The Art of Installation with Amy Sillman and Donna De Salvo

I'm Amy Solman and I'm a painter and an artist and sometimes I curate shows and do other things. I'm Donna DeSalvo and I'm a senior adjunct curator at the Dia Art Foundation. From David's Werner, this is Dialogues, a podcast about artists and the way they think. The feeling of meaning being released into the room is euphoric because it means that you've wronged the object with your hands and squeezed out some juice that wasn't prior visible or experienceable because most objects at museums are not usually on view. You know, juxtaposition is a very powerful thing and sometimes you can bring multiple objects together that have never been together and already you have a new narrative that emerges. Sometimes I like to think of it as like a really good cocktail party. I'm Helen Molesworth, your host for this season. Every episode features a conversation with artists, curators, writers, designers, philosophers, filmmakers and musicians about what it means to make things today. Hey everybody, it's Helen. I'm joined today by two colleagues I admire enormously. Artist Amy Silman and curator Donna DeSalvo have long been curious about how little we curators and artists ever actually talk about the brass texts of the how and why of installing our exhibitions. There is no denying the insider-based ball quality of this episode, but my hope is it will give you all a window into this admittedly esoteric but really fascinating topic. I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it. Alright, hey Donna, hey Amy. Hello. So nice to have you both here on the podcast. The conversation I want to have is the conversation about installing. Installing works of art, installing exhibitions, installing permanent collections. And the art world, no, this is like a magical moment. We host curators live for it, artists live for it, and yet we have as a field, there's not a single book dedicated to how to do it. There's not a single class dedicated to how to do it, even given the rise of curatorial studies programs over the past 25 years. There's no strunk and white for like the grammar of install. We often don't even share the same nomenclature from institution to institution. We've all installed in many institutions and we all know that there's a kind of ad hoc language that develops on the floor about what we're doing. That one institution calls a floating wall, a floating wall, another institution calls it a chunk wall. Another institution might call it the Matisse wall because a Matisse painting hung on it 20 years ago and no one's ever forgotten it. We don't even share a language for this activity that I think, and this is one of the reasons I wanted to have the conversation with you guys, helps us make meaning. When we say we want this next to this, we're not, we're trying to convey meaning, feeling, affect, interpretation to a public. And we don't even like share the DNA for how to talk about that. Amy, you did that beautiful show on shape at Mama and you employed a lot of different types of ways of handling and displaying works of art. And Donna, your warhol show at the Whitney was like a master class in you can install them this way. You can install them that way. You can put them in a grid. You can hang them on wallpaper. Like you kind of almost made every move that could be made. And so I just wanted to see what sense we might be able to make of this fundamental act. And maybe what I'll do is I'll just open it with a super general question and we can take the conversation wherever you all want to go. Anyone teach either of you how to install. I mean, I would say I kind of learned by doing I had as an undergraduate, I had a class, a museum studies one year course. And part of it was we had to do an exhibition. And so I think at the time, my professor had very, very basic things like hanging height, that kind of stuff. But I mean, I really learned a through observation and really working with objects, which I think is a really important thing because the reality is how you move something from idea to spatializing. And I've observed this in curatorial studies classes where actually students are not thinking about how their ideas translate to being in a space, which is the best part of actually installation is when it moves into. I also credit having been as an undergraduate also a studio major. And so I really feel that, you know, even though I didn't continue being an artist, but I really feel that working with objects. And my very first job was at moment in the registrar's department. And I used to have to measure works catalog them, do condition reports. And I got to handle like the furlough and teacup, I mean, all kinds of things that was so fantastic. You know, it was like a graduate course, three years of just working, picking things up, having a physical relationship with them. I always credit that in some way as almost breaking down also a bit of a barrier in not thinking about the object in quite a kind of exalted way. It just became real and every day. And so that was an important basis for me to build on. How about you, Amy? For me, probably the first time I really thought about how to hang a show is with you. We hung my show. And I learned a lot from watching you hang a show. But I also went sort of my own direction afterwards and hung shows in very eccentric, non-traditional ways. A lot of gallery shows, especially ones that maybe Americans didn't see because in England and in Germany and in France, I hung a lot of different gallery shows in weird ways. And then when I started hanging curatorial projects in museums, I hung them in funny ways. And entirely I would say as I get older and older and have been invited to do it more, I realized that it's 100% based on how I make a painting. It's not different at all. I make work in a way that is very much about form as the bearer of content, formal consideration, scale, space, line, color, pattern, distance, height, rhythm, sequence, all of that. Back at that time, which was over 10 years ago, I was aware that I didn't know how to do it. I learned a lot from watching you. But then I sort of like you do when you go to school, you get a master class and then you forget all about whatever they told you and just go your own way. And I really think one of the things I know how to do is move edit, make changes and trouble as somebody who just left my studio said, you never leave well enough alone. And I think that my specialty is making things complicated, overly complicated, perhaps, but I like systems and I also like improvisation. And I like to mix those two things together. So I hate the SketchUp model dollhouse, put it where it goes thing to me that is death. I will never do it. I can't do it. I don't want to do it. And all my triumphs have been never following the plan and working with 50% impulse in the space with the saying and 50% some kind of almost linguistic strategy that kind of is like an idea. That's very much something you can say like when I made shape of shape, I said, I want to pretend that the objects are on bleachers as though you're in the ring like the gladiator and the objects are the people watching you. So I think you can say those ideas in language and I think it's great to have concepts and then I think it's great to just like break the bank and go like this looks horrible here. Like we will not be able to keep this here. Let's move this over here. I've always maintained that if you really look carefully at a work of art, it will tell you what to do and I've always operated from that premise. Sometimes when I get really stuck, that's what I'll have to do. I have to step back and really think about the space, think about what's going on in that work and allowing the work itself to be the driver. So part of it is that. And then the other part, which is probably where we differ because I'm coming at it not as an artist, but as a curator, is if you're imparting a narrative in an exhibition, let's say a thematic show, how do you make that apparent to a public on a visual level? I've always felt if it could be done visually, I'll do much less than a text panel. I'd much rather make the case on a visual level than write about it. And the other thing is when you're working with many objects, I mean, going back to the warhol exhibition, I did work with a model. We had like 30 carriers coming in for the installation. So there were a lot of things that had to be thought through. So it worked out quite a bit in that way. However, there was a problem. A section, it just didn't work. And I knew it didn't work. When we say it doesn't work, what is it working? Well, in this case, it was looking at warhol's work of the 50s. And basically, I needed to move into warhol's work of the early 60s. Essentially, I had one too many works, and I had to make a decision to delete it from a lender. So these are the kind of considerations. Fortunately, they had led a couple of pieces. I wasn't eliminating them completely from the exhibition. So you know, they weren't happy, but I had to use diplomacy to explain why. It was totally the right decision to remove that work. And then everything fell into place. I mean, those things happen, and it becomes like a. And then some things are what I call game day decisions. And this is where I firmly believe in the power of art. It has its own mind. And you can plan it, and you get into the gallery, and somehow the way it occupies. So okay, for instance, I always found one of the hardest works to hang at the Whitney was Mark Rothgo. I think it's black over red. It sucks all the air, the black of the pain canvass. It just sucks the air out of anything near it. So sometimes, you know, I've hung out painting several times. I've had to move it around the room a few times, because I couldn't get a sense of where it really worked until it found its place. But it required that degree of moving it until it seemed right. So that's the part of it that's intuitive, that you can't entirely plan. And it is what I love about what art is. I mean, there were unruly children sometimes. Oh, completely, completely. I know that I've hung a lot more of my own work than other people's work. Obviously, so I'm talking kind of in a more different register, because I'm talking about moving my own stuff around half the time. But I know that when I would, let's say there's an opening wall at a gallery, there's usually like a first painting. And usually you sort of leave it alone, like a lot of times you walk in and you see like one thing, it sort of sets the stage. I've had the experience many times that you bring in all the work. And if you had a plan of what was going to be there and you have to put each painting in the place, the first place and see if it, I think what happens is that it feels like it expands sideways. And you can literally feel a painting that you know really well, look like it gets wider, like it was inhaling through it's in that kind of lung, like that Pilates breast thing where it's kind of filling sideways. I know my work perfectly well and I still can't predict which one is going to do the thing in the room. And sometimes it's not the best one or it's not the most attractive or it's the weirdest one. And so then you have to go with that because as soon as it looks like it breathes, you gotta go, okay, you'll go here. Is there a move like putting something close to a corner and pulling it away, resorting to a grid form at a certain point? Are there little tricks that you've each developed that help you move through the sticky, ineffable part of this work? I think the space here is an enormous aspect of this because if you've worked in a variety of different scenarios, you know, the architecture of the space also has its own demands. Helen, you and I both worked at the Wexner Center, which is probably the most idiosyncratic space I've ever worked in. And there are certain things in a way it gives you a lot of freedom because it's not a conventional rectangular room. When I did my Ray Johnson exhibition, I conceptualized it for the Wexner space. It opened up the Whitney, which is in the Breuer building, which is a more conventional space, but actually the space of the Wexner, which in and of itself is disjointed postmodern, at a level of fragmentation that I actually felt really spoke to, actually, you know, the nature of Johnson and the male art network and scattering things out into the world. And that's where it looked the best. So certain spaces, I think, also have their own logic and their own, you know, they inspire in different ways. What one other word I would use, it's terrible to say, but, you know, when you find that work that is not working with everything. And inevitably there's always what I call the dog wall. And it's usually the wall that you don't come on face on, you know, face on. It's behind you. And so it's not going to get the great vista, but it might be that place. And if you can't delete a work and you have to keep it in because it's alone, let's say, or it's already written up in the news letter or the brochure or the catalog, that's often times I've had that experience and I'll say, okay, this is going to go on the dog wall. But that's kind of like what I was going to say because I don't have any trick and I don't work at the same institution all the time. So I don't have that experience of getting to know that space, which is a whole different thing because then, you know, you've done it so many times. But I, so I always don't know what I'm doing. And I have to put every single thing, every single place until I figure it out. And it's really slow and arduous and fun. And there's no, I have no trick up my sleeves, but there's one thing that I know I love putting a little work on a big wall and a big work on a little wall. And I think that dog wall thing is kind of related because I had a painting in my last show at Barbara Gladstone that two out of the five people who saw it in my studio before I brought it over said, that's really ugly. Don't show it. And I liked it. And the other three people said, I like it, bring it over. So I brought this questionable thing. And the same thing happened before that, the show I had before that where I had this ugly painting that we didn't send. And on the last day we had to run and get it because it was the dog work. And we put the dog work on the dog wall and then it looked great. So there's also a thing where you take the trouble thing and put it in the place. It's not the first place you come in. It's behind you, but it's right across from the best place. So it's the kind of worst place, but it's also then the weirdest, most aggressive, least attractive, most complicated, but demanding work, which is in a way like putting the big thing on the little wall. It's interesting because one of the things I think I'm hearing in our conversation is we are imagining how we're getting a viewer to either move around, stand and look or think. Like we're asking this one relatively simple gesture. And I wonder if you guys could talk a little bit about how you are thinking about imagining your viewer when you're installing works of art. Well, I mean, I think when you're doing an exhibition where there is a narrator or an argument, then it's really thinking through how one is doing that. So I mean, a case in point, since you mentioned Warhol at the beginning, I wanted very much to talk, worker, the fifties. And so I followed a fairly conventional chronological installation. However, I also knew that the public would not be as familiar with that work. I didn't want to lose people there. So I made the decision that the first gallery actually would have some of the works that were more well known and look like Warhol's. Because I felt that it's like there is a seductive aspect of installation. And I think, you know, one wants to seduce the viewer. People feel excited. and have an open mind. Not hit them over the head with your argument. I think sometimes people make that mistake. And as a result, they may lose the viewer before they even got the viewer. There's an educational aspect of what we're doing. And so I try to think that way about a broad public, 'cause in large-scale museum, you have to think broadly, but not in a way, but they maintain the complexity. I think that's really, you know, you find that sweet spot where it's complex and also accessible. - When an artist curates a show like I do, I don't have an argument, at least I haven't had one, specifically when I'm hanging the shows that I've hung. So I don't have any choice, cream to uphold. I don't have a historical requirement. I'm not required to put anything in place to make you agree or don't agree with whatever the deal is. - So what's the criteria then, Amy? - Sure, pure visual, surprise, basing things. I think the, I've for a long time have thought that one of the key elements of aesthetics is surprise that when you are at a moment where you didn't expect it and your breaths come, you take a sharp breath all of a sudden. Like I remember really clearly not hanging shows, but being a visitor at a show, the most surprising moment I ever had was at the Demon Hill where I turned and behind me was like some African object. And in front of me was some, I don't know what it was, I do, I do shamp or something. And then next to me was like, I don't remember the objects, but I remember that they were deployed in shockingly non-teleological methods and they were not right. And they came to life with a kind of a laquity that I can't even express in words properly. It was a digital experience of the highest order. And I remember that I thought, this is the greatest museum I've ever been to because they made me not know and fall into a pit of not knowing and then wake up with the object in my brain so profoundly. I also had that once at the Whitney where I saw a room of stand Vanderbake projections on screens and it was like there were about 100 screens and all these things going on. I think it was a Kelet who did that show anyway. But it was like being alive for the first time ever in the presence of this throbbing art. So I always try to hang things in a way where it reminds me of the other thing I saw and I'm drawing a visual line between one thing and another like a rhyme or a punch. And then I got criticism for having done so morphism because it wasn't right. But that's the thing that I think why artists could hang a show because we have only one thing that I've pulled a visual relationship that we have in our mind already with objecthood and what we've kind of built out of it in our own kind of mental neural networks. Not I did not go by a book. I don't go by books in my studio either. I don't make paintings based on next Batman either. So there's relationships but they're found nine pre-determined sites. That's the freedom that you guys in a way don't have 'cause Donna has to think about how to deal with Warhol. And I don't have to think about that. - I think that the relationship between artists and the history of design display is a really fundamental one because when you look at the development of museum display, the interpretive exhibition as we know it was a relatively new thing. In the early part of the 20th century it kind of grew out of the capital of curiosity. Then it started to have a certain kind of logic that was imposed. But then you also had like take a gig in a home and order the century. So I've always loved one of had the opportunity to work with artists. And when Linda Norton and I did the US Pavilion in 2005 with Ed Roussier, we then brought the show to the Whitney. And we came up with it two ideas of how to install the paintings which we presented to Roussier and wanted him to choose 'cause one was more conventional, almost mimic the US Pavilion. And the other one was so radical 'cause it was just a series of diagonal walls that sort of radiated off the large window at the Breuer building. And it was inspired by the paintings themselves which had that sense of moving like a car, but also the architecture. And very risky because I remember saying to my colleague, Linda, boy, if we got this wrong, we are really screwed because it was totally unforgiving. And fortunately our intuition was right and Ed trusted us. He loved it at which also gave us a sense of confidence. And it was, it remains to stay an installation people will talk to me about. And that was more in the level of installation, Amy. Like when I think about what you did at DIA, you're chieftain where it reads like a total work of art. I mean, it's so spectacular and you have that sense of your entering into an object. In fact, the objects almost lose their sense of objectness because they envelop the whole space. And those are very exciting opportunities that I feel a greater freedom to do if I'm working with an artist. So my last question is about what I see as an attempt on the part of museums now. I don't think in any concerted or conscious way, but in a tacit way, I feel like I've seen a lot of exhibitions lately that are fighting against the white cube and that are fighting against the bang, bang, bang, kind of minimalist, modernist install that we've inherited. The use of wall coloring, contemporary art exhibitions, the use of wallpaper, the use of carpeting, the use of video projections in the space, a mixing of media. And I think it's coming from two places. One, a kind of maybe a kind of fatigue with the white cube. But the other thing is I think it is coming from some artists, like I think about an artist like Dina Lawson, who, you know, in one of her first solo shows, like painted all the walls purple, laid down purple carpet, put crystals in the corners, and was in a way thinking about domestic interiors, specifically black, you know, middle-class domestic interiors and wanting to use a sort of broker and arrangement between the austerity of our art world spaces and the warmth and vernacular of our home spaces. And I guess I'm just curious what you guys think about that. If you've noticed it too, and if you feel like a sea change might be in the mix, I mean, I think that characters feel a greater freedom. And I do think that that's come from what artists have done. You know, the engage working with contemporary artists, living artists, I just think it gives people that opportunity, maybe to feel themselves. Maybe because I began as an artist, I always felt a little bit more open in certain ways. Although there were times I would question like, "Gee, can I do this?" But like, for instance, at the Whitney, we moved, especially when we launched the new building, we really sort of thought very much about the way artists work across media. When I went to burn last year at Kunspian Burn, I had this big show that I agreed to curate their collection and my show was below and the floor above was the collection show. And when I got there, I decided to paint all the walls. I had not planned to do that at all. So I got off-- - For your show or for the collection show? - Collection show. - Okay. - So I got off the plane and I went out there and I like got on the ladder and started painting. But the thing when I realized when I was doing it, I realized that touching the wall is forbidden. So for me, in my own one person show at a museum, but also working with their collection, the smirching the wall, which is basically what painting is, is forbidden. And I realized that the walls of a museum are the patriarchy because it holds the whole thing up and you're not supposed to touch it or go near it. So it's like dad behind the newspaper in the morning reading the paper and going, "Yes, dear." It's just like this distant thing, you don't touch it, you don't relate to it, you have nothing to do with it. It's fascinating to me because I did a whole thing for moment and I talked about installation and I ended up talking about how for me the corner, the corners are like white, their whiteness. And like I did a whole thing. whole riff on all the artists who I think were basically fucking around with ideas of whiteness who used corners Felix Gensolas Torres, Ronnie Horn, you know Sarah, all kinds of things. So I know what you mean about the way in which the architecture that we're operating in is carrying the ideology of the world that we live in. How could it not? Right? Like this is what it means that things are structural that patriarchy or racism is structural. And so I find that kind of a moment in an install really interesting. One of the main assignments that you always do when you're an artist is you spend many years being given certain elements like you have certain colors and you have to mix gray with it. And then you have to make your own color grid, a la Joseph Elbers. And you have to take all the colors or the forms that are inside of a matease or whatever piece that's being assigned and you have to like reorganize it. And this kind of sense of like a recombinant language that's a visual language that cannot be summarized as being better for some reason. That that recombinatory logic of trying everything in every corner and every wall is the way that you learn how to make a painting. And I think that's the way we we artists would curate. Well, there's a compositional side of it. But I will say Amy, some artists I've certainly worked with who have not listened and felt very strongly that they knew and didn't always turn out as well as it could. And that's the kind of like funny position we're in as curators too is if somebody doesn't have to take our advice. You can't force someone. And also as a curator, you kind of in this place is you have to kind of advocate for multiple constituents advocating for the artist, you're advocating advocating for the institution, and you're also advocating for the public. So it's a little bit of fancy footwork at times to figure out how to make all that work together and sometimes it doesn't. But when I install, I always will ask the people I'm working with, what do we think? What do we think? Because more from then not 90% of the crew that you're working with are artists. And I respect them. I'll take the ideas I'll listen. I mean, at the end of the day, I have to make the decision. But I also think it also just makes it a kind of joyful experience because it is the best part when things go well. Installation is like what we live for. That's the best part of it all. And I love when it becomes that kind of collaborator. And when it works and everybody goes, wow, that looks so great. There's just a kind of wonderful feeling that comes from that. I really, I really prize that. The feeling of meaning being released into the room is euphoric because it means that you've rung the object with your hands and squeezed out some juice that wasn't prior visible or experienceable because most objects at museums are not usually on view. So when we go through and we all go through and then we talk about it, then the brew really comes and then you really, like, then you have meaning that's prompted by objecthood rather than by art histories. And it's not some narrative somebody told you, you felt it in your side, your pores. It's so crazy. It's absorbable like a scent. That's how new meetings come about. juxtaposition is a very powerful thing. And sometimes you can bring multiple objects together that have never been together. And I read it, you have a new narrative that emerges. When you have all these voices in the room and maybe they've been together, maybe they have. And sometimes because they're coming at it through the visual, it opens up a level of conversation. It's a starting point and not an end point, which is another thing I think about with exhibitions. Hopefully it's the starting point. And Helen, I know you've always done that in your work where it becomes the starting point for thinking about things in a different way, different theoretical approaches, different arguments that come about. And it's what exhibition at its best should be. Damn, I feel like I got to go and install a room of art like right now. It is the best. It is the best. All right, y'all. Thanks, guys. This was great. Much. Thank you. Dialogues is produced by David's Werner. If you like this episode, please follow, rate and review us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. It really does help the show. Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you join us here next time.