Jeremy Deller, Has the World Changed or Have I Changed?, 2000. Performance, Expo 2000, Hanover, Germany. Courtesy the artist. © Jeremy Deller

I first met Jeremy Deller at his studio in London in 2000. It was my last stop in the city en route to Heathrow and had been prefaced by two recent encounters with Jeremy’s work that heightened the anticipation of our meeting. As part of the Tate Britain show Intelligence, he’d presented his collaborative “Folk Archive” project with fellow artist Alan Kane which functions as an ongoing compendium of the art and cultural production of everyday contemporary Britons. I was blown away not only by the breadth and volume of the material, but also by his redefining the notion of what “folk art” could mean and represent—as something that could truly embody the creativity of a people rather than merely signifying a particular genre of art. The other was a more subtle and subdued work presented as part of the exhibition Protest and Survive at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, titled Has the World Changed or Have I Changed? (2000). I immediately recognized the phrase from the song “The Queen is Dead” by the legendary 1980s Manchester The Smiths. Both the song and the eponymously-titled album that it opens were a staple of my musical life as a Chicago-area teenager, yet I’d never really meditated on that lyric until prompted by Deller’s intervention. The work itself—represented as part of the larger installation Beyond the White Walls (2012) in CAM’s presentation of Jeremy Deller: Joy in People (opening February 1)—features documentation of a day that Deller spent with a circus clown in and around the German town of Hanover. The droll tragicomedy of the situation fit perfectly with the sense of world-weariness of the title phrase. While its appearance in the middle of The Smiths’ song is mitigated by the momentum of Johnny Marr’s urgent guitar, placed in this new context it becomes a somewhat maudlin reflection on growing old, on the passage of time, and one’s ability to truly feel in touch with the present moment. I suspect that both Marr’s guitar and a teenaged lack of life-perspective conspired to obscure the lyric for me in 1986, but since then I cannot help but reflect on the phrase when confronted with some new cultural phenomenon, the appeal of which I cannot fathom.

The forthcoming opening of Jeremy Deller’s survey exhibition at CAM has prompted me to ask the question “has the world changed or have I changed” once again from perhaps a more affirmative and optimistic perspective. The world HAS changed since The Smiths first posed that question to me, as have I—thanks, in part, to Jeremy’s work. As the exhibition demonstrates through a range of experiences—from a re-creation of Deller’s first show in his parent’s home to an exploration of the life and times of British glam-wrestler Adrian Street—there certainly is joy to be had in the things that people do, say, make, and sing—things that in large and small ways change the world and our relationship to it.

By Dominic Molon, Chief Curator

CAM is pleased to be participating in the inaugural EXPO CHICAGO art fair, September 20–23 (Navy Pier, 600 E. Grand Avenue, Chicago). We will be presenting an interactive installation by Lauren Adams—who is currently exhibiting in the Front Room—at booth 520. On Friday, September 21 at 1:30pm, Dominic will be speaking on the Contemporary Curator’s Panel at the fair (more details below). If you’re in Chicago, please make sure to stop by and say hello!

EXPO CHICAGO/2012 features an outstanding selection of 100 international exhibitors as well as a limited number of young galleries in the Exposure section. Additional programming includes IN/SITU, a showcase of large-scale installations, site-specific and performative works by leading international artists situated throughout the fair, and /Dialogues, a daily series of panel discussions and conversations with leading artists, architects, curators, designers, and art professionals. Visit expochicago.com for more information.

We the People is an interactive installation in which artist Lauren Adams has painted slogans from recent Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party protests into reproduced Revolutionary War-era wallpaper. Visitors to CAM’s booth (520) can paint their own “protest” on a unique ceramic plate to be displayed during the fair. A custom-designed tea towel both advertises the project and will be exchanged with visitors in return for their contributions. The project complements Adams’ presentation in CAM’s Front Room, on view through October 14.

Friday, September 21, 1:30 pm Contemporary Curator's Panel features Michael Darling (Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago), Lisa Dorin (Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, The Art Institute of Chicago), and Dominic Molon (Chief Curator, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis). Moderated by Paul Laster (Editor, Artkrush).

Congratulations to Alex Elmestad, CAM’s Manager of Public Programs and Interpretive Technology, on the opening of his artist-in-residence exhibition, Institutional Memory, at the Luminary Center for the Arts this past Friday.  Here’s what Alex had to say about his exhibition.

“The main objective of this exhibition will be to produce a memory of past experiences within a publication that will hold not only personal histories within the pages, but the intimate and personal narratives of the community will also become part of the institutional history.

A limited edition book will be produced from the manuscript taken at the opening. As a literary form of expression as well as written documentation of an event, exhibition, or project, this catalog will take the form of a performance first. A stenographer will be hired during an opening. Equipped with a stenotype, the modern shorthand machine, the stenographer will be assigned to a specific gallery and will be instructed to eavesdrop on as many conversations as possible over the course of opening night and the week following. In many ways a museum is a listening tool often asking for feedback from the visitor in order to improve its mission and enhance experiences. Without the social dialogues welcomed and formed within the forum atmosphere of a museum, the public would not feel ownership with the institution. It is exactly the dialogues produced that make the space personally important for members of the community. Through this performance the metaphorical museum ears are literally personified with a living person transcribing and recording the social activity inside the space.

This performance will exceed the boundaries of traditional recording and will somewhat venture into espionage because the stenographer will be obtaining information without permission of those in the space. Thus the issue of private and public space is raised. The fragmented conversational material will then be reviewed by the artist, notes will be made and items will be arranged to create a more cohesive, yet engaging narrative; however, conversations will not bealtered to any degree. The artist will work with an editor to realize the literary vision of the work, and a final manuscript will be approved and the artist will collaborate with a local designer and print shop to produce a visually interesting editioned publication to be sold by the organization. Titled Institutional Memory and produced as a print multiple, the work is intended to be shared with others. As a limited edition, the work will maintain a certain value and have ephemeral qualities, but the main objective will be to produce a memory of past experiences within a publication that will hold not only personal histories within the pages, but the intimate and personal narratives of the community will also become part of the institutional history. As a result the institution truly becomes a place of dialogue consisting of many voices that are listened to and the exchange is materialized in a written form. The publication will include an introduction text written by the director, a short discussion between the artist and stenographer, select typed short hand notes, and the edited conversational narrative.”

If you missed Open Studios this year, don’t worry, there is always next year. A previous blog post already mentioned the Preview Party which had a record breaking 720 people in attendance. Special thanks goes to the River City Professionals for co-hosting the program, helping to promote the event, and bringing all of their members to party. In addition to the 150+ Open Studios artworks on display in the galleries, Pi on the Spot, also known as PiTruckSTL on Twitter was parked outside the building serving up fresh pizzas straight from truck’s oven. As a local phenomenon, Pi has been embraced by the St. Louis community and even Chicago based Senator, turned president Barack Obama has endorsed the iconic deep dish pizza with his seal of approval. Just recently, chefs of Pi were flown to the White House to caterer an event especially for the president. Alongside the Pi Truck, a Frosty Treats ice cream truck was also parked outside for those looking to fill their sweet tooth on a hot summer’s evening.

As an added bonus to the Preview Party, guests were encouraged to enter a bike raffle to win a Electra Pink Hawaii Cruiser donated by Big Shark Bicycle Company. Ramona Scott was the winner and stopped by the museum the next day to pick up her prize and even rode it home.

With temperatures reaching over 99 degrees, that still did not stop the devoted cyclists from riding over 14 miles and stopping at a variety of studios along the way. Led by Greg and Alex from Bike Shark Bicycle Company, the bike tour departed the Contemporary on both Saturday and Sunday at 10am. Special thanks also goes to Bike St. Louis, a division of Great Rivers Greenway for endorsing the program and helping to make bike riding in St. Louis safe and accessible.

Later that day, Director Paul Ha and Associate Curator Laura Fried introduced themselves at the museum to over 30 people that registered for a 4 hour bus tour to select studios. As visitors boarded the luxurious air-conditioned bus provided by BEST Transportation St. Louis, “Pops” the driver greeted them and drove them all over the city to studios chosen directly by both the director and the curator.

On Sunday, winners from our Facebook competition joined Joe and Jeff from Glide St. Louis Tours for a segway excursion to select artist studios. Director of Individual Giving & Stewardship Emily Klimek acted as the Contemporary representative on the tour. If you applied to win a spot on the segway tour, do not give up, become a Fan of the Contemporary on Facebook now and look out for the next opportunity on this platform. Those that won the Facebook competition also received a free meal ticket to the Open Studios BBQ.

What better way to end a whole weekend of programs and tours plus a Homegrown Summer for that matter then to enjoy barbeque from Pappy’s Smokehouse and ice cold beer from Schafly. The watermelon was sweet and chilled to perfection, but the pulled pork sandwich was definitely the crowd favorite. Normally, you would have to wait hours to get a taste of Pappy’s perfectly cooked BBQ, but at the Contemporary it was all there for the taking for only $10 a meal. In addition to the BBQ, sides, and beer, Ted Drewes frozen custard was offered as an additional summertime treat.

What could be more “Homegrown” than Ted Drewes, Pappy’s, Schlafly, 150+ local artists, and the Great Rivers Biennial exhibition? Well, you asked for it… the Rum Drum Ramblers, with upright bass, harmonica, and banjo guitars rocked the courtyard with down and dirty St. Louis blues. The summer might not be over, but this year’s Open Studios was the climax of the Contemporary’s Homegrown Summer, a series of programs featuring local art, food, and music.

Sean and I, fountainside, in Washington Square Park

Last week I spent three days working with Sean Landers in his Chelsea studio, preparing the design for his upcoming catalog. The major monograph, produced in conjunction with his recent exhibition at the Contemporary, will focus on Sean’s work produced in the early nineties. In my three-day visit, we roughed in some 300+ pages of exhibition shots, individual works, and running quotations from Sean’s paintings, diaries, and prose.  The above picture was my view of the city looking up the Hudson River for those three days. Below is a picture from the back of the studio looking out the windows. You can see Sean and his two studio assistants, Allison and Cindy working away.

The studio is filled with bright natural light, which can make viewing work on the monitors difficult.  On the desk you can see a Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis baseball hat that was there before I arrived, and which serves as the official studio sun visor. On the monitor is the catalog in progress.

Tuesday evening when we were done working, we headed home along the High Line.  What a beautiful transformation, from a neglected elevated rail to city park.

Stay tuned for the catalog.  It will be our largest to date, weighing in at approximately 400 pages!

The fourth iteration of the Great Rivers Biennial opened Friday night, April 30. The Biennial is a collaboration between the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Gateway Foundation designed to strengthen the local art scene in St. Louis. This innovative program identifies talented emerging local artists and mid-career artists whose work explores new directions, and provides them with financial support as well as local and national visibility.

This year’s Great Rivers Biennial 2010 artists, Martin Brief, Sarah Frost, and Cameron Fuller, each received $20,000 to help support their practice, in addition to the opportunity to mount an exhibition in the Contemporary’s Main Galleries. The Great Rivers Biennial is one of the most widely anticipated exhibitions presented by the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. The energy it has generated has galvanized the arts community in St. Louis, contributing to an enhanced quality of life for St. Louis area residents.

This year’s exhibition includes the following:

Martin Brief’s suite of twenty-eight new drawings, collectively titled Amazon God, appear at first glance to be seismographic in nature, the recording of tectonic shifts. In fact, they meticulously inventory the results of a search for “God” on Amazon.com. Brief records the thousands of book titles his search unearthed on scroll-like sheets of paper with a Rapidograph pen.

Sarah Frost’s installation, Arsenal, had its beginnings on the internet, too, though YouTube provided the impetus. Frost found there a community of young boys who self-publish instructional videos for making elaborate paper guns. Guided by the boys’ videos, Frost fashioned a paper cloud of weaponry suspended from the gallery ceiling, which shares the space with YouTube stills.

Cameron Fuller’s The Institute for the Perpetuation of Imaginal Processes reveals his interests in folk art, Native American artifacts, and the natural history museum. Upon entering his “museum within a museum,” you’ll encounter As It Is, a life-size diorama, and then, in adjoining rooms, Remembering Washington, The Guidance of Disaster, and Where My Heart Will Lead Me, an allusion to the itinerant tinker.

The Great Rivers Biennial 2010 runs through August 8. For more information, visit www.camst.org.

I’m Michael Goodwin, and I have been working as an intern at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Recently, I began the detailed project of revamping the Contemporary’s library. My goals were to catalog the museum’s book collection, marking each publication with CAMSTL’s stamp, and then categorize the diverse subject areas for ease of use. And when I started, I was concerned about whether or not everything could be accomplished before summer began and my internship ended. 

Enter: LibraryThing.com. LibraryThing is an online book community, a cataloging tool, a social network of book lovers, and a nexus for book reviews, local book events, and book discussions. LibraryThing welcomes both personal and organizational catalogs, and a number of likeminded museums are already part of its network.

Twenty-first century technology and new fields of social networking have made the process of cataloging and searching for books a breeze. What once may have been a long, monotonous process is now as simple as using Facebook, which is second nature for any college student.

Adding a book into our personal catalog is easy: enter its ISBN number. Searching for a book is just as easy. LibraryThing is able to search hundreds of global catalogs in order to correctly determine the book, an ideal feature for the Contemporary’s international collection of reference books, gallery guides, and monographs. 

Unable to find a certain book in one place? Users are also able to quickly click onto another catalog to search. Resources like the catalog of the Helsinki Metropolitan Libraries, the National Library of Taiwan, or the University of Botswana catalog, to cite a few fascinating examples, are immediately available. 

One of the huge benefits of LibraryThing is that the catalog is viewable from any computer, with or without a LibraryThing account. Visitors to the Contemporary’s presence on the site, http://www.librarything.com/catalog/CAMSTL, can browse and search the Contemporary’s catalog. And you can visit the books in person, too; they’re housed in the museum’s second-floor Exhibition Lab.

A site visitor can enjoy all of the benefits of this unique social network by joining LibraryThing for free. If you choose not to join, the browsing and searching aspects of the site are still available. The incredible accessibility and digitalization of the collection will certainly improve the Contemporary’s library experience for all. If only there was a way to digitally stamp the books as well … but who knows what the Internet will yield next?

Artist Sean Landers, whose work is in the Contemporary’s current exhibition, Sean Landers: 1991-1994, Improbable History, recently led a New Art in the Neighborhood session. His workshop focused on self exploration and expression through artistic writing, as he led the twenty students in a stimulating narrative exercise.  Landers first asked the students to write three personal truths about themselves or the world around them.  The artist then collected the statements and read them aloud to the class without revealing their authors.  The truths were poetic reflections, frank observations, and deeply personal secrets.  The thought-provoking workshop provided an opportunity for the students to express their most direct thoughts and create a picture of their identity.

 The exploratory workshop was a great segue into a NAN session led by local artist Kit Keith.  Keith, an accomplished mixed-media artist, began the workshop with a discussion of her earliest artistic influences and the lessons she learned from her father, who worked as a sign painter.  She shared with the students a history of her artistic voice, emphasizing her fascination with 1940s imagery and use of found objects, two constants in her work.  Keith brought several unfinished works with her, and worked on her art alongside students as she challenged them to make collages with found objects, found imagery, paint, and illustration.  The resulting collages were extremely diverse and channeled Keith’s techniques through pastiche and careful composition.  Students crafted their collages using newsprint, personal photographs, magazines, and textiles, and other fascinating materials. 

 Not only did these two artists share stories of their efforts to create self-reflexive artwork, but they also gave the students precious insight into their personal methods and aesthetics.  After two fun and challenging NAN workshops, the students will surely be inspired to continue creating art that gives thought to personal narrative and honesty.  It was great to see their processes develop through these two workshops.  Thanks again to Sean Landers and Kit Keith!  And thanks to the NAN students for their consistent dedication, talent, and enthusiasm!

The Museum is closed for installation until January 22 which is Opening Night of Sean Landers: 1991-1994, Improbable History and Stephen Prina: Modern Movie Popin the Main Galleries and Xavier Cha in The Front Room. You can stay connected to the Contemporary by visiting this blog, social networking sites, and the Museum’s website. Click here for all the ways to stay connected while we are closed.

Read the blog posted on saintlouisartmap.org. Find out about the Piñata Closing Party, the event to mark the end of the exhibition For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there.