Looking Back at Dream Exhibitions Version 1.0

by Corinna Kirsch on March 18, 2014 · 5 comments Dream Exhibitions

Still from Super Mario Clouds, Cory Arcangel, 2002.

Dream Exhibitions is a series that asks everyone what unrealized exhibition they’d like to put on. Everyone’s invited, so dream a big dream, and send it our way (Corinna Kirsch, corinna@artfcity.com).

I started Dream Exhibitions because I wanted to see if we can come up with new ways of thinking about art exhibitions. And, based on the submissions, we did. (I had been running the series weekly, but now it’ll just be run every once in a while.)

Looking back at the first edition of Dream Exhibitions, several trends ended up popping up like persistent gophers. The people have spoken and here’s what they wanted to see:

  • Exhibitions in places other than galleries

Video art in a sports bar
Damien Hirst at a water park
Sculpture in a car wash
IRL support group for trolls

  • Art with not-art

Jay de Feo’s Rose shown next to a Death Star model
An exhibition about being stuck in an art gallery with the cast of Sex & the City
Circles with nipples (Yes, just circles.)

  • Contemporary art revisited

Michelangelo and Manzoni
Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc” as a handball court (Trend overlap alert: This one fits in with art with not-art category and exhibitions in places other than galleries.)
Whoworeitbetter.info exhibition
John McCracken tombstones

  • Major museum makeovers

Skateboarding down the Guggenheim ramp
The Met Museum’s mummies stacked into a pyramid
A show of vinyl records at the Guggenheim installed along the museum’s winding ramp

Then there’s some twisted, dark fantasy ideas, like a Staten Island carnival full of evil-versions of artists. Ha.

Overall, what’s key to these submissions is that pretty much no one brought up creating new work. The lesson, it seems, is that we already have enough art out there to wrestle with, so let’s make better what we’ve already got. Now let’s just make that happen more often IRL.

 

 

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