For a project for my Exhibition Processes class, I am planning a project akin to Andrea Fraser’s “Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk” in 1989, a single channel color video in which Fraser portrays the role of a museum curator named Jane Castleton, who lead a group on an unusual tour of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There were five performances of this series, in which Fraser would go throughout an art museum and describe her surroundings and the less prevalent themes within an art museum, sometimes completely overlooking the artworks themselves. These works were seen to be a performance piece, and I was inspired by this to create a performance of my own within Decatur Georgia.
In this performance, I will act as a curator and tour guide of the Decatur Square and surrounding areas, giving my audience a tour of the art of Decatur through tags and stickers on the streets, while talking about the importance of the art, and its context in the city as a whole. I have chosen to organize my art (as of right now) into several categories, based on location and added context. I have divided into 4 to 5 different categories of public art, and the importance I see in each, featured below.
- The Electrical Grid/Box in the Decatur Sqare
- the Church Lightpost
- The Mural
- and finally, the Tunnel
While each section of art is unique, I feel that I have a few primary themes to address, of “high” and “low” forms of art, public versus private space, and diversity in artistic education. I have chosen several images that I feel are provocative for a variety of reasons, and have a plan to create an entire website for the purpose of running a “gallery” of my images, with some of the primary sources attached.
My current plan is to perform a live presentation of my topic at the Agnes Scott Spring Annual Research Conference, if my submission is accepted.
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