This e-mail interview with independent curator and Professor Mary Jane Jacob discusses some aspects of long-term public art projects that Ms. Jacob has curated in United States since mid 90´s up until today. Issues discussed include independent curatoring, audiences of public art, success and failure, reception and the (im)possibility of mediating these projects for (the other) audiences.

Paula Toppila (PT): You are well known and respected as the curator of several groundbreaking public art projects in the United States, such as Culture in Action (Chicago, 1991-4) and Conversations in a Castle: Changing Audiences and Contemporary Art  (Atlanta, 1996). Would you like to tell how did you first decided to leave the art institution of the museum, become an independent curator and start working with projects that take place outside the traditional art spaces?

Mary Jane Jacob (MJJ): … long delay in answering your question as I have been occupied for some weeks preparing for the beginning of classes here at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  And in this process of attending to logistics and snatching time for concepts, and thinking that maybe the institution of an art school (that I had thought was different than a museum) was perhaps not so unlike others, not a creative space.  Just having received a close colleague´s new book, I read his introduction that ends with this self-description: “These are the writings of someone who knows full well the importance of institutions but who struggles constantly with the suspicion not yet a belief, that institutionalization is death”.1  And I wonder – me, too?

So your question is timely.  It was fifteen years ago this month that I made the self-proclamation of being an independent curator.   Perhaps paradoxically, each exhibition project that I’ve crafted has been carried through a host institution.  But my work has been on the margins of each and this status is critical, I can say, even powerful and provocative.  Thus, as an independent curator I have been both in the institution [we need to adhere to something to have our actions connect to those of others] and out [commissioned to do an experimental or alternative project for an organization]. At its best, it also became a way for the institution and the people in it to see themselves and to reflect on their own work.  And what is equally significant about this position is that here the institution can imagine itself differently—here in the moment of the making as we can focus collectively on something that aims to embody the very reason for the institution’s existence and others give themselves over to that process.  These special projects, accomplished under the auspices of certain institutions, never turned out to be what the organization originally proposed when inviting me.  They always evolved, purposefully, as we questioned why we were doing this project, revisiting this question consciously and fully engaged in the process – and it was always mandatory to stay open to where this process could lead.  Some observers would call this a risk, but it never was.  I think the idea of risky is a residue of the Modernist desire to keep alive the avant-garde´s dream of innovation as challenging and an affront to the public.  Rather we were involved in something quite timeless – a need for dialogue – striving to maintain our trust (not without relapses and some fears) that the right form would emerge and that by deeply investing together in the process as we moved from our communal unknowingness into knowing, the product would emerge (the artworks and exhibition) and the long passage of this process would be worth it.   

Now I find myself (this phrase appropriately evokes my present sense of detachment) working as an administrator in an art school, while also a professor and still an independent curator.  I thought it would be better to work in an institution populated by artists than curators.  But being inside the institution doesn’t always allow us to be our best selves.  So I am seeking to find ways to talk to my colleagues, perhaps off-campus and, preferably, in their studios, to connect to a creative side in which we can together imagine things differently. And I hear from another long-time colleague, with whom I share a discourse on Public Art, and who recently writes: “My concern is that the art part for the individual artist may be lost when the organizational affiliation is stressed more than the investigation into developing new paradigms. It needs to be more … open for artists to push into new areas and develop new approaches to creating public art. Perhaps another way to say it is that by the time the institution has developed a program, the information has been around and become rather mundane.”

So, I think we arrive at your next question.

PT: One aspect that appeals to me in new public art is that it makes the  process of making the work visible to larger audiences if we compare it to art works normally  shown in art museums. The process of making the work might happen in collaboration with local people or even with a targeted collaborator-audience, so the process is not only made visible but the participants can actually affect on the process i.e., the art work. What have been your experiences and challenges as a curator (for example with Culture in Action in Chicago) in working this way and mediating these works to art professionals and other audiences?

MJJ: Actually, coming in touch with the public has been the most exciting, important, at times demanding, part of this work.  At first, I thought we needed to locate the issues of the community in and around which a work was to be created (their needs, their stories that needed to be told, for instance) and then we could translate them into art so that others might know, too.  In this, I am speaking for myself and the artists with whom I work intimately to bring about their projects, so…we also thought we might solicit their ideas (say, about what they would like to see happen in their town).  But the notion of permission arose and we needed to ask the audience, essentially: Can we work with you? Can we work in your spaces?  In these communications, the underlying thread in the process needed to be respect. 

The most critical  thing is to make time in the process to share: to reflect with others on the simple evidences and complex patterns of our everyday lives to share by letting the loose ends of a process-yet-unformed be exposed.  And in this way, people can ingest in bite-size pieces aspects of the eventual, often multi-layered work, spend more time with it, and in the end remember the taste of the creative process and that is exhilarating!  Then, their experiences of participating in the process of a work’s actual becoming can also affect artists and shape of the eventual works.  But for that to happen, it is up to artists to listen carefully to the public that is the motivation of the work, and this brings us back to the word respect and to the practice of sharing: artists need to respect the voices of others and, absorbing them over time, and translate them through their own artistic processes. 

So, it is challenging.  The artist (and curator) has to be vulnerable: open to the unexpected, to others’ ideas and responses, and to making the imperfect stages of their own work known to others.  At the same time, it is invigorating because it reaffirms that others outside the art world, the so-called public, truly are interested in art. 

We just have to leave the door open.  In the case of Culture in Action, there were many vocal critics who were outraged and found reprehensible the claim that community members could have a role in a work of art because they existed outside the professional boundaries of art and, thus, were deemed unqualified.  I love the reactions and exchanges with the public…that is where the real dialogue about art happens! 

Now this kind of interaction doesn't happen with each member of the public; not everyone steps up front-and-center or stakes a claim in the process; it is usually just a very small number of people that connect to the project at first, but I think even these few numbers have a ripple effect and, over time, others find a relationship to the work, too.  I think there might be a lesson here that we can take back into the experience of art in and out of the musuem.  This may sound abstract or ill-defined, but the problem in communicating this invested process to those outside is that it is very personal and real understanding develops over time and by living the experience in real time and in the palpable ways in which we live the process itself. 

PT: A couple of questions arise immediately from this honest and insightful answer:  I believe you had perhaps some personal discussions even deep debates around the discourse of public art during and after Culture in Action.  Now, when we step outside of what was said in the media and consider what actually happened, how people there knew and felt the artists´ projects, I think that you were mapping a new territory of perceiving and receiving contemporary art in a public space. What interests me is: how was the reception of the project documented, beyond media coverage, for local participants as related to their experience?  Or perhaps there are living evidences of the project still in Chicago?

MJJ: The media was pretty damning: first and foremost around whether it was “art.”  This kind of public art became circumspect because of its association with the members of the public who were the subject, whose issues and concerns were foregrounded, and who were key constituents or collaborators.  Daily newspapers interviewed “the man-on-the-street,” everyman, anyone; so they spoke to participants and were comfortable to tell their stories and make some connection to art; they were open to art being something different and excited it could be so directly a part of the lives of citizens in the city.  These journalists had less preconceptions about what was art. 

But art critics really only talk to art people.  So, critics not only kept to themselves and judged works according to their own art histories, but also they projected onto the public their sense of who the public is and how the un-art-educated public would react…without ever spending time with people they did not know, hence the public.  (Art critics look at objects and make assessments; they do not talk to viewers.  They maintained this convention of not talking to the public, even though the mode of art had radically changed and the public was an essential part of the making of each work.)  The art press also has preconceptions about the experience of art.  I discovered that the art world has quite a narrow idea of who is the audience for contemporary art.  [This idea actually became the pivotal question that artists and I took up in my next public art program: Conversations at The Castle: Changing Audiences for Contemporary Art in Atlanta.]  I was bothered by the dismissive attitude of our art world in thinking that the public doesn’t fit in.  Unfortunately, the art press has the voice in the art field; their assessments linger and serve to define the ways things are understood in contemporary art history.  I was motivated to break this down because I knew, firsthand, that for many people (whose names are not remembered in art annals), their involvement in making or viewing these art projects was life-changing…and there are always even more who we do not know about, in fact, people (in and out of the art world) still write me about their experience today, ten years later.  Some projects lived on, such as Inigo Manglano-Ovalle’s Televecindario undertaken with local teenagers around issues of their representation in the media and culture; it  was transformed into an organization called Street-Level Youth Media that today serves 1100 students from disadvantaged backgrounds each year.  Maybe it is only with time that we really know about experience—ours and that of others. 

Now the arena of public art has broadened and many embrace working in direct contact with those who are not artists.  But at the time the works we created for Culture in Action developed out of a deep and urgent searching, looking at questions that lay at the intersection of art-audiences-and the artwork.  We weren’t looking for people to tell us what their problem in life was so we could make an art work about it or try to remedy it with art.  Our questions were about the value of art and the art experience.  And while some works connected to social questions and aspects of the human predicament, taking on the reality of the public and fusing with life’s processes, this was a path or way of making art that emerged as we went deeper into these questions.  Now that this path has been articulated, some artists adopt it as a style, proceeding deductively rather than inductively.  In order for art to have vitality and quality, relevance and endurance, art always has to take up questions in thoughtful ways—and in ways that are new to us even if the questions are eternal. 

PT: It is enlightening to read what you say about practical side of the process, the research made on the issues in-between the audience and art work, how the way of working emerged when doing it and that it was not direct causality-seeking process of problem and solution. Socially engaged or community artists are often criticized for this, that they try to become social workers, even if the artists themselves are very much against this idea and have other interests and point of departure. Perhaps this has to do with problem of mediating the process to the other audiences you talked about earlier?

Another question is that, in the context of socially engaged public art, how would you define success? Or failure?  Earlier you mentioned that you don’t actually find working in the field of public art more risky as one could suppose, but that you have found a way of working that is a more elaborated process and team work where one has to concentrate on maintaining openness, to stay attentive, question oneself constantly. I’m interested in this dichotomy of failure and success, because success is by nature visible, failure is often hidden, covered, not talked about, but still there. I’m interested in your relationship and thoughts on this.

MJ: Well, sure, we hide the parts that didn’t go so smoothly and the narratives we construct—our retelling of the story—takes on its own life that highlights what we thought worked, the parts that we like to remember most.  The acknowledgment of successes and failures are subject to our own perspectives and recollections. So that is one way in which we could talk about success and failure.

Or we could be scientific and look at the effects on individuals: collaborators and public supporters, visitors and passersby, artists and many others, even funding agencies.   But time and resources in the arts rarely allow for such an analysis, and that would be laborious to be sure.  So we depend on anecdotal, incidental recountings for bits of information.  Over time we learn of an eventual success because works have a real transformative role…or is it that after time has passed, it is the positive aspects that find their way back to us?  But I cannot answer your question of success and failure on this level of truth.  

Yet there is another way in which we can consider success and failure which has to do with (a) the artist’s or the art work’s intent; and (b) how wide is our frame of consideration. 

In the first way, to know how well something is accomplished, we have to know what is its aim.  By this I don’t mean a work’s surface description but its deeper reason for being (such as, to contribute to the health of a community or to social good or to the beauty of a place; to touch people, to change them, to have a positive effect on the way they feel) rather than immediate goals (like, to have a certain size audience, to teach children to read, or to convince people that contemporary art is great).  The aims of a work of art can be accomplished in many different ways and work that looks quite unusual and un-artful (as some of the Culture in Action projects did at the time) can share the same aims as art of the past.  Moreover, the effects of a work that is experienced by a small group of  people can spread to others, a whole community might have changed, thus achieving the intent of the work and making it a success.  But we do not often know this chain of effects and how the experience if art enters and is transformed in the lives of its primary and subsequent publics.  So, we have to trust that art and the questions of art matter…knowing from our own experiences that it can…and trust that a work of art can be a success even if we cannot verify it. 

In the second way, a project needs to be assessed within a very wide frame of reference.  A work of art that is not embraced by the art world, may a beacon for townspeople or meaningful for professionals in another field.  A work may be temporary in its physical manifestation, but it may live on as an image or idea or dream; it may have been picked up by others and sparked an idea in far-off places, leading them to follow their own imaginations of what art can be and how it can relate to their lives.  I take our conversation—across the email and across continents—to be a point of success for the projects I helped engender but you take the time to ask about them…so I thank you.  I would add one more thing: this is only possible because our frame is wide in regard to what art can be, what an exhibition can be, what artists can do, who is the public for contemporary art, and what art can mean in the everyday.

PT: Can meaningful, thoughtful public art be made by using other methods than the elaborated way that you have developed and that has now, as you say, become a trend in making public art projects in the United States and is it possible to gain new audiences without directly collaborating with them in long-term? We have seen some examples of very differently realised public art projects in Kuopio, Finland where a young festival called ANTI dedicated to produce works in public space takes place. Perhaps you would like to reflect your thoughts on those projects.

MJJ: I hope so!  I must say, as a seminar participant, I was stunned last month to be arriving for the first time in Kuopio at the same moment as some of the artists!  It could have been a very cavalier scenario, but over the four days of the festival I found not only could one have a full and absorbing—total—experience (because, in fact, it was possible to be a part of the whole festival), but also a few of the works were deeply touching.  Those that touched me the most had a commonality: the artists worked from their own experience in another place or culture, yet their art translated with ease to another context because they each were insightful about human emotions, allowing us to experience them in our own time and place.  And, maybe, too, it was because these works were disarming in their engagement, drawing us in with their humor and even absurdity.  So Koji Takamiya’s Otama Garden was delightful at the same time it was forlorn as an evocative of childhood fantasy.  Jennifer Nelson and Glen Redpath’s marathon through Prisma hypermarket was fabulous: installations of food and other stuff mounting in the aisles, as did viewers who abandoned for a time their shopping.  And who would have thought crowds of people would gather in the rain and bond to collectively cheer on spider plants as they “raced” down a small inclined street staged by Denise Ziegler? 

In the early 1990s projects that emerged from short-term visits were damned by U.S. critics as “parachuting,” gestures of exploitative occupation.  But I think that assessment was too blunt, too mathematical an equation (days in-residence equal important of project).  ANTI is truly a gift to the city and I hope in years to come it can continue to intertwine audiences from different walks of life into the experience.  It can also benefit from some projects that take root in the place over time—just as I can now imagine adopting a strategy of  immediate engagement of site.  There is more than one way.   

1 From Michael Brenson, Acts of Engagement: Writings on Art, Criticism and Institutions, 1993-2002 (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004), 18.