Art Observation 2019

Art Observation 2019





Tate has announced that it will only show women artists in its permanent exhibition for the period of one year. Everyone is so thrilled and excited about it. I can't get excited. Actually, it makes me tired. The same sales trick was put on by Saatchi Gallery with its "all-female exhibition" Champagne Life in 2016. It's a marketing strategy that looks great on the surface but changes nothing structurally really. Just the good old ways of putting women in a box. 

Talking about institutions and their wish to change power, look also at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. In 2018 it had a huge show called Hello World (weak title, I know) that tackled diversity in the own collection (which has like zero diversity). Shipping art works from India under huge costs, etc, was what "globality" in a museum seemed to be all about. Apparently, Hamburger Bahnhof never heard about diaspora in its own city Berlin, nor did it try to change anything structurally about diversity in the ways the museum itself functions. At the moment, there is a show with a long title, which involves artists from Brazil, Cameroon, China, Colombia, France, Hungary, Poland, and Senegal, and the press text announces proudly they all have been invited by German artist Antje Majewski to show with her. Same old ...., I think.

It reminds of the introduction of Udo Kittelmann, director of the Stately Museums in Berlin, to the exhibition of Andrian Piper in 2017, in which he stated that Adrian Piper wrote him an email asking if he was interested in buying and showing her work The Probable Trust Registry. Interesting transparency, I thought, normally Kittelmann doesn't let us know what enters his mail box. Also, Kittelmann found it funny to let the visitor know that Piper had told him that the art work was much cheaper than for instance a Jeff Koons. 

I don't find that funny, I find it sad. 
I also find the above pictured article in Sleek Magazine sad.



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