When Kathy Halbreich announced she would leave the Walker Art Center after nearly 17 years as its director, she told the New York Times "I can’t imagine any other institution capturing my talents and spirits so perfectly."
Apparently, her imagination has found that institution.
The Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, is creating a position for Halbreich, naming her the museum's only associate director. She will focus on contemporary art initiatives and programming for both the museum and its affiliate, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center.
Rather than lead a department or spearhead exhibitions, Halbreich will work across the institution to help define, structure and extend MoMA's commitment to contemporary art. She will lead the museum's curatorial committee for contemporary work, help develop museum acquisitions of new work and play a role in museum advocacy.
Halbreich, who ends her Walker tenure at the end of October, begins her new gig February 2008. She will report to MoMA Director Glenn Lowry.
Some might raise an eyebrow over Halbreich’s move from a director position at one of the world’s leading contemporary arts institutions to an associate director post at a museum with many focuses, but Halbreich sees the step as part of her personal and professional evolution.
"When I resigned from the Walker, I decided that my days as a museum director were over and I wanted to discover the next chapter in my career," Halbreich said through the MoMA. "I look forward to focusing on art and artists, which are the most challenging and stimulating concerns I can imagine."
Two weeks ago, the Walker announced Olga Viso, director of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, as Halbreich's replacement. Viso begins at the Walker in January.
It was a shock to me when MoMA started allowing us VideoArtTypes to post our art alongside their videos of the Old Grand Poobah Artists they feature on YouTube. MoMA is usually the last institution in the world to do anything new. They may exhibit modern art but blazing new paths has never been a forte there. I was the first artist allowed in. Others followed. The whole idea of le Tube is called DIALOGUE and sharing. It means art becomes ALIVE. Most museums still use le Tube as an advertising gimmick which is in violation of the Tube Rules but an institution can usually do what it wants. Artists are the little guys and museums are the five-hundred-pound gorillas on the block. Get a clue. Example: The Hirshhorn doesn’t respond to anyone (they don’t even look at their own site more than once every six months) where the Indianapolis Museum of Modern Art has made their channel dynamic. They tend to it daily. They’re out there interacting with us. YouTube is simply not the place for the Ivory Tower and if that’s how any museum is going to behave there, they will become quite irrelevant and fast. The Walker Art Center has been at le Tube for eight months yet only has two videos. However, their Performing Arts Season Announcement is one of the most stunning videos on the entire Tube. It signifies quite clearly that the Ivory Tower Paradigm of le museum is over. It remains to be seen if the Walker will allow video responses but we here at Cinematheque in Paris are making one. The Walker’s production of its “season” has provoked us to want to create a film that captures the relationship of our space (a loft that changes daily) to how the public interacts with it. You never know when you make these things if the museum will allow them to be seen but we make them anyway and we submit them to whoever (usually it’s an intern) has been assigned YouTube as a marketing mechanism. YouTube is FAR, FAR more than that and has GOT to be viewed as a participant in the exhibition and creation of Art. The alternative for the notion of the Museum is irrelevance and that irrelevance doesn’t just sit there — it gets articulated. The walls of the Ivory Tower have got to start expanding into the community and your community — Minneapolis — goes all the way to Paris. According to YouTube’s login log, the Walker hasn’t even logged in for a week. It has no video responses displayed. It feels like advertising. Time will tell. The irony (and the disconnect) is that the museum itself or at least the public persona of it feels so vital. The jury is out as to whether or not this is simply PR but YouTube is where the rubber meets the road. If no one at the Walker even looks at their own channel for about another day (if they don’t then why should we), they’re going to get clicked out of worth even dealing with. Why would an artist even bother to relate. There are just too many other places that want to deal with us and allow us in. So with Kathy Halbreich moving to MoMA, “things” are going to get interesting. It will be an open question as to whether or not the Walker’s new Director (Olga Viso) being from the Hirshhorn will be able to maintain or interject any vitality in Minneapolis whatsoever but the lofty and indifferent attitude displayed by the Hirshhorn does not bode well. The vitality of Art on le Tube is a day-to-day proposition. Whether museums can keep up is an open question. Art itself can definitely leave them in the dust. They ALL say they are ALL the cutting edge with new art and new artists doing new things. It’s rhetoric. Usually, these curator types are absolutely unavailable to artists and indifference is the paradigm. The new blood at MoMA is trying. You would find their YouTube channel to be a place of enormous reciprocity. The Walker’s channel while slickly produced is beginning to flag because it’s simply not tended to and this usually reflects the real working mechanisms of a museum. It’s not something you can fix in a month or via committee. You have it or you don’t. Musical chairs among museum administrators is amusing but whether or not new people translates to access to new Art is definitely a question up for grabs. — Tim Barrus, Cinnematheque Films, Paris
Comment by Tim Barrus Cinematheque Films — 9/27/2007 @ 9:42 am
[…] Off Center » A New Home for Halbreich Kathy Halbreich leaves the Walker for the MoMA as their only associate director. (tags: Walker.Art.Center MoMA Kathy.Halbreich art.spaces museums) […]
Pingback by Gallery of Contemporary Art / UCCS / Archive / links for 2007-09-27 — 9/27/2007 @ 12:21 pm
Hi Tim, in response to your comments, I put together a video clip as a response (it seemed appropriate). We do listen, and are aware of many of the issues you raise.
And this is now our official youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/walkerartcenter.
Comment by Justin Heideman — 9/27/2007 @ 2:22 pm
It’s exciting to have the Walker at le Tube. I am glad to see it. Often, people think I’m just Being Difficult. But there is a method to the madness. My purpose is to bring relevance to YouTube. Artistic relevance. ART cannot and must not be ensconced by Culture in an Ivory Tower. Art is too important. It speaks to us in terms of who we are and how we are and what we are. YouTube is chaos. But life is like that, too. And I want as much Art brought to le Tube as I can kick to be there. We are as I write this in the process of creating a video response which we will submit to your new channel. You guys have so much to offer. One of these days I have GOT to get to there — to see this place called the Walker — but it’s a long way from France. For now, I have le Tube and am glad for it. Thank you!
Comment by Tim Barrus Cinematheque Films — 10/3/2007 @ 1:19 pm
Hi Justin…
Another Busy Day: Cinemathque Loft, Place Vendôme.
Today: Creating a Video Response to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis which is a city in le States.
The following from today’s ARTFUL MANAGER at ART’S JOURNAL:
Tim Barrus: “Ones smiles. Two Worlds: My World. Their World.
[Example: below: yesterday’s Video Response posted at MoMA re: Cinematheque to Carroll Dunham]
My World is a lot more fun that Their World. In My World, you get to stay up all night (actually for three of four days) painting and filming painting. In Their World, you are required to go to bed by eight and there is no such thing as Scotch. In Their World, you Better have a job (they say it’s Who You Are). In My World, there is no such thing as a le job. You can Be whoever You Want To Be Today.
In Their World, there are Rulz and Relationships. In My World, we Make Things. Because We Want To. In Their World, you only make things there is a market for. In My World, color gets pushed and black and white is arrogant and funny in the shadows. In Their World, it all hangs on the wall like a dead animal. In My World, we threw the TV out the window into the alley. In Their World, watching it is pretty much what they do and then they go to bed so they can get up to go to work.
In My World, we ride bikes because it’s fun and makes us feel good. In Their World, they wait in traffic. A lot. In My World, we build fences to keep Their World out. In Their World, they build fences to keep one another out. In My World, Art is the World. It’s everywhere. It’s in the fridge. It’s blasting through the speakers. It lives in the shoes (if you wear them) your feet dance in. It gets sprayed on walls. In Their World, it’s auctioned at Christies.
In My World, we have Art Patrons. In Their World, they always have a le Boss or a le Master or they are One. In My World, you paint what you want to paint, you dance to music you want to hear, your clothes are second-hand and always have paint on them. You dress because if you don’t some policier will shoot you dead. In Their World, bondage is the rule but don’t call it that. Call it a tie. You may call them the Suits.
In My World, we make fun of the Suits a lot. Especially the Publishing and the Art Suits. Sometimes it’s sort of what we do. In My World, it’s an Art Form. We call it Guerrilla Messing With Them. In Their World, Guerrilla Messing With Them is punishable by public execution. It’s a Big No No No. The Suits are serious Suits. They manage The World. Well, Their World. Their World Art is Advertising. They own Everything and Everywhere so Advertising is everything and everywhere. It’s on the signs. It’s plastered on the websites. It’s at the le bus stop. In their World, it costs a lot of le money. In My World, we spray paint over it at the le bus stops. And we’ve been known to tear it down if we can without being arrested. In Our World, jail is an abstraction and we Hope to keep it one. Their World is a jail.
My World lives in and around Our World. Like a planet and the sun. Their World is some lonely cold gas planet of little substance that goes round and round but little else. The Inhabitants of Their World Endure. That’s all she Wrote. In Our World, there are too many Other Our Worlders Making Things to have time to Endure. We’re way too busy Making Art to Endure Anyone or Anything.
The dialogue between Our World and Their World is almost nonexistent. 1.) Because Passion is not allowed in Their World, and 2.) We despise them and they fundamentally hate us even if the denial they live in does not allow them to articulate that. It’s not love that make the world go round. It’s hate that makes the world go round. Sometimes for effect we’ll lob a brick through their Museum windows and sometimes for effect their policier will chase us down the alley. But they don’t like us and we don’t like them and Both Worlds Pretend the Other One is Irrelevant. Our World is a turbulent, chaotic mash of Passion, Blogs, Voices, Personalities, Music, light, film, Sex, marijuana, Scotch, Paint, and Sex. You had better stick to the le Subject (or what they say it is) in Their World or they will ban you at the same time they will applaud the virtues of free speech and the dissemination of ideas.
In Our World and My World, we go Out of Our Way to not Humiliate People (unless they’re Politicians or Publishers or Gallery Managers who tell us to Go Away or Curators whose email address is a secret). In Their World, Humiliating People with extraordinary disdain and Contempt is the Paint they paint their canvas with. Both our World and Their World share some attributes and liabilities. But we don’t talk to Each Other much because Their World has the Art Policier and the Art gatekeepers and the Guillotine but what they really spend most of their energy on is marginalizing us where we spend far too much time looking for bricks to throw. A.) We insist: there’s a Culture War going on and managing it (like any other war) is mainly an illusion. B.) They insist: there is no Culture War and everything is fine (it can all be managed if Everyone would simply follow the rules) and if you disagree with that premise (especially with any Passion Whatsoever) your head can be severed from Your le Neck.
My World and Our World are both viscerally cognizant that there is a Culture War Slugging It Out out There. Example: The Walker Art Center has Provoked Us (this in a good way) on le Tube to respond to issues such as What is Art (which is the Real Issue if you can get past all the minor stuff) and what is a museum and what is Transparency and what is Access. This has Stumped Us and we are currently pounding our Heads against le loft’s walls in the Angst that we are Compelled to Create Something — a narrative of Ideas — to respond with (Artfully, the gods help us) and the issues are Important even if we’re not and last night we had a Rave in the loft and we’re tired. But Time is Time. In Their World. In Our World. And what Time is telling us is that today we’re going to have to tiptoe over to the walls and gates and Policier Lines and Peer Over at Them to try and See What They are About and we are not sure we can understand either Them or their Language.
The two Worlds Meet. And we are Afraid. 1.) They could say in their usual attempt to marginalize us that Our World and My World is imaginary and it’s not. It’s quite real; all too Real. 2.) We could say They’re not Really worthy of our time.
Both One and Two are the very things they do to us and the very things we do to them.
Will there ever be a connection. Only Time and le Tube will tell. What is Art. I’m not sure that we’re sure. But I think we’re Living It as fast as we can.”
– For Arts Journal: Tim Barrus, Cinematheque Films’ Loft, Place Vendôme.
Comment by Tim Barrus Cinematheque Films — 10/5/2007 @ 11:37 am
We’ve posted a video response at your channel on le Tube. All best — Tim
Comment by Tim Barrus Cinematheque Films — 10/5/2007 @ 6:49 pm
[…] next step — a new associate director position created for her at New York’s Museum of Modern Art — was barely alluded to during Monday’s […]
Pingback by Off Center » Halbreich gives herself the boot at one hail of a goodbye — 10/30/2007 @ 11:36 am