CCS BARD

To the Reader (a kind of introduction),

Not Necessarily in that Order is an unbound publication. This was not a designer’s decision, it was a reader’s decision. Books should be used: they should be read, written in, and talked about. I hope you will use this book as you see fit. Make yourself a copy: print out the PDF below, cut it, punch a hole through a corner, and bind it with a binder ring. Then feel free to reshuffle the book’s contents. Remove the pages for notes and use them—or, better yet—put them next to a piece that interests you and write. Doodle. Take out the photographs and hang them somewhere. Use this introduction as scrap paper. Do as you wish, and know that what I had in mind was to keep you interested.

The table of contents in the PDF should serve as your guide through the array of subjects presented here. If you are interested in the Barnes Foundation, you’ll have images of its new building and the arrangement of works in the old building; also, there are interviews with Judith F. Dolkart, the Chief Curator of the Foundation, and Tod Williams, one of the architects of the new building. There is a discussion of the history of the collection and the time in which it was formed, as well as Albert Coombs Barnes’s ideas about art, the way we experience art, and the way these methods could be passed on to a wider audience.

If you are interested in contemporary art and its institutions, please take a look at Krist Gruijthuijsen, Maxine Kopsa, David Reinfurt, and Stuart Bailey’s text. Krist and Maxine are currently working on Kunstverein Amsterdam, an exhibition space, franchise, and curatorial office with a presence in New York and Milan as well. David and Stuart founded Dexter Sinister, a “just-in-time workshop” that has enormously influenced the way many people think about publications. Their collaborative text,Recollection Collection Scenario, is a form of dialogue between institutions. A part of it uses the audio tour format, and so I will follow up on it as a metaphor: in this specific publication, their text is a tour through possibilities. This publication is printed through an educational institution that is also a museum, and deals with an institution at a time of change; Recollection Collection Scenario does not serve here as a model or solution, but rather, broadens the terms in which we discuss institutions.

And, if you are interested in how all of this—modernism and contemporaneity; a private collection, a workshop, and a kunstverein; private and public; accessibility and inaccessibility—ties together, then know the project of this publication is, in part, to draw links that extend beyond a certain palpable separation between modern and contemporary art by taking an institution at a time of change and interposing it with contemporary projects. That is what I try to do in my text.

Also, there is a little bit about publications in general, institutional memory, lawsuits, curating collections, architecture, French modernism, and a quote by Godard.

Thank you.

— Orit Gat

Not Necessarily in that Order is curated by Orit Gat as part of the requirements for the master of arts degree in curatorial studies.

Student-curated projects at CCS Bard are made possible with support from the Rebecca and Martin Eisenberg Student Exhibition Fund; the Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg Family Foundation; the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation; the Board of Governors of the Center for Curatorial Studies, and by the Center’s Patrons, Supporters, and Friends. Additional support is provided by the Monique Beudert Award Fund.

Download: NotNecessarilyInThatOrder.pdf