My critique examines the premises of the institutional mindset of “audience” and moves to posit ways to engage audiences that can reshape our perception of the public’s relationship to contemporary art. A very sizeable portion of the audience for documenta, for instance, is comprised of art professionals and others of various educational backgrounds. I am also interested in developing a consciousness of a wider public that may not be have ever gone to museum (and may not have the opportunity or inclination to go in the future) and that may not have formal education (or much of it), but which is a valid audience for contemporary art and ideas. My interest arises from the class implications of the prevailing concept of the “art audience” that is so embedded in our practice and which, I find to be especially ironic given the theoretical bases for the content of many works of art today. A different conception of audience is called for.

For about ten years, I have tested the concept of audience—meeting people outside the art world face-to-face—by shifting the location of the exhibition to meaningful local contexts and closing up, literally, the distance between the art and the audience. These “new,” maybe temporary art audiences were not attracted because they possessed art knowledge, but they were knowledgeable about the site the exhibition occupied and sophisticated in their perceptions of the issues and social politics of place. They were open to art, too, and anxious for what it could bring to their discourses.

To me, it is important to think about what the audience knows, rather than subscribing to a deficiency model, that is: non-art world audiences are lacking, their constituencies are empty vessels which we need to fill up with art history and art criticism information. I believe we can also learn from these audiences and, by listening to them, find out what they can contribute to, even at times surpassing, our own narrative of the work of art. By taking the institution out of the art equation, I have been freed to reconsider the relationship of artist and audience. Now, after a decade of such practice, I might say that the kind of work I do—outside of museum institutions— is not alternative or anti-institutional but rather honors the contexts and issues from which much contemporary work stems. As art has took up questions of identity and power, the framework for art—by necessity—became society itself. It was only natural.

This brings us to questions of democracy. When the framework of an exhibition is built upon respect for the individual audience member and opens up a level of participation for others, then the public’s engagement of art moves to a level of dialogue. This can exist on a collective level, too, among a community of concern. The art world is one such community, one of many. But other communities can find a stake in the meaning of art and we, as members of multiple communities, can find multiple meanings in art. I feel it is my task as a curator to create openings into art that best articulate its meanings to people from different backgrounds, building relationships through the exhibition that have deep grounding that is neither entertainment nor education--each of which is based on a hierarchical structure (money and a proscribed knowledge, respectively).

So, what does this mean for community and place? What does this mean for the institutions of art? What does this mean for art making? In the very asking, we find that not only the audience has shifted but we have, too. Such dialogue acknowledges that in the reception to the work of art, we all have something to learn: artist, curator, institution, and audience members. And from this dialogue with the audience, we, as curators, are moved to be self-critical and more reflective in our own practice. So, we’re not just arbiters of quality and presenters, animating visual and conceptual terrains from a position of control and knowing. When the exhibition opens, the story is still not fully written; there is another part of the art equation: the audience. How well we listen to the audience, encouraging other receptions and perceptions, the more we will hear and the greater the work of art will resound.