Society For Contemporary Art
Yesterday I started my first internship. I work along with John Mickinnon in the Contemporary Arts office of the Art Institute. More specifically I am working for the Society For Contemporary Arts. The SCA is a non-for-profit organization that relies on AIC members generous donations. This society holds events such as guest artist speakers, visits to private art collections, and a large gala in early summer. The focus of the group is to research and collect contemporary artwork of interst to the AIC. The Society then collects this artwork and hosts their own showing (the gala). The curators of the AIC will then express their desire for a certain piece and the society purchases that piece and donates it to the museum. So really the Society is a middle man between the museum and the artists. There are some really interesting relationships involved with this group, including: collectors, currators, and critics.
There will be a few things that I do for the SCA but yesterday I did some tedious work with powerpoint. But it was very interesting and fun... I had to research appropriate artwork from a list of artists that the society was interested in and place the images i collected into the powerpoint. It was a list of about 30 to 40 various artists, some were younger and current, others were older, but very influential.
Also another awesome thing is that my desk is squished up next to a minature model of the modern wing. Here they move miniatures of the artwork around and add new artwork. For instance in the modern wing there is a sculpture of a tree trunk that is laying on the ground, by Charles Ray. The piece is called Cypress. I find it to be a funny piece since it is an entire tree trunk made out of replica's of replica's... Well in this miniature model of the museum there is a replica of the replicated tree trunk... and this miniature model of the trunk is a stick... haha.
Also I found that it was kind of difficult to distinguish what would be interesting pieces for the society. While I was researching, the teacher in me kept on finding pieces that would be a great classroom visual... Well a lot of times classroom visuals are not art pieces that are the classic piece to dwell over in a museum. So I had to keep on taking my teaching goggles off and looking at artwork in a whole knew way. So I'm wondering if there is a big difference between an educators interests and the non-educators interest.
sounds like a really interesting internship, josh.
ReplyDeletethe different sub-groups, societies, institute, etc. which exist and support a space like the art institute are fascinating. everyone moves in their own spheres, and they don't often come in contact with each other, but their work is all totally on display for the public. i've come across the society for contemporary art a few times, and to be honest i'm still not totally sure what to make of them.
i like your point about choosing images from a teacher perspective. it's important to be able to utilize different lenses to view things. you don't get the full picture if you hammer away from just one perspective. good luck with the internship!