Finally, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is going to make sense, if all goes according to plan. Like a new owner in an old home, chief curator Michael Darling is overseeing a philosophical gut rehab whose ultimate goal is clarity.
“As an outsider, I wasn’t 100 percent sure what the MCA stood for,” says Darling, who was hired last summer in what has since been acknowledged as the catalyst for a nearly complete overhaul of the curatorial department. “I didn’t have a great sense of what was in the collection, what defined the museum, etc. This (re-imagining) is a way to tie the ID of the museum to its collection and also have a clearer message about the exhibitions that we do and the types of shows that we’re doing, building these competencies and reputations with different through-lines.”
Needless to say, this kind of change doesn’t happen overnight.
Darling’s vision began last summer, within weeks of when he landed on his new turf. During a lengthy interview in August at the MCA’s cafe, the museum building came up, along with its reputation as an overpowering venue whose overscaled walls dwarf most of the exhibitions it has housed.
Darling, at the time, was careful in his word choice. “I think (rethinking the layout) would help to streamline things,” he said. “I think it would help to build our identity in a clear way. I’m getting to understand the building and the collection, and the curators are trying to start to understand some of those patterns that we can create for people.”
Nearly 12 months later, Darling’s curatorial clarity is beginning to manifest itself physically, most immediately in the museum’s front yard: A massive yet playful four-piece installation by Hong Kong-born sculptor Mark Handforth will live on the front plaza beginning July 8 (pending weather) through autumn. By then, every last corner of the building at 220 E. Chicago Ave. will have been re-imagined, perhaps for the first time in its 15-year history, with the museum’s permanent collection in mind.
It’s a comprehensive overhaul that doesn’t end with the property. Over the course of the next year, the MCA will adopt revamped graphic and digital identities, ultimately including a searchable online archive similar to what large institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago have.
It’s due time, according to director Madeleine Grynsztejn.
“The last time the MCA engaged a major change to its design identity was 15 years ago with the opening of the new building,” Grynsztejn wrote last week via email from Italy, where she was attending the Venice Biennale. “It was right for its time, and as we’ve changed and evolved, we again need to create a new visual identity for the MCA Chicago that fits with our current and future vision.”
The plan is to roll out physical changes gallery by gallery, floor-by-floor, like a progressive supper, allowing visitors to digest one newly rebranded area at a time.
Following next month’s plaza installation unveiling, the main floor’s north and south galleries, historically home to rotating exhibitions with an awkward pause in the echoey atrium between, will begin to take shape as the go-to spaces to show off the permanent collection. In October, a show of post-minimalist work from the 1960s and 1970s dubbed “the language of less (then & now)” will kick off the MCA collection showcase in the north gallery, which thereafter will be refreshed three times a year. The south gallery will house post-emerging contemporary artists beginning with Rashid Johnson in spring 2012, also rotating three times per year. The lofty atrium in between will serve as a sanctuary for major contemporary works.
The general idea, Darling explained during a thorough walk-through in April, is to acquaint visitors with the permanent collection, whose archive has never been made public online or otherwise.
The cost to see it all, a suggested donation of $12, won’t change. According to the MCA’s chief financial officer, the total cost of the transition will be absorbed into the regular operating budget, and grants will help fund the creation of the online archive.
“The motif I’ve been trying to go for is clarity, clarity, clarity,” Darling said via telephone this month.
Beyond the semipermanent collections showcased on the main floor, the MCA’s identity will permeate through the rotating galleries on the third and fourth floors with special exhibitions and visiting shows. One such series quietly launched in February with the Thomas Ruff exhibition on the fourth floor. Branded “MCA DNA,” the series will feature iconic works that constitute the building blocks of the museum’s collection.
The biggest news? The decade-old UBS-sponsored “12 x 12: New Artist/New Work” series is getting a makeover. It will move from the main floor to the third, doubling in size. On display for three months or more instead of just one month, the new series, renamed “Chicago Works,” will debut in November with an installation by oddball Milwaukee painter and filmmaker Scott Reeder.
“In my opinion, what we’re really trying to emphasize is a deeper, greater commitment to the artist,” Darling said, “with twice the space, longer shows, more educational components and an opportunity for curators to be even better for those artists who are out in the world. I’m really excited about that and want to get out this message that the MCA is paying attention to the best art practices in the city, and we’re the place where people can find that.”
At the same time the museum is making physical and digital changes, Darling’s 2010 hiring has also stirred a sea change in staffing. Since Darling took the helm last August, four of the museum’s seven curatorial positions have been in flux, including two veterans who predate Grynsztejn.
For Dominic Molon, who worked his way from security guard to curator and stayed at the museum for two decades, the decision to leave last summer was rooted in a desire for a new challenge.
“I’d grown up there,” Molon said via telephone from the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis where he is chief curator. “I’d been there since I was 18. It was like, if I don’t leave now, I’m never going to leave.”
The recent turnover is par for the course in curatorial departments, said Grynsztejn. “It often occurs in waves,” Grynsztejn wrote. “We turned this challenge into an opportunity to refresh and renew our curatorial program at the MCA.”
Grynsztejn didn’t answer exactly when and why the current changes came about (“It is essential for a museum to continue to evolve and create new ways to engage audiences,” was her reply), but one speculation is that the museum is responding to wavering attendance, which has historically been on the low end of the 10 major museums and institutions within Chicago’s Museums in the Park coalition. Between 2009 and 2010, attendance at the MCA was down 13 percent to 261,850, just slightly above the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. Last year’s visitors to the Art Institute of Chicago, by comparison, numbered 1,612,780.
Perhaps starting over was the best means to an end.
Molon’s replacement, Naomi Beckwith, landed at the museum in late May, and compared its energy to that of a start-up company.
“I don’t feel like I’m joining an old boys club,” Beckwith said via telephone this month. “It’s not as much about an absolute fresh start as it is about the ethos around here being, let’s put it on the table, let’s discuss it. Right now, this museum is doing anything but inertia. … I think there’s a way in which we’re doing very smart things with the collection, revisiting them. It doesn’t feel like we’re dusting things off, but (instead) trying to look fresh at things and why they’re still relevant.”
Curator Lynne Warren, by far the matriarch of the group with 32 years on staff, said that she’s witnessed drastic changes at the museum in the past, though they were more visible within the context of a smaller curatorial staff.
“I love seeing new people come in with new ideas,” Warren said by phone this month. As for the public’s perception of the museum’s transitions, Warren said, “That’s so hard to predict. … You just have to do your best and do the most honest and transparent thing you can do and hope that your message does get out there, and that it’s compelling. Having clarity always helps.”
Darling and Grynsztejn stressed that beyond clarity, friendliness is key. Revamping an art museum only goes so far if it’s not approachable to the public.
“We believe in being 50/50 artist-activated/audience-engaged,” Grynsztejn wrote. “This is really important: We want to be increasingly essential to each and every Chicagoan and MCA stakeholder, the go-to place for genuine interaction with the creative process, where you can engage with vibrant new ideas and in the process learn more about yourself and gain insight about others and the world around you.”
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