There is no reason to be mad, instead there is a reason to be happy.
Before I expound on this sentence let me explain to those parties unfamiliar with insider politics of the Philadelphia art scene just what a “Works on Paper 2009” is and why some people are upset about it:
The Drama
A “Works on Paper 2009″ is an art exhibition juried by Joao Ribas, Curator of Exhibitions, MIT List Visual Arts Center (Cambridge, Massachusetts). Artists were asked to submit up to three works for a fee ($15 for one work, $20 for two and $25 for three), artists were to bring the work in question, not pictures of the work, to the art gallery to be juried. Perks for being one of the selected few in “Works on Paper 2009″ include cash prizes totaling up to $2,500, purchase consideration by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a purchase award for Arcadia University’s permanent collection, and eligibility for inclusion into “A Closer Look 8″.
Joao Ribas, of the long title and equally long list of credentials (former curator of The Drawing Center in New York, and a critic whose writing has been published in many journals) chose 22 works from 22 artists out of the 1,256 works from 567 artists who submitted. This has made some people mad (read about it here, here, and here) and spawned at least one exhibition in response (Little Berlin: “Works on Paper Rejects”). The following unfounded accusations have been thrown around:
1. Work was “tagged” to be viewed or set aside before the juror arrived on scene
2. Arcadia University made crazy money off the show
3. The artists selected are somehow insiders, thus proving 1 and making 2 horrible.
Object Lesson: Never Look a Gift-Horse in the Mouth
Nowhere does it say that Arcadia University’s art gallery has to bring a curator with an amazing reputation into Philadelphia to judge the work of Philadelphia-based artists. Nowhere does it say that Arcadia University’s art gallery has to issue cash prizes totaling up to $2,500 to selected entries. This show is not the work of arch-villains bent on cheating struggling artists out of hard-earned cash, this show is the work of people who care about fostering community and giving artists something to work towards.
“Works on Paper” is a gem of a Philadelphia tradition, based on the concept that actual works (not images) are best evaluated in person. This may be a benefit to an artist who feels like pictures do not accurately translate their work, a juror would be able to ascertain critical nuances that are routinely misrepresented in mechanical representation.
Perhaps the only thing that went a little astray this year is that a small gallery staff made of mostly work study students had to handle an overwhelming amount of entries. 1,256 entries was a record for the gallery and in good faith Gallery Director Richard Torchia has mentioned that future incarnations of the exhibition may have to “revert to a two-tier method by which the juror first reviews slides/jpegs and then invites artists to bring in actual works for consideration.” For all of those who have complained about the process of dropping up and then picking up their physical artworks; be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
On juried shows
There has been some whispering that if you are an artist entering a juried show that has a fee you are a sucker who is wasting their money. I agree with this sentiment the majority of the time with a few exceptions and those exceptions all have to do with who the juror is and where the show is being held. During my own artistic career I haven entered four juried exhibitions (I do not include in this number grants and applications for memberships in artist-run spaces), I was accepted into two and was rejected from another as well as “Works on Paper 2009″ . If I had it to do over I would still enter “Works on Paper 2009″. It is the kind of exhibition that looks great on a resume and might help you out with a nomination for something like the PEW.
Any one who has had to jury a show will tell you that it is something of a crap shoot. There are ALWAYS more entries then a juror feels comfortable viewing. If the jurying is done by slides then the amount of time spent on each slide is usually minimal, if you enter a video they have time to watch something like less then a minute of it.
Allowing everyone who enters something into your juried show to be a part of your exhibition is just as bad as it has yet to successfully work to my knowledge. My own personal brush with failure using the “let everyone in” method was Copy Gallery’s first show “Here and Now”. People were supposed to bring $5 and artwork ready for hanging then pay and hang their work wherever they could find space. It seemed that nothing could go wrong until the group of us became convinced that a peculiar jug was a bomb and so we rejected a work.
Copy’s failure was based on the famous 1917 exhibition by the Society of Independent Artists, which was also a failure. The original 1917 exhibition also promised to “exhibit all the work submitted” but the Society hid Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” or urinal signed R.Mutt, during the exhibition’s opening.
Works on Paper 2009
Could you look at 1, 256 works and choose only 22 of them?
Reviewing the exhibition of the selected works is more then a little difficult as I can’t help getting distracted by thoughts of the curator. “Works on Paper” is a clear and concise show with very little color. From out of what had to have been a mountain of chaos and a riot of color came a 1200 sq. ft white room with little on the walls. Some of the work appears to be playful but none of it looks like it is having any fun. Ribas likes work that questions the nature of what it means to be a work on paper (Leah Balis’ contribution is a free-standing sculpture, Gabriel Boyce and Preston Link submitted a full print-out of the health-care bill, Michael Davis Carter framed some Lacoste tissue paper)—- I can’t help being impressed by the fact that although Ribas had no control of what work he would be jurying I felt like I could have been at The Drawing Center and was reminded of an exhibition he curated at Artists Space called “Free Economy”.
I hold nothing against the work of any of the artists in the show and welcome the opportunity to see more from each one (for example; a recent show at Little Berlin that Gabriel Boyce and Preston Link’s Health Care Bill was created for, “Breaking News“, was really wonderful) but to be frank I find “Works on Paper” interesting conceptually but boring just the same. It would have been much better with my drawing in it.
There is no reason to be mad, instead there is a reason to be happy.
All artists who entered this show have no reason to feel like they were cheated. Yes, 567 people entered and 22 people “won”. There is no doubt that some decent and fabulous works were left out, just as there is no doubt that some decent and fabulous works were left in. Arcadia University’s art gallery is only 1200 sq. ft. Only so much can be done with 1200 sq. ft.
Enter into “Works on Paper” again in two years and be happy that the opportunity exists. In the meantime create your own destiny.
Works on Paper was also reviewed by:
Edith Newhall for the Philadelphia Inquirer
Libby Rosof on Artblog
and the previously mentioned artblaugh.
5 Comments
I completely agree with you about not being able to get the thought of the curator out of the show. A show with 22 works is a tight and highly-curated show. And it bears the stamp of the curator above all else. Another curator…another show. This is a great essay.
Annette – Whereas I have enjoyed all your previous posts solely because I thought they were interesting, this month’s is especially good in its necessity. When the artblahg recently hit the scene, there was a moment of excitement: “A spoof on the artblog,” we all thought, “how fun!” But the novelty of telling-it-like-it-is and the mystery of who is behind the curtain quickly wore off, leaving us to recognize the blahg for what it is: the consistently selfish and increasingly banal complaints that artists have been leveling at the institutions they love to hate for well over a century. So thank you for providing context instead of eliding it, for considering process rather than assuming conspiracy, for understanding history and seeing continuity in our own age, for recognizing imperfections without dismissing greater benefits, and — above all — for writing with personal honesty and without the thinly veiled self-interest that mires so many anonymous posts. Well done, once more. Looking forward to more in 2010.
Well done, as usual! Of course the show is very like an argument. I would expect no less and no more from Ribas. And any juried show has more to do with the curator’s agenda or thinking processes of the moment than it has to do with freestanding merit of each individual piece of art or each artist behind that piece of art.
It is better that artists submitting to shows get a grip about this for their own mental health. Rejections only feel personal, but they are not personal (at least for the most part); they are all about the curator and the show.
Fortunately, Ribas is interesting, and so I did find this show interesting, although rather conservative for the most part. Works on Paper is not generally a show that I would go to for breaking new ground, but rather for quality and survey of trends. This show does provide those and it is quite thoughtful. As for the similarity to shows curated by Ribas in other locales, I do think that has as much to do with the globalization of the art world as it has to do with Ribas being Ribas. Works on Paper used to be more about Philadelphia, but then, Philadelphia had a more regional flavor than it does right now.
Annette, Great post and once again you have struck a cord, giving a voice to what artists are thinking about. Overall, I am glad about the complaining. I would rather people complain than passive aggressively go about their art making. Get it out in the open and things will change. I think making change for what you say, “be careful what you wish for you just might get it” is true, but shows respect for artists and their artwork, which, in my view, is what sparked this whole argument. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of us artists and we are pretty much working for free and all for what we think is a greater good. I’m glad that there was 1,256 pieces of artwork submitted.
Wow. Thanks for the wonderful comments!
And as a shout out to Beth and Little Berlin’s show–I’m looking forward to submitting my drawing and can’t wait to see what else pops up–maybe it’ll get more of the “local flavor” libby was talking about!
Happy New Year!