A Brief History of Curating. Hans Ulrich Obrist
solution was, in that you also had to make a “virtue of necessity”—something that was used to such effect by so many artists. Over and over again, artists have told me how important the circumstance of this space was to them.
JC It really was important. In the first place, very young artists did not have great oeuvres in those days, that is, bodies of work sufficient enough for big retrospectives. Secondly, in most cases, they had never had a solo exhibition in a museum. Usually, they had had experiences with commercial galleries only, where space was typically restricted. Thirdly, there was a tendency among artists to avoid the sanctified halls of museums altogether. The inclination to go into a museum, into those “sanctified halls,” was not widely developed. There was more a tendency to avoid them. Though our institution was technically and legally a museum, it was in many ways more comparable to a private enterprise in someone’s house—a fact that has something to do with the atmosphere the place had and the way I ran it. I made decisions that I was not theoretically entitled to make, but nobody seemed to mind. There were no committees to decide what artists to show or when.
HUO Therefore, no bureaucracy?
JC No bureaucracy. Because of that, I had no difficulty making contact with artists who were skeptical of the museum as an institution. In other places, there were aggravations or things did not even get off the ground, but I did not have any problems.
HUO Would it be right to say that Mönchengladbach had the advantage of being more of a laboratory situation than a representational situation?
JC Exactly!
HUO If one talks to Harald Szeemann, or other curators from the 1960s, they often say that there only were a few interesting places in Europe at the time. Which ones were they?
JC Amsterdam, Bern, Krefeld. But I have to add that the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld closed for renovation soon after I left. The Museum Haus Lange shut down because it did not belong to the city, but actually to the Lange heirs, who decided not to extend its lease. Therefore, exhibitions were no longer held there. So, the only place in Germany that was internationally interesting was thus out of commission for a time. This was my chance to relieve Krefeld of its solitary responsibilities, as it were, which I promptly did.
HUO Were there other museum directors involved with contemporary art?
JC Not really. There were a few—[Werner] Schmalenbach in Hannover, for example. But they all showed what was already to society’s taste. Taking care of art and making a contribution as a museum to the definition of the term art, that nobody did. Their exhibitions served other aims than the ones in Krefeld and Mönchengladbach. I did not want my work to degenerate into a business. You know: I have such-and-such budget, I can therefore only organize a fixed number of predetermined exhibitions set to run one after another. No, some of my exhibitions occurred very spontaneously. Things happened from one day to the next. You met with particular artists you had known for some time, and asked them at a certain point: “Do you have time next month?” The question of money did not really play a role. Of course, one needed money, but it was improvised.
HUO Alexander Dorner’s writings deal with this kind of improvisation.
JC I was already interested in Dorner in the 1950s because he was one of the few people seriously thinking about the function of museums. He was somebody who did not just pass through an institution without asking any questions, but who developed a comprehensive idea that I could follow. I have always believed that it is the artist who creates a work, but a society that turns it into a work of art, an idea that is already in Duchamp and a lot of other places. In most cases, museums have failed to see the consequences of this notion. I have always considered myself to be a “co-producer” of art. Now, do not misunderstand me. I do not mean this in the sense of dictating to an artist: “Listen, now paint the upper left-hand corner red!” but rather in the sense of participating as a museum—as a mediating institution—in the process that transforms a work into a work of art. So it was always clear to me that I did not need to do anything for works already declared art by common consent. Instead, I was interested in those that had not found that consent and so that were still works, not works of art.
HUO Besides Alexander Dorner, were there any other figures who were or are important to you?
JC Not off the top of my head. Willem Sandberg, though, was a great influence on me. I think this is true for many others, as well.
HUO Why was Sandberg so important?
JC Sandberg excited me because he totally turned the definition of a museum—which was so tightly allied to the one of art—upside down, even more than Dorner. His ideas, which he disseminated in the publication Nü, and which caused such a stir at the beginning of the 1960s, abandoned the old notion of the museum as a permanent exhibition. Artworks should be warehoused, he said, and brought out for specific exhibitions and shown in a leisurely fashion. All institutional conventions governing art’s veneration should be given up, and it should feel as if you could play ping-pong in the museum right next to the walls with the paintings on them.
HUO Art and life?
JC To bring art and life completely together and, therefore, to give up the institution of the museum—at least as it is traditionally understood. Sandberg’s ideas suited me very much, although I adjusted them to a degree when I started in Mönchengladbach.
HUO How did this transition come about?
JC It was initiated by the controversy over the term museum. I had problems with a notion, common in those days, which held that problems with the museum could be solved by simply replacing the word with something else. Analogous to the term “anti-art,” the notion of the “anti-museum” was developed to reinvigorate the concept of the museum. But, despite the prefix, I did not want to completely abandon museum as a term. This was probably my main difference with Sandberg. Unlike him, I tried to explain my position within the context of the history of the museum and of its development. However, in a publication I said I was not against playing ping-pong in a museum, but thought that the paintings should be removed from the walls first, since they would be a distraction…
HUO In an interview I did with Pontus Hultén, he also talked about art and life in relation to the museum—in particular the Kulturhuset, which was very important in Stockholm at the end of the 1960s as a transdisciplinary utopian idea. It was also about the blurring of art and life through the integration of things such as restaurants, interactive rooms, workshops, and laboratories. However, he said that, for him, separation was always a very important aspect of the Kulturhuset concept, though one that was never actually realized, until he later played with it at the Centre Georges Pompidou. Still, the collection was always the priority. This is similar to what you just said: one can play ping-pong in a museum, but while the exhibition is somewhere else.
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