The Art of Seeing
Photo by Bayareaeventphotography.com
Viewers discussing an installation at 2008 SITE Santa Fe Biennial
With SITE Santa Fe’s innovative 2008 biennial breaking attendance records, and viewers including as many second-homers and garden-variety tourists as destination visitors, we wondered how the art-savvy nonprofit was bridging the gap between its challenging contemporary fare and the everyday people who come to see it. Luckily, that’s at the top of director Laura Heon’s agenda. Here she dishes on art, community, and SITE’s fall lecture series (of which she presents the first installment), The Curatorial Agenda.
What do you see as the role of a curator?
It’s very hard for an artist to make an artwork and get it to the community. Our task at SITE, and mine as a curator, is to present art that is hopefully like nothing you’ve ever seen before—that is complex by its very nature—but to make that available to a general audience. I think bridging that comes from empowering people to take risks with you and to try something new.
Then why focus on agendas?
Everybody on the planet’s got an agenda—and certainly everything you do as a curator has a political valence. One of our jobs, I think, is to present a critique of the world around us, and to say, “Really, really, this is the world we want to live in?” People tend to choose art for their homes that is comforting, that reifies certain values. I mean, who wants to be in their pajamas getting a glass of milk in the middle of the night and come across something that unsettles them? Most people don’t want that. But when I’m choosing work for the museum, I want work that can withstand deep interrogation and give back. Something that is flexible, multifaceted, and helps generate new thoughts in people, regardless of who those people are.
How do you achieve that?
It’s how you present things, and what you choose to present. It’s important that the people here and the building are welcoming and open, so viewers will spend the time.
What does all this mean for the interested, but not expert, viewer?
The goal is to just give people tools for looking. Then people begin to become active viewers rather than passive ones who want the whole thing spoon-fed to them. So much of education is meant to impart knowledge; I don’t give a crap about imparting knowledge. What I care about is creating passionate people who are authors of their own life on the planet. And I think we can do that a little bit here.—MS
The Curatorial Agenda lecture series: Art for Art’s Sake, Sep 23, 6 pm; Art of Identity, Oct 7, 6 pm; Art to Change the World, Oct 14, 6 pm; $5–$10, series $12–$24, SITE Santa Fe, 1606 Paseo de Peralta, 505-989-1199, sitesantafe.org
