Statement 03/06

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My inquiry for my secondary field: Why are students not engaging in interpretive museum tour?

My inquiry is specifically questioning interpretive museum tours, which (in my mind) is a form of institutional critique. I want to dig deeper than just questioning art institutions. The three artists that I selected are The Guerrilla Girls, Michael Asher and Fred Wilson.

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Guerilla Art Action Group, a stylized enactment of military-induced violence, 1969

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The first work of art from the Guerrilla Girls: Guerilla Art Action Group, a stylized enactment of military-induced violence, 1969. Four member of the Guerrilla Girls staged an action in the entrance lobby of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Their reasoning for this was because they believed art institutions had connectins with politics, specifically that the Rockefeller family would be removed from the museum board of trustees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

 

 

  Michael Asher, Jean Antoine Houden's George Washinton, 1979

 

The next work I selected "Jean Antoine Houden's George Washinton, 1979" by Michael Asher. Michael focused on how Institutional Critique shows how "site" of an artwork determines the "meaning" of that work. He explored this by moving a bronze replica of Jean-Antoine Houdon’s George Washington from its prominent position outside the Art Institute of Chicago to an eighteenth century display room inside the museum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                 

 

 

 

       Fred Wilson, Metalwork 1793-1880, 1992

 

The last artwork that I selected "Metalwork" 1793-1880, 1992 by Fred Wilson. Fred Wilson curated an exhibition at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore that revealed the racial and class prejudices shown in that museum.

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Current

I decided on the first current: Official, Institutionalized Contemporary Art.“Traditional sense of being a marked change in the continuing practice of art in some significant place that emerges, takes a shape that attracts others to work within its terms and to elaborate them, prevails for a time, and comes to an end.” I like this quote from our reading because it really hits what institutional critique is targeting. Institutuional critique artists display and practice their work in a significant place to spread their message. Most of these significant places are ironically in museums and galleries. This arrtacts others to explore institutional critique and show their responses. Their goal is to get their messages across to the public and to the important indiviuals who have power in art institutions to change.This was exemplified in the reading when institutions of modern art were exploited to reign in the impacts of contemporaneity on and renovate them known as Remodernism.’