Recently, we stumbled upon an interesting project called Go. It's a Brooklyn-based initiative that asks ordinary people to vote on which artists they think should be included in an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. Go describes itself as such:
During GO, Brooklyn-based artists are asked to open their studios to the community on September 8–9, 2012. Community members registered as voters will visit studios and nominate artists for inclusion in a group exhibition to open at the Brooklyn Museum on Target First Saturday, December 1, 2012.
Go is interesting because it alters the way we traditionally curate art in museums. At the moment, curation is largely an undemocratic process -- a small circle of stakeholders, investors, academics and, of course, curators determine what will be housed in a museum. The process is mired in politics and contestations over history, memory and value; yet, the process is anti-political in the sense that it does not incorporate the political system the West holds so dear: democracy. In short and in the words of art historian Carol Duncan, the museum is a ritual that excludes many non-traditional perspectives. As she argues:
Above all, a museum is not the neutral and transparent sheltering space that it is often claimed to be. More like the traditional ceremonial monuments that museum buildings frequently emulate -- classical temples, medieval cathedrals, Renaissance palaces -- the museum is a complex experience involving architecture, programmed displays of art object, and highly rationalized installation practices. And like ceremonial structures of the past, by fulfilling its declared purposes as a museum (preserving and displaying art objects) it also carries out broad, sometimes less obvious political and ideological tasks. (p. 279 of Interpreting Objects and Collections)
It will be interesting to see what comes of Go's democratic experiment. It will be interesting to see if it has the effect, at least in that one moment of exhibition that it produces, of destabilizing the ritual. We suspect that the voters will be a somewhat self-selected set of individuals so well-versed in the ways of the art world that they may not bring any outside ideologies with them that would be too destabilizing. Nonetheless, we find this pretty darn cool.
If you want to get involved, go here.