IN THEIR ARTICLE IN THIS VOLUME, Jane Livingston and John Beardsley [SEE DOCUMENT V.1.6] give a vivid account, from a curator’s point of view, of the organization, philosophy, and analysis of the exhibition Hispanic Art in the United States: Thirty Contemporary Painters and Sculptors. I agree with their analysis and would like to comment further on their carefully worded description of the “silent criticism” from professionals within the art establishment. The lesson that is clearest in my mind—as described by Livingston and Beardsley—is that those of us who care about making the minority arts a vital part of mainstream museum programs must work together. When curators, art critics, college professors, and museum directors debate about exhibition format or style, we must remember that we are trying to improve our efforts, raise our standards, and make our message clearer to a larger audience. The enemy is not within our group but beyond the debating arena. Apathy and disregard among the general public and professionals toward minority art, particularly when that art is placed in the general art museum environment, must be changed to cooperation and understanding. We must keep that ultimate goal in mind as we explore this complex subject.
My duty here is to give the museum director’s point of view. As director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which organized Hispanic Art in the United States, assumed financial risks, and raised the funds, I was impressed by how difficult this project was. When I gave the curators a mandate to find the best art, I had no idea of the problems that would follow.
Despite the fact that many people “know” about contemporary Hispanic art, we found not a single individual who had both strong curatorial credentials and a catholic viewpoint on the subject. This meant that the curators—Livingston and Beardsley—had to carry out in-depth, primary research on a national scale; and they had to do it quickly enough so that the word contemporary in the exhibition’s title retained its meaning. If the ARCO Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation had not stepped in at the research stage of this project, the exhibition would not have been possible. The reason: basic research is expensive. Since contemporary Hispanic art is not studied in many universities or reviewed in professional or mass-circulation periodicals, information about the artists and their works is not coherent or easy to locate. The curators had to spend enormous amounts of time assembling the kind of fundamental information that is readily available for the traditional art historical disciplines in any library. Because contemporary minority art, by virtue of its recency and subject, has not been researched, one must prepare to undertake a massive effort if one wants to do the job well.
Gathering the information and putting it in a narrative form may be sufficient for the art historian, but it is only the start for a curator. These curators were looking for the “best.” There were few art dealers who could advise and guide them in this process; many Hispanic arts organizations had local or regional missions, and their recommendations had to be translated to a national level. A process as simple as gathering slides for comparison became a complex project. Every step along the path that led to selecting the artists and the artworks was difficult. There were no well-illustrated catalogues raisonnés or university slide libraries of Hispanic art. The curators often went back two or three times to view an artist’s work. Comparing and sorting art for an exhibition of contemporary minority art is expensive and time consuming.
Within the contexts of basic research and looking for great works of art, this project, like all large contemporary exhibitions, was the topic of endless discussion and debate. In the field of contemporary art, everyone has an expert opinion. Add to this the ethnic element. Some people debated that non-Hispanics had no right to curate a Hispanic exhibition, and others complained that one Hispanic group was being favored over another, and some leaders in Hispanic arts organizations fought against the exhibition because they felt that the art and artists were being taken from the Hispanic organization’s sphere of influence. In organizing this kind of exhibition, an enormous amount of time must be spent in communication with the minority establishments. Silence can be misinterpreted and can lead to fear, mistrust, and malicious, destructive rumors. An efficient communication system will not eliminate all these evils, but it helps to create a foundation of understanding that is essential in an exhibition of this kind. This is a significant difference from most of the art exhibitions that I have worked on during my twenty-year museum career.
My goal in directing this project was to help broaden the programming in mainstream art museums and to begin a long-term commitment to bringing the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, closer to the diverse Hispanic communities that make up the city’s population. This latter goal is in concert with the belief broadly shared among art museums that they must provide educational and community service to all constituents. During the time that the exhibition was in Houston, there were approximately 150,000 visitors. Approximately thirty percent were Hispanic, based on sample audience surveys. There were major symposia, film festivals, artists’ and writers’ book festivals, concerts, family days, tours in Spanish and English, and a host of other activities in Houston during the run of the exhibition. A special committee of fifty Hispanic community leaders helped the museum with outreach and publicity. When the exhibition closed in Houston this committee remained with the museum, helping the Education Department to recruit Hispanic docents and to bring general art education into the Hispanic communities via church groups, schools, and other organizations. Moreover, the museum was introduced to numerous Hispanic businesses and organizations that now work with and for the museum on a regular basis. In short, the exhibition was a small but important step forward in bringing the general art museum and the Hispanic peoples of Houston closer together.
In another sense, the exhibition went against the tide of today’s art museums. Most directors I know believe that great museums must specialize. In this sense, adding a new kind of exhibition to the program can be seen as confusing an institution’s identity and taking funds away from an older, dedicated purpose. This exhibition is a good example. Approximately one-half of the cost of the exhibition was paid out of the operating budgets of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the other five museums on the tour. The other half came from grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the ARCO Foundation, the AT&T Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
In the long run, the barrier to placing minority arts in the general art museum may be part of a much larger issue. Despite the enormous success of art museums in the United States during the last two decades, the fact remains that among the 150 top museums all but a handful are undercapitalized. Look closely at their budgets and you will see that few of our museums have the funds needed to carry out basic research or to expand into new program areas. For more and more institutions an overwhelming effort is being put into raising funds and earning income—not to create massive expansion programs, but to remain effective at present levels. Also, the traditional funding mechanisms for eleemosynary institutions are being altered gradually, making program innovation and expansion even more difficult. First, the budgets of the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities have remained relatively flat in the last eight years, losing ground to inflation. The incentives for philanthropy in the private, corporate, and foundation sectors have been reduced and in some cases eliminated by changes in the Internal Revenue Code. By reducing federal funding for the arts and eliminating incentives, the federal government has forced, and even encouraged, art museums to earn a higher percentage of their incomes. I have argued elsewhere that this pressure has tended to make art museums and other nonprofit institutions act like commercial or profit-oriented entities. This pressure to earn revenue has many ramifications for minority arts. Whether anyone is willing to say it or not, the question museum directors must ask themselves is simple: Can the large, established art museum afford minority art exhibitions? Can the cost be offset by income? If a director does not ask that question, then he or she should look for another job.
The challenge for those of us who are dedicated to placing high quality minority exhibitions in the broad context of general art museums is to find a way to make these projects a part of “normal” operations. In Houston there was concern that attendance would be low for an exhibition of Hispanic art. As I have said, the result was nearly 150,000 visitors, which is considered very good by Houston standards. A special public relations plan, aimed at the major Hispanic neighborhoods and carried out by a Hispanic firm, was a huge success. In addition, while the exhibition was open in Houston, two other popular exhibitions were on view: Drawings by Holbein from the Court of Henry VIII and The Quest for Eternity, a major exhibition of Chinese tomb sculptures including life-size soldiers and horses from Xian. Hispanic Art in the United States benefited from the crossover attendance stimulated by these two great exhibitions. In addition, the visitors attracted by Hispanic art in the United States were treated to great works of art from other cultures that may not have interested them initially.
I feel strongly about the role of general art museums in the presentation of minority exhibitions because in my experience, while minorities appreciate exhibitions dedicated to their unique art forms, people do not want a steady diet of their own work. The message that the Museum of Fine Arts received was loud and clear: make the broad range of fine art understandable and accessible to minorities.
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In exhibiting minority artists in the same manner as Italian Renaissance artists or French Impressionists, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, also addressed another controversial issue: How much interpretive information should be provided and how should it be presented? In our ongoing programs related to the permanent collection, we follow a fairly rigid philosophy. Exhibition labels are kept to a minimal size to encourage visitors to focus on the works of art themselves. We do not believe in installations that try to place art in context by installing large reproductions or long labels that “explain” the art.
This approach is balanced by our Education Department, which aggressively provides visitors with tours, pamphlets, catalogues, films, teacher-student packets, and other pedagogical tools. This translates into the belief that a minority artwork should be able to stand alone apart from its cultural context, if you will—just the way a panel painting from a Renaissance predella, for example, may hang alone, out of context, in a museum. In our philosophy, the context is supplied in educational materials.
I mention this because in doing this exhibition I found an attitude that puzzles me to this day: the belief that contemporary minority art needs a kind of anthropological or sociological interpretation. I am not against museums that follow this attitude, but I—as director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston— want the right to exhibit contemporary artists the way I exhibit Old Masters.
In emphasizing the general art museum’s role in presenting minority art, I am not in any way denigrating the institutions that specialize in African American, Hispanic, or any other minority art. On the contrary, the general art museum cannot function in this area without the specialized museum. Unfortunately, in my experience I have not seen much of an established network between the mainstream, and minority spheres. The fault lies on both sides. The director of the general art museum is racing full speed ahead just to keep his or her institution operating at its current level. The directors of minority-oriented institutions, on the other hand, are sometimes fearful that cooperation will somehow hurt their identity and their unique role in their communities. And when it comes to the funding formulas of various government agencies—city, county, state, and federal—I have seen too much confrontation: too often battle lines are being drawn between big and little, general and specialized, minority and establishment. When art museums fight among themselves, everyone who cares about art loses. Our goals must be to enlarge audiences, to increase funding, to work together to rise above the status quo, and to make innovation a popular cause. I say this because my experiences with the Hispanic Art in the United States exhibition as well as other exhibitions of minority art tell me that while bigotry is, to a certain extent, ingrained in our society, the real obstacle to overcome is the lack of exposure and, therefore, the lack of experience of the general public and art history professionals. This simple fact is not sufficiently understood by those of us who want to expand the aesthetic boundaries and definitions of fine art. We expect too much from any single exhibition or book on minority art. These high expectations are the products of frustration and hype. Artists who finally get a chance to be seen by the general public and professionals might have expectations that are unrealistic. Curators who work for years on a minority exhibition find out that it is received like any other exhibition. And that is just the point. Moreover, as museums strive to fund an exhibition and stimulate attendance, they can, easily overemphasize the words first or new and create expectations that are not met. I see each exhibition and book as building blocks, parts of a large edifice that includes academic, critical, and commercial elements as well. All are needed to establish and sustain any vital art form in our society. I hope we will arrive at a point where the minority exhibition will be received with the same thoughtful review process that serious Old Master exhibitions receive, with the same potential commercialism, and with the same in-depth study. Those will be the ultimate signs of acceptance.