It was not until recently that we witnessed the arrival of the curator in the world of art fairs and the promotion of some of these as ‘curated fairs.’ In fact, we should not be surprised by the presence of curators at art fairs since it increasingly becomes the differentiating element helping the art fair stand out in the overwhelming number of fairs around the world. In fact, the idea of new ‘fairism’ has emerged as a way of understanding and reformulation the function of the fair as a commercial structure but also as an artistic institution (cf. Jonas Ekeberg).
This year, the Armory Show also tried to ‘institutionalize’ itself with an inaugural curatorial venture focusing on twentieth-century women artists. Taking place in four locations throughout Pier 92, the exhibition entitled Venus Drawn Out: 20th Century Works by Great Women Artists, curated by Susan Harris, celebrated the achievements of women artists who continue to remain undervalued in the marketplace. In an unusual curatorial/commercial collaboration, works were selected from submissions made by the exhibiting galleries. The exhibition, including forty works of paper, offered a moment of pause in the midst of the fair and inspired the sole pleasure of looking at good art.
Additionally, the Armory Show also launched a project called Armory Focus, aiming to shed light not only on a group of artists, but also on the fully formed creative ecology in which they live and work. This year’s focus being China, the presentation of more than thirty artists by seventeen galleries offered a glimpse of the dynamism and vibrancy of today’s Chinese art world to the Armory’s wide reaching audiences. Without a direct narrative, the exhibition revealed some of the most important new developments in Chinese art as well as other important, but often overlooked, moments of contemporary art history. The curator, Philip Tinari, also invited the artist Xu Zhen to pursue the Armory Commission, adding a further layer of depth to the China Focus initiative while allowing for a new set of relationships and interpretations about art in today’s China.
In curating art, it is not necessarily the individual ingredients – the works of art – that make it work, but the combination and interaction that lead to an understanding beyond the individual artwork. Curating, like the type present throughout the Armory Show, can help you see something more in the setting of the objects. While some gallerists work with a variety of artists and offer insight into how the artists relate, others show only one artist’s work but somehow the whole show is much more than any of the individual parts. Usually, the space, if well curated, works with the visual language and creates a soft blending of art to achieve unification around themes and forms.
By considering things such as transparency, pedagogy and interest, this is exactly what we, as curators, must try to achieve.
Melissa Okan
Parsons Curators 