Cultural Landscapes, Aesthetics, and Tigers: A Conversation with Mitchell Hearns Bishop
Mitchell Bishop at the Adamson House, Malibu, California. Photo: Maria Gilbert.
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been preparing a presentation about time-based art for the colloquium at the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, “Collaborations in Conserving Time-Based Art,” which I talked about last month with Jeff Martin. I started my research for this talk with my friend Mitchell Hearns Bishop’s article, “Evolving Exemplary Pluralism: Steve McQueen’s Deadpan and Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s Anne, Aki, and God–Two Case Studies for Conserving Technology-Based Installation Art.” You can read that article on the American Institute for Conservation’s website.
Even though Mitchell worked for many years in various roles at the Getty and had both Robert Irwin and James Turrell as visiting professors in art school, I’d like to move a little bit away from concepts of contemporary art in my conversation with him. Mitchell is now the curator of historic collections at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden and responsible for the historic buildings, collections, and the cultural landscape. Of course, I recognize that the L.A. Arboretum is an environmental institution, which means that its mission is more closely aligned with ecological issues rather than art history. Or is it? As much as these disciplines are different, there are similarities.
Richard McCoy: How is the Arboretum different than a fine art museum, and how has your approach shifted from that of a conservation professional to one of a curator?
Mitchell Hearns Bishop: While we do have art in the collections, the overall context is environmental so my curatorial approach needs to be aligned with that. My botanist colleagues often refer to me as the “historian,” but for me that’s problematic, as a conventional historical interpretation independent from the environmental context is meaningless.
At the Arboretum, our purpose is to promote learning and provide inspiration and enjoyment, which isn’t really that different than an art museum’s function. Take, for example, the National Gallery in Washington—the classicism and monumentality of the architecture and the quality of the collection are inspirational in a fundamental way. A lovely garden or landscape with charming old buildings provides a similar feeling. While the Arboretum has a traditional educational role, it is in the context of pleasure and inspiration. We want visitors to go away feeling good. The site itself is what I refer to as a “geography of pleasure.” It was a resort, a recreational destination one hundred forty years ago and still is today.
Collaborations in Conserving Time-Based Art: a Conversation and a Colloquium
Jeff Martin
When I spoke to Jeff Martin for the first time last year, one of the first things he told me was that he wasn’t “a real art conservator.” Many professionals in my field work very hard to identify themselves as art conservators, so to have someone deny it all together struck me as a bit funny, and rather accurate. Often the things I do at the IMA leave me wondering if I too am a “real conservator,” but I think many of us have come to realize that a narrowly defined role of a conservator is not as useful as a more broadly defined one, especially when it comes to caring for art in the twenty-first century.
Jeff Martin took an indirect route to becoming a conservator (real or otherwise). He was in the first graduating class of NYU’s MA program in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation, where the coursework includes time-based art conservation. Before NYU, he worked as an archival footage researcher and television writer/producer. He now works as an independent conservator and archivist, with clients including the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum.
Jeff organized the upcoming colloquium “Collaborations in Conserving Time-Based Art,” which is co-sponsored by the Hirshhorn and the Lunder Conservation Center; it will take place at the Smithsonian on March 17 and 18. Associated with the colloquium are two evening talks that are are free and open to the public:
- Keynote address by John Hanhardt, Senior Curator for Media Arts and Nam June Paik Media Arts Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum, March 17th at 7 pm in the Ring Auditorium at the Hirshhorn
- Meet the Artist: talk by John Gerrard, March 18 at 7pm in the Ring Auditorium at the Hirshhorn
Richard McCoy: Will you start by defining Time-Based Art?
Jeff Martin: I have to answer that question by talking about why I don’t love the term, at least for the kind of work we’re discussing. If we’re talking about works that unfold over time—wouldn’t an Alexander Calder mobile fall in that category? It can’t be experienced properly unless it’s seen as it moves over a period of time. For that matter, the Hirshhorn had a major retrospective of Anne Truitt’s work recently. One thing that struck me was a wall text that talked about the necessity of viewing her sculptures from all sides in order to really understand them. You couldn’t get the full impact of the pieces unless you walked around them to see how the colors changed and unfolded as your perspective changed. If that’s not “time-based,” I don’t know what is.
Examining Roles and Investigating Responses; a Conversation with Rebecca Uchill
Rebecca Uchill
Caring for contemporary artworks usually requires a team effort.
I’ve been fortunate at the Indianapolis Museum of Art to work with colleagues who take their role in caring for artworks very seriously. For instance, I worked with former Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Rebecca Uchill, who arrived in 2005 and left Indy in 2008. Soon after her arrival, she began putting together exhibitions that among other things challenged the existing procedures of the museum and in a variety of ways pushed us to more clearly define our roles. In 2008 Uchill left Indianapolis to pursue a PhD at the MIT department of History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture. While I appreciated the exhibitions she brought to the IMA, one the most important projects she spearheaded is the creating of the Variable Art Team (VAT), an interdisciplinary team focused on the preservation of artworks that possess a changing observable state. Such artworks can involve variable presentation formats, time-based fluctuations or other types of variables, for example:
- Installation or site-sensitive artwork with artists’ instructions for implementation;
- Electronic or media-based art with updating platforms and devices;
- Conceptual art, ephemeral art, or art made with unsustainable materials.
Since Uchill’s departure, the VAT, currently led by Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Sarah Urist Green and myself, has grown in scope and continues to be a museum-wide collaborative and interdisciplinary effort.
Richard McCoy: Will you go back to 2006 and talk about what you had in mind when you started the Variable Art Team (VAT)?
Rebecca Uchill: I had been speaking with my friend Cara Starke, Assistant Curator of Media Art at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), about their similar inter-departmental group, and I was also interested in the work of Jon Ippolito in naming and thinking freshly about Variable Media. My original, very simple intention was to make clear and evident that everyone had a role not only in the process of putting an artwork on exhibition and that these roles also contributed to an artwork’s preservation in different ways. As you know, sometimes documents related to the production of artworks weren’t archived because they seemed incidental at the time, but they would later emerge as essential–or at least desirable–records. For example, an artist’s napkin sketch drawn in the exhibition design offices might later become an important art historical document, as well as a partial roadmap to future re-creation of the work.
RM: I think finding, storing, and then retrieving all of the necessary documents around contemporary projects is among the biggest challenges facing institutions these days. One thing I remember from those early meetings is that we didn’t want to make any new institutional policies, and we didn’t want to try and force people to attend the team meetings. Raising awareness of what each person’s role in the exhibition and preservation of an artwork is complicated enough. I also remember spending a lot of time working with the VAT to make the “Variable Artwork Production and Archiving Flowchart.” While that isn’t always how artworks are produced at the IMA, it provides a good framework for how they could be commissioned.
Variable Artwork Production and Archiving Flowchart Rev. 1.1 (2008)
RU: The flowchart definitely forced a conversation about what people were actually doing, and demonstrated that almost everyone has a role. It made it possible to have a more nuanced conversation about what interactions or transactions were happening at each stage of a process.
From your perspective as a conservator, it seems what’s interesting (with the flowchart) is to figure out the legacy of the documentary traces of an artwork’s production. But what I find additionally interesting, as an art historian, is to see the distributed agency in the production of an artwork made manifest through that kind of chart. One often conceives of an artwork as being the product of a particular artistic position, but frequently it’s not that way entirely. There are other attributes–as with any other creative or productive act–that influence the outcome. Thinking about those influences that result from institutional contexts of production and display is now an academic focus for me.
This summer, for example, I am going to work in residence at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), where I will conduct research on the ways that certain 20th- and 21st-century museum architectures have affected contemporary art or reflected its changing approaches, especially towards the performative and dialogical.
The Ethics of Dust: A Conversation with Jorge Otero-Pailos
In my previous columns in this monthly series, I’ve spoken with a number of practicing conservators to illustrate some of the ways in which we care for contemporary art. But I’ve never engaged directly into a discussion around the ethics of our work. What does it mean to preserve, clean, represent, or repair an artwork, building, monument, or cultural heritage site in the 21st century? What guides our decision-making process and how do we translate this process across different time periods and cultures? These aren’t easy questions.
As a way to consider ethical issues related to conservation, I’ve invited Jorge Otero-Pailos here for a conversation. In addition to being an architect and professor in Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, Mr. Otero-Pailos is an artist who installed an artwork in the Doge’s Palace for this year’s Venice Bienale. His project for Venice, The Ethics of Dust, was commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Another installation of this project was exhibited at Manifesta 7 in Bolzano:
Richard McCoy: First of all, I really like your work and the complex issues it raises. But because last month I spoke with Glenn Wharton about interviewing living artists, I’d like to start by turning the tables a bit on you. Will you talk about your future plans for this work, and what kinds of parameters have been set into place for its long-term preservation? Or is this work itself ephemeral?
Jorge Otero-Pailos: As conservators know all too well, no work of art lasts forever. The Ethics of Dust is a project to preserve the world’s pollution, a material that I see as emblematic of modernity, but which we know only obliquely through its effects on other objects.
Paradoxically, even though conservation was formed in the effort to deal with the advent of pollution, we really don’t know very much about it politically, culturally, historically, and aesthetically. We also know very little about its own long-term behavior, or how to preserve it. But without it, a major part of our cultural history will be lost.
I’ve attempted to open up this conversation and to focus attention on pollution with this series of installations, in which I save pollution from major monuments. I’m using latex as a way to transfer the pollution from the buildings. Apart from standard directives, I have not set special parameters for its preservation. In what concerns the latex, we benefit from the work that has already been done on the conservation of Eva Hesse’s work. More importantly, regarding the pollution, I hope this work will open up the possibility to take “dust” more seriously and begin experimenting with how to conserve it.
International Design Conservation: A Discussion with Tim Bechthold
Are the “Design Arts” the same as “Contemporary Art?” Is Jasper Morrison a contemporary artist? Or is Jeff Koons a designer? Art objects serve different functions than design objects, don’t they?
As an art conservator, my initial focus in any project starts with from what and how art is made. To this end, there really isn’t a big difference between, say, a toaster and a gigantic puppy made of flowers. But I must consider the intent or purpose—or maybe function—of an object when creating a conservation plan.
I had these questions and thoughts in mind last month when I departed from my fair Hoosier State to Munich, Germany, to attend a conference organized by conservators Tim Bechthold and Susanne Graner and hosted by Die Neue Sammlung, The International Design Museum Munich. The conference was called “FUTURE TALKS 009: The Conservation of Modern Materials in Applied Arts and Design,” and I wouldn’t have thought of making this trip three years ago, because back then the Indianapolis Museum of Art only had a few design objects in its collection. But now, all of a sudden, we’ve acquired hundreds of objects, recently co-organized and hosted the exhibition European Design Since 1985 (which will be traveling to multiple venues in the near future), and just this year we acquired the Miller House, one of the country’s most highly regarded examples of mid-century Modernist residences. It was designed by Eero Saarinen, with interiors by Alexander Girard and landscape design by Daniel Urban Kiley. Of course, this home is filled with design objects.
But I digress. The conference in Munich was excellent, and Die Neue Sammlung is a fantastic museum. To talk more about the conference and caring for design objects, I’ve invited Tim Bechthold, the Head of the Conservation Department Die Neue Sammlung, here for a conversation. Thankfully, Mr. Bechthold is not only good at organizing conferences and working as a conservator, but is also fluent in both German and English.
Concepts Around Interviewing Artists: a Discussion with Glenn Wharton
Over the past six years or so at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, I’ve spoken to a lot of artists—either about projects we’ve commissioned or ones that we simply acquired or borrowed. Creating a dialog with artists around preservation issues related to representing their work has become an important way to document their thoughts at a certain time. Theses interviews, whether written or recorded, then become an integral part of the documentation that is stored in the museum’s archives. But interviewing artists about preservation issues can be difficult and consuming work.
Glenn Wharton
To explore issues related to the methodology and process of interviewing artists, I’ve invited conservator Glenn Wharton here for a discussion. Mr. Wharton is a Conservator at the Museum of Modern Art specializing in time-based media conservation. He is also a Research Scholar at New York University, with a joint appointment at the Institute of Fine Arts Conservation Center and the Museum Studies program. He serves as Acting Executive Director of INCCA-NA, the North American group of the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art.
Richard McCoy: Why do you think it is important to interview living artists?
Glenn Wharton: I think things have really shifted in the field of conservation in response to changes in contemporary art production. The art object is often contingent in that it may be replaced or it may not even exist in contemporary works.
With installation art, media art, or performance art, the work frequently requires a team of people putting the artwork together and then taking it apart again. Many conservators have recognized that what we need to do is document how we install the artwork and define what the artwork can be, not just what it is or what it was. This involves working with an artist, sometimes over a number of installations. Having a record of the artist’s input and thoughts about this process is very important.
For us at MoMA, an artist interview might be anything from a quick email asking in what format a video was produced or what material was used in some specific component of an artwork, or it might become an extended series of conversations that plays out over time.
Each interaction with an artist is different, and context driven. If it’s a full-on interview—one in which the artist comes in to MoMA—we sit down, tape it, transcribe it, and draw out information for our reports. This is a very formal process.
Imaging Conservation at the Guggenheim: A Discussion with Carol Stringari
Conservator Carol Stringari with Ad Reinhardt's "Black Painting" (1960–66). Photo: Kristopher McKay, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
In August of 2008, Holland Cotter began his glowing review of Imageless: The Scientific Study and Experimental Treatment of an Ad Reinhardt Black Painting at the Guggenheim Museum in New York with this paragraph:
Things fall apart. That’s one of the facts of art. Material gets buried under other material. That’s another art fact. They are both about the meeting—sometimes gradual, sometimes sudden—of aesthetics and physics, the moment when it becomes clear to the eye that a thing of beauty, while always a joy, will not last forever, at least in its original form.
I don’t think there is a New York Times writer more understanding and sympathetic to the conservator’s role within the museum than Mr. Cotter. I remember reading that article and looking at the accompanying images and wishing I could see the exhibition. The two conservators who researched and conserved the painting and developed the exhibition were awarded the 2009 College Art Association/Heritage Preservation Award. These two conservators are Chris McGlinchey, the Sally and Michael Gordon Conservation Scientist at the Museum of Modern Art, and Carol Stringari, the Chief Conservator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Ms. Stringari has been at the Guggenheim since 1992, and as the Chief Conservator, she oversees a staff of six conservators who work on a wide variety of projects. Since I wasn’t able to see the exhibition Imageless myself, and because Ms. Stringari is one of the leaders and innovators in the field of the conservation of modern and contemporary art, I’ve engaged her in a discussion around some of her past and current projects in an effort to define her role in preserving art in the 21st century.
Richard McCoy: No doubt, as the Chief Conservator, that you play a number of roles at your museum. Will you describe an “average week” for you and your department?
Carol Stringari: I can’t say that there is an “average week” at the Guggenheim. Given the fact that we have a small conservation staff and a very ambitious exhibition and affiliate program, each week can be quite different. One week could include treating an artwork in the lab, installing an exhibition in Bilbao, or attending planning meetings for future projects in Abu Dhabi.
Our conservation staff is extremely busy and since we do not see each other regularly, I encourage everyone to gather weekly to share ideas and discuss projects. I feel that everyone can learn something from the larger group, regardless of their “discipline.” By discipline I mean their specialization, be it paintings, objects, works on paper, electronic art, etc.
We also have regular meetings with our curatorial department to discuss research and treatment projects, philosophical issues, and to set priorities for upcoming exhibitions.
RM: What is your involvement in site-specific and Guggenheim-commissioned projects? Does your approach differ much in these projects from working on a more traditional work of art?
CS: We have recently become more involved in the documentation of works as they enter the museum collection. With the addition of staff we are able to engage the artists early in the process and discuss working methods and materials. When possible, we photograph and preferably videotape the installation works as they are created. When this is not possible, we conduct “variable media interviews” to determine the parameters of the artwork and how it might transform over time and in different contextual circumstances. These interviews enable us to document specific technologies and how the use of technology creates meaning within an artwork.
Fundamentally, the questions we ask are the same as for traditional artworks: How do we retain the integrity of the work? How do we preserve historical and cultural context? And how do we conserve the work for future generations? The answers to these questions can vary dramatically based on the nature of the work and the artist that created it. We own a very wide range of artworks, from quite traditional objects to conceptual art, earthworks, large installations, and technology-based works.
What’s Cookin at the Art21 Blog: A Weekly Index
It’s mealtime! Join Sonya for a fine helping of nutrients and adventure with this week’s Index:
Round ‘em up Nicole! Here’s what Art21 artists have been up to this past week.
The Pop-Up Book Academy: An Interview with Sam Gould of Red 76 by Daniel Fuller … a requiem for Maurizio Cattelan? Read more details about the latest show at Harlem’s Triple Candie. Also… a day at Art Disneyland! Jump in the car with Daniel and head to Mildred’s Lane.
Thank you to Daniel for so many of your fabulous posts! Hrag Vartanian introduces new Art21 Guest Blogger, (drum roll, please) …Quinn Latimer.
In the latest Letter From London, Ben Street writes to us with some thoughts pertaining to acts of vandalism on works of art.
Conserve contemporary art! Check out the Art21 Blog’s new column: No preservatives: Conversations about Conservation and read Richard McCoy’s interview with Hugh Shockey from the Lunder Conservation Center.
Mark your calendars … Performa is scheduled to open in NYC this November. In this week’s Flash Points: Nicole Caruth interviews participating artist Saya Woolfalk.
In this week’s addition to the column Teaching with Contemporary Art, Joe Fusaro highly recommends that we visit exhibition, Circles of Influence at the Clark Institute before it closes September 7th!
MoMA Trumpets Amsterdams’ Role as Hub of Conceptual Art by Hrag Vartanian.
Wesley Miller provides an introduction to Season 5 artist Paul McCarthy.
But what if those enemies, just outside the door, came armed with Bach and Mozart and Caravaggio and Goethe? What is the relationship between artistic greatness and democratic inclusiveness? Quinn Latimer asks that and other provocative questions in her response to a recent New York Times article by Michael Kimmelman.
Paul McCarthy is described as a pulsing ID. Read this interview with McCarthy by Benjamin Weisman in this weeks BOMB in the Building.
Check out the newest Art21 column dedicated to all things food! (I’m lovin it!) Gastro-Vision: Aesthetics in Urban Farming, Part I by Nicole Caruth.
And the latest Art21 Exclusive: Artist Joyce Pensato discusses her experiences appearing as a performer in Oliver Herring’s videos.
Examining the Lives of Jenny Holzer’s Works/Words: A Discussion with SAAM Conservator Hugh Shockey
In 1993 the IMA acquired its first and only work by Jenny Holzer. The IMA’s 1983 piece is Untitled and consists of selections from her “Truisms Series.” It is the first in an edition of four. Cybernetic Data Products fabricated the original, which used an internal computer processor to send signals to the red LED lights to display Truisms in a variety of patterns–they flashed, dashed, blinked, etc.
Today, when you take the escalators to the contemporary galleries on the 3rd floor you will encounter this work installed just above the elevator. But this isn’t really the same sign that Ms. Holzer made in 1983… what’s there now is a little bit different.
2009 Installation of "Untitled" © 1983 Jenny Holzer
By doing some quick research in the IMA’s conservation, curatorial, and registration department’s files I was able to piece together Untitled’s exhibition and conservation history, and even discover its previous owners and pre-IMA exhibition locations. Why did I do this? I wanted to know about its conservation history and I was looking for some guidance on “correct” installation parameters. Truth be told, I was really looking for a note from Ms. Holzer or one of her assistants that stated precisely how the work should and shouldn’t be installed. Does it have to be above a door? Or entryway? Can it be hung like a painting, 62″ on center? How about pushed into a corner?
The variable installation locations of this artwork make it dynamic and somewhat playful in that it can represent an authoritative voice and at the same time question authoritative voices. While of course a certain amount of common sense could be and should used when installing it—after all, it is a sign and it gives information so it seems rather straightforward to install it in a place where we would find a “sign” and also authoritative information. The IMA has only installed the work in one other location. In the image below taken last week you can see a gallery placard (a sign!) just about exactly where Untitled was installed from 1993-2003.
1993 - 2003 Installation location of Jenny Holzer's work, "Untitled"
In addition to looking at the IMA’s files I also searched IDAA (the INCCA Database for Artists’ Archives) which led me to this case study on Inside Installations website about Ms. Holzer’s 1997 installation at the Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa, Proyecto para Bilbao. While the Guggenheim’s installation is a lot more complex than the IMA’s, there are many similarities related to its preservation and future.
Extending the Conservation Framework: A Site-Specific Conservation Discussion with Francesca Esmay
The opening date of the IMA’s 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park is less than a year away, and work is picking up at an increasing pace. 100 Acres will be one of the largest museum art parks in the country, and the only one to feature the ongoing commission of site-specific artworks. Around here it’s become commonplace to interact with one of the eight artists making an inaugural installation on site or in a 100 Acres meeting. Construction and planning is well underway on all of the projects.
Being responsible for the preservation of these new installations continues to precipitate developments in our long-term approach. For the past five years, I’ve been helping to care for the more than 50 outdoor sculptures on and around the IMA campus, but the installations within 100 Acres will require a slightly different kind of understanding of preservation.
For example, the IMA’s iconic 1970 LOVE sculpture has been installed on the grounds in at least 4 different locations, and at least 3 other locations elsewhere before it was acquired by the IMA in 1975. Unlike LOVE, the 100 Acres works will be intrinsically tied to their locations.
Aerial view of the IMA campus with the museum building and Lilly House and gardens to the right and 100 Acres to the left.
Once 100 Acres is open, the IMA will continue to commission new site-specific, endemic, large-scale installations and artworks for the untamed woodlands, wetlands, meadows and 35-acre lake of this museum art park. As far as I know, a project of this scale is unprecedented. When I thought about art conservators with experience working with site-specific outdoor installations, the first one that came to mind is my friend Francesca Esmay, the conservator at the Dia Art Foundation. While it remains to be seen if any of the 100 Acres installations will become as iconic as Walter De Maria’s The Lightning Field or Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, I was very interested to understand her approach to managing the preservation of “art that extends beyond the traditional exhibition framework.”
I asked Francesca about the maintenance and conservation documentation of the Dia collection, in particular for Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty.
Francesca Esmay: There are a lot of facets to the preservation effort at Spiral Jetty, so I will try to talk through all of the different approaches that Dia is taking. I guess two main things to point out right from the start is that (1) the piece entered Dia’s collection in 1999, so for most of its life it has not been under the purview of Dia; and (2) it was substantially submerged for almost 30 years! It emerged in 2002 and has been almost consistently visible since then, at times with water levels so low that there is exposed lake bed for hundreds of feet around the sculpture, really with no water in sight.
Obviously this change in water levels has impacted the physical materials of the Jetty. It becomes intermittently encrusted with salt crystals each time it emerges from the Great Salt Lake, dramatically coloring the basalt rock white until the salt wears away and the rocks return to their black color. Along with this more transient shift in color, the change in water levels have created areas of erosion, simultaneous with areas of new deposits of silt and sand from the lake.
Since we at Dia are still gathering information around the history of the piece, I cannot say what, if anything, was done to it in terms of prior physical interventions or “restorations” during the years before it came into the collection. If anything had been done it would have been in the early 70s, since it became consistently submerged not long after it was finished in 1970.
As far as routine maintenance for the sculpture, I check the water level online from time to time, to make sure the sculpture is still visible! And to a certain extent, we attempt to roughly gauge the number of visitors to the site, although we don’t keep hard data on that and rely instead on estimates from the park officials at the Golden Spike National Historic Site. We have contacts who live in Salt Lake City who regularly visit and report on anything noteworthy, and we typically have someone from the staff and/or colleagues visiting the site providing reports as well. I have managed to see the piece once per year since joining Dia in 2006 and plan to maintain that schedule so there is a formalized, regular documentation of the sculpture and its changes.
Francesca Esmay, Aurora Tang, and Rand Eppich prepare to launch a tethered helium balloon with digital camera attached. Robert Smithson, "Spiral Jetty," 1970. Long-term installation in Rozel Point, Box Elder County, Utah. Photo: Katie Stone Sonnenborn. Collection Dia Art Foundation.
Specifically in regard to that effort, I recently collaborated with the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) to explore ways to document the piece in a more systematic way. I worked with Rand Eppich, senior project manager in the Field Projects Group at the GCI, who deals with photography and documentation for the projects they work on — many of which are archaeological sites. He and I spoke about the idea of using those methods to document Spiral Jetty and we met there in May of this year to launch a collaboration.
