Conversations Salon Discussion

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]I want to first, um, thank Art Basel for bringing us to peripheries and centers and the relationship and within that are these constellations, but um, my hope really today is that we are not getting trapped in any discussions really about terminology, but that we we can really just speak about the very reality of working and curating where in Columbus and in Glarus and to speak about and address the potential that um, on the far right is um, Florence Derieux who you may know and certainly um, read her name all over the place this week because she curated Art Basel Parcours.

[00:00:45]Um, but beside that she is also um, the director of um, the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne in Reims.

[00:00:53]She before worked at Le Magasin and um, Palais de Tokyo amongst other places.

[00:01:00]Um, then next to her is um, Michelle Grabner who is a artist, uh, art critic, a writer, a teacher and also a curator.

[00:01:10]Um, she just recently curated the Whitney Biennial which closed yesterday.

[00:01:17]And um, but also she is running together with her husband, Brad 15 years ago and over um, these 15 years they have shown more than 200 artists there and more recently in 2008 and for a while and where he was the chief curator of MOCA Cleveland before um, I think before at the in Lucerne and then then in 2000 Oh, in Solothurn and then um, in 2008 went to become um, the director of the Kunsthaus Glarus a you know, a a place in a a very regional area in Switzerland with a and how you address, you know, being at the periphery and how you sort of deal with that, how you respond to it, and which strategies you sort of apply to sort of even maybe turn the negative points of being there into something that might be positive. And I think I want to start with Michelle cuz I think the discrepancy between, you know, being a co-curator of the Whitney Biennial in an art center like no other, uh, but also having the experience of worked in, you know, all the other places you work. I think I want to sort of start with with that.

[00:02:33]Sure. Thank Thank you, Reto. Um, uh, you know, I think it's a good story, quite honestly. And I'll I'll talk a little bit about the exhibition spaces that Reto introduced. The Suburban is a exhibition space, a very small exhibition space in Oak Park, Illinois.

[00:02:44]It's a first-ring suburb of Chicago. And since early 1999, we've been bringing artists in, international artists for the most part, um, people that you will recognize, whether it's Luc Tuymans or Katharina Grosse, to local artists, artists from Madison, Wisconsin, um, Cleveland, Ohio, and so forth. So, we've been doing that for quite some time. And they're typical exhibitions in which every 8 weeks, they rotate. Um, but there's something important. Chicago's actually a very small art town. And I would say that the majority of the artists to a small space like that, they're my students, my graduate students. So, they selected three curators. Um, I was one of them. There was another curator from Philadelphia named Anthony Elms and Stuart Comer, who was at the Tate Modern. But because the center always pulls, um, Stuart is now, uh, a chief curator at MoMA. That happened during the process of the Biennial.

[00:03:36]Um, the reason I was, uh, asked to, uh, participate as a curator for a Biennial, for the Whitney Biennial in New York, is because I was working very diligently for many, many years, um, off-center in the in the middle of the United States.

[00:03:50]So, there's this kind of beautiful thing that uh, things will circle back around.

[00:03:55]Rachel, you asked about kind of the negative things. You actually think you're working in obscurity, but you know, clearly I didn't know the curators personally at the at the Whitney who ended up inviting me. But, they've been watching. They look. They read my writing. They looked at our program and so forth. So, it's really interesting.

[00:04:09]It's kind of a degree of patience in which one has to wait and it's halfway surprising in terms of who's watching and who's not.

[00:04:16]So, yeah, so that's my my lovely story.

[00:04:19]So, for you, Florence, it's sort of a little bit of the same from us and now working in Basel and for Parcours, but um I don't know thinking about us, I first and foremost think about the cathedral more so than maybe, you know That's it, really. So, the audience is not extremely familiar with contemporary arts. We can't say that. We have to In us, it's different. It's the center of the region. It's a It's a It's a city where most people live. It's easy. But, then we have to work in the whole region, which is extremely rural.

[00:04:57]But, I don't live here on a daily basis.

[00:05:01]I travel I'm lucky enough to be able to travel very often to Basel and and meet the people and discover the area because each year Art Basel chooses a different area of the city, a historical part of the city, different each year to develop Parcours, which is in in its fifth year this year.

[00:05:22]I'm curating it for the second time.

[00:05:25]Uh The Wexner going into it is this idea that we would bring as much international contemporary culture as we could to Columbus, Ohio.

[00:05:34]But, I would say that over 25 years this consciousness has really evolved to be something much more about And you know, I that's probably something we could talk about more.

[00:05:47]Okay, for I think I want to continue at that point right afterwards. But, Sabine, I think for you what would interest me most is that you know, one could say in like relatively spoken, Glaurus is so close to Zurich like But, this times they disappear into cities again and um we are left uh there with quite minimal of knowledge about about culture. You know, visit the region for a very different reason. So, in terms of really programming, how do you specifically address that? And how do you find that balance and that that goes for all of us, I think, between, you know, addressing your audience, but also maybe trying to raise the bar and also sort of trying to really just do what your, you know, what is what are your own convictions and what your passion is.

[00:06:42]Well, from for me So, I arrived in 2008, so 6 years ago.

[00:06:49]And all the FRACs were created in '82.

[00:06:53]The FRAC Champagne-Ardenne was created in '84. And if I say that, it's because I really truly inherited a history. All the directors before me had to go through things that I could not even believe when I found documentations, letters mostly coming from the politicians.

[00:07:11]That we trace the history, very short history. Apparently, it's from because we didn't have a building until 1991.

[00:07:20]And from that moment, we had really exhibitions on site and problems started.

[00:07:27]Politicians, you know, endlessly were writing letters to complain. So, the four directors that directed the FRAC before me had to go through so much.

[00:07:36]It's unbelievable. When you think it's '91 is already like yesterday.

[00:07:42]So, that's a very interesting moment and I'm lucky because they really had to uh go through population was has always been very strong because the artists were invited right from the beginning to work within the region.

[00:07:58]So, we do exhibition also through residencies outside, but I think the contact with the partners, with the population makes the whole process very smooth at the end of the day. Plus, now we have in the past years a lot of press.

[00:08:15]And as soon as there is press, as soon as there is television, people think clearly this is good and they are proud.

[00:08:23]And I always work on the pride. This is the trick I use basically most of the time.

[00:08:29]I have to admit. Think that in terms of our history, which is also short, um and we're we're a non-collecting museum. Um but we're very large. Um Time is always kind Speaking by my own experience, does having the artist present really help? I know that you sort of produced these I think it's two very beautiful books about the work you did at the Suburban sort of recapitulating like what you did over these 15 years or so. Um is that a way for you to retrospectively not only >> to do that outside of the website. Um you know, so the the curatorial programs particularly at the uh Poor Farm. So, in addition to, you know, letting it being governed by artists, um there's been two more recent projects, a Gretchen Bender survey, um that we put together because we can do this in rural Wisconsin. This is a project that from the distance of the Midwest or from all of our distances, we can actually see blind spots in the center. Um and Gretchen Bender or Lu Che Pozzi who active from uh you know, far out, these holes that the center isn't dealing with. And to have the center then go to any one of us and say, "Yeah, let's let's take that in." And we couldn't see that from, again, our compression. Um So, that's uh that's one of the freedoms >> from the begin from the start on, or is that something you sort of learned over time? Cuz I realized that this is something that happens quite often with Stan.

[00:10:00]Okay, I see there's like two We have a mic somewhere, so it should come.

[00:10:17]Uh >> No. One second. Did you turn it on?

[00:10:20]Okay. Hi. Uh my name's Ashley Connor.

[00:10:23]I'm a writer and curator. I write for Art Guide East and 7 by 8 Curatorial. Uh my question's kind of long, so I've written it down and will read it. Uh is the value It's based on a on our conversations about the value of the art here, or is the value of Art Basel different or less because of where you are coming from?

[00:10:42]And do you think that the Basel or Unlimited format succeeds at engaging a general public, or only the art community? And if you could take Basel to your community, how would you change the conventions of this format?

[00:10:56]Yeah, sorry. Pick You can pick one or two and answer whatever you like. I heard like 20 questions at least out of that. Um but yeah, I mean, maybe I can David, you seem to have a I don't I you know, I work My position is I don't work at >> very different from what we knew of him.

[00:11:14]Or if I when I discovered Nick Mauss project here, which is fantastic. Nick Mauss had his uh A before I became the director. And through my um work with the flag, we have a collection.

[00:11:28]And uh I collect, therefore. But um uh Chris Burden made a donation of a very, very huge piece 2 years ago. A piece that he produced as part of his exhibition in '94, and I went recently to see him to discuss the modalities of the restoration of this work that I found finally money to do.

[00:11:48]And that's when I saw the works in the studio, and I started discussing with him the possibility Lawrence bar course, which I haven't seen yet. I want to say that. Yeah, and something to add to this quickly to that question general and that discussion about central periphery.

[00:12:04]There's one question there. Where is the mic? Oh.

[00:12:15]Okay. Okay. And my name is Adriana Gonzalez Brumm.

[00:12:20]And okay, I come from Paraguay. My question is if this is periphery, so how do you call an artist and institutions that are working in countries that are in sort of works, and it becomes different. And I would be a extremely interesting discussion one hopefully can take place in another or a couple of other panels. But, then just for the sake of, you know, having some sort of streamline discussion, we decided to, you know, include institutions from Switzerland, France, and Thank you. Hi, my name is Anna Castro, and come from Brazil.

[00:13:02]Um just a quick question. Um how do you choose your artists?

[00:13:09]Please.

[00:13:15]Um >> [clears throat] >> well, how do I choose my artists? Um you know, luckily I have a lot of colleagues that have a lot of stake in the institution. My director's been there 20 years.

[00:13:28]Uh there's an institutional history that's very important to us. And as I said, there are sort of successes that we have learned that we're good at.

[00:13:38]Um So, uh you know, for me, I want complete over years about certain artists.

[00:13:47]Um right? So, it might be no, we're not ready for that now.

[00:13:51]No, no, no, and then finally it's yes.

[00:13:54]Um and then maybe it's too late. But, you know, um for me it's it's it's about a conversation with my institution itself.

[00:14:02]That's how I choose.

[00:14:09]Uh sure. Um you know, I I I sit up here in a different capacity than my colleagues. Uh as I was saying earlier, we try to say yes to artists, even the most outrageous projects. We want that to happen. At the same time then, what we will do is pair it with um an artist we select, Lucho, who's sitting behind.

[00:14:27]So, it really is that that range.

[00:14:31]Okay, I just heard that we have like room for one more short question.

[00:14:37]Um after that, I think we have to stop here. So, if there's no more questions, we maybe just stop. If there's one more, we could take that.

[00:14:46]Okay. So, I like to thank all of you again for being here and thanks to Art Basel for making this possible. And then Thank you.

[00:14:56]>> free to ask us other questions and more in, you know, in a personal setting after this talk. Thank you very much.

[00:15:04]>> [applause]