I have always been a behind-the-scenes kind of girl, from my time working backstage in theater to my current curiosity about how exhibitions come together. So I loved the week-long series the Guardian ran at the beginning of February where they did some extensive coverage on "the people who make arts happen." For example, the current Tate Triennial of new British art at Tate Britain Altermodern granted Jonathan Jones a unique chance to see how some of its crazy installations got installated:
In the end, it is as an idea that [curator Nicolas] Bourriaud's Altermodern will succeed
or fail. It's hard for me, as a critic, to make any kind of judgment -
I've got too close. But one thing does strike me, which won't be easy
to forget next time I write a review. When you dismiss an exhibition,
you're not just damning the artists and curators. Art is a world, and I
don't mean in the nebulous, ugly sense of the "art world". I mean a
real social process, in which people come together in complex ways to
make things. It is relational, as Bourriaud and his theoretical
followers would say. No one is an island, to put it another way: we're
all part of the archipelago.
Altermodern is a particularly raucous and installation-heavy show, but even Adrian Searle in his review notes that "it is also the richest and most generous Tate Triennial to date. It is also the best-installed." It took a small army of people to make that possible, each with their own important role, and if you're confused about what separates an art handler from a co-curator Jones's handy glossary about the exhibition will help you out. Then click here for some great photos from the Triennial's installation, including a fabulous image of artist Matthew Darbyshire putting his mom to work.