You have a rigorous research-based art practice. How did that begin?

The earliest works in the show begin in 2014 when I was a student, with explorations into employing research-based methodology. I’ve always been asking questions and trying to visualize language and relationships. At the time, I was experimenting with researching histories of American school desegregation. In particular, I was focused on the cases that led to the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision of 1954. As a student at Yale, I had access to the law library. I spent a lot of time trying to understand the many cases of this landmark legislation. Anyone who uses interstate travel, public education, or public broadcasting is a direct beneficiary of this legislative package.

I found myself with lots of questions about public-school transportation and a long legacy of devaluing the lives of children of color and public space, as well as defunding and depriving public schools of resources after the Supreme Court decision to desegregate schools. I had faith that if I focus on an area of research or a particular question that something is going to come of it. I didn’t know what the work was going to look like. I didn’t know what the solution was going to be. But I just started reading the cases.

How did you become interested in public spaces and resources?

I’m from Southern California. Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, I was very impacted by the prominence of murals and narratives painted in public spaces. There’s this part of me that I can’t really shake: a desire to inquire about issues of public concern and embed them into a process by which new material is produced. The first works start there.

I was exploring the perception of color and its impact on the value of life in public space. As an adult, I was able to again study Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color, which I had first learned in elementary school. This work gave me an opportunity to start exploring color relationships chromatically and societally. I realized that the impact of color perception and optical illusions initiated by interactions of particular colors which make us see things that aren’t really there. I saw an echo in the case law that I was reading.

Subsequent bodies of work follow this methodology, with site-specific research on such topics as the relationship between public transportation and voting referenda in Atlanta, for example, as well as a comparison between the contemporary use of third-party transfer programs seizing paid properties and the historic property dispossession of people of color in New York. Let’s talk about some of your latest works, which were produced during an artist residency in Boulder, Colorado.

There are three new pieces in the show that use marble dust from the nearby Yule Mountain Quarry, which produced the marble for the Lincoln Memorial and most—if not all—of the great monuments in Washington D.C.

Not unlike your earlier works, you employ a rigorous material process that alludes to the history of abolition and democracy in America. How do you create these multi-layered surfaces?

Before I know what the image is going to be, I’m building a surface with material that is symbolic to me of a place in some way. The material used for Here at the Western World…, for instance, is made of a quilting liner. I spent a lot of time in southern Colorado, outside Denver in the San Luis Valley, and I made friends with people who gave me such textiles. I attached the quilt liner to a piece of raw canvas. I used paper bags, which I separate from the handles. Over many days, I soaked the paper and unfolded it carefully, before laminating it into the surfaces of the work. The pieces become kind of like animal hides that are stretched onto the wall and cured in anticipation of stretching them onto awning style frames. The surface of the piece was then encrusted with sand from southern Colorado and marble dust from the Yule quarry.

There are additional layers and images constructed on top of that surface as well.

The halftone line image that’s projected on the surface in yellow hues is an image of a particular classroom from This Is Not Who We Are (2002), a documentary film about Black communal experiences in Boulder from the 1800s to more recent years. The catalyst of the film, which questions Boulder’s standing as what some have called the happiest place to live in the U.S., is a controversy over excessive police force used against a Black student at Naropa University in 2019. I included an image from the film of Professor Wyndham’s classroom.

Printed on the pink vinyl is a still that I created of a very quick moment from 1972 home video footage of the choir from the Second Baptist church—the only black congregation in Boulder for many years—singing, which resonated with my own experiences going to church growing up in Los Angeles. These places historically in the United States and other colonized countries are where people of color gather for respite and liberation. There are these moments that happen where people are trying to get closer to freedom by gathering together for release and for mutual exaltation.

Amy Sadao.

DAVID KELLEY/COURTESY INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, PHILADELPHIA

Amy Sadao is leaving her post as director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania to pursue new opportunities and personal projects, including a book that will focus on the ways art, politics, and community intersect. John McInerney, executive director of Penn’s Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, has been named interim director of the museum.

During her tenure, which spanned more than seven years, Sadao increased attendance and grew the museum’s digital reach. The ICA presented 51 exhibitions of underrepresented artists under her leadership, and she developed the museum’s department of public engagement. With her team, she raised $32 million dollars for the institution and tripled its endowment. 

In an interview with ARTnews, Sadao said she strived to make the ICA accessible to a broad range of audiences and to extend “a compelling invitation to our neighbors in West Philadelphia,” where the museum is located.

“I fulfilled and surpassed all of my goals, so this is the perfect time to think about my next step,” she said. “This is the right time for me to be able to write, research, and conduct interviews with people I admire, and it’s the right time for the ICA. I’m excited to see where ICA goes from here.”

Vice provost for faculty Anita Allen will chair an advisory committee for the selection of the next ICA director. The committee, comprised of staff, faculty, artists, alumni, and members of the museum’s board of overseers, includes, among others, Lynn Marsden-Atlass, university curator and executive director of the Arthur Ross Gallery; Michael Leja, professor of the history of art; and Aaron Levy, executive director and senior curator of the Slought Foundation.

Update 9/4/2019, 1:30 p.m.: This article has been updated to include comment from Amy Sadao. 

Bruno Nouril.

COURTESY ICA PHILADELPHIA

Bruno Nouril, who most recently served as development director of the Drawing Center in New York, has joined the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. In his role as director of development at the ICA, Nouril will outline and execute philanthropic goals for the museum.

While at the Drawing Center, Nouril oversaw various fundraising initiatives and special events. He also has experience working at the Queens Museum, the nonprofit Art21, and the Museum of Biblical Art in New York.

He said in a statement, “Supported by Penn’s incredible resources and stimulating intellectual environment, ICA is impressively bold in the contemporary art it presents and forward thinking in how it makes that art accessible to the Penn and wider Philadelphia communities.”

Amy Sadao, the director of the ICA, added, “Bruno is a proven leader whose ability to identify funding opportunities that respond to changes and trends in arts philanthropy demonstrate both impressive fundraising skills and a natural gift for relationship-building. Bruno’s broad experience in philanthropic fundraising will be a strong asset to ICA, building on the strength of our past and profoundly impacting future growth.”

Andrea B. LaPorte.

PENN NURSING SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania has announced two major financial gifts totaling $4.5 million. Both gifts will primarily go toward the funding of new curatorial positions at the museum.

Daniel and Brett Sundheim—who has appeared on the ARTnews “Top 200 Collectors” list for the past three years—gave a total of $3 million, with $2.5 million going toward the chief curator position currently held by Anthony Elms; another $500,000 sum will go toward a new fund focused on outreach and community engagement. Andrea B. Laporte gave $1.5 million, which will now endow the associate curator position held by Kate Kraczon.

In a statement, Amy Sadao, the director of the ICA, said, “We’re incredibly grateful to University of Pennsylvania alumni Daniel and Brett Sundheim and to Andie Laporte for their visionary gifts, which enable ICA to remain at the forefront of contemporary art by securing long-term support for our curators and their ongoing work.”

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.

COURTESY INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia announced today that it will be the first museum certified by Working Artists and the Greater Economy. W.A.G.E., a New York-based activist organization, advocates on behalf of artists for sustainable economic relationships with institutions that show their work.

The ICA is responsible for tracking and payment of fees based on its annual operating budget of $4.8 million. In a statement, W.A.G.E., which began its certification program in 2014, said of the ICA’s commitment, “it demonstrates that a museum is capable of meeting external payment standards, and more importantly that those standards can be set by workers.”

The museum joins 53 other certified institutions, among them Artists Space, the Swiss Institute, Participant Inc., and Open Space, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s online platform for writings by curators, artists, and critics.

“Our partnership with W.A.G.E. helps to set a new standard in the museum field, one that ensures equitable environments for the artists with whom we work,” the ICA’s director, Amy Sadao, said in a statement.“We’re proud to be the first museum to join this diverse group of arts and culture institutions across the U.S. who are certified, and hope that it will encourage other museums to do the same.”

Allen Accoo, Lisa Richardson, and Terry Parker, security staff at the Studio Museum in Harlem, in front of Adam Pendleton’s Collected (Flamingo George), 2009.

Without museum guards, museums couldn’t exist—it’s as simple as that. For our Crime issue, we turned the spotlight on the people who not only act as key players in the implementation of an institution’s security system, protecting works from theft and damage, but also perform a critical role in the museum-going experience.  

Museum security, above all, abides by Murphy’s Law. “If you think it’s not going to happen, it’s going to happen. You have to expect the unexpected,” said Pat Natale, director of security at the New Museum in New York. The 2013 show “Chris Burden: Extreme Measures” included an artwork made up of multiple gold bars, so the museum had beefed up security—there were armed guards, panic alarms, motion detectors, audible alarms, and even fake walls. “In the end, the security protocol became as much a part of the piece as the piece itself,” Natale said.

Going a step further, Dick Drent, former corporate security manager at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, codeveloped a new form of security for the institution in 2013 based on a type of observational analysis called the ORRI Methodology, which uses elements of predictive profiling (an evaluation of whether a person, object, or situation poses a threat). Drent considers the role of a museum guard to be a proactive one: “We prevent things from happening before they happen,” he said.

But museum guards often transcend their roles as silent watchdogs, and many institutions encourage their security staff to engage in a dialogue with visitors about the art. “When I first came here, the philosophy was that the museum security officers were to be like the statues,” said Christopher Kunkel, head of security and safety services at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. “Security officers were supposed to stand along the walls and say nothing to anyone.” That isolation taught him that a more involved approach can enhance a visitor’s experience, and he implemented a system in which guards engage more with the public.

The many hours guards spend with the art can result in an unusual degree of familiarity. Linda Harris, who has worked as a guard at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia for 14 years, often finds she can recite the sound tracks of the video art in the galleries she patrols. “When they finish installing, I stand there and memorize the piece. I only have to look at it a couple of times,” she said. “When we had an exhibition of Kalup Linzy’s work [in 2010], I felt like I had a whole audience to work with. I sat there until I memorized each of the voices in his video.”

The job is a kind of endurance test. Guards are on their feet during busy openings, events, and slow days alike, which requires both physical and mental stamina. As Chad Lawrence, who works as a guard at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., noted, “It’s a solitary position, and you really have to feel comfortable being inside your head for long stretches of time. For some, it can be incredibly draining.”

A common theme among the guards I spoke to was a deep appreciation of the art they protect, and it’s worth recalling that many artists have done stints in museum security. Artist Ellen Siebers, a gallery attendant at Dia:Chelsea, watched the paintings of Robert Ryman—who was himself a guard at the Museum of Modern Art in the early 1950s—go up on the walls for a recent Ryman exhibition. “There’s another level of intimacy with the work when you see how it’s installed,” she said. “As a painter, having time to finally learn all the little things that you can’t really find in texts is great.”

Dia has a long tradition of artists serving as attendants; Amy Gartrell, Nate Lowman, and Jeremy Sigler have all worked there. Siebers’s colleague J. Soto, a performance artist, feels his artistic practice informs his role as a gallery attendant. “I think it plays into an idea of time, and witnessing how guests view the work and move through the space,” he said. “There’s a kind of mental endurance and long-term, durational presence that’s required to stay in tune with the work and the space.”

Guards also serve as the eyes and ears of the curatorial staff, acting as intermediaries between the exhibitions and curatorial departments. K. Shannon Ali, director of visitor services at the Studio Museum in Harlem, likes to keep things in the family. “When I first came to the museum, they had a few officers and contracted security, and I immediately got rid of the contracted security,” she said. “When guards are hired through the institution itself, they have a vested interest.”

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William Gross, lead gallery officer at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, standing next to Yoshida Homei’s Arayori (A Peasant Woman), ca. 1915, one of his favorite works in the museum.

Ellen Siebers is a gallery attendant at Dia:Chelsea in New York. “You have to be very present for this job all day," she said. "If you’re having an off day, that can really be a challenge.”

Guggenheim senior security officer Ennel Agyemany.

Linda Harris lives in North Philadelphia and works at ICA Philadelphia.

Pat Natale, director of security at the New Museum. “You can’t be prepared enough. You have to expect the unexpected.”

J. Soto, gallery attendant at Dia:Chelsea. “There’s a kind of mental endurance and long-term, durational presence that’s required to stay in tune with the work and the space,” he said.

Mary Woodward, a museum assistant at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., said that patience is a big part of the job. "We end up answering many of the same questions all day long, such as 'Where is the bathroom?' Another is explaining to visitors the various museum policies."

Mike Guy, museum supervisor at the Phillips Collection. One of the challenges of the job that he described is finding the balance between security and the visitor experience. "It can be difficult to tell someone they need to step back from a painting or enforce photography policies while still encouraging them to experience the art and get excited about the collection," he said.

Chad Lawrence, a museum assistant at the Phillips Collection. Lawrence described one of the main challenges of the job. "It’s a pretty solitary position, you have to feel comfortable inside your own head for long stretches of time," he said, adding that being a working artist provides valuable experience for his job. "Having an understanding of what's on the walls makes it easier to interact with the public and build a friendly, welcoming environment," he said. "That makes it easier to protect the artwork and museum as a whole."

Neda Amouzadeh has been working as a museum supervisor at the Phillips Collection for two-and-a-half years. "If I have ever seen an artwork put in danger by a visitor, it’s not malicious," he said. "The visitor is always unaware that what they're doing is problematic, whether it’s pointing at a painting too closely or swiping a frame with their purse as they walk by it. Contemporary pieces are more difficult to guard because they can sometimes look interactive, or if it’s not a traditional framed painting, some visitors think they can touch it."

Allen Accoo, Lisa Richardson, and Terry Parker, staff at the Studio Museum in Harlem, in front of Adam Pendleton’s Collected (Flamingo George), 2009.

Gallery officers Dennis Cloutier and Gene Antonelli at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Installation view of ‘Rodney McMillian: The Black Show,’ 2016, at Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania.

CONSTANCE MENSH

The Institute of Contemporary Art’s ground-floor gallery in Philadelphia has been considered a “difficult” space since the building made its debut in 1991. Its looming ceilings aren’t kind to small or delicate artworks, and the kinds of stand-alone works that would play off its plainness and vastness—say, a big, exuberant Nancy Rubins sculpture—are rarely the stuff of ICA exhibitions. Sheila Hicks’s 2011 retrospective of her expressionistic fiber works was a notable exception.

Now, five years on from Hicks, Rodney McMillian has made the most of the space, but in an entirely different way. For his exhibition of sculptures, wall-hanging works, and videos, titled “The Black Show,” the Los Angeles–based artist has treated the gallery as a giant stage set that can be approached from any angle. Wherever you are is where you should be.

Rodney McMillian, Many moons (detail), 2015, latex, acrylic, and ink on paper mounted on fabric, installation view.

CONSTANCE MENSH

The gallery is dimly lit, and there is no sense of hierarchy in the arrangement of works. One of the wall pieces is hung so high that it’s hard to see amid the shadows near the ceiling. A sprawling, 70-foot-long painting on paper (the only painting here) made specifically for this show, of a swamp as seen on a moonlit night, is hung from a ceiling track and divides the gallery diagonally. A black vinyl piece wraps around one of the gallery’s columns. Throughout the show, McMillian’s juxtapositions of videos and artworks are dramatic and unexpected. Walking from the entrance and trying to follow the progression of works feels like being on an old-fashioned amusement-park boat ride through a cavernous tunnel.

The main component of most of the sculptures and wall-hangings is black vinyl, and though the works are largely abstract, they are also suggestive of body parts, wounds, and, by extension, violence against black people. By stitching into the vinyl with thread and adding zippers McMillian reinforces the sense of threat. Anger simmers in a burlap wall piece that resembles a mural-size American flag with a square of black latex paint in its upper-left corner, where the stars would be. And instead of stripes, there is an incarcerated man’s long indictment of the American judicial system, sewn into the fabric, line after line, in red thread.

McMillian’s six videos, all made in 2015, are the most absorbing works in his show. In Shelter (Crawl) the artist is a camouflaged soldier dragging himself through a weedy landscape, clearly on the verge of death and shouting repeatedly a line from the Rolling Stones’ 1969 song “Gimme Shelter” in a raw, exhausted voice. It’s an extremely disturbing performance that evokes the experiences of escaping slaves.

A longer piece, Storytime in Dockery, is the most powerful and haunting of the videos, following McMillian into an abandoned house in Dockery, Mississippi, where he seats himself in a room and cheerfully reads aloud from Winnie-the-Pooh to an imaginary audience of children as he casually swats away insects and wipes sweat from his face. Is he mentally ill? Did he witness a dreadful event in this house? Was he one of the “children”? McMillian doesn’t offer an answer. No, more terrifyingly, he puts the book down and leaves as quietly as he arrived.

Barbara Kasten, Architectural Site 7, July 14, 1986, 1986, Cibachrome, 60" x 50".

LOCATION: WORLD FINANCIAL CENTER, NEW YORK, NY/ARCHITECT: CÉSAR PELLI/COURTESY THE ARTIST

The assembled pieces here suggested that the artist’s primary subject is space. Photography’s ability to flatten, distort, and fragment space is exploited in works ranging from Kasten’s first staged photographs of objects—including her subtly colored “Constructs” of the early 1980s—to her remarkable pictures from later in the decade of corporate offices and museum buildings that, shot at night using gel lighting and mirrored props, resemble modernist opera sets. Elsewhere, physical space is transformed by one of the standouts of the exhibition: the brand-new video piece Axis (2015), in which three stacked, slowly revolving white cubes are projected in the corner of the room.

For those who had previously only encountered Kasten’s photography in reproduction, the enveloping scale of the works was a surprise. Equally startling is the degree to which these purely analog pieces anticipate the digitally constrcuted images of our own time.

A version of this story originally appeared in the September 2015 issue of ARTnews on page 88.

From left, Anthony Elms, Alex Klein, and Kate Kraczon.

CONSTANCE MENSH

Today the ICA Philadelphia announced three curatorial appointments: Anthony Elms as chief curator, Alex Klein as the Dorothy and Stephen R. Weber (CHE ’60) curator, and Kate Kraczon as an associate curator. The three appointments, all effective immediately, were made possible by a $10 million gift from philanthropist Daniel W. Dietrich, II, given to the ICA Philadelphia in May. (Ingrid Schaffner previously held Elms’ position—she left the ICA to curate the 57th Carnegie International.) The announcement is also part of ICA2020, a larger plan for the museum’s expansion spearheaded by museum director Amy Sadao.

Rather than styling its press release for the appointments in a traditional way, with the museum authority figures praising each curator, the ICA Philadelphia asked an artist to comment on each curator. (Sadao, of course, is excited about the appointments. “Their individual and combined knowledge and passion for big questions, new research, and enabling artists’ visions gives audiences opportunities to access the joy, inspiration, and challenge that the very best contemporary art provides,” she said in a statement.)

Zoe Leonard spoke about Elms, who included the photographer’s work into the ICA’s 2013 show “White Petals Surround Your Yellow Heart” and who later helped Leonard to realize her 2014 Whitney Biennial installation. “He is a deeply thoughtful curator—rigorous, dedicated, and with profound integrity,” Leonard said in a statement. “Anthony has his eye on the bigger picture and has an incredibly wide-ranging ability to make connections across disciplines.”

Meanwhile, Barbara Kasten talked about Klein, whose survey of Kasten’s work, “Stages,” is currently on view at the museum. “Her commitment and her intelligence, coupled with her professional rigor, make her one of the most innovative curators of her generation,” Kasten said of Klein.

And finally, Alex Da Corte lauded Kraczon with praise for her work with Da Corte and Jayson Musson for an installation they did at the museum in 2014. “She is so generous with her artists—and pushes them to push their ideas and think big,” Da Corte said. “She trusted in us—and I think that is why she generates exciting and surprising shows.”

Barbara Kasten, Architectural Site 17, 1988, Cibachrome.

COURTESY THE ARTIST

Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday.

Today’s show: “Barbara Kasten: Stages” is currently on view at ICA in Philadelphia and is the first major survey of Kasten’s work. The exhibition features photographs, her earliest fiber sculptures, cyanotype prints, mixed media works as well as a new site specific installation and is on view until August 16.

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Barbara Kasten, Architectural Site 17, 1988, Cibachrome.

COURTESY THE ARTIST

Barbara Kasten, Axis, 2015, video projection, installation view.

CONSTANCE MENSH

Barbara Kasten, Construct 32, 1986, Cibachrome.

COURTESY THE ARTIST

Barbara Kasten, 'Stages,' 2015, installation view, ICA, University of Pennsylvania.

CONSTANCE MENSH

Barbara Kasten, 'Stages,' 2015, installation view, ICA, University of Pennsylvania.

CONSTANCE MENSH

Barbara Kasten, Axis, 2015, video projection, installation view.

CONSTANCE MENSH

Barbara Kasten, 'Stages,' 2015, installation view, ICA, University of Pennsylvania.

CONSTANCE MENSH

Barbara Kasten, Transposition 7, 2014, Fujiflex digital print.

COURTESY THE ARTIST

Barbara Kasten, 'Stages,' 2015, installation view, ICA, University of Pennsylvania.

CONSTANCE MENSH

Barbara Kasten, Axis, 2015, video projection, installation view.

CONSTANCE MENSH