Pick and choose

You can tell by their nervous looks and the way their eyes keep flicking side-to-side that curators know that their cultural capital is being seriously eroded. Even in New Zealand we have curators who have to get out there and raise big bucks if they want to do big exhibitions (the no dough, no show policy). That’s a radical change in skills and expectations.  And most institutional curators will also tell you that admin and policy is taking up more and more of their time (looking at you Te Papa). Junior curators, on the other hand, are slowly being reassigned to what is really project management with some writing on the side. 

Now, piling on the pressure, is the recent announcement by MoNA owner/collector David Walsh in Tasmania that he's getting a couple of scientists (evolutionary neurobiologist Mark Changizi and evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller) to curate their next big show. While it's just an extension of the celebrity curator phenomenon (Steve Martin, Madonna, James Franco) with a bit more intellectual heft, it does suggest a future in which anyone can curate for an art institution as long as they have fame or a sexy specialty or ... now here's an idea ... both. 
Image: David Walsh 
COMMENT: Roy Clare 26.02.16: When seeking to adduce evidence of trends in museums/galleries commentators too readily cite David Walsh and MONA. In reality all they show is that if you are a fabulously wealthy owner of a gallery you get to call the shots. Meanwhile the rest of us owe something to our public funders, so we run our places with teams of really great professionals, a clear conscience .... and increasing audiences. 
OTN:
James Franco at LACMA
Julian Barnes Royal Academy
Peter Greenaway La Louvre
Steve Martin Hammer Museum of Art
Pharrell Williams – Design Exchange
Julian Schnabel – LACMA
Cameron Silver – MOCA Pacific Design Center
Crowd sourced exhibitions - Everywhere
......   It's a thing.

Die hard

We nearly missed one of David Walsh’s King Hits at MONA in Hobart. The standalone gallery featuring the French artist ChristianBoltanski is next to the wharf where the ferry ties up and most people (well everyone really) heads past it and straight up the 90 stairs to the museum entrance. Then as they queue up at the top of those stairs to leave, everyone tends to hustle past again so as to get a good seat for the ride back to the city.

If you do stop and go inside you see a bank of monitors that screen video of Boltanski’s studio in real-time as well as highlights from previous days. As his studio is in Europe we don't reckon many MONA visitors catch Boltanski in real time but the feed is part of a bet-cum-purchase he has with Walsh. Walsh is a committed gambler (that’s where the money for the museum and its collection has come from) and in his purchase of The life of C.B he is making another call. 

In Boltanski’s words, “We decided to work on the basis of this old tradition of a lifetime annuity. To buy en viager in France is a transaction by which you pay someone fixed instalments until their death, at which time the payments stop and you inherit the property. David gives me a bit of money each month. In eight years time he will have paid me the agreed amount. If I die in five years time, he gets a good deal.” 

So, the longer Boltanski lives, the more Walsh will have to pay. Boltanski is 68 and has refused to sell Walsh his ashes.

Image: DVD records of the days already videoed with slots good for another nine years worth of recordings line the ‘Boltanski room’.

The Butler did it (again)

We don’t want to go on about this (so why are you?) but down in the bowels of MONA we looked up and, kid you not, there was Brian Butler again. What are the chances?

Pay as you urn

Most art museums have Friends groups to help with functions, put up funding for purchases into the collection and bulk up numbers at openings. The benefits to the Friends themselves vary but mostly there are discounts, previews and a newsletter. For such packages Friends are prepared to pay from $15 for a student membership to $30 for a family at the Govett-Brewster, from $20 for a student membership up to $4,000 for a platinum one at the Auckland Art Gallery and up to $40 for individual memberships and from $60 for a family at Te Papa. 

But at MONA, the Museum of New and Old Art in Hobart, a new world of Friend memberships is on offer by the dare-you-to owner David Walsh. For $75,000 you can have an Eternity Membership including all the usual MONA membership trimmings plus a guarantee of perpetual rest. Stump up the cash and your ashes will be stored forever at MONA in a handmade urn (Walsh disarmingly calls it a ‘fancy jar’) created by New Zealander Julia deVille. Putting his family where his mouth is Walsh’s father is already up on the shelf. Contact the museum at info@mona.net.au or call on 1800REMEMBER.

Image: a funerary urn by Julia deVille

Cabinet paper

When you first step into Hobart’s $224 million über art attraction MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) you can feel the difference. This is a radical departure from your usual art museum. The white cube has been banished in favour of darkened rooms with spotlit objects and complex layouts, and there is not a label or wall text to be seen. And then it dawns on you. For all its high tech trappings this is a return to old school museum display and the cabinet of curiosities.

The hand of private collector David Walsh is all over his museum especially in the material previously known as labels. Although MONA prides itself on having no labels or explanatory panels, the usual museum verbiage is not far away. It’s been tipped onto a hard drive to be accessed by an iTouch given to all visitors. Branded as The O . And Walsh, in a move that saves MONA from being what could easily have become lugubrious, plays the humour card. Look up Walsh’s comments on a baby monkey skeleton sitting in a chair (it’s that sort of place) and you get, “This is so cute, look at his little hands resting on the chair.’ That’s the first time. If you check it out again it comes up “ “This is so gross, look at his little hands resting on the chair.’

Walsh also uses the The O to undercut his critics (and there are some despite the runaway popular success of MONA). Commenting on one work Walsh mentioned he had prosopagnosia (an inability to recognize people by their faces) which in turn prompted art critic Christopher Allen to bring out his stick. “It may explain why a lot of the works he has chosen are rather coarse and obvious in meaning, and why the paintings and other two-dimensional works are mostly mediocre”. Walsh immediately added this to The O commentary. Nice.

So MONA is very, very popular, people stay for a very, very long time and the experience is brilliantly personalised. You can check out what Mary looked at by going to http://mona.net.au/theo/ and entering mary@barrs.co.nz (I forgot to ‘LOVE’ it – you can press a love or hate button on your ‘O’ for each work - but my most favourite work was in fact Lucio Fontana’s Spatial concept).

The museum profession is watching MONA closely of course. The success of its Google-like gathering of objects and DIY connoisseurship suggests a way to attract audiences by valuing personal responses over institutional expertise. As Walsh says himself about looking at MONA's latest exhibition Theatre of the world “the less you know about art the better you are off.” If MONA gets to lead the way, it’s going to be a game changer.

Image: the baby monkey skeleton on a chair. By the way, if you look up the commentary on the work a third time you get "The Victorians were so weird."