Performance art in the first decade of the twenty-first century saw an increase in popularity. Goldberg explains that post September 11, 2001 a, “multiculturalism that had marked academic and curatorial research since the 1980s, broadening the scope of the Western European canon in art history and criticism, increased exponentially” (p 226). I’m curious how the attack on the World Trade Center had an effect on curation in museums, galleries, etc? For artists, especially performance artists, whose practice often transposes an inherent political agency, would that mean an added responsibility?
I find the conversation involving the necessity to archive performance art and how it changed the dynamic of the museum to be rather interesting. As Goldberg explains, “for the first time archivists, registrars and conservators…had to confront the complexities of displaying, collecting, preserving and explaining materials that had so profoundly shaped artistic developments in the final decades of the twentieth century, yet which, paradoxically, was ephemeral and almost invisible” (p227). I wonder if the ephemerality of performance adds to its agency? Does a performance lose its potency when the moment passes? Or can it retain it’s power through documentation? Is there something lost through this documentation process? It seems these questions elicit greater responsibility from those archivists, curators, directors, etc.
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