Installation view, Paul McCarthy: Head Space, Drawings 1963–2019, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, February 2 through May 10, 2020. Photography © Fredrik Nilsen Studio
PHILLIPS: How has your institution shifted its engagement now that you’re physically closed? Have there been any surprising creative developments with this new shift?
CONNIE BUTLER: Like most institutions, we are quickly regrouping to respond to the new demands of this extraordinary circumstance. Because the Hammer has such an amazing archive of public programs, which are usually free to the public and happen several nights weekly at the museum, we have a lot of content at the ready. We are also looking at ways to activate our collection and also make the most of our relationships with artists. In our community and among the artists in upcoming shows, there are many great potential studio conversations. I don’t know what this crisis will bring in terms of artistic shifts but I do know that artists always respond to the social and political realities of whatever is going on in the culture so there are sure to be long-lasting effects that we’ll see in art-making. Mostly it’s a time for institutions not to be conservative in their thinking, and I’m sure that goes for artists as well.
P: Is there a work of art you’ve exhibited recently that comes to mind during this moment?
CB: Well the fantastic current shows we have in our galleries currently, but not on view, come to mind every day. Paul McCarthy told my colleague Aram Moshayedi that he’d like to sleep in the galleries surrounded by his amazing drawings which are on our walls currently. His entire life as an artist is represented by more than 250 works on paper. This was a huge project for us and for Paul. I think of it every day.
P: Having to step away from your usual day-to-day schedule, is there a book/film/project that you’ll take this opportunity to begin or return to?
CB: The crazy thing about the new remote working is how time-consuming it is! I can say that I’m almost busier than I’ve ever been before. But as the weeks unfold I look forward to several writing projects including an essay on the artist Liz Larner for a survey show that will take place at the Walker Art Center and SculptureCenter and also a text on the artists Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci whose work I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Their collaborative work engages dance, drawing, performance, and the choreographic in the space of the museum in ways that have shifted my thinking about what it means to be a viewer.
Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Telepathic Improvisation, 2017. Installation with HD film, 20 min. Dimensions variable. Performance: Marwa Arsanios, MPA, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Werner Hirsch. View, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris.
P: What’s on the horizon at the Hammer that you’re looking forward to?
CB: I am currently working with my colleague Anne Ellegood, now director of ICA LA, on an exhibition called Witch Hunt. It was scheduled to open in the fall during election season, to respond to the current crisis in leadership and our government, through the lens of feminism. This show features the work of an amazing group of fifteen international artists who are contributing new and recent projects that deal with social and political histories from very different cultural positions. These mid-career, women-identified artists each have a long history of working from a feminist position and it’s going to be, frankly, a fantastic show of powerful ambitious work. The show will now open in February 2021 and I really can’t wait to have these great artists like Yael Bartana, Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, Candice Brietz, Vaginal Davis, Otobong Nkanga, Okwui Okopokwasili, and many others in our galleries and in Los Angeles.
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