Introductory Primer

Note: the following is a working primer of The Social Museum. This document is subject to indefinite addition and/or alteration by the public, though the museum’s administrators have the right to filter ideas as they see fit.

The Social Museum, in its most simple definition, is an as-of-yet unrealized museum of social behaviors as exhibited by art and artifact.

This concept came out of a discussion between Joe Gullo and Joel Kuennen addressing the need for a contemporary art museum that could get beyond the paradoxical limitations of postmodernism. Since the concept of art itself is related to the expressive disciplines, it seemed to Joe and Joel that a new and exciting way to collect and exhibit works of art could involve the control of whatever is being expressed in such works, so that the museum could commission works for the sake of fitting into the context of a prescribed theme. This would allow the museum to bring forth pieces of art and artifact and synthesize them into especially nuanced exhibits. A system like this also lends itself to an organizational structure somewhat akin to a magazine or journal, where a relatively small group of senior-level employees draws content from a vast and possibly far-flung network of contributors.

Of course the element of control would stop at edict of the exhibition themes. The museum should do nothing to direct the individual creation of whatever works it commissions; it should only give the prompt, thereby turning what would otherwise be just an exhibition space into a kind of forum for the ideas it wants to reveal. Ultimately, the Social Museum will act as a catalyst and a forum for expression.

A mission such as this naturally lends itself to anthropological and/or sociological subject matter, so institutionally, the Social Museum should focus on pieces that explore trends in social living and the idiosyncrasies of the social being. The variety of media that contributors could use to achieve this end is virtually limitless.

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The central unique feature of The Social Museum is the prescription of exhibition themes by the contributors featured therein. In this way the museum’s operation will be somewhat like an arts collective, except the contributors will not be permanent authoritative members (though of course any merited contributor can be involved as much as he/she wants). Ultimate authority for the museum’s operation will be vested in a board of directors, who should be required to incorporate into its decision making process the influence of everyone else involved. The collaboration between the contributors and the directors, though, will only extend to the prescription of exhibition themes, and nothing to do with the administration or the external operations (promotions, public relations) of the museum.

Working together (in a process detailed further along in this document), the directors and contributors will flush out the content plan for every exhibition on its agenda.

Ultimately, The Social Museum has a mission befitting of a journal; its content should reveal or comment on truths and Truths in society. Though instead of being published and disseminated, this content will be hosted in a physical space. The comparative description of this goal is that the content and messages within the museum will be like those featured in Adbusters, National Geographic and Vice magazine—all rolled into one.

OPERATION AND ORGANIZATION

Issue – Exhibitions

Because the museum will cover such vast subject matter, it will operate in exhibition cycles, where the theme will change several times per year. And so, initially having no permanent collection, the museum will be in a constant state of renewal, perpetually refreshing its inventory according to whatever the “theme of the season” is.

A better way of thinking about a “theme of the season” is to think about the way magazines devote entire issues to one topic. Vice magazine intentionally titles every issue as “The Iraq Issue” or “The Turning Homo Issue,” and so forth because it wants to simultaneously tie the issue (the current printed edition) to the issue (the current social-political topic). The museum will promote the theme of the season in the same way.

For illustrative purposes let’s assume the museum will roll its exhibitions four times a year, aligned for promotion’s sake with the natural seasons. So then, the winter season will be something like “WAR at the Social Museum,” and the collection it will house for that three-month period will comment on WAR. (I’m using a generic theme like war for the sake of brevity). And then in the spring it would house “PANIC at The Social Museum.” This will give the museum the opportunity to prescribe themes and then commission and collect works to fit into that subject. So “WAR at the Social Museum” will house photography, artwork, and artifacts pertaining to WAR. And in addition to the static pieces within, the museum will also host performance art and lecture series pertaining to this same subject. This will allow the season themes to be marketed through numerous varied channels, almost as if " ... at the Social Museum” were a promotional entity, and itself a sub brand of The Social Museum as an institution.

So for example, the varied contents of “WAR at the Social Museum” will allow that particular season theme to be advertised through several channels. If the museum commissioned three performance art acts pertaining to WAR, those acts could be marketed as individual events and also “as part of WAR at the Social Musuem.” The possibilities for singular events are endless, especially when considering that the museum’s season theme will change every three months. Even if the museum addresses something as broad as WAR, farther down the line it could draft a theme as particular as “Results of Social Tension in Charged Situations” or, “Archetypes” or “Imagery Evoking Bi-Polar Connotations.” These, of course, are very unromantic titles, but they contain the kernel of this notion of season themes, which is that all the works exhibited are tied together with a pre-conceived notion.

This is not to say the museum’s curatorial staff should be fascist when discriminating works for exhibition, only that it will work to judge from the same prompt as the contributors work to create, like the relationship between an editorial board and its writers. The structure of this relationship allows The Social Museum to constantly reinvent itself, in—uniquely—more frequent, more episodic steps. In a way, The Social Museum will act as a publisher, in that it will make ideas available to the public. And instead of promoting one period or genre of work, (as in “Modern,” or “Classical,” or between lenses like “realist” or “expressionist”) it will promote topics, and then exhibit ideas pertaining to that topic. The construct of ideas pertaining to topics is what makes up an issue. And an issue being conveyed by displaying a collection of works is an issue-exhibition.

Here are some examples of issue-exhibitions. The titles are meant to be understood on varying levels and degrees. Some of the following may seem very simple. However if one takes a minute to think of the notion of these, of the denotative and connotative properties of these words, they then have the potential to become issues.

CAREER
NEGLIGENCE
META EXHIBITION
ASEXUAL DESIGN
CRIME AS INNOVATION
POST/PRE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
DELTA MALES
SUPEREVERYMAN
INDUSTRIAL CUISINE
PROFIT
VICE

Think of the endless opportunities to play on these themes in any number of media! To be prompted with these or any other equally evocative issue would allow for an exciting schedule of events!

The process of bringing a seasonal issue-exhibition to show involves several steps, and they are embarrassingly like the steps involved in writing a five-paragraph essay. They are: the brainstorming of ideas for issues and the nuances therein, the researching of existing work that’s emblematic of the issue, the networking of outside contributors (not necessarily artists, but all people with relevant connections to the subject matter—e.g., journalists, historians, outside curators, people of notable repute), the formation of a central thesis for the issue-exhibition (a document subjected to circulation among the Museum’s staff and the network of outsiders it has assembled), the planning of live events to be held either at the museum or sponsored elsewhere, (readings, lectures, Q&As, acts of performance art, workshops and photo shoots), the acquisition of existing works and collections, the networking of contributing artists along with the commissioning of new works, and finally, the planning and design of static installations. Concurrently to all these steps, separate but intrinsic departments must work to promote the upcoming issue-exhibition.

And now, each of these steps must be flushed out in greater detail.