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John
Kindness: Big school dog, plaster, blackboard
paint and chalk, 89 x 129 x 43 cm, shown as part
of the Branching Out exhibition, Irish
Museum of Modern Art, January - March 2004; courtesy
IMMA
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Collecting as a means of
keeping art alive or as a tool to contribute to contemporary
art projects, rather than elaborate storage, where the
art will endure the restrictions of a time capsule, is
the aim of most contemporary art galleries. H.G. Wells,
in his book, When the Sleeper Wakes, describes
a person who ceases to exist because his potency or potential
is suspended. Likewise, artworks that remain in storerooms
are in suspended animation. Each item is racked in controlled
atmospheric conditions. Clinical, purified, preserved;
away from human contact; humans are the enemy and are
capable of causing the destruction of artworks, even by
breathing. Artworks in most collections look the same,
they even have the same name; they are wooden boxes and
odd forms of protective packing with text that reads handle
with care, this way up; they will remain in this form,
in suspended animation, for a long time.
An instinct to conserve naturally
asserts itself. The process of classification formalities,
plinths, frames, display cases, environmental control,
disaster plans are all crucial to every professional collecting
body. It is important for organisations to comply with
international standards of collections care, but without
compromising innovative collection policies.
The need to encourage best practice
in institutions with collections prompted the Heritage
Council of Ireland to launch an Accreditation Pilot Scheme2
in 2001. The scheme functions as a device for raising
standards and assessing and regulating quality control
in collecting institutions. Participants in the study
were selected to represent the range of museums and their
geographical locations. Among the thirteen participants,
the only organisations with a full or part visual-art
presence in their collections are the National Gallery
of Ireland, the Hunt Museum, the Chester Beatty Library,
the Butler Gallery and the National Print Museum. The
objective following the pilot phase is to implement the
scheme nationally; this will enable a diverse range of
collections, including more contemporary art galleries,
to participate on the scheme. The benefits will be not
only to raise standards of collections care, but also
to improve access to collections, and encourage cooperation
in the sector. A most necessary and timely initiative.
However, a large amount of the motivation of collecting
institutions on the scheme and in general in the country
is exclusively in the area of acquiring, preserving and
cataloguing.
Collections are built to preserve
and accumulate items that are deemed to have cultural
value. They can attempt to address many goals of an organisation.
These objectives are identified within the educational,
historical, and cultural functions a museum or gallery.
Also, from an economic perspective, they have a significant
role to play in the advancement of tourism in any city
or town. Generally, a collecting institution is thought
of first and foremost as a showroom, and exhibitions are
taken for granted as the natural way of dealing with art.
We advance from the storeroom to showroom, but let's go
further because, in reality, an exhibition is just one
way amongst many of working with collections and letting
art exist.
Private corporations that buy art
to hang in their buildings successfully create a space
for art to exist and be experienced. Corporate art collections
like AIB, Microsoft, and Bank Of Ireland can provide a
source of stimulation and creativity for each organisation's
employees. The collections have the potential to create
an environment for the workforce to live with art in an
everyday context. However, this engagement for the most
part is passive. I believe the main reason for the endorsement
of corporate collections is that it supports artists through
purchases. The choice of art is limited; their reasons
for purchasing works can be influenced by factors restricted
by workspaces. Their raison d'être is not to actively
engage with social and political issues, which are concerns
of public collections. However, they do play an important
role in the overall collecting debate within the private
and public spheres, because they add to the art economy
financially and aesthetically.
I hope to advance the argument for
acquisitions beyond the notion of collecting as an endeavour
of accumulating objects just to have and to hold,
to quote the title of a conference on collecting held
in the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA).3
My focus is on how collections are exhibited and curated;
without jeopardising collections care.
Firstly, lets examine how collections
are formed. The choice of works acquired makes explicit
the economic and political agendas that inform past acquisitions
and exhibition policies. The notion that public collections
are based on an accrual of works that have been put together
by curators working from personal passions and interest
is valid, appropriate and acknowledged. At the aforementioned
conference to have and to hold, Jan Debbaut expressed
the impracticalities of a democratic system of a panel
selecting work for acquisition; he declared this system
as ineffectual. As the Head of the Collection at Tate
Modem, Debbaut says he is transparent and accountable
about his subjectivity, when purchasing art for the Tate
or in his previous job as Director of the Stedelijk, Eindhoven.
Most public galleries have an acquisitions committee who
fund and approve purchases; this committee is guided by
an acquisitions policy, which is informed by the predispositions
of the curator.
So, public collections are a personal
choice. Characteristics of individuals make up collections.
Some artworks in public collections, like the Butler Gallery
or LCGA, have been purchased from the exhibition programme.
Thus the collection echoes the exhibition agenda at the
gallery, and also it is cheaper to buy art from in-house
exhibitions. Decisive factors for most collections are
economic feasibility, artistic availability, chance and
accident.
Maybe we would like to think of these
factors as being more theoretical, tactical and orchestrated,
but this is not the case generally, mostly due to meagre
budgets and reliance on donations. Many collections are
limited as regards gender, and diversity of medium, and
if we claim our collection represents excellence, then
such an assertion rests as much on what is absent as what
is included. Most collections in Ireland have a similar
bias, with an analogous cross section of artists and styles
represented. From nineteenth to twenty-first century,
mostly painting, mostly Irish, mostly male artists. This
is not a criticism but rather a fact, because collections
have functioned as a history of Irish art and artists,
and can indeed reflect a genealogical map of that history.
A controversial strategy to address
this bias would be to create a scenario in which each
gallery would concentrate on a different medium or genre.
For instance, the Model and Niland could house the National
Video Art Collection, LCGA the National Drawing Collection,
the Lewis Glucksman the National Art and Science and so
on - thus creating areas of excellence within the national
art infrastructure. However, given the subjectivity surrounding
purchasing power and the fact that art forms in contemporary
art are not easily categorised, this option might not
be feasible.
Let us return to the fear that artworks
will remain in a cataleptic state in storerooms. Expanding
the possible meanings generated by and around the works
of art within a collection, devising new ways of showing
works of art, and creating structures within which to
set up themes with conviction, animation and flexibility,
is key to a living collection.
Public institutions can learn a great
deal from the so -called idiosyncratic responses of visitors.
When people engage their own subconscious, a process of
personal creativity begins. Often when people view contemporary
art they react with frustration and / or curiosity. Asking
curators, artists, or non-art professionals to curate
exhibitions from the collection can stimulate readings
of a collection and create an environment which can enrich
our appreciation and understanding.
The IMMA's National programme is
a good example of a national institution dispersing its
collection throughout its all-Ireland constituency. By
making available the best in contemporary Irish and international
art to organisations and centres that have no collection
or maybe even no formal gallery space, they are encouraging
access and opportunities for the general public to experience
contemporary art. But importantly the coordination of
the exhibitions is a two-way process between IMMA the
venue. The support of National Irish Bank enabled IMMA
to create and coordinate an project called Branching
Out which encompassed a related series of workshops
leading to exhibitions between IMMA and various community
groups and venues across Ireland, the aim being to develop
a greater understanding of the national collection of
modern art.
Over the total duration of the projects,
approximately seventy workshops took place involving as
many as 400 students from primary schools, 100 students
from second level, and fifty participants from outside
the formal education sector. Over 150 older people participated
in two of the projects. Seven hundred people participated
directly in such workshops while large numbers from the
local communities visited the corresponding exhibitions
and attended lectures and tours.
Selected works were exhibited at
the South Tipperary Arts Centre, Mullingar Arts Centre,
St Caimin's Church and the Aistear Centre, Mountshannon
and the Tallaght Community Arts Centre. Non-gallery spaces
were Ballincollig, Bandon, Carrigaline and Fermoy Libraries
and the Limerick School of Art and Design.
Branching Out is and example
of our national institution successfully generating conditions
in which people can experience a sense of discovery in
looking at particular artworks, in a particular space
at a particular time, rather than finding themselves standing
on the conveyor belt of history, channelled through the
cultural amusement parks that exist in other institutions.
The conveyer-belt model encourages the viewer and the
public to be passive consumers. This is not the intention
of IMMA or other projects like Stations at the
Butler Gallery and Amy Plant's4
intervention at LCGA.
Stations is a project carried
out in 2003 that attempted to create awareness among the
local community in Kilkenny that the Butler Gallery collection
existed, examine a new and innovative way of experiencing
art and create an approach for participants and the public
to discuss contemporary art. Five artworks from the collection,
by David Nash, Clifford Rainey, Alistair Wilson, David
Lambert and Diana Hobson, were placed in five Kilkenny
homes over a period of five months. This allowed each
household to live with a different artwork for a month
at a time. By concentrating on one artwork each month,
the participants were able to compare the artworks to
each other and, in this way, build up a critical awareness.
The title Stations5
is inspired by the Irish Catholic tradition of neighbours
and friends visiting each other's homes to host mass in
the community. In the same way that mass can be experienced
out of its usual church environment, Stations
brought art outside the usual gallery building into
homes in the community. At the end of each month, the
Butler Gallery visited the 'art-stations' and listened
and recorded the ideas and responses that were unfolding,
and discovered that the immediate response was an emotional
one. Sometimes this was developed into a more in-depth
investigation as to why the artwork compelled or repelled
the viewer. A relationship developed at home between the
householders and the artwork that could not have occurred
in a public space; they became protective over the artworks
and this extended to a feeling that they should 'defend'
the works to their neighbours. It is in experimentation
and innovation that using imagination is central; the
straitjacket of restricted institutional policy on how
to display the collection had to be made more flexible
and diverse and inclusive. The Butler Gallery had to be
capable of reviewing and reinventing both its audiences
and itself.
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Nick Huntley, with Alistair Wilson
sculpture, Little flame in a boat; the Huntley
family were participants in Stations,
a Butler Gallery production, 2003; courtesy Butler
Gallery
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In August 2003 Amy Plant's documentation
of the process of a project she initiated with the collection
of LCGA was exhibited in Drawing on Space at
Project, in Dublin. Plant's work relies on the participation
of others; she is a collector of conversations and social
activities. She based herself in LCGA for fifteen days
and investigated the responses and interpretations of
people to the National Collection of Contemporary Drawing,
which is part of the LCGA Collection. From these conversations
Plant developed an installation in the space comprising
the artworks chosen by the public. This project linked
the artworks with people's characters through the intervention
of Plant, and resulted in and examination of self, the
collection and the possibilities of contemporary art as
a conduit for communication. Branching out, Stations
and Amy Plant are just three examples to illustrate the
exciting possibilities of public collections.
Although interest and participation
in the arts is increasing, it is still a small-minority
percentage in absolute terms. The reason it is increasing
is because the population is growing. In tandem with this
growth is the influx and diversity of new creativity.
It is important for the future vista of any gallery and
its development to play a vital role in the living identity
of the community, creating honest and respectful partnerships
with people. As well as all of that, it is simply about
getting the collection out of the storeroom and out of
suspended animation. Looking for pioneering ways of creating
opportunities for people to experience contemporary art
in public spaces that captures the unusual, the uplifting
and the creative can be rewarding for the institution,
the public, the collection and the artists who are represented
in the collection. The existence of public collections
necessitates and nurtures study and research, the gathering
of knowledge that forms a history to pass on and share
with the public, but also a collection is first and foremost
a living and visible resource, and its use is only limited
by the imagination.
Nathalie Weadick is Director
of the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny.
