For the occasion of the opening of the new Walker Art Center's exhibition, I've interviewed Vincenzo de Bellis who is Curator of Visual Arts at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis since 2016, and has been recently appointed Associate Director of Programs.
The exhibition "Illusion Brought Me Here" is Mario García Torres's first US survey and highlights the artist as both researcher and storyteller, exploring the impulses that produce artistic thought. In this interview de Bellis also shared his thoughts on the artists selected to represent Italy at the upcoming Venice Biennale.
Editorial note: The interview took place mid October, before the recent annoucement of Mary Ceruti as New Executive Director of the Walker Art Center from end of January 2019.
Mara Sartore: You were recently appointed Associate Director of Programs at the Walker Art Center, what does this new task entail and how have these first two years at the Art Center played out?
Vincenzo de Bellis: A whole lot more of hassle! Jokes aside, I arrived at a time of profound change for the United States, just three months before Trump was elected. The Museum was going through a moment of change, it was a difficult period, but at the end of the day I am very very happy with how things are going today. The Walker Art Center is an extraordinary museum with great history and a great staff and if it had not given me so much stimuli I probably would have given up.
My first project at the Walker was the Jimmie Durham exhibition "At the Center of the World" (2017), it was a pitstop for the exhibition originally produced by the Hammer Museum. "At the Center of the World" arrived at the Walker after the reopening of Museum's Sculpture Garden in June 2017. Among the sculptures on display was the Sam Durant Scaffold, a large scaffold that represents the massacre of 38 Native Americans one by one, Dakota precisely, which occurred in 1862 in Mankato, a town 80 miles from Minneapolis. This sculpture sparked a harsh reaction amongst the Dakota community, to the point that it was removed during a ceremony. The exhibition by Jimmie Durham (in fact the first retrospective dedicated to him in American museums) opened three weeks later. Jimmie is considered by us Europeans as the icon of Native American artists, but for Native Americans this is not the case, because Jimmie has simply refused to provide evidence of his Cherokee origin and has never wanted to undergo the bureaucratic procedure imposed by American administration. A very complex story where many people have very precise positions, which are not easy to navigate through and which go way over the art itself. When the Museum presented his retrospective, huge controversy erupted once again.
So this was my tumultuous debut at the Walker. Today the museum is in great health. We re-opened the Sculpture Garden after a major re-design and new big acquisitions, we successfully completed a big capital campaign. More importantly we have had great Walker-organized and co-organized exhibitions such as Merce Cunningham: Common Time; Nairy Baghramian: Deformation Professionelle; Allen Ruppersberg: Intellectual Property 1968-2018 and Siah Armajani: Follow this Line. Also we have already planned ahead of us and have a very strong program for the years to come of both major group and solo exhibitions as well as more emerging artists projects.
Image on top: Vincenzo de Bellis © Bobby Rogers, Courtesy Walker Art Center
Read the full interview on My Art Guides.
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