OPEN SPACE

………………………………. "Only dull and powerless artists defend their art by reference to sincerity" —Kazimir Malevich……………………………………..

[Stephanie Pau, SFMOMA manager of interpretation, sifted through many hundreds of paper bits and pieces to put together a mini-retrospective of the museum's paper-trail history since 1935, on view now in our visitor education center.]

A few weeks ago, a new exhibition opened at the Koret Visitor Education Center, located on the second floor of the museum. It’s called Dispatches from the Archives, and I’ve organized it as part of the 75th anniversary suite of exhibitions. Dispatches is as much a reflection on as it is a celebration of SFMOMA’s rich and varied history, from its opening on Van Ness in 1935 to the present, and highlights some of the treasures that have been unearthed, catalogued, and processed since a Getty Foundation grant enabled the museum to establish an official SFMOMA Archives. For several hours each week from April through July, I met with archivist Peggy Tran-Le down in the SFMOMA Library. She patiently brought me box after box of ephemera from the past eight decades of the museum’s printed history—exhibition posters, mailings, publications, and design objects.

These weekly forays into the archives reminded me of my past life as an archaeologist, hours sifting through evidence left by those who came before me, and I was all the while cognizant of the fact that history makes itself every day—certainly at an institution as busy as this one. It was mind-boggling to think of how much stuff we create, and the myriad stories revealed (and yet so obscured) by each individual piece of ephemera I came across. There were so many things I wanted to include, but alas, our Education Center has only so much space on its walls. So I cut off the checklist at seventy-five objects from the museum’s history.

I chose to include things not just for their aesthetic qualities but for the stories they told—of the artists, projects, and innovative programs SFMOMA has hosted from its inception. And what a variety of things I came across—from stunning poster designs by Arnold Fujita, Barbara Stauffacher, Martin Venezky, and other Bay Area graphic designers (including the unsung heroes of our in-house design team); to the whimsical (artist-designed belt buckle for a 1975 Artists’ Soap Box Derby); to the bizarre but tasty (chocolate bars designed by Tibor Kalman for his 1999 retrospective).

SFMA Artist’s Soap Box Derby, Commemorative Belt Buckle, 1975; brass; designed by Don Rich

Tibor (The Perversely Optimistic Candy Treat), 1999; chocolate bars; designed by Tibor Kalman, M&Co

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Of the dozen or so art blogs I know of, Vvork is the one I most frequently recommend and regularly visit. It has become a familiar resource, a routine stop for informal research. Vvork is curated/edited by a team of four (spread across three cities) who “think of the site as an exhibition space…updated daily.” It mimics a physical  exhibition venue in that it collects and displays artworks accompanied only by title, year, artist (like labels in a gallery) and a link to related websites for additional/interpretive text about the artist. It’s different from a gallery exhibition in that there is no fixed ending or spatial limits, only a series of beginnings with entries that stretch back into time. “A logical consequence of this claim [that Vvork is an exhibition space rather than a blog] is that the artworks shown are not reproductions but legitimate experiences.” (see Malraux’s Museum Without Walls via Crimp)

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As the first artist-in-residence at the San Francisco GLBT Historical Society, EG Crichton adopted the role of a matchmaker of sorts.  After spending hours researching in the archives she had the idea to personally match a living person with a dead person’s archive, extending a unique invitation to ten people to create a response to the experience of exploring a stranger’s life through what they have left behind.  Crichton’s matchmaking was largely intuitive and sometimes inspired by shared demographics. The results of this matchmaking is a dynamic and comprehensive exhibition entitled Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archive that includes both the contents of the archive itself, as well the creative responses to them. The exhibition features visual artists, musicians, poets, and performers including  Elliot Anderson, Dominika Bednarska, Troy Boyd, Luciano Chessa, Crow Cianciola, Lauren Crux, Bill Domonkos, Tirza Latimer, Maya Manvi, Camille Norton, Gabriella Ripley-Phipps, and Tina Takemoto. From cardboard boxes filled with journals, articles of clothing, ephemera, films, letters, and photographs emerged sculptures, poetry, performances, films, letters, and music.

The opening night featured three performances including a poem written by Camille Norton and inspired by the archive of Nancy Stockwell, an aria composed by Luciano Chessa for his match, Larry DeCaesar and the monologue “Dinosaurs & Haircuts” by Lauren Crux.  Crux’s performance was inspired by her experience sifting through the archive of Janny Mac Harg, a San Francisco songwriter, cabaret singer, and political activist. Crux discussed the way in which the archive reflected to her her own role as a lesbian in the latter half of her life while humorously and poignantly interrogating the archive itself: “I suppose that eventually we are all only our artifacts but why does this bother me so much? It’s not death I am afraid of. Like most of us, I hope to have a good death, to go out quickly or gently during sleep without much pain. So, why does the idea of archives bother me so much? Oh, it’s the damn cardboard boxes.”

As I sat tucked in the last row of fold-out chairs in the back corner of the crowded room, listening to Crux’s concern about preservation and the inevitability of one’s life being reduced to a collection of objects stored in a box marked “Acid Free,” I realized that I was one of the youngest visitors at the GLBT Historical Society. There was something affirming about sharing space with an older queer community; a group of people whose own experience of gender and sexuality was informed by a social and political context entirely different than today, people whose struggles and contributions paved the way for today’s generation of queer artists and activists. In this moment the title of this exhibition was more than just relevant, it was visible.

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[New contributors! The Archivists ]

It was a tense moment in the comment box last week, but the SFMOMA blog seems to have weathered the storm. Do let us say that the museum is no stranger to criticism. There is, lingering temptingly in the archives, a story too good to keep to ourselves: the infamous mystery of the “missing” artwork donated in 1972 by the Bay Area Dadaists.

In an attempt to upstage a donation by Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson of paintings by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, the Bay Area Dadaists gave the Museum an “even more lavish gift,” in the form of “Bertha Buffalo” – a bison head with a Dada treatise in its mouth. When Director Gerald Nordland didn’t properly acknowledge the gift, the Bay Area Dadaists sent him this threatening letter:

Along with the letter, the Bay Area Dadaists also sent:

One: A copy of a recent article about the Anderson donation (which apparently left them “Rauschenbergless”).

Two: A letter sent to members of the press (complete with creative spelling) exposing the atrocious actions of the museum…

1. That Mr. Nordland is lieing and is afraid to show our bison head “Bertha Bufallo” in or to the Museum.

2. One of the guards stole the Bufallo from the Museum. Think of the headline that makes (Guard steals Art from Museum).

3. Or the Museum staff misplaced the Bufallo under an ashtray or something, which would be hard to do considering its’ size, but you never know it just might have happened.

And, three: They also included their original statement, describing the Bertha Buffalo gift:

“Just as the whiteman came and slaughtered the bison, for greed and profit forcing them into near extinction, so have the galleries, schools, museums, and art establishment conspired to try to crush the life and force out of the dada spirit. So to the San Francisco Museum of Art we (the bay area dadaists) present Bertha Buffalo a symbol not of our extinction, but of yours.“

Now there’s a critique.

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[ The Archivists at the SFMOMA Archives work to organize and preserve the records of the museum's history, sorting through press clippings, scrapbooks, and letters to find the ideas behind past exhibitions, activites, and events. We'll occasionally treat you to some of our more illustrious findings.]