“Margarine and the Museum”
An excellent piece by Julia Langbein about her participation in (and critique of) “Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art,” an exhibition held at University of Chicago’s Smart Museum last year. (The show is traveling to the Blaffer Museum in Houston (August 31, 2013 — January 5, 2014) and SITE Santa Fe (February 2014 — May 2014). A quick teaser:
Alhäuser asked the staff (aided by volunteers) to do everything but sculpt margarine. She needed caterers. So she turned the museum staff into a catering staff, who over the course of a work day assembled hors d’oeuvres for 400 people. We were asked to cut canapés and toasts, to shape marzipan from molds, to skewer chicken and peppers, melon and strawberry. In fact, much of what we did involved skewers, and “skewers” is a word designed to make German mouths flap and deflate like a balloon released.
“Skeeeuuusssssss?” Alhäuser ventured at the planning meeting a few days before the opening, tucking her chin down and scanning the museum staff for recognition.
“Skewers,” offered the Events Manager, who had spent the morning at Whole Foods buying “artists’ materials.”
“Skyeuuusssss,” said Alhäuser, reassured. A baby hung off her hip (the danger of exposure to margarine.)
I thought we were all in love with her at that moment—she is a warm woman with a wide smile whose work, after all, stages act after act of generosity—but I was wrong, because the night of the opening, the volunteers mostly bailed. Alhäuser had seen worse. At a summer event in Berlin four years ago—recounting this to me, she didn’t want to name names, given the hostility that had ensued—she had proposed an ice sculpture and when she showed up, there was no refrigerator.
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