Contemporary Museum
100 W. Centre Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
Project 20, Part 1
December 2009 marks the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Contemporary Museum. From the museum's first exhibition-a courageous community-based examination of the AIDS crisis through art-the Contemporary Museum has been a bold and experimental institution, responsive to the cultural, social, and political climate of our times and serving as a laboratory for new ideas and new models for exhibitions of contemporary art. During the museum's first ten years the Contemporary became known as a "museum without walls" for its groundbreaking exhibitions staged in temporary sites throughout the city. Following nearly a decade of nomadic programming the museum moved in to a more permanent facility to accommodate the growing audience and offer year-round exhibition programming. With the Contemporary's Mt. Vernon location as its home base, the past decade has been marked by ambitious new commissions, national tours for Contemporary Museum projects, innovative programming that brought teens together with artists, and off-site installations that have engaged communities throughout the city of Baltimore. <p> Over the past twenty years, the Contemporary has presented over 50 exhibitions, installed shows in more than 25 venues, collaborated with over ten of Baltimore's cornerstone institutions, organized exhibitions that have toured to 15 cities around the country, and have supported residencies and new commissions by over 40 artists. <p> In January 2010, the Contemporary Museum will launch a year-long exhibition series to mark the museum's 20th anniversary. This exhibition will feature twenty artists from all over the globe, working in all media, and representing some of the most promising new talent in contemporary art. Each artist has been selected by one of twenty guest curators, each of whom played a significant role in shaping the Contemporary Museum's dynamic twenty-year history. Guest curators include past directors, former curators, and artists who exhibited in Contemporary Museum exhibitions. By inviting the Contemporary Museum's prominent alumni to each select one artist for this exhibition, Project 20 will celebrate the museum's visionary and experimental past while looking ahead to the future of contemporary art. Among the guest curators are George Ciscle, the museum's founding director, artist David Reed, who exhibited in Going For Baroque in 1995, Adam Lerner, the Contemporary Museum's curator in the late 1990s, and photographer Dawoud Bey, whose 2008 summer residency in collaboration with the Walters Art Museum produced an inspiring portrait exhibition co-curated by fifteen Baltimore-area teens. <p> Project 20 kicks off on January 16 with the opening of Participation Nation, an exhibition that brings together three artists and artist collaboratives who create installations that invite viewers to participate by contributing to the work's content. Participation Nation will be a highly interactive exhibition experience with new works by Finishing School (Los Angeles), Neighborhood Public Radio (Chicago) and Lee Mingwei (New York).<p> Formed in late 2001, Finishing School is a Los Angeles-based collective that explores issues such as individual rights and freedoms, governmental power, scientific exploration, and corporate branding and influence using humor, technology, and activism. Finishing School established themselves in 2002 with "Today it's Voluntary," a provocative view of surveillance and individual freedoms in a post-911 world. In this installation, Finishing School established their model for participatory projects as they subjected gallery visitors to a series of voluntary "security" screenings as they attempted to enter their exhibition venue. For Participation Nation, Finishing School is developing a new project entitled GO, a project that will invite viewers to document explorations of their neighborhoods using digital cameras that will be available at the museum. <p> Neighborhood Public Radio is an independent, artist-run radio project committed to providing an alternative media platform for artists, activists, musicians, and community members. Setting up temporary booths to stream content onto the internet, or using low-power portable FM transmitters, NPR's nomadic team-anchored by artists Jon Brumit, Lee Montgomery, and Michael Trigilio broadcasts live shows from galleries, residences, and neighborhood points of interest. To celebrate the character of local neighborhoods, "NPR" constructs programmatic narratives with community members' voices rather than through journalistic reporting. During Participation Nation, NPR will work with local musicians, visual artists, activists, journalists, and Baltimore-area residents to participate in this grassroots activity whose neighborhood-based programming provides inspiration as an alternative radio broadcast model. <p> Conceptual artist Lee Mingwei creates installations that often depend on shared experiences and collaborations between himself and the public. During Participation Nation, Mingwei will present the Pantheon Project an installation that offers the audience an opportunity to represent themselves to one another through a carefully structured, public ritual exercise orchestrated. Inspired by traditional devotional practices, the artist invites the audience to transform generic wooden boxes into secular shrines honoring the individuals and institutions that have protected and promoted them. Other visitors to the museum who share their sentiments will be able to engage them in dialogue by leaving their own devotional materials at the site of these displays during the run of the exhibition. Taken together, these shrines are intended to paint an unusual and telling portrait of community values. <p> Exhibition Curators: Gary Sangster, Thom Collins, Irene Hofmann
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