Power 100
she established with her husband
and brother-in-law, leveraged the
Institutionalised
family’s vast Internet and media
holdings (only a fraction of their
With Sir Nicholas Serota, director of Britain’s Tate, at number three, privately held empire) to establish
and Glenn Lowry, director of New York’s Museum of Modern teacher-training programmes
Art, at number four, the power of the big public international throughout Latin America. Related
institutions seems incontestable, their presence on any register of programmes support cultural studies.
power a de facto requirement. Serota’s Tate empire is the most Cisneros, who sits on MoMA’s
successful major presenter of art in the world in terms of visitor board of trustees, has underwritten
numbers; Lowry’s MoMA is a financial and curatorial behemoth. curatorships, study programmes and
Surely big must always be best? exhibitions at institutions in both
Yet bigness aside, it’s starting to become apparent that North and South America. Gifts
the identity of major institutions as the final authorities within from her collection of twentieth-
the artworld hierarchy may not be what it was; as the culture
of contemporary art expands, driven by globalisation and the
market, the question arises as to whether or not big institutions
– centralised, expensive and about as quick to respond to changes
39
century Latin American art – the
world’s finest – include pieces by
Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica and Jesús
Rafael Soto now installed in MoMA’s
in direction as an oil tanker – may be starting to play second fiddle permanent collection galleries.
to a more mobile, vastly more sophisticated web of influence that
Patricia Phelps
Since 1996 the Fundación Cisneros
exists somewhere among the networks of biennials and art fairs. has published 23 books, selections
As the curator Carlos Basualdo recently argued, ‘the international
de Cisneros
from its holdings recently concluded
exhibition’s clear and direct influence on the traditional institutional Category: Collector a 12-nation tour south of the border
circuit can be confirmed… Many conventional museums have Nationality: American and a stunning exhibition analysing
resorted to the implementation of biennial or triennial showcases Last Year: New abstraction in Latin America opened
as a way to increase the number of their visitors and attract the at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery to a rave
attention of the press.’ Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, whose review by Roberta Smith. Cisneros is
What Basualdo and others have noticed is that in terms of husband, Gustavo, is worth $6 not simply a presence. She pursues
leading the agenda, it’s not so clear that the big institutions play the billion according to the annual the kind of wide-ranging, often
key role they might have a decade ago. There’s now a great deal of Forbes listing of billionaires, has grass-roots engagement which
activity above them – with biennials run by powerful and footloose become an increasingly effective changes culture over the long term.
independent curators – as well as below; responsible for boosting force in contemporary culture
audiences, big institutions lose sight of the more speculative and in the Americas. The Caracas-
independent aspect of providing a programme, especially with based Fundación Cisneros, which
regards to living, breathing contemporary artists. As Gary Garrels
– former chief curator of drawings at MoMA, who left in 2005
for LA’s much smaller Hammer Museum – indicated in a recent Bernard Arnault was rated the plans to build a €100 million (£67
LA Weekly interview, his move was partly based on a desire for a seventh-richest man in the world million) twentieth- and twenty-
more nimble, more experimental institution: ‘it’s difficult there [at by Forbes this year (again). The first-century art museum in Paris,
MoMa] to do smaller projects – they just kind of get lost’. man behind the world’s largest designed by Frank Gehry. The Louis
So perhaps for all their account-ledger-and-ticket-stats luxury goods group, LVMH, raised Vuitton Foundation for Creation is
power, big institutions are struggling to redefine their purpose. his profile in the contemporary art to be built in the Bois de Boulogne in
It’s easy enough to attract crowds to contemporary art, and the world last autumn by announcing western Paris by 2010, and looks set
one strength the big museums have over the biennial circuits is to rival the spectacular eighteenth-
that, well, they don’t disappear after a week. But how to balance century palace, the Palazzo Grassi,
the traditional museum’s role as the collection of the art-historical which houses his business rival
canon, especially when the idea of the canon in recent art is so
contested, and when perpetuating a collection is – because of the
market boom – becoming an impossibly costly activity? No wonder
that Tate has called in forward-thinking curator Nicolas Bourriaud 40
François Pinault’s collection. Arnault
44)
is known for a hard-knuckle if
visionary approach to business, and
ondon (
y
, L
the plan for a new museum has put
to curate the next Tate Triennial, or that Serota should call for more him on the map as a power-wielding
artists and benefactors to consider donating works to the Tate. But force in contemporary art (though riedman Galler
if the big public institutions aren’t to lose their identity amid the
Bernard Arnault
LVMH is a longtime sponsor of
merry-go-round of big cash-cow international shows, biennials, Category: Collector large contemporary art shows, from
triennials, art fairs and new private museums, the next few years Nationality: French Yves Klein at the Pompidou Centre
may be spent facing the tough question: what are we for? Last Year: New in 2006 to this year’s Richard Serra at
MoMA, New York). It’s anticipated
the new museum will include work
by Dan Graham, Damien Hirst,
opez, courtesy the artist and Stephen F
Anish Kapoor, Tadashi Kawamata,
omain L
Jeff Koons, Claes Oldenburg, Serra
43), R
and James Turrell.
y A. Bal (
39)
41), Thierr
ullan (
cM
atrick M
photo: P photos: Catherine Opie (
Artreview 132
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