Biennial Heuristics
I like museums. I'm glad they exist, and I hope they continue existing, despite the numerous ways that they are obviously "problematic." If we are going to live in a society—lots of people who say they do clearly don't actually want to, but that's another conversation—then it's good to have a place to go look at art. The places that people visit to look at art should improve over time in step with the constantly-revised, normatively-established goals and needs of their visitors.
Let's briefly review the roles of galleries and museums, the two main places people go to look at art..
| Museum | Gallery |
|---|---|
| Bigger narratives, aspiring toward something like "universality." | Smaller narratives reflecting more localized tastes, artistic tendencies, and business models. Nobody expects a gallery show to exhaustively survey national or global art, or even the entirety of a specific period/movement (unless the gallery for some reason claims it will do so). |
| Public sphere: museums are described as a public good, preserving historical memory, etc. despite having boards full of arms dealers and being full of imperial loot and the like. They can in fact be a public good to a certain, limited extent, because it is good to look at art in a context that even slightly meets the conditions described in the first paragraph above, even if it happens to be in a compromised, deeply-flawed institution. DYOR. Most institutions considered to be "public goods'' are compromised. Lukacs wrote about reification in 1923, 101 years ago. Another way of saying this is simply: art can be good, and museums can be a decent enough place to see it, all things considered. Until there are less flawed institutions, we have to continually improve the ones that we have, or abolish them completely when it is deserved. | Private sphere: maybe some annoying young people with rich parents get together and decide they want to party at openings, or maybe somebody worked incredibly hard because they believe in art so much, taking out a loan to open a gallery; either way, no gallery is trying to be for everybody, they are supposed to reflect the specific tastes/business models of their owners/artists/collectors and the specific values of the gallery's community. There are galleries that show good work and there are galleries that show bad work; their overtly privatized nature makes them less complicated than museums. |
There is obviously cross-contamination between these two columns, but the noted typological differences are useful as general heuristics.
Now that we know what a museum is, we might ask, what is a biennial? Well, it is a large-scale international survey show of contemporary art that recurs every two years.
What is the point of a biennial? A biennial isn't the same thing as a private art fair, such as Frieze. It is something different. A biennial is supposed to have purpose, or at least a vision of some kind. It is supposed to meaningfully document the international contemporary art of the last two years, identifying meaningful trends, themes, and points of view. Documenta is like a biennial, and not like a private art fair, but it happens every five years. Even a cursory review of 20th century art history will demonstrate the importance of Documenta to the iteration of what we know as "contemporary art." There have been other important biennials, too. The 1993 Whitney biennial seems to have been pretty important, for example.
We might say that, according to art historical memory, the large-scale international survey show of contemporary art that recurs every two (or five) years has played an important role in art history.
This piece isn't about biennials in general, though. It's about the Whitney biennial.
I'm not going to go to the Whitney biennial this year, and I didn't go to the last one. I don't really remember how I felt about the one before that, although I remember getting a lot out of the Charity Porpentine Heartscape work in it, I think that may have been the only piece I really spent any time with.
It seems obvious that the Whitney is the worst major museum in New York. It is a cross between a distasteful mansion, the MSNBC TV channel, and an upscale mall like The Grove in Los Angeles. The permanent collection is significantly worse than its competitors'. It overtly markets itself to credulous tourists. Being there feels like being at a parent-teacher conference, somehow. And yet, I've seen shows that I liked at the Whitney. I've gone to talks that were good at the Whitney. I've always meant to listen to the recordings of Cecil Taylor improvising at the Whitney. Once an institution reaches a certain size, and exists for long enough, it's bound to contain multitudes.
What's my problem, then? Well, if you review the curatorial statements of the current and previous biennials, they both communicate the following points: The work included in the show tackles the world's problems The experience of art has the power to be politically transformative
As far as point A is concerned, I generally reject the suggestion that professional curators in the highest echelons of today's art world have high-level moral, sociotechnical, or political expertise, point blank. It's simply not in the job description. They should be interested in those things, sure, but I don't know a single person who considers the art world's highest-paid museum curators to be experts on these topics. Curators ought to be good at carefully and methodically asking very focused questions, an approach that is unfortunately not particularly compatible with the blockbuster museum show format.
Is anybody really looking to the Whitney Museum to offer sweeping analysis of the last two years of national history? Is anyone credulous enough to take the curators' stated intent of political transformation completely seriously when it literally includes the Bulgari, Sotheby's, and Hyundai logos? Unfortunately, the answer might be yes.
Of course there can still be good art in the biennial, despite this confusing framing. It also seems pointless to blame artists for participating. In the event that one of the participating artists makes good art, then it is good for them to participate, because it is good for their career, and it's not like there are any non-compromised ways to have a career in art.
Now, moving to point B, I'd ask if anybody is really going to have their mind changed in a mall. Is this really a situation where somebody might be transformed into a "better" political subject? What does this even mean? "Better" according to whom? Hyundai? Warren Kanders?
Maybe that's ungenerous. I imagine that on some level it is possible that a viewer could skeptically make their way through this exhibition and still have some kind of limited, powerful experience according to some meaningful standard. I don't know. I haven't been, like I said.