Hi, good evening.
My name is Anne Umland.
I'm a curator in the Department of Painting
and Sculpture here at The Museum of Modern Art.
And we are standing here in one of the Museum's
5th floor galleries in Midtown Manhattan
in between 53rd and 54th Street.
And we are really tremendously lucky, because
it is after public hours, and that means that
we have this whole room full of art to ourselves.
So I am here tonight to answer questions from
all of you about what it means to be a curator
here at The Museum of Modern Art.
But I thought that before we get started doing
that and more people are still joining the
live stream, I could show you around this
gallery a little bit, take advantage of having
it all to ourselves, and talk a little bit
about the history of MoMA and of what modern
art means.
So this institution, The Museum of Modern
Art, commonly known these days as MoMA, was
founded in 1929, so that is almost 90 years
ago now.
And it was predicated on a very simple yet
radical idea, and that idea was that the art
of the present, the art of the now, the modern,
was as worthy of people's attention as the
venerated art of the past.
And the Museum has remained true to that vision
from 1929 on through to the present day.
Although I think it's very important to stress
that right from the very beginning the term
modern and the term modern art at The Museum
of Modern Art encompassed many different things.
I could refer to paintings or to sculptures,
to architecture, to design, to film, photography,
or these days to performance and media art.
And I think that that idea of the modern as
being something that doesn't have a particular
style or a particular media or a particular
type of subject matter, it's an open-ended
proposition about what the new and the compelling
can be.
And as you go through the galleries at the
Museum, the one thing, however, I think that
you can say that all of the creations and
the creators who you see on our walls and
in our gallery spaces have in common is this
fundamental desire to make things new, to
create works of art, the likes of which we've
never seen before, to come up with new sorts
of visual vocabularies to respond to the world
and the time around us in different ways that
change and vary over the years.
And I think when I say that here at MoMA modern
art can be many different things and that
it's something that the curators think about,
argue about, talk to our public about in an
ongoing basis is one great example of thinking
about how modern art can be many different
things is to begin right here in this gallery.
And so to talk a little bit about what we're
looking at here, we're in a room, and here
I'm working with Nathan.
Nathan is behind the camera, and he has agreed
to follow me around, so I'm not gonna move
too quickly.
But we're in a gallery that so curatorially
speaking we would say we are in a monographic
gallery.
In other words, we are in a space where all
the works installed with only two exceptions
are by a single artist and that artist, in
this case, is someone named Pablo Picasso.
And I think it's probably fair to say that
in the mind of the general public to the degree
I can see into the mind of the general public,
which is quite debatable, but, anyway, I think
it is fair to say that the term modern art
and the name Pablo Picasso are almost virtually
synonymous, and he is an artist that has been
written into this institution's DNA virtually
from the start.
So this is a room that features Picasso's
works, which is a curatorial decision, because,
of course, with gallery installations, you
could have many different artists in the same
gallery.
You could hang only pictures with the color
red.
You could decide to show only collages or
awesome blushes or sculptures.
You could look at works created in particular
cities or in a particular year, but in this
case, the curators chose to devote a gallery
to Pablo Picasso's art and to a particular
slice of that art moreover.
The works in this gallery, the earliest, this
here on my left from 1906 where you see Picasso
in his 20s beginning to work in a way that
is still relatively naturalistic.
You can still recognize the subject matter.
The colors and hues are harmonious and delicate.
But as you move around the room, however,
and by the end, you'll get all the way to
1915, so what is that, 1906 to 1915, so nine
years, you watch Picasso taking on the task
of reinventing the language of Western pictorial
art.
He looks to sources as varied as ancient Iberian
sculpture with the two nudes from 1906 here
on my left.
And by the time we spin around to the work
that we started out with, which is Pablo Picasso's,
or started out with behind me, Pablo Picasso's
painting of 1907 known by the title, "Les
Demoiselles d'Avignon."
This is a work of Picasso referred to as his
exorcism picture, as the work in which he
set out to upend the ways that paintings,
and compositions, and themes, and subjects
had been constructed before.
I think it is fair to say that to this day
it remains one of the most confrontational,
aggressive paintings in the history of Western
art with the way that the five protagonists
stare right out at us.
You could say on the one hand that they are
objectified.
It is a picture of five naked women on the
one hand, but the way that their gazes lock
in on ours objectify us.
This is a moment where Picasso in his search
to come up with new ways to making pictures
is looking to sources as varied as Oceanic
art, African art, Egyptian art, El Greco.
So he's creating a picture that isn't unified
in terms of its style, it's a picture that's
not unified in terms of its space, and that
is willfully deformed and ugly and confrontational
in that way, and I think from that moment
on Picasso never looked back.
So the rest of this gallery takes you through...you
watch Picasso.
This is a sculpture that he made in 1909 in
a very closely related painting here on the
left.
So again, tonight we're gonna be talking about
things that curators do or that they decide.
Here, Picasso is along with Henri Matisse,
one of the great painter, sculptors of the
20th century.
So it was very important to the curator that
we show him working not only in two dimensions
but in three and the way that those two aspects
of his production inform each other.
Or then as you move down this wall, so, as
I said, I think before, I can't remember,
another decision made was to hang the works
in this room in chronological order, so that
as you circumnavigate, you're going from 1906
now through 1909.
You get over here to probably the most abstract
that Picasso ever gets to the least, easily
recognizable.
This art historians refer to the style of
a work like this as high analytic cubism.
But I think what you get a sense of is Picasso
trying to find a way to capture the intensity
of the way that he perceives the world by
actually trying to go back to some state prior
to all the learned languages that...you know,
he was such a gifted draftsman.
He studied at the academy.
Here he is renouncing or denying all that,
creating a picture that lacks color virtually,
that is made up of drawn lines, of shimmering
planes, of shifting perception, and a way
that I think hints at the complexity of the
way that Picasso saw the world.
And then right next to it, from just a few
years later is a much simpler object, right?
And radically recognizable relative to the
opacity of "Ma Jolie," so this is a sheet
metal guitar that Picasso made in 1914.
And it is for all its humble subject matter
or, in fact, because of its humble subject
matter, because if you think, in 1914 sculptures
more often were figures on pedestals, right?
They were not just common everyday still life
objects.
And they were commonly made from precious
things like bronze, or marbles, or granite,
or stone that was carved from an internal
core.
Well, Picasso's sheet metal guitar is made
out of a common industrial material that is
relatively easy to cut and snip.
It is not made from a single core.
It is made from multiple parts that are put
together in a way that is in fact so simple
that one of Picasso's great friends at the
time and talking about this object said it
was so simple that any ignoramus in the universe
could make it.
Now, of course, not any ignoramus in the universe
could make it, because only Picasso did and
had the idea, but the fact that he was creating
an art that was so simple that declared the
means of its making right out front was a
radical proposition at that time.
And in terms of the history of sculpture,
another thing that is so revolutionary about
this work is the way that by opening up the
body of the object that we can see inside
it, Picasso was introducing air itself in
a way or space in as a sculptural material
for the very first time that I think if you
just pan back to look from the Demoiselle
down at the end and then on through the guitar,
or...
Oh, I really want to spin here to get Nathan
back, because I want to end up by this wonderful...this
is another sculpture by Picasso from 1914.
It's one of a series of six that he made that
takes a glass of absinthe as its subject matter.
So, I mean, think about this.
This is diminutive.
It's anti-monumental.
It is particularly interesting.
I can't tell if you can see this on the camera
or from the viewer or not, but it incorporates
a real spoon.
So this is one of the first times in the history
of art that you are looking at up an awesome
blush, right up a sculpture that is made out
of composite parts and not all of which are
made by the artist himself.
The absinthe spoon was a sort that you could
buy at any flea market, and in fact, this
little sculpture rather faithfully replicates
what...if you were drinking a glass of absinthe,
you would have a spoon with a sugar cube,
and you'd pour water over the top to dilute
the alcohol.
So you can see that Picasso's...even he's
cast a sugar cube in bronze, he's cast the
body of the sculpture in bronze, he's cut
through it.
He's made a glass, something that should be
transparent, opaque by making it in bronze,
painting over it and at the same time giving
us all these little peek-a-boo views into
it so that figuring transparency, again, in
a sculpture that we would normally think about
as solid.
So I think to conclude, to wrap up this portion
of our live stream and to move on to questions,
because I know a lot of people are joining
us and the questions are coming in, I'd simply
say that in this room, as I said at the beginning,
a decision was made to look at a slice of
Picasso's work and to bring him in this case
right up to the eve of World War I, and I
think that it's always important when looking
at works in the gallery or when curators look
at works in the gallery to think about what's
going on in the larger outside world or what
was motivating Picasso at the time, and it's
interesting with this work to know that absinthe
was banned in 1914.
The French government decided that it was
too dangerous for people to drink, and so
in a way this little diminutive sculpture
is a memorial to this particular moment of
Bohemian Café life in Paris that was so much
a part of the early vocabulary of cubism as
you see here, and that ended, of course, with
the outbreak of World War I when so many of
Picasso's friends and acquaintances went off
to fight.
So I'll see you in the next room.
So, hi again.
So now I'm seated in a different gallery,
so this is the first gallery on the 5th floor
and I think I can't see what they're
saying through the camera, but I bet you're
getting to look at Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry
Night" right behind me, so, lucky you.
And I'm getting to look at this whole crew
of people, which is very weird in the galleries,
but it's nice to have so much company.
So, all right, we've gotten a lot of questions
from the trailer that we posted, so I'm gonna
start with some of those.
But for those of you who are watching us at
home, please send us in your questions during
the live stream, and they'll be passed on
to me by our producers.
So, okay, let's see.
Is this question number one?
All right, this is an Instagram trailer question
from Barbara Santagata.
Sorry, Barbara, I hope I'm pronouncing your
name correctly.
So Barbara's question is a great one.
She asked, "How long does it take to bring
an exhibit to life from first discussion to
opening day?
So, okay, well, the simple answer to that
is that it varies.
It depends on the size of the exhibition,
who has the works that you want to borrow,
on how difficult the loans are to obtain,
but I think it's fair to say that for a major
historical exhibition, like Picasso's sculpture,
like the Francis Picabia show or other things
I've worked on, it takes anywhere from two
to three years from the moment of the genesis
of the idea up until opening day, sometimes
it takes even longer.
I'm working on a Sophie Taeuber-Arp exhibition
right now that I have been thinking about
doing since 2006, and it won't open until
2020, but, you know, I don't get to work on
it nonstop for 14 years, other things have
to come in.
So I hope that answers your question.
Okay, next stop, Instagram trailer from Carxissax,
great name.
I hope I didn't mangle it.
So this question is, "What do you think are
the most important skills in being a curator?"
Well, I think there are a lot of them, but
I suppose I would single out two.
I think one is striving to have an endlessly
open mind to be flexible in your thinking
and to be willing to look about and think
about things that are different or that contradict
beliefs that you have.
And I suppose the other in addition to working
hard to keep an open mind and to be flexible,
the other thing I think is important is to
be a perfectionist, to be asking right up
until the last minute every moment, whether
it is a text you are writing or a gallery
that you are installing or an exhibition that
you're organizing, is this the best it can
be?
Have I done the best that I can for this subject?
Is every detail the way that it should be?
And if it's not, what can we do to make it
better?
Yeah, so open-mindedness and perfectionism,
those are my two.
You'd probably get different answers from
lots of different curators here.
Oh, my goodness, this is a heavy one, Instagram
trailer, from LakeMCG.
"What is the function of an art museum in
society?"
So that is a big profound question.
I think I would say that the role of an art
museum, the role of this art museum is to
celebrate, to showcase, to create a space
where people can come together singly, in
groups to look at great works of modern and
contemporary art and that it is a place therefore
where we can think about empathy, where you
can think about others' perspectives, where
you can learn about or be exposed to different
ways of seeing the world.
And that if the museum functions as that sort
of special place and a place for convening
conversations about art, that to me is the
most important thing that a museum can and
should do.
Okay.
All right, let's go over here.
Okay, here is a question from Jules H. "How
do you choose what art to include or exclude?"
So that's another big, good question.
So I suppose you can answer it in many different
ways, because you could include or exclude
things from the collection, or you could include
or exclude things from a gallery hang, or
you could include or exclude things from an
exhibition.
So I guess it always depends on the context,
whether it's the context of the collection
and what works would add something to the
story that we tell.
In a gallery display, it's what works well
as an ensemble.
I often think when you're installing galleries...a
former curator here used the analogy of installing
galleries as like writing.
You know each work of art is a word, and you're
kind of making sentences within an individual
gallery, an individual galleries with an exhibition
add up to make an essay.
So back to your question of what to include
or what to exclude, you want things that are
contributing to the argument, that are contributing
to the message, that are of a quality, right,
that merit display on the walls, that, yeah,
add something important, so different things
depending on different situations and different
times.
That governs what to include or what to exclude.
All right, next stop is from a YouTube trailer,
from Megan K. "What led you to pursue a career
as a curator?
How did you get to where you are today, and
what advice would you give to aspiring curators?"
So let's see, what led me?
All right, well, I'll be short, I think, because
you people love to talk about themselves,
and suppose I'm no exception, so I'll just
try to keep this quick.
What led me to be a curator?
I always loved art.
I wanted, in fact, to be an artist, but I
was not any good at that.
So I had a mother who was a chemist, she was
an organic chemist, and she told me about
a profession called being an art conservator.
So I went off to college to study art conservation
and to double major, in fact, in art history
and in science and chemistry, and I failed
miserably at the science part, so there I
was, an art historian.
And fast forwarding, I just loved working
with objects, and I knew I wanted to work
in museums, because I liked having a larger
public, I liked that museums had an educational
role that they reached out to different communities
and then back to the fact that at museums
you work with real objects, you work with
tangible things, you work with living artists,
you work with artworks, right, that live in
the sense of the presence that they bring
to our gallery walls.
So that was why I chose to pursue a career
as a curator, was because I wanted to work
in a museum, because I wanted to work with
different communities and just not in a narrow
academic field, although curators can, by
the way, teach, and write, and publish, or
do things like this, you know, speak to all
of you on social media.
So I think the field is much broader than
maybe many people think.
And so how did I get to where I am today?
Well, right, I think I've worked very hard,
so I'll give myself credit for that, but I've
also been very fortunate.
I know that I have had a lot of luck.
I got a job straight out of college as a curatorial
secretary in Dallas, Texas, because that's
where I'm from a while back, Texas.
And I worked for a group of four amazing people,
and there I learned that I wanted to move
to New York City, because I wanted to be where
I could see a ton of art and I wanted to go
to graduate school.
And when I was in graduate school...
This is becoming what my dad would call a
"shaggy dog story," like, it's too long.
So anyway, at graduate school, I studied with
a professor named Kirk Varnedoe, and he became
a former Chief Curator in the Department of
Painting and Sculpture here at The Museum
of Modern Art, and he invited me to come work
with him, and I said yes, because MoMA was
my dream job.
And once I got here, as I said, I worked hard,
I did a lot of different things, I had the
tremendous privilege of working with incredible
people and, yes, so...
And I didn't leave, because once you're at
MoMA, I mean, I'm still smitten and I can't
believe I'm lucky enough to be here.
I think it's one of the greatest museums in
the world.
So, all right, that was a bit of boosterism,
but it's heartfelt.
What advice would I give to aspiring curators?
Well, I think internships are hard to beat.
I would say you can get experience in the
arts, especially if you're based in New York
City but almost anywhere now online, to look
for internships and get your foot in a door
and do a good job when you're there, because
there will always be positions opening up,
and it's great to have the experience, and
it's good to make connections and to meet
people, and that will take you far.
You should also go look at lots of arts, look
at as much art as you can in the flesh.
Okay.
Instagram trailer, from, I'm not gonna read
who it's...well, it's from PGONYEA99.
"How many people are involved when a gallery
is reinstalled?"
Okay.
Well, that's a great question.
So looking around this gallery, how many people
are involved?
I'm just gonna list all the different types
of people I can think of.
So there are the curatorial team that's usually
anywhere from one to two to three people.
There's the registrar department.
So those are the folks who take works from
storage and very, very carefully bring them
to the floor.
There are the art conservators who, before
you bring works to the gallery to hang on
the walls, examine them to be sure that they
are stable, that they don't need reframing,
that their surfaces are intact.
Sometime they'll say to us, "Well, you really
should glaze that or put glass on it to protect
the surface of the picture."
So registrar, conservators, curators, educators,
right?
If anyone goes through our gallery, you will
see that very often we...well, in every case,
every object has a label that has basic information
on it.
Sometimes there are additional labels that
have a small short text that provide background
or content.
Those texts are reviewed by people in the
Department of Education and also in publication.
So we have editors who try to make sure that
the language that we use is clear, and open,
and accessible for our public.
There are the people, the painters, the exhibition
designers, the lighting engineers, all of
whom work together with the curators, with
the registrars, with the conservators to make
the galleries here look as and the artworks,
most importantly, in the galleries look as
the best they can possibly be.
So I don't know, what are we up to?
It's like 20.
You could keep going on, because once a gallery
is up, then, right, communications, publications,
social media.
So, right, core team is probably 20 people
get involved with the gallery installation,
but in the sense that the art is at the heart
of what this institution does in every sense
of the word.
Every department in the Museum in the end
is involved in what goes on on our gallery
walls here.
Okay, let's see.
Fay Kelly.
"When you get paintings from private collections
or other galleries for an exhibition, do you
rent them or are they given for loan, for
free?"
Well, that's a good question.
So in my experience, when organizing temporary
loan exhibitions, no, we do not pay rent for
the pictures that we borrow.
Sometimes with other institutions, we will
be charged a loan fee, and usually what that
loan fee would cover would be the cost of
creating a work, of framing it if it doesn't
have a frame, if it needs conservation treatment
in order to be stabilized for travel.
The borrowing institution would be asked to
pay for that.
When a private collector lends to an exhibition
here at the Museum, we would do the same thing.
The Museum ensures it pays the cost of creating,
it pays the cost of framing, it pays for any
sort of conservation treatment that is needed,
and then, of course, we publish the works
in our catalog.
We talk about them on our website.
We give them another life by showing them
on our walls, and I suppose this said, of
course, without the generosity in the civic-mindedness
of private collectors who are willing to be
without their works sometimes for a year or
more depending on how long an exhibition tour
is.
We could not do what we do here, so we are
tremendously grateful at every moment to the
people who allow us to share their works with
our large public.
I hope that answers that.
Okay.
YouTube trailer from Matt Spaul.
"The convention now is for the museum gallery
space to be white and blank, but this wasn't
always the case.
When did it become the standard, and in what
situations is it relevant now to not have
a white gallery space?"
Well, I'd begin by saying I can't tell if
you can see here that the walls in this gallery
are not white.
And, in fact, if you go through the galleries
at the Museum now, I think pure white walls
are the exception rather than the rule.
This said, I think that in the '60s and '70s
and perhaps...
What's the word I'm looking for?
In the '60s and '70s at the height of Greenberg
and formalism, right, and the idea of art
being presented autonomously, that is when
white walls became the norm.
And I think that there's a book by Brian O'Doherty
called The White Cube 1976 that sort of marks
the apogee of that trend.
But if you look even on MoMA's website, I
would recommend this at MoMA, moma.org, there
is a wonderful section called Exhibition History.
And if you click on that link, you can go
back and see photographs of exhibitions and
collection gallery spaces here at the Museum
from 1929 on.
And I think that very quickly will disprove
the notion that the conventions here were
strictly white cube and white space.
There's always been a much more diverse way
of mounting and installing works and the common
denominator, I think, are always the criteria
is what is best for an individual work of
art or what is best for an individual artist's
work.
And if that artist's work looks best on a
white wall, then a white wall it shall be,
but in the case of this gallery with older
late 19th century works, for instance, a more
warmer, softer, beige color is what was selected
to use.
But great question.
In what situation...yeah, so it's relevant
not to have a white gallery space when the
art merits it or determines it or asks for
it.
Look at this, Instagram trailer from Chuddles.
"Is there one specific exhibition that you've
seen at some point in your life that radically
changed the way you think about art and/or
your role as a curator?
And if so what, when, and how?"
That's a big question.
All right, I'd rather ask everybody in the
room.
But, all right, I'll think of...
You know, I'll tell you about two things that
I remember.
I don't know if they radically changed the
way I think about art and my role as a curator,
but they certainly gave me something to aspire
to.
So the first is a show that was held here
at this museum in 1989, so that's too dated,
right?
To me, it seems like yesterday, but '89, right?
So we're decades past that now.
But the show was called "Picasso and Braque:
Pioneering Cubism," and it was organized by
the former Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture
here at MoMA named William Rubin.
And what William Rubin did was he set out...well,
the backstory is that for a brief period of
time, say from 1907 to 1914, Pablo Picasso
and Georges Braque worked very closely together
to invent this new language of visual form
that was called or that came to be called
cubism.
Braque described the relationship between
the two of them that they were like two mountaineers,
you know, roped together to achieve something
new.
Or Picasso liked to...you know, affectionately
called each other, like, Wilbur and Orville
Wright, right, because the airplanes were
being invented right at that time.
But, anyway, this idea that two people together
could make something that neither one of them
could have done alone.
And what this exhibition, "Picasso and Braque:
Pioneering Cubism," did was tell that story.
So for me, it so changed the notion of an
artist as a single, isolated, solitary genius,
right?
It pointed to the fact that every work of
art is the result of a context, or a community,
or a collaboration of some sort even when
you're looking at some of the most famous
artists of the 20th century.
And I just loved the way that that story was
mapped out in the galleries of that exhibition
and that, in fact, it put together a show
that Picasso and Braque, right, they saw the
works they were making, but they themselves
would never have been able to see them altogether
in the way that Rubin put them together for
us in 1989.
So it was both moving in that sense.
It was a tremendous chapter in the invention
of modern art.
It was like you could watch a visual language
being formed on the walls.
I think for me it mattered, too, that it was
very serious and it was very scholarly, it
was very rigorous.
There was a lot of research that went into
the catalog.
There was a big symposium after the exhibition.
So, anyway, it gave me something to aspire
to in the ways that exhibitions can make a
contribution to art history and change the
way that we think.
And then the other favorite memory I have
about an art exhibition that sort of changed
the way I think about art or encapsulated
something was a show at the New Museum downtown
years ago, and actually a specific piece in
that show by an artist named Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
He's deceased now, but in the 1990s he was
a young contemporary artist, and in this exhibition
was a piece that Gonzalez-Torres had made
that would consider him nothing more, nothing
less than a stack of sparkly covered candies
in red, white, and blue.
And as I was standing there looking at this,
like a sparkly, scatterous sculpture in the
corner, this little kid came running over
and grabbed some of the candies.
And, in fact, that was the complete intention
of the artist, right?
So if you think about from Marcel Duchamp
on kind of inviting the audience into the
piece, what that work of Gonzalez-Torres did
was make the generosity of that invitation
implicit, and it was a work that, you know,
everybody was invited to take a piece so that
slowly it would dwindle away.
And so he was an artist working in the age
of AIDS and was thinking a lot about mortality,
and he managed to make from something as simple
as a stack of candy in the store, on the floor,
a really poignant sculpture about change,
and passage, and time, and then the institutions
that own those candy pieces or the private
collectors are responsible for replenishing
them.
So there's always this chance for regeneration
built into them.
So that really changed the way for me that
I thought about what an art object could be
and the way that the relationship between
an art object and the person who owns it,
be an institution or a private collector,
could interact.
Okay.
YouTube trailer from Kold Krash Gaming.
I think I have to, like, change my social
media moniker.
You all are, right, much more creative than
me.
So here's the question from Cold Crash Gaming.
"A lot of what you describe is your responsibility
sounds similar to what an exhibition designer
would be responsible for.
Are there no designers?
And if there are, what are their responsibilities?"
So I think, Cold Crash Gaming, you must be
responding to a moment in the trailer, I'm
suspecting, where I was talking about the
Meret Oppenheim fur teacup and how we have
to decide what size the pedestal is and all
the rest.
So let me say, for the record, MoMA has an
incredible team of exhibition designers, and
we, the curators, are dependent on them.
We collaborate with them.
It is one of the greatest joys of working
in this place, to have the opportunity to
sort of think out loud with people who know
so much about the presentation of works of
art.
And I suppose where the two jobs differ is
that...let's think about the fur teacup, what
the curator, what I could bring to that discussion
with the designer about how high should the
pedestal be, and how should it be lit, and
the size of the vitrine, and all of that is
a knowledge of how the artist had displayed
the object in her lifetime, of how it had
been shown in the past, of how it had been
photographed.
Where was the little furry spoon?
I can bring to that a sense of what the presence
of the object sort of historically and presently
demands.
And then the exhibition designers, of course,
can talk about, "Well, you know, this size
would be better.
This color would be great.
Have you thought about lighting it in this
way?"
So it's very much a collaboration, and I'm
sorry if I gave the impression that there
were no designers.
There certainly are.
Okay.
I love this question from Yokthan Chaderichie,
I think.
I'm sorry, I probably did a terrible job on
that, too.
So your question is, "What advice would you
give to a normal art visitor to look at a
painting to appreciate it most?"
So that is just such a good question.
I love it, because it means I get to tell
you my favorite thing about looking at any
work of art, which is choose a picture, choose
a sculpture, whatever you choose, stand in
front of it for 30 seconds without saying
anything, without looking at your phone, without
taking a selfie.
Look at the work in front of you for 30 seconds,
and you will notice so many things.
And then if you're with someone and they've
done the same thing, a great way to continue
to look at the painting, get even more out
of it is to ask the person what they noticed
and to compare it to what you've seen.
And 9 times out of 10 you're gonna have noticed
really different things.
And so I think that immediately is a point
of entry to how to appreciate a painting,
and even if it's a painting that makes you
mad at first, to think about why that is and
then maybe what was that artist trying to
communicate, because I think all visual artists
are making things for an audience.
They may not know that it's you, but they're
making things that are there to be seen and
to be engaged with, so I hope that helps.
A question from the YouTube trailer from Ali
Adinehzadeh.
"How would you identify an artist such as
Pablo Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein, Salvador
Dali?
Even though everyone says they belong to a
certain movement such as cubism, surrealism,
pop art, etc., they actually did do more things
than most people would know about them, and
they did really great things as well."
So another great question, and I think every
artist, and especially Pablo Picasso, or Roy
Lichtenstein, or Salvador Dali, strives to
escape categorization, and I think that it
is always the case that you can't reduce an
artist to a single label.
So how would I identify an artist such as
Pablo Picasso, one of the 20th century's great
visual innovators, right?
That leaves it open.
It doesn't say he's just a cubist or a surrealist
or this or that, right?
He's an inventor of visual form.
Roy Lichtenstein, right, the way that he looked
at popular culture, and comic books, and the
language of the graphic arts and brought that
into the way that he made pictures is absolutely
revolutionary.
And I didn't need to say pop to tell you that.
Or Salvador Dali, right, who, yes, is synonymous
with the word surrealism but who, as you know,
went on to do many different things.
You know, then you can talk about...maybe
if you get away from the labels and start
describing what they did and actually looking
at things, that is the way to identify artists,
is by talking about what they did rather than
using a short-hand label.
Okay, I have to have a sip of water.
I don't know about all of you out there, but
I'm thirsty.
Sorry.
Okay, YouTube trailer from John-Luke Durham.
"Do you think curating is an interdisciplinary
profession?
What skills outside of the art world do you
use as a curator?"
Fun.
So yes, I think curating is interdisciplinary.
What skills outside of the art world...so,
in addition to art history, writing skills,
public speaking skills, teaching skills, entertaining
skills, chitchatting skills, cooking skills.
I like to give dinner parties for people that
I work with or artists that I meet.
So I think all of those things contribute
to what you do as a curator.
And, of course, I think that curators need
to engage with people outside of their profession,
so not only in terms of skills that I use,
but people that you engage with in terms of
their expertise make this an interdisciplinary
profession.
So I have two here, you want me to take both.
Okay.
Well, I don't know.
So I'm gonna look at both.
I'll decide which one.
Oh, my gosh, all right, so this one says we're
about out of time, so I have to move on to
a conclusion, and this one says, all right,
I have to look at my conclusion.
They were the conclusion for me.
Okay.
So I have fans tuned in.
Wow, this is so exciting, from Colombia, Alaska,
Liverpool, Chicago, Paris, and Istanbul.
So, well, hi.
Wow, that's really exciting.
How many of these places have I been to?
I've never been to Istanbul, I would love
to go.
Paris, yes.
Chicago, all the time.
Liverpool, once.
Alaska and Colombia, never.
So I hope to get there one day.
So, well, okay, thank you to everybody out
there, especially all of you in far-flung
places, for all these great questions and
comments.
If you enjoyed this, please check out...so
this is the public service message, please
check out our other videos on our YouTube
channel.
There you can find live, past live Q&As.
The Museum does a series called "At the Museum."
They do another one called "How to See."
They do a further one, "In the Studio."
So I've scrolled through some of those myself,
and I can say there's a lot of great material
there to watch.
If you're interested in modern art, contemporary
art, museum professionals, exhibitions, etc.
it's all there.
Also, if we didn't get to your question tonight
during the live Q&A, please be sure to leave
it in the comments section below on this video,
and we will be sure to answer a few in the
coming days.
So, okay, thank you all for tuning in.
It's been great fun to talk to all of you,
and we hope you'll keep tuning in in the future.
Good night.
