PROFILE: Carlos Basualdo, Commissioner of the United States Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennial

His proposal, Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens –for which Basualdo wrote the texts in English that accompany the catalogue ? will reveal the intricate nature of the American artist’s work and its close relationship with the context in which it is shown. This will be the second time that the Argentine critic acts as curator in the Italian biennial. The first time was in 2003, when on an invitation from the Italian critic and curator, Francesco Bonami, he directed The Structure of Survival, a study of the effects of the crisis in the developing world.

Given your long-dating bonds with Italy (Basualdo is of Italian origin and he is a professor at the Università Iuav di Venezia), what motivated you to compete for the curatorship of the United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennial?
“Michael Taylor encouraged me to compete. At that moment we had just acquired Bruce Nauman´s work, The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths (1967), one of the first neons in his career. That gave me the idea of showing Nauman and his relationship with the city” (The work, acquired in 2007, will be one of the works included in the pavilion. The text that accompanies the work at the museum reads as follows: ‘Nauman’s sign advertises a metaphysical and deeply personal message as if it were for sale.’).
You propose to explore the artist’s oeuvre and to examine it at the same time in the Venetian context, “using the notion of the national pavilion as a point of departure,” as you explain in your presentation. How will you achieve this?
“The work itself generates a crisis between internal and external space, public and private, body and space. Logic might help to open up the pavilion and connect it to a city that has a particular logic, in which everything seems to be suspended and one never knows for certain if one is in a public or a private space.”
Curator Michael Taylor said: “Bruce Nauman has fundamentally altered our conception of artistic practice and identity.” However, you consider him an artist who is difficult to understand. What prompted the final decision?
“I considered it a challenge. The things I have done in my life, I have done because in them I have found a chance to grow, or should I say, to think and live. This was the case of ‘Tropicália: A revolution in Brazilian culture’ (Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2006), which gave me the chance to know Brazil better than I already did and touch what I would call Brazil’s ‘marrow’. In my opinion, Nauman is a key artist of this century, who has exerted an incredible influence and who still has a bearing on artists’ thinking.”
Is a biennial the appropriate space to present him?
“What interests me is to see and communicate what the artist wants to say. The more difficult the thing you have to say is, the greater the visibility you need to have. In this respect, a biennial is the perfect place. A friend of mine used to say that if you want something to be noticed, the ideal strategy is to build a sort of mound in the middle of the exhibition space. That is precisely what we want to do with Nauman’s show.” (The partnership between the Philadephia Museum of Art and two academic institutions, the Università Iuav di Venezia and the Università Ca’ Foscari, will make it possible to interlace Nauman´s works with the urban structure of the city, instead of restricting them to a single physical space).
In “The Structure of Survival” (Venice, 2003) you presented works by José Antonio Hernández-Diez (Venezuela), Carolina Caycedo Sánchez (Colombia), Fernanda Gomes (Brazil), Rachel Harrison (U.S.A.), Olumuyiwa Olamide Osifuye (Nigeria), Pedro Reyes (Mexico), Dolores Zinny and Juan Maidagan (Argentina / U.S.A.), among others, in an effort to show how the crisis is evidenced in art and society. What do you rescue of this first experience in a biennial?
“It was not a Latin American exhibit, but the point of view was Latin American. For me, it was very important, and I still base many of my ideas on it. It was my first experience in Venice and I felt very well in Italy. After the biennial, I was invited to deliver courses during the winter, and I still teach courses during one quarter every year.

From Literature to Art Curatorship
You had your academic training in the field of Literature, and your father had a strong influence in this respect. What can you tell us about your initiation in art?
“In the 1980s I began to contribute as an art critic in the local edition of the newspaper Página 12 (Rosario 12). With the cash prize I obtained from my participation in a poetry competition in Spain, I traveled for the first time to New York. I met Jack Bankowski, the editor of ArtForum magazine. He invited me to write about Latin American art. I looked at him and thought: ‘But what is he talking about! If Latin America is huge!’ It was a great opportunity, and with that excuse I started to travel through the whole region.”
What led you to compete for the Helena Rubinstein Fellowship that allowed you to work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1993?
“I had organized a visit to Rosario for Robert Storr, the then senior curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). On that occasion, he recommended that I opt for that two-month scholarship, and I did so. I was the only person to be selected. At MoMA I met Jessica Morgan, currently a curator at Tate Modern, with whom I established a friendship and with whom I have always kept in contact.”
Thanks to your work for ArtForum, you were able to tour almost the whole of Latin America, even though you eventually returned to Argentina. What led you to settle in New York once again in 1994?
“In a trip to Brazil, I met Catherine David, who was later the curator of Documenta. She put me in contact with Benjamin H.D. Buchloh (currently a teacher at Harvard University and co-editor of October). Both of them advised me to apply to the Whitney Independent Study Program in Critical Studies at the Whitney Museum of American Art, to which I had access through another Helena Rubinstein Fellowship (1994-95). When this was over, there was not much to do in Argentina. That was before the existence of the Malba, and in addition, I am a native of Rosario, which made everything harder for me in Buenos Aires.”
Your activity as an art critic runs parallel to your activity as curator. What exhibitions did you curate during those early years?
“I organized ‘The Education of the Five Senses’ –titled after the book by Haroldo de Campos – an exhibition of Brazilian art that I staged for White Columns (the oldest alternative-art exhibition space in New York) in 1995. I also featured ‘Concrete Dreams’ at the Luis Ángel Arango Library in Bogota (1997) and a Cindy Sherman exhibition for the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo, Brazil (1995)”.
What is the difference between the New York of that time and the present-day city in terms of opportunities to receive training and work in the field of art?
“At that time there were many work opportunities for people who were not from the United States. It coincided with the time when Okwui Enwezor, creative director of Documenta, was making projects. Octavio Zaya, art critic born in the Canary Islands, and many more people from the periphery, were in the city. In those days I collaborated a little with Catherine David at Documenta and in 2000 I started working as chief curator at the Wexner Center for the Arts (Ohio State University, Columbus). That was before Okwui Enwezor contacted me to work with him as co-curator at Documenta 11 in 2002.
Documenta 11 and Tropicália: two axes of change
A criterion shared by curators and academicians such as Luis Pérez Oramas, Edward Sullivan and Gabriel Pérez Barreiro, is that the notion of ‘Latin American’ encompasses the art of the region without highlighting its differences and particularities. Do you consider that Latin American art should be sold en bloc even at this time?
“I always talked about this with Eduardo Costa, David Lamela and Leandro Katz, for although I always felt that the role of Latin American artists was important, the label also restricted their access to other spaces. I had had the chance to tour the region, and so I could realize that there was not any kind of unified context. What interested me, then, was to find out why nobody talked about Hélio Oiticica or Víctor Grippo in texts related to art history. It is incredible that everything has changed so much.
In light of recent history, to what do you attribute the origin of this change?
“Between the presentation of Magiciens de la Terre /Magicians of the Earth (Centre George Pompidou, Paris, 1989) and Documenta 11 (Kassel, Germany, 2002) there was a radical change which was also experienced in other spheres, like the political and the economical ones, but which had a particular impact on the way of thinking art history. The 1984 Havana Biennial had already initiated this change.” (In his essay, Vasos comunicantes/Communicating Vessels), 2004, Eugenio Valdés Figueroa writes that these two exhibitions identified “two lines of ideological approach to the art of peripheral countries.”).

That was a historical moment for Latin American art.
“In the case of Latin America, there were fortunate coincidences. On the one hand, the indisputable role of someone like Patricia Cisneros, who has transformed MoMA into something unrecognizable. People like Gerardo Mosquera, Mari Carmen Ramírez and Ivo Mesquita have been part of a group of curators and critics who have done a lot to make these artists known. Finally, there are also the universities, which have been an incentive for many people to study and write about Latin American art.”
What was your direct experience of this time of change like?
“It was a change for which I had fought hard, although many people believed that I was very international. They imagined I was becoming detached from the Latin American context. I never wanted that, but I did want artists to be read in a more international context, to show their works and situate them in the context of art history.
Tropicália (Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2006) positioned you as a curator, but it also shaped your way of thinking the art that is shown in museums. In terms of your personal experience, what happened between Documenta 11and the exhibition of Brazilian art that revolutionized London?
“Tropicália was a very difficult endeavor, but it received recognition when the London Times published that while until then it had been thought that the avant-garde movements of the second half of the 20th century had developed in Europe and the United States, from that moment on it would be necessary to face the fact that the avant-garde had taken place in Brazil. I fought a lot for this, but then I had to think about what I would do in the future.”

Philadelphia: rethinking a collection
How do museums conceive art at present?
“That is also changing, because they used to envision it in a very structured way. The Philadelphia collection –except for its Mexican component, a valuable selection which has, however, a very well-defined time-source (the 1940s) – is comprised predominantly of European and North American art. Here I am responsible for Jasper Johns and Ellsworth Kelly, but I am interested in narrating a story that may clarify Johns’s dialogue with Duchamp and Nauman, and also the dialogue between Cildo Meireles and Duchamp or Tunga’s with Nauman”.
This is the case at the Philadelphia Museum, but does this also happen in other institutions?
“I think that this is, somehow, a story that the most important museums are beginning to narrate. MoMA has included Latin American art in this effort, but neither Arte Povera nor art from Eastern Europe can be seen in its galleries yet. Tate, on the other hand, is moving in all directions since 2000, when it opened. The Centre Pompidou is desperately trying to catch up. At present it is not about the work in itself, but about how to articulate it in a permanent collection.”
How did you become curator of Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art?
“I greatly respect Anne Temkin, my predecessor. I applied for the position when I learned that she was leaving. Anne d’Harnoncourt was the first to fill that position. With Temkin, the dialogue regarding what we wanted from the collection was always very clear.”
What was your first acquisition?
“One of the first works I showed her was one by Thomas Hirschhorn, Camo-Outgrowth (Winter), 2005. It is quite new and radical, but she loved it. There are only two of them: one is at the Pompidou and the other is a version the author created especially for us.
There are similar stories involving a work by Víctor Grippo (Analogía I, second version, 1997) and another by Hélio Oiticica (Seja marginal, Seja Héroe, 1967).
“Can you imagine what it was like to acquire a work comprised of four hundred kilograms of potatoes? It is something basically impermanent, but Anne loved it. Víctor’s widow decided to sell that work, of which there is only one version at the Art Institute of Chicago, to us. It is Víctor Grippo´s key work and his widow knew that there was a special relationship with him. After Tropicália, we were able to buy the banner Seja Marginal Seja Herói, the only existing banner by Oiticica, and we found it when we carried out our research for the London exhibition. I think all important acquisitions have their own particular story.
What acquisitions criteria does a museum like the Philadelphia Museum of Art apply?
“In Philadelphia you cannot purchase much because there isn’t much money. That is why Anne Temkin said to me: “You must think a lot about each acquisition you make.” This has been a cardinal piece of advice. You must think a lot because each acquisition must be special. Special means that it is the result of a dialogue with the artist, because what I want is the artist to be well represented by the work of his or hers that we purchase. Eighty percent of the works in the museum came through donations. Our job is to motivate those donations. During the time I have worked at the Philadelphia Museum, I have striven to incorporate collectors from other regions to the Committee of Modern and Contemporary Art. Currently the Committee includes an Italian and a Mexican. That is much easier in New York; in Philadelphia it becomes very difficult.
What is your strategy to attract collectors?
“The strategy is to understand what is unique about the Philadelphia Museum in relation to modern and contemporary art, but also what can lead a non-American person to experience a connection with the Philadelphia. The attraction resides in the modern art collections, but the nodal point is Marcel Duchamp. In addition, there is the Brancussi Collection, which is extraordinary. There is no exhibition hall like the one at the Philadelphia Museum where you can view Jasper Johns’s whole career; there is no art space where you can witness the birth of Ellsworth Kelly’s oeuvre, or that of Cy Twombly’s. The idea is to continue with that tradition, to take it even further and see what the future galleries will be.
Could you mention some of the most striking works that have been incorporated in the Philadelphia’s collection of contemporary art recently?
“I am very proud to have purchased the work by Nauman, Daniel Buren (White and Red Painting, 1971) and Grippo. We also acquired a fantastic installation by Georges Adéagbo (Abraham—L’ami de Dieu (Abraham—Friend of God), a special version for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000-06. We have bought works by young American sculptors such as Rachel Harrison (Nice Rack, 2006) and Charles Long (Untitled, 2007). I am also very glad to have received two works of the 1950s by Gyula Kosice as a donation.
What Latin American names would you like to incorporate in the Contemporary Art Collection of the museum?
“I would like a more important presence of Latin American art, and we are working in that direction. We already have some works by Francis Alÿs, Carlos Amorales and Guillermo Calzadilla, for instance. I am interested in incorporating Latin American constructivist art, Brazilian art of the 1960s and 1970s, a work by Doris Salcedo, plus works by Gabriel Orozco and other younger Mexican artists.
What are the priorities and what the hopes that these aspirations may be fulfilled?
“Philadelphia is an encyclopedic museum (it hoards two hundred and twenty-five thousand art objects). There are priorities, and they are very clear: to maintain artists who are key components of the collection, because they are the basic columns of the museum. But that does not detract from the idea of building a vision of a more international museum. I will evidently focus on the art of Latin America because of its quality and because I know it well. The challenge is how to do so with limited resources. Now it is easier to talk about Latin American art with our benefactors. However, I wonder who the Patricia Cisneros of Philadelphia might be.
What exhibitions are you planning after the biennial?
“I am planning an exhibition of works by Michelangelo Pistoletto, a representative of Italian arte povera who works with the notion of the spectator’s participation.
You have mentioned that you are thinking of a project based on the relationship between Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage and Merce Cunningham. A great deal has been written about them and they have extensively exhibited separately; then, why present them jointly?
“In the United States, that was an extremely key period in which there was a great overture towards and a great communication with Europe. The idea is to narrate what was happening between all these artists. I think this might be envisaged as a sort of American Tropicália. In fact, we would work with historical and documentary material, as well with a notion of interdisciplinarity and with young artists in order to find out if this group of artists still exerts a significant influence. Very often, canonization ? that operation by means of which art history assigns certain places ? closes certain aspects of the work. This exhibition is aimed at opening the work, the same that we will do with Nauman. At first, one thinks of the artist as a monolith, but the final objective is to reach the public.”

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PERFIL: Carlos Basualdo (45 years old) was born in Rosario, Argentina. He graduated in Literature at the National University in Rosario, in 1982. He participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program in Critical Studies at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1994-95. Among the exhibitions he curated, special mention may be made of Tropicália, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2006; The use of images: photography, films and video in the Jumex Collection, MALBA, 2004; The Structure of Survival, Venice Biennial, 2003; Hélio Oiticia: Quasicinemas, Wexner Center for the Arts, 2001; From Adversity We Live, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2000; The Aesthetics of Dreams, Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2001; The education of the five senses, White Columns, New York, 1995.
His writings have been published in ArtForum, ArtNews, The Art Journal, The Art Newspaper, Moscow Art Magazine, Flash Art, NKA, Journal of Contemporary African Art, Atlantica and Art Nexus. He was curator of the Wexner Center for the Arts and co-curator of Documenta 11. He is Curator of Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and commissioner of the United States Pavilion in the 53rd Venice Biennial.