Sheyi Bankale (SB): Has globalization reached the art museum?

Richard Armstrong (RA): I’d say that if you look at art museums as an outgrowth of the Enlightenment, the common rise of commerce, trade and colonization (all of them are intertwined), the natural history museum might really be the biggest demonstration of globalization. Globalization has reached the art museum but not in the States; instead, in the States, there are repeated cycles of introversion and extroversion. After World War II there was a particularly high level of interest in globalization under the impetus of the Rockefeller brothers, and it demonstrated itself in big projects in Europe, Asia and Latin America under their various charitable arms. The Guggenheim began as an American translation of a German idea, a Bauhaus-oriented idea. Its origins lie mostly in ideas about how to change behaviour through exposure to abstract painting, with that exposure being a rigidly defined experience – music, cloth-covered walls, giant frames and low benches that one could lie down on. The original director, Hilla von Rebay, had a very determinist view on what we should look at – what she deemed important – but it was Teutonic. The Museum of Modern Art which began at the same moment might have been considered Francophilic while the Whitney, which is a couple of years younger than the Guggenheim, had an American bias. There was globalization in our century, but it was essentially about contact between Europe and North America.

SB: Do you feel globalization may encourage a sense of censorship in what is displayed?

RA: No, I think that censorship is frequently a manifestation of two things, one being a type of fear, and therefore political power, the other an adherence to orthodoxy, which is usually a curatorial trap. If there is censorship it is because, from the curator’s point of view, certain things don’t qualify as contemporary art.

SB: Pontus Hultén and Willem Sandberg show great examples of how the museum curator can actually determine the role of the museum, in these cases, allowing it to be an incubator or laboratory: almost a kind of time capsule, or storage. This leads to new ideas and discourses. Would you agree?

RA: I think that there are a lot of powerful people – you’ve cited two of them – who understood, perhaps better than many of their peers, the potential for the museum as a social arbiter. We are now in a phase where that’s considered a worldwide phenomenon: time capsule, Petri dish, convening spot, possible revolutionary site – all updates on the Hulten/Sandberg model.

SB: We’re in a digital age. What is your vision for technology as a tool to communicate?

RA: With prosperity and air travel, we have the potential as people to spend time together more freely, which is positive. With the internet, we have the potential negative of a lot of ill-informed people who have very strong opinions. Sometimes I wonder if we haven’t reverted to “drums along the Mohawk”, that constant beat of folks with their frequently self-serving opinions, often not based on fact. On the other hand, there is the possibility of widespread involvement, which is positive.

SB: How can new technology be used internally?

RA: We think that sharing as much as we can with people online at their convenience is good practice and we’ve made a great effort towards that. We have large audiences in social media and on the website. We also encourage people to visit a Guggenheim ‘outpost’ somewhere in the world, so that they have a physical experience as well. We’re also interested in going beyond, encouraging an ‘on-the-street’ interest. The BMW Guggenheim Lab is an example. We are on the street now in Berlin after eleven weeks on the street in New York last summer, and we’re going to Mumbai in December 2012. On the street, online, and on-site.

SB: Last year I was one of the curators for the European Capital of Culture in Turku, Finland. A major discussion took place about the Helsinki Guggenheim site. In view of the relationship? Between a potentially new museum and the Kiasma, would this create conflict between the museums?

RA: We didn’t get that far – we don’t know. The executive body of the city council voted against an architectural competition, so we’re frozen for now.

SB: What do you think of Pittsburgh’s contemporary art landscape, and how would you measure it in comparison to other national cities and international cities?

RA: That city has very few peers in America and only a few abroad. Between the Carnegie Museum, The Andy Warhol Museum and the Mattress Factory, plus the other offsite activities that come and go, a small population has access to very up-to-date and broad-based information. It’s quite unusual, and if you throw in the Frick and the nearby Westmoreland Museum, it makes for a very active programme. In terms of counterparts, I frequently think of Glasgow – Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Tramway and other opportunities there – but pound for pound, person for person, people in Allegheny County are getting as much reward from their region as any other comparably sized city in the world.

SB: From conversations in Pittsburgh, I heard you were extremely influential in the acquisitions at the Carnegie Museum?

RA: That’s one of a director’s few prerogatives, and you have to think about what is the legacy. Other people then ponder whether this is worth looking at thirty years later, or eighty years in the future. We were very careful when making acquisition choices, bolstering, I hope, the collecting that was handed on to us. We also added to the acquisitions budget so that people after us have capital to spend.

SB: Through the changing resources of the collection did you witness a shift of expectation and behaviour of Pittsburgh museum visitor?

RA: You have some very sophisticated people who’ve been around the block and have good, close access to thinkers and, then, there is a transitory population that is university-based. Then, the museum has a long history of being involved with younger people and now retired people as well, so it is a broad audience. I would say many of them are directed to pre-1945 art by temperament because, as you can see, it is a slightly conservative environment, but there’s a taste among lots of other people for knowing what’s happening today and looking at it carefully and then adding that to the collection.

SB: Playing devil’s advocate, by reviewing the Teenie Harris exhibition. Was this an exercise to expand the demographic of the audience?

RA: That was probably the most important African-American archive of a photojournalist whose work frequently aspires to, and often reaches, a universal value as art.

SB: I would argue! The debate concerns a career as a photojournalist – should he now be recognised as an artist and amongst artists?

RA: I think so, yes. Either way it was a worthy investment – in one day the museum collection became twice as big. We bought eighty thousand negatives, all from one artist. It was a giant commitment; it’s comparable to beginning another museum. And, the ensuing show was only step one of the digestion of his work. It is well on its way now; we have to give credit to Teresa Heinz and the Heinz Endowments because they funded the project and shared our enthusiasm from the beginning.

SB: There seems to be, more than I have ever experienced within museum walls, a hard push for acquisitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Perhaps because here is a history of old money and an established acquisitions history too, that seems to be entrenched in this trend?

RA: I think they buy very cleverly and, like you said, they have a fair amount of money available to them. It’s a broad based activity – all the curators get to play in the game. I also think that the museum has a special role there because, to some degree, people might or might not feel somewhat isolated, and having a great collection like that reconnects them to a bigger past, or a greater future.

SB: Maybe it could be considered an attempt to increase the museum’s international power?

RA: There is no power inherent in the collection except through sharing it with other people. Demonstrating a perception about what the past meant, what the present is and what the future could be, is the museum’s purview. Its architecture department, the photography department, painting and sculpture department and its contemporary department each has brilliance among its curatorial staff.

SB: For sure, and that mirrors the cityscape in a way. My first acquaintance with Pittsburgh was an invitation from Evan Mirapaul, an art collector I’ve known for six years. I have to admit my first thought was ‘Pittsburgh?’ So I travelled with no expectation, and the vista was instantly attractive. And then you start to understand certain phrases such as affordable rent, powerful institutions, sovereign universities; and these three components form the early stage of an interesting platform…?

RA: We were just in Bilbao last week, Eleanor Goldhar and I, with some other people, and it’s very comparable to Pittsburgh; determined by the river, framed by the mountains, chock full of industrious people. Some of them felt left behind previously but are now gaining ground…

SB: This is why I’m pondering the possibility of the architecture of such a city. Hans-Ulrich Obrist pointed out to me “The architect, Cedric Price’s major but unrealized work, the Fun Palace (1961-1974), was planned to be an interdisciplinary multi-purpose complex for cultural projects. The Fun Palace, which Price developed out of dialogue with Joan Littlewood, was to be a flexible structure in a large mechanistic shipyard in which, according to changing situations, many structures could be built that utilize calculated uncertainty and conscious incompleteness to produce a catalyst for invigorating change.” I thought there are many similarities to be found in Pittsburgh. Could Pittsburgh become the new Fun Palace?

RA: You should show it to them, sounds exciting. I saw his retrospective in Montreal, and that was a small part of the overall project. Price was a charismatic and insightful architect.

SB: Over the last few decades in Pittsburgh, the population has decreased from 800,000 to 300,000, that is a huge drop in its demographics. But this is where it manifests the ‘phoenix approach’ or ‘greening approach’ to achieve new opportunity…?

RA: You’ve got to ask, how do we keep the place unique, and how do we take care of who is here, and how do we address the really essential question of “are we over-built in certain places?” And I think Burgh’ers have done a fairly good job of that, so it is at least three simultaneous considerations at all times.

SB: The unique support mechanism helps?

RA: It’s a Garden of Eden for nonprofit organizations, having more available money per capita than any other city in the country. It’s not a particularly greedy place, so the way the money is invested is fairly sage.

SB: As an opposite reaction, there is the element of knowing a constant dripping tap of resources exists, which artists can draw from, so does this have an influence on the work itself?

RA: You never know, you would like to think that the audience and the makers become numerically large enough that it becomes self-critical because otherwise, you’re stuck in this middle level of “we make because they give”, and the third party wants to look but it’s not really being critical. You have to hope that the audience, all three aspects of it grows to such a degree that it all becomes self-critical.

SB: In this area, improvements can certainly be made. Like you said, there is an inertia of building blocks and, therefore, concentration and foresight are spent pushing to get it right as opposed to, perhaps, critiquing it?

RA: The way to look at it is that it might be more competitive. It wouldn’t hurt to have another invasion of younger or older artists that have a different view from the people who are there, but I think that with the aspect of very cheap space and the possibility of contact with the international world there is a reality in itself: an attractive city to artists.

SB: Do you think that the connection internationally is also connected to the art market? In relation to the number of commercial galleries per city is there a shortfall in Pittsburgh?

RA: It’s unlikely that that will happen, you don’t even have that in Chicago, which is eight times bigger. The peculiar reality of globalization is that a few cities have attracted most of the commercial outlets. Now they’re going through a change because the world’s population is becoming itinerant. Moreover, people are not going to galleries, they’re going to art fairs – that’s another levelling and break up and redistribution of power. But the notion that Pittsburgh will ever have a cluster of powerful private galleries is unlikely.

SB: I’m intrigued to understand what attracted you to Pittsburgh, and also why you decided to leave?

RA: Well I guess when I went to Pittsburgh – it was 20 years ago now – it was to do the Carnegie International in 1995. I had a very concrete goal; to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the show. I’d been advised to move on from the Whitney Museum and, as soon as I went to Pittsburgh (I’d been there once before) I thought it was a good fit and I liked it, and they were equally enthusiastic. So the party began, and the party went on for a long time. But they needed a new source of energy and ideas so it just seemed timely to go elsewhere. I thought I’d come to New York again but I didn’t realize I’d have a job. I guess I just kind of knew I’d come to New York.

SB: You are held in high regard, however, is there anything in Pittsburgh that you felt you could have achieved that perhaps you did not?

RA: There were things that we could have done but there was no disappointment. There was one, big lingering challenge that I think other people will be able to address, which was even outside the museum’s walls, but inside the museum most of what we thought was worth doing got done. There was a slow metabolism out there but it was thorough. I was very happy that nearly everything got accomplished.