Art and Obsolescence

For this episode we are back in the conservation lab, visiting with Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Melva Bucksbaum Associate Director for Conservation and Research at the Whitney Museum of American Art. If you were to visit the Whitney today and see the lab and the department that Carol leads, you might find it hard to believe that none of it existed back when she joined the Whitney. In 2001 Carol not only became the museum’s first director of conservation, but also its first staff conservator. In our chat we hear all about the incredible work that Carol has done over the past 20+ years at the Whitney, but the story goes much further back, prior to arriving at the Whitney, Carol spent a prior 20+ stint as the first conservator at the Menil Collection in Houston. Having originally trained and studied art that was centuries old, at the Menil Carol suddenly found herself dealing with modern and contemporary art and all the special and unique challenges that emerge when a conservator is faced with art where the paint has barley just dried. Carol found that talking directly to artists and their collaborators about the practical and technical aspects of their work was crucial in her work as a conservator — long before this was a common thing for conservators to do. This interview practice was eventually formalized and became the Artist Documentation Program, generating hours upon hours of footage of Carol and her former colleagues chatting with artists like Ann Hamilton, Ed Ruscha, Sarah Sze, Josh Kline, just to name a few. Today artist interviews have become a central part of conservation practice, so I was very excited to sit down with Carol, to interview the interviewer and hear what she has learned over decades as a leader the field of conservation.
Links from the conversation with Carol
> Artist Documentation Project: https://adp.menil.org/
> The Whitney Replication Committee: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/11/the-custodians-onward-and-upward-with-the-arts-ben-lerner

Get access to exlusive content - join us on Patreon!
> https://patreon.com/artobsolescence

Join the conversation:
https://www.instagram.com/artobsolescence/
Support artists
Art and Obsolescence is a non-profit podcast, sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and we are committed to equitably supporting artists that come on the show. Help support our work by making a tax deductible gift through NYFA here: https://www.artandobsolescence.com/donate

This month we’re in the studio visiting with contemporary artist Nikita Gale. Gale's work employs objects and materials like barricades, concrete, microphone stands, and spotlights to address the ways in which space and sound are politicized. Last year in episode 32 we visited with gallerist Ebony L. Haynes, director of 52 Walker, and it was in preparing for that conversation that I visited the gallery, and had the treat of seeing Nikita Gale’s work in person for the first time in the exhibition titled End of Subject. I wasn’t really sure what to expect as the documentation online was deliciously cryptic — installation views showed a space sparsely populated by metal panels on the wall, and on the floor numerous sets of metal bleachers that appeared to have been crushed, thrown on their sides, spotlights strewn about the room, and wires — lots and lots of wires everywhere. With the beautiful wooden floors and opens space of the gallery, it looked as though a dance piece or some performance art had gone horribly wrong. This was all I knew, as well as the fact that there was some kind of sound element to the piece. When I arrived, the gallery looked just as it did in the photos online, but there was no sound. I was tiptoeing through the empty gallery, when suddenly the whole space sprung to life — voices erupted through the space, and the previously inert spotlights began to dance around the room. Over the course of several minutes I witnessed an incredible choreography of sound and light, until silence and stillness eventually returned to the room for an extended period of time before a new score and choreography eventually emerged. I sat in the room for an hour watching people come and go — some visitors who missed the performance entirely, some who only saw one or the other. It was incredible to see the space repeatedly transform from a spectacle, to a space where the viewers themselves became the performance. Being a conservation nerd of course my mind went directly to wondering how in the world a piece like this might be documented and migrated through generations of technology over decades, and I knew I just had to have the artist on the show to find out. Tune in to hear Nikita’s story.

The Kramlichs began collecting time-based media thirty years ago, and eventually they asked the question: what would a home look like if it were purpose-built for living with their collection? On this episode we'll not only get to hear the story of what inspired Pam to focus on collecting this challenging medium so early on, but also the treat of a walking tour of the Kramlich's residence and collection facilitty designed Herzog and de Meuron.
Links
> The Kramlich Collection
> The new book documenting the residnece and collection
> SFMOMA

This week features legendary curator of digital art, Christiane Paul. It would be fair to say that digital art is having a moment these days, so who better to provide some context than the curator who quite literally wrote the book on it. From publishing a glossy quarterly magazine on digital art and hypertext in the 90s (Intelligent Agent), to her extensive curatorial work at the Whitney Museum of American Art and as an independent curator, Christiane Paul has had a major influence on how the world collects, understands, and curates artistic practices that exist in, and evolve from the digital world. Tune in to hear the story of her career’s evolution, and what Christiane thinks about the current hype around crypto art.

Links from the conversation with Christiane
> Whitney Artport: https://artport.whitney.org
> Programmed: https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/Programmed
> The Question of Intelligence – AI and the Future of Humanity https://parsons.edu/sheilacjohnsondesigncenter/the-question-of-intelligence-ai-and-the-future-of-humanity/
> Sunrise / Sunset: https://whitney.org/artport/commissions/sunrise-sunset
> https://www.newschool.edu/media-studies/faculty/christiane-paul/
> Christiane's book: https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/digital-art-softcover-third-edition

Join the conversation:
https://twitter.com/ArtObsolescence
https://www.instagram.com/artobsolescence/
Support artists
Art and Obsolescence is a non-profit podcast, sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and we are committed to equitably supporting artists that come on the show. Help support our work by making a tax deductible gift through NYFA here: https://www.artandobsolescence.com/donate

On this week's show we chat with curator Chrissie Iles, who since 1997 has been the Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, where she has built a singular collection of time-based media art. In this extended chat with host Ben Fino-Radin, Chrissie tells the tale of how she built this amazing collection, her general approach and philosophy as a curator, her roots in artist-run spaces, and her vision for the future of the art world.
Links from the conversation with Chrissie
> The Whitney Museum of American Art: https://whitney.org/> Into the Light: the Projected Image in American Art, 1964–1977: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/into-the-light
> Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/dreamlands
Join the conversation:
https://twitter.com/ArtObsolescence
https://www.instagram.com/artobsolescence/
Support artists
Art and Obsolescence is a non-profit podcast, sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and we are committed to equitably supporting artists that come on the show. Help support our work by making a tax deductible gift through NYFA here: https://www.artandobsolescence.com/donate