrospective style of exhibition, does a better job of combining all three

aspects found in the art of the Contemporary. Because it is not only acknowledging how these

artists have engaged with the issues of today and beyond, but how they have progressed

throughout the years and their careers, this style has more of a sense of the cotemporal that the

others lack. The Mark Dion exhibit is modeled around different investigative modes of his career

and combines older works with a brand-new piece built specifically for this exhibition (“Mark

Dion”). The exhibition catalog combines multiple authors discussing his work as well as

conversations with the artist himself. All these aspects bring to the fore the three aspects of the

contemporary. They address his immediate concerns with the natural world, his

contemporaneous working habits, and his cotemporal discussion with peers and artists past and

present. In one of the essays by Ruth Erickson she states very succinctly, “Dion’s maneuvering

within institutions and among disciplines has come to define his oeuvre” (20). This simple notion

is at the crux of how his work, and a retrospective of it, is a true example of the Contemporary.

Dion moves from style and within different institutional frameworks and the exhibition

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highlights these movements. These movements are the immediate and contemporaneous nature

of the Contemporary. The cotemporal element is the conversations that are highlighted both by

the artist and through the exhibition of his work.

The Charles LeDray exhibition creates a similar atmosphere to the Mark Dion

retrospective. From the opening lines of Adam D. Weinberg’s essay in the exhibition catalog we

see LeDray’s works placed in the Contemporary context, ‘the works’ evocation and complication

of diverse notions of time—from scientific and nostalgic to systematic and entropic—are key to

their enduring significance and art historical relevance” (7). This quote immediately places the

work of Ledray into a cotemporal, immediate, and contemporaneous context. It shows that the

exhibition is looking to solidify his position as an artist of the Contemporary moment. The works

in the exhibition are then described and written about in detail within the catalog and each is

given context surrounding its nature. The authors describe the materials and process, and ground

these in traditions new and old. Another important description of his work is from Jen Mergel’s

essay where she states, “LeDray’s work is not the object itself, but our experience of the object—

how we approach, discover, and interpret the details he composes” (23). What these insights into

Ledray’s work, which are found throughout the exhibition catalog, have in common is creating

the Contemporary context for his work. The work is not the object itself; it is the immediate

experience and concerns that he is channeling through the work. The discovery and

interpretations are the contemporaneous and cotemporal, the viewer is invited into the grand art

historical conversation that is possessed and pushed forward by Contemporary Art.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

As noted previously the ISG is a unique institution when it comes to not only

Contemporary Art but also how they operate in general. With the stipulations left by Mrs.

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Gardner in her will, that the collection was not to be moved or changed, the museum had to find

new and unique ways to incorporate Contemporary Art. The ISG renovated the grounds and

added a new wing to house Contemporary Art among other things. In 2002 the ISG embarked on

a plan to expand the museum with an expansion designed by Renzo Piano (“New Meets Old”).

With the new wing and renovations completed the ISG started several programs to incorporate

Contemporary Art into their exhibition practices. According to the ISG website regarding the

new space:

Today, we strive to continue Isabella’s legacy of cultivating talent and supporting artists.

The Museum’s New Wing, with its openness and transparency, is a signal of the

institution’s commitment to artistic practices of the present and to welcoming new

audiences. The New Wing’s modern exhibition space and performance hall host a steady

stream of Contemporary Artworks, music, dance, and more. The acclaimed Artist-in-

Residence Program invites artists to live and work at the Museum, taking advantage of

everything the Gardner has to offer, and frequently creating new works in response.

(“Contemporary Creativity”)

This entire program sums up the ISG response to Contemporary Art. They strive to mimic Mrs.

Gardner’s desire to collect and encourage the artists of her time. Through public exhibitions,

public art, residency programs, and concerts the ISG has entered a new conversation with its

already historical precedents.

While the time frame provided does not provide many traditional exhibition catalogs

there are interesting exhibitions to look at. Two of these exhibitions are in conjunction with the

Artist-in-Residence program. The first concerns artist Luisa Lambri an Italian artist working in

both film and video. Her stay at the Gardner produced an artist’s book rather than a traditional

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exhibition catalog. She used photography of the architecture of the ISG and juxtaposed it with

journal entries from the architect William T. Sears (“Luisa Lambri”). The works were also

shown as part of an exhibition in the new wing to commemorate it’s opening to the public, with

the photographs being changed to reflect the changing of the seasons as it stayed open (“Luisa

Lambri”). This style of engaging in a space while relying on the historic nature of the grounds,

does a decent job of combining the three aspects of Contemporary Art. It addresses the artists

immediate concerns, works in a minimalist contemporaneous fashion, and has the cotemporal

conversation, the ecological timescale of the seasons and the human timescale of inhabiting a

place, at its core.

Another artist in residence that produced an artist book as part of their program was

multi-disciplinary artist Su-Mei Tse. The artist book Notes was published in conjunction with her

residency program but her inclusion in the sound art showcase Listen Hear: The Art of Sound is a

fantastic example of how the ISG deals in unique ways with Contemporary Art. The exhibition

was in multiple parts of the museum, not limited to the new wing. Because the exhibition was

comprised of sound pieces the ISG had the unique opportunity of installing new works in the old

wing without breaking any of the guidelines laid out by Mrs. Gardner. While Su-Mei Tse’s work

was displayed in the new wing in a very straight forward gallery setting, white walls and

minimalist displays. Some of the other works in the exhibition created unique situations in the

old wing. Moritz Fehr’s piece Undertone played sounds that evoked the scene present in

Vermeer’s painting Concert, which was famously stolen from the ISG in 1990. Another

installation, Lee Mingweis’ Small Conversation transforms the courtyard using small speakers

and a soundscape composed of insect sounds and other subtle nature noises. These pieces, and

the others involved in the Listen Hear program, in an incredibly unique way invoke the sense of

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the Contemporary. They are each concerned with immediate problems, the impermanence of art

and nature. Each piece reflects contemporaneous attitudes towards practice and material, sound

as art. Finally, because of their use of the Gardner space they have multiple cotemporal

conversations existing in them at once. This combination of space and practice creates a totally

unique Contemporary experience. (“Listen Hear”)

The Gardner museum by its nature and restrictions influences Contemporary Art that it

instills in it some of the qualities found present in Contemporary Art from within itself. What

this means is that the almost historical house nature of the ISG creates a sense of contemporality

in any art that is on display in there. The other two aspects of the Contemporary are present in

the works depending on the artist and the display. Most of the works that end up in the new wing

loose some of this magic but retain some of it by proximity. By working within the limitations of

the space provided to them the ISG has created a unique environment for the exhibition of

Contemporary Art.

Conclusions and Recommendations

What is plain to see by observing these three museums is that each approach to exhibition

has a different effect on how the Contemporary Art is perceived. The MFA creates a historical

linear narrative with its collection. The ICA deals with the immediate and contemporaneous

concerns of Contemporary Art across a field of diverse artists and critics. The ISG creates a

synthesis of these two ideas by combining the historicizing nature of its architecture and design

with a focus on working with living Contemporary Artists to use the space to address ideas of the

Contemporary. These simple comparisons provide a lot of insight into how the museum not only

functions as a meaning making institution, but also how they can better serve their audience

through engaging more fully with Contemporary Art.

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The first recommendation that pertains mostly to the MFA is the reevaluation of the

universal survey style. While it functions for the MFA as a core value in how it interprets art it

undercuts some of the power of Contemporary Art. In his introduction to the MFA catalog on

their Contemporary Art collection Edward Saywell says, “encyclopedic collections open

Contemporary Art to encounters with history in ways that can bridge past and present, stretch

across geography and cultures, and provide ever-richer insights into the challenges and

conditions of life today” (16). While perhaps under ideal circumstances and without audiences

bringing their own biases into the museum this might be the case, the weight of history can work

against this notion, with Contemporary Art. By historicizing art in this manner, it has the effect

of loosing some of its power of the present. This is the immediacy that is mentioned by Terry

Smith and defines one of the aspects of Contemporary Art. An art that is so concerned with the

immediate moment, whether it be a social issue or a personal struggle of the artist, does not

benefit from being put into a linear historic narrative. This narrative also effects the reach of the

global and diverse creators of Contemporary Art. The narrative of the MFA is so heavily reliant

on a white euro-centric model that it removes some of the power of the diversity of artists and

thought within the Contemporary Art world. By opening its permanent collection to being

restructured the MFA could go a long way to improving how it relates to Contemporary Art.

One such way to create a synthesis between the historical narrative and the Contemporary

Art collection without unnecessarily relying on a linear historical narrative is creating

connections based around the Terry Smith definition of Contemporary Art. In writing about the

Tate Modern in London Smith states:

The affinities highlighted are usually those between artworks that, unexpectedly and

without regard for actual historical time, seem, to a contemporary observer, to share a

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similar mode in their pursuit of a topic, or to pursue a closely related topic in dissimilar

ways. Curators are fascinated by what seems to be a conversation among artworks, one

that they might conduct in our absence. (“What is Contemporary” 60)

By allowing for free-flowing interactions between artworks based more around the defined

aspects of the Contemporary connections can be made that do not imply traditional linear

historical narratives. For example, a work of art that has immediate ecological concerns like a

Mark Dion piece can be shown in relation to say traditional landscape works. This connection of

thematic development does not imply landscape art evolved into current Contemporary

installation practices but rather highlights both artists concerns, and how their different concepts

of time show up across their works. This type of more free and open display of artworks, outside

of the traditional universal survey style can open the MFA to a new and broader understanding of

their Contemporary Art collection. This new understanding is not only an internal stance but will

translate to the audience as well.

The ideas of the Contemporary are also squarely focused on creating a diverse and

socially inclusive conversation. This is represented well in each of the museums commitment to

having a diverse range of artists represented in their collections and exhibitions. Each of these

museums also supplements their Contemporary Art collections with public facing social

programs. The MFA includes a number of community programs that not only interface with their

historic collections, but also Contemporary Art practices, one such example is a home school

initiative called “Artful Adventures” and in particular one program that examines the new

Basquiat exhibition at the MFA (“Artful Adventures”). The ICA also has many public programs

that function in conjunction with their exhibitions, but one ongoing practice of note is the “Art

Lab” project. This consists of a permanent space within the building for art making and classes

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that directly put the viewer in connection with Contemporary Art ideas and art making (“Art

Lab”). The ISG has its own collection of community engagement programs, among them open

studios focused on art making and interaction, community salons, public works of art, and a

history of working with local artists and art spaces (“Community Efforts”). Each of these

museums makes a concerted effort to create an atmosphere of social inclusion, and makes it

apparent in their publications, but how this shows up in the space is sometimes lost.

The ICA addresses this issue head on by having a diverse and global range of artists

represented in their collection, the MFA and the ISG unfortunately have a tougher time reflecting

this in their collection. The MFA is often at the mercy of its universal survey style. For instance,

the wing of the Americas in the newly built addition includes a basement and three floors. The

linear narrative leads them to place the art of the Americas collection in historical collections that

has the progression of moving from the past to the more contemporary from the bottom up. This

places the museum’s collection of first nations art in the basement section. Much like with the

previously mentioned Nishida Jun pieces, a contemporary work placed within the historic

contextual collection, the art of the indigenous American’s contains contemporary works that

respond to older art and artifacts. This has the perhaps unintended consequence of burying the

immediacy of these works in the past, they have lost some of the potent message by

unfortunately hiding them in a basement. This type of issue could be rectified again by

readdressing the need for the museum to strictly adhere to the universal survey style. The ISG

faces a similar issue but by the virtue of being unable to alter their historic collection, they

address this in the cast of diverse artists they attempt to bring into the new space.

While all three museums attempt to address social issues in their exhibitions and strive to

remain relevant in constantly changing times all of them could do a better job of taking more

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proactive stands for the ideas they are representing. The museums tend to try and present ideas

and artists intentions as “asking questions.” The failure of the museums comes in the form of

trying to retain an air of neutrality. This unfortunately has the effect of undercutting some of the

more powerful statements that the artists make with their works. None of the museums seem to

do more than what is expected of them when it comes to addressing the issues of the day. This

even seeps into how the museums gather funds for some of their projects. The “Art Lab”

initiative mentioned earlier for example is funded and presented by Bank of America. By

allowing for large corporations to finance inclusion initiatives, corporations that are so very

responsible for the problems they want to address, they present as being more concerned with

continuing to exist rather than taking a stand. Taking a stand is hard especially in such dire

financial times for a museum but it is also more necessary than ever. When you are looking to

artists to compel viewers by taking bold stances on today’s issues, the museum should be

expected to do the same.

In creating a descriptive rather than a prescriptive definition of the Contemporary in art,

museums can better engage with their own collections and collecting practices as well. As now it

stands the definition of the contemporary in art is something that is seen as ongoing and almost

unending. This has the problem of creating open ended collecting policies when it comes to

Contemporary Art. This can be mitigated by focusing the collections on the Contemporary

moment rather than just art made in one’s own time. This focus will than translate to a more

holistic approach to exhibition design by having another section of the museum focus on the

three aspects of the Contemporary. By figuring out how best to collect this art museums will also

put an emphasis on how this art is displayed in a manner that reflects institutional best practices.

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What this then supposes is that the museums must not only look to making public

programs areas of social inclusion but also the collections they exhibit. By using a more forceful

voice in the context and meaning that museums create around Contemporary Art, they can

become more adept at being wholly socially inclusive spaces. The task is no small one, and it

must ingrain itself in a holistic way into the very fabric of all aspects of the museum. The

museums studied here are on their way but often overlook the collections themselves and how

they speak when it comes to the message of social inclusion.

This research also recommends that the museums continually practice a sort of self-

reflection. Much in the same way that the exhibition planning and research takes the form of a

scheduled task, the museum should in the same way have a scheduled review of their

Contemporary Art collections and exhibitions. This review could take the form of public

feedback observations, surveys, and conversations within the museum and without. What is most

important is that the museum recognize the role it plays in creating meaning in its works of art

and how this in turn plays a role in how the public views the works, and lastly this can impact the

inclusion measures that museums strive to implement. As the notion of social inclusion becomes

more and more important to museums it is now more than ever of the utmost importance to not

undercut these efforts with a collection that looks back on the past. With the notions of what

Contemporary Art is as laid out in the beginning of this capstone, and how important this work is

to the times the museum finds itself it, it is even more important that these messages are as

strong as possible. A museum should constantly look to improve itself and include this is the

exhibition design process, and ultimately the very fabric of how the museum operates.

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