Editor’s Be aware: This story is a part of Newsmakers, a brand new ARTnews sequence the place we interview the movers and shakers who’re making change within the artwork world.
In 2021, whereas an affiliate curator at one in every of New York Metropolis’s temples of experimental modern artwork, the Swiss institute, curator Daniel Merritt stated that artwork historical past performed a job is his apply, however was not a hill to die on.
“What I feel builds attention-grabbing curatorial work,” he stated on the time to Cultured, “isn’t entrenching your self an excessive amount of in a sure self-discipline. It’s a must to stay versatile to present occasions.” It’s not artwork historical past that drives his apply, he added, however somewhat “figuring out when to current the work and having the viewers wish to hear from or interact with the topic at hand.”
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Like that of a performer, Merritt’s north star has extra to do with timing and figuring out his viewers than museum catalogs and scholarly texts. Whereas he’s not on the Swiss Institute, Merritt’s ethos hasn’t modified, even when the backdrop has. In 2023, he left New York Metropolis to turn out to be the director of curatorial affairs on the Aspen Artwork Museum, which sits on the middle of the artwork world’s Rocky Mountain Mecca.
Simply final week, Merritt was named the museum’s chief curator. The promotion is well-deserved, judging from the 4 exhibits presently on view in Aspen: “Heji Shin’s America: Half One;” Shuang Li’s “I’m Not” (co-curated by the Swiss Institute’s Alison Coplan); Ugo Rondinone’s “the rainbow physique” (organized together with museum director Nicola Lees and curator Simone Krug); and Megan Marrin’s “Austerity” present. The exhibits exhibit the breadth of Merritt’s curiosity, mind, and playful sensibility, bearing on all the things from the battle towards nature to an arguably unhealthy obsession with the post-hardcore/emo band My Chemical Romance.
ARTnews spoke with Merritt to be taught extra about how he approaches organizing a present, what drew him to Aspen, and his thought course of relating to organizing a present.
This interview has been edited and condensed for readability.
ARTnews: Let’s begin at the start of this chapter of your profession. How did you finish of up in Aspen?
Daniel Merritt: Some time again I bought an e mail from Nicola [Lees, the CEO and artistic director of the museum] inquiring if we knew of anybody who would possibly wish to take a place or may very well be a great match for a place on the Aspen Artwork Museum. I had recognized Nicola for a number of years at that time. We had been East Village neighbors whereas she was operating the gallery 80WSE at NYU and I used to be working at Swiss Institute. There was numerous overlap and I adopted her program very intently. I assumed they had been doing such unimaginable issues and there was actually simply type of such an open curiosity that I acknowledged inside Nicola that I assumed it will be actually enjoyable alternative to work collectively. So I threw my hat within the ring myself.
What was your first undertaking on the museum and describe the working course of there—how do exhibitions come to mild?
In my first few weeks on the Museum, I labored with the schooling group on the Youth Artwork Expo, a long-standing program that the museum initiated again round its founding within the late ’70s that featured the art work of upwards of 1,000 youngsters in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley and past. Two flooring of the museum had been dedicated to this art work. As I used to be actually touchdown on the museum, all of this art work was filling the galleries. I couldn’t consider a greater undertaking with which to get my bearings but additionally to grasp that the museum was working in actually thrilling and daring, unconventional methods.
That undertaking actually conditioned the best way I take into consideration making exhibitions for the museum and commissioning residing artists right now. Extra broadly, it’s good to think about seasons. In a seasonal place like Aspen, you consider who’s on the town at the moment and why they’re visiting this very small city in America. Throughout winter, it’s actually individuals who ski. There’s an excessive adrenaline junkie angle to numerous the folks on the town so that you wish to domesticate exhibitions that match that vitality. It’s enjoyable to consider the way you would possibly construct on what could also be thought of a pop sensibility. The exhibits that we’ve got actually push that idea outward in attention-grabbing methods.
Do the customer figures spike across the ski season?
The inhabitants of Aspen fluctuates by the 1000’s after we are “in season.” It makes you consider the viewers otherwise. However there’s a core group of people who’re on the museum no less than three to 4 days per week. It’s a neighborhood hub for them. And that goes past Aspen. It’s Basalt, Carbondale, Glenwood Springs—the complete Valley. I feel very a lot in regards to the core viewers that involves the museum so persistently. That’s what’s so attention-grabbing in regards to the Aspen Artwork Museum versus a museum in an city middle. We’ve got so many repeat clients as a result of we’re the most important museum for lots of of miles. On the one hand, you’ll be able to actually ponder the seasonality of it, however you additionally wish to mount exhibitions that individuals wish to come again to. You actually need to put on two hats in that means.
Inform me about Heji Shin’s exhibition. I really like that you simply’re usually bringing images middle stage.
I’m so pleased with this undertaking. It’s totally new work and Heji’s first solo museum exhibition in america … After we invited her to do the exhibition, we began with a immediate, which is unusual for me. I requested her to step out of the studio and go on an American street journey and {photograph} the US. A lot of her work comes collectively in these closed environments. One of many first stops on the journey was in Cape Canaveral, Florida the place she began photographing rocket launches. She had by no means photographed a rocket launch earlier than. I feel she would admit to this, however each she and I actually underestimated the individuality of that photographic course of. It’s very drawn out … We had been very lucky to get entry via NASA and the press corps of the aerospace firms. She spent numerous time with individuals who dedicate their lives to taking photos of rockets. She realized lots in an extremely compressed period of time. The outcomes are fairly poignant and pull out the vitality of the scene.
Going again to what you stated about organizing exhibits for that group that wish to stay on the sting—I hear there’s one thing thrilling with Alex Israel developing quickly.
It opens on President’s Day. Alex is doing a undertaking in collaboration with the Aspen Artwork Museum and Aspen One, the ski firm that runs the 4 mountains right here within the valley. There’s a restaurant on the face of Aspen Mountain, previously often known as Ruthies, that’s been uninhabited for properly over a decade. I used to be shocked by that. You possibly can ski by it. It’s this absolutely intact shell that’s in fairly good situation. I used to be in Alex’s studio and I seen this sequence of work of celebrities who had died because the invention of Instagram. It was a very poignant departure in his apply, a rumination on how loss is collectively processed and the way, when a star passes away, the identical 5 pictures ricochet via your social media feeds. So this deserted constructing, which has an virtually omniscient place over a thousand ft above road degree overlooking the city, appeared like the proper place to discover that.
There actually is a heavenly high quality to the area. We determined to take it over quickly and rebrand it as “Heaven.” Alex, in a nod to Los Angeles historical past, which is so vital to him, pulled the graphics that accompany the exhibition and all the signage from a novelty retailer referred to as Heaven that was in Century Metropolis within the Seventies and ’80s. You possibly can lookup photos of Brooke Shields and these teen actors from the ’70s and ’80s and they’re carrying Heaven merchandise. And so he’s colliding all of these items collectively on this very adventurous place, the place you’ll be able to ski up, flip into this surreal surroundings, after which proceed in your means. We’d be remiss if we didn’t do these issues, if we didn’t enterprise out into the panorama, if we didn’t discover buildings, and ask, “Hey what’s like actually occurring in there? Can we use it? Can we present artwork in it?”
That’s the spirit that Nicola and I wish to carry to the museum and to the city.
Alex Israel’s Heaven exhibition opens on February 15 and runs till March 16 at Ruthie’s, stationed on the base of the treasured Ruthie’s Run on Aspen Mountain. The undertaking features a elevate ticket and on-mountain signage designed by Israel.