backstory50: Artist as Curator
Many years ago, when I was Chief Curator at the Neuberger, I was thinking about putting together an exhibition of the work of Forrest Bess. We have a wonderful painting of his work in our collection entitled Before Man, which was purchased by Roy R. Neuberger from the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1978 and donated to the Neuberger in 1986.
If you don’t know Bess’s work, the paintings are small, gorgeous abstractions in his own hand-made frames. At first glance, they are seemingly innocuous, but they are decidedly complex in their relationship to the lexicon of symbols that the artist created.
Then, it came in the mail… a request from the de Menil Collection to borrow our Forrest Bess for a Bess show they were organizing. At first I thought…aww, rats…scooped. And then I thought…hmm…maybe we can show their exhibition here at the Neuberger. So, I reached out and, sure enough, the answer was yes.
Menil Collection Exhibition Curator Clare Elliott created a 20-year survey of the artist’s paintings and then invited artist Robert Gober, who had created a Bess project as his submission to the 2012 Whitney Biennial, to expand on that project for the exhibition as well. The new project included photographs of the artist, as well as correspondence and articles by, and about, him.
There are several interesting things that the exhibition points to alongside Bess’s work. First is the way in which a contemporary artist like Gober would contribute to the Whitney Biennial a project about another artist. Then there is the artist as curator. And finally, the ways in which Bess’s work, so visually innocuous, ties to a lexicon and threads a thesis he derived about queerness … but more specifically, his theory that the unification of male and female within one’s own body could produce immortality. You can learn more in this story prepared by our curatorial assistant, Rem Ribeiro.
Today’s 50th anniversary thank-you goes to Rem, a graduate of Purchase College’s MA Program in Art History. She was an amazing addition to our staff when she joined us a few years ago. I expect she will do great things in the fields of curating and curatorial studies.
Tracy Fitzpatrick
Director, Neuberger Museum of Art
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