Extension, Loop, Pull  

Part of my research into choreographic thinking is to envision how the intersection between the choreographic and the curatorial is produced through movement, and what characterizes the nature of that movement. Selecting collections for Open House was a fluid process, characterized by extension—the looping movement of the initial query to a collector or collection, a pulling back into conversations with other collections, and then an extension out again, to still other collectors.

Touch, Accumulation & Eddying   

I had no assumptions about whether people would be interested in participating in the exhibition. I remained open about how the relationship—and the objects that catalyzed it—became delineated with the curatorial framework.

The movement for Open House entailed reaching out, a touch. Touching resulted in accumulation, common in collecting practices. In this case, the accumulation took place via an eddying, with overlapping flows, backtracking, revisions, spill-overs, adjustments, and countercurrents.

Intersecting Frameworks

Other than wanting to showcase some Lamont Gallery works, I kept the possibilities open to the other types of collections that would be included. I was receptive to opportunity, rather than dictating and defining the details in advance. The importance of any given collection was in the way it extended awareness of collectors and collecting practices, and situated collections within intersecting social, material, and affective frameworks.

Additive & Responsive

The primary focus was local (Academy-related) and regional (New England), although there was at least one collection from the Midwest. The inclusion of some collections arose from casual conversations. The paint by numbers pieces came from the suggestion of our gallery manager, who had seen the works while on vacation. The vintage radio suggestion came from an employee who had seen the collector profiled on a New England culture program. The project grew in this way, by additive and responsive means.

Open Houses

I contacted collectors by phone and email, but much of the work was done face-to-face. These conversations entailed more than talking about the collection, of course. They included making someone’s acquaintance anew, even if it was someone I thought I knew. I was invited into people’s offices, workshops, and houses. Upon my arrival, I was offered wine, coffee, snacks, places to sit, and often access into spaces that were the most intimate: bedrooms, private home offices, and bathrooms. Kitchens in every state of chaos. Living rooms that were not staged for display but caught in the act of daily life. I was attuned to the intimacy and vulnerability at this stage of the project.

Negotiation

Determining what would be displayed in the gallery was done through the light touch of negotiation. I could suggest what I was interested in including, but the collector was free to share that object or other objects. The touch was a meeting point not situated in one agent or another, and not necessarily in a nostalgic, equidistant middle, either. The discussions were more about the relationship or exchange than about any particular object, in contrast to a more traditional art-historical approach where the specific object is key to the aesthetic or material argument.

Generosity

I was struck by the incredible hospitality of the collectors who became my hosts (it was not the other way around, the gallery acting as host and inviting others in). The title of the exhibition, Open House: A Portrait of Collecting, was in response to my literal traversal of spaces: highways to side roads to driveways, offices, classrooms, living rooms, storage areas, backyards, family rooms—along with walls, shelves, bedside tables, work desks, mantles, and closets, and of the generosity found therein.