Portrait of Sigmar Polke by Jan de Groot

with Chris Ofili, Thomas Struth, Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin, Anna Gaskell, Kara Walker, Sarah Lucas, Yoshitomo Nara, Thomas Ruff, Mariko Mori, Vanessa Beecroft, Helmut Federle, Peter Doig, Andreas Gursky, Damien Hirst, Wim Delvoye, Carsten Holler, Jenny Saville, Carroll Dunham, Matthew Barney, Shirin Neshat, Sam Taylor-Wood, Peter Halley, Yoko Ono, Rodney Graham, Karen Kilimnik, Takashi Murakami, Zoe Leonard, Richard Serra, John Baldessari, John Coplans, Frank Shifreen, Gillian Wearing, Julian Opie, Mona Hatoum, Olafur Eliasson, Paul McCarthy, Maurizio Cattelan, Martin Assig, Margi Geerlinks, Wolfgang Tillmans, Thomas Demand, Oliver Boberg, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sigmar Polke, Howard Hodgkin, Sally Mann, Sylvie Fleury, Sarah Jones, John Currin, Rineke Dijkstra, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Charles Ray, Erwin Wurm, Douglas Gordon, Jeff Koons, Marlene Dumas, Donald Baechler, Christopher Wool, Inez van Lamsweerde, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Janine Antoni, Daido Moriyama, Andres Serrano, Candida Hofer, Cosima von Bonin, Araki, Elizabeth Peyton, David Shrigley, Tracey Emin, Hellen van Meene, David Shrigley, Marc Quinn, Rachel Whiteread, Doris Salcedo, Mona Mazouk, Julian Opie, Mike Kelley, Stephan Balkenhol, Daniel Pflumm, Navin Rawanchaikul, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Pierre Huyghe, Yayoi Kusama, Joseph Beuys, Mark Dion, Monica Bonvicini, Enrico Baj, Christo, Tacita Dean, Daniel Scheffer...

The Little Museum That Could... And A Biennale Too 

DETROIT - In a young century dogged by instability and uncertainty, faith in the power of art is rekindled by the reopening of Detroit's Museum of New Art (MONA). The need for a contemporary museum here is especially strong in view of the fact that the entrenched artistic circles have opposed or dragged their heels at such efforts for decades. Moving outside these circles, a small group of businessmen have stepped forward to support and retain a contemporary in the region.

After searching nearly a year for its new home, MONA is preparing to reopen and re-establish itself as a cultural anchor for the region. The practical resolve has been made to move to a smaller suburb. The idea was to choose a city nearby Detroit that would have a fresh atmosphere and without the old politics. A small enough community where the museum could create an art scene which would be new and innovative, and yet still encompass the entire region.

The decision was to go with a much smaller space as well. As explained by Jef Bourgeau: "We've never thought in small terms. We don't accept this notion of small. It's a museum on the human scale. I would say that is the ideal scale."

Working against such scale and attendant expectations, MONA is mounting a mammoth undertaking in its reopening with the Midwest's first biennial. Still, a museum space can be anything it wants. Once the art is in it, the art is all that matters. The new goal will be to make the new space, no matter how large or how small, into a really powerful and evocative cultural force. To help achieve that, this new MONA vows to retain the museum's founding philosophy: that art's joy, power and creativity lie solely in the eyes, hearts, hands and minds of the generation that creates it.

I was able to sit down with the busy curator for a brief interview on these topics and more.

Question: The Museum of New Art has gathered quite a rogue's gallery of artists for this first-ever biennial. How did MONA ever pull together such a feat in Detroit of all places?

Bourgeau: This region is home to probably the world's best art-educated public. Due mostly to a combination of a great many art schools and the way these art schools pump their kids out onto our streets - with vivid impressions about contemporary art and about today's artists in particular.

Q: What do you mean by vivid impressions?

Bourgeau: Exactly that. That the art public here has little more to go on than impressions, and those mostly second-hand. Gotten from books to art magazines to lectures to "drive-by" talks/slide-shows from the artists themselves. All this helps to shape a greater impression of the artist than of the actual art. Since the original work is seldom viewed in Detroit, having lacked the forum of a contemporary museum for so long.

Q: And by approaching this condition as a strength and not a drawback, MONA has decided to exploit it to the fullest? Which has led you to organize a biennial, not of actual art, but simply portraits of the artists?

Bourgeau: Exactly. That's the true embodiment of early 21st century culture and art. Not the art, but the artist. Not the product, but the individual. The art has become secondary to the artist.

Q: You're talking about celebrity.

Bourgeau: A cult of personality, perhaps. Yes. And in many cases the art or talent is of little or no consequence. Simply a medium used to expose the so-called personality. And, yes, that often leads to celebrity. Maybe this is about all that. These are people we only read about. So it's also about the creation of today's icons. Which is happening every-where, and often without a real examination of content or context.

Q: And, all of this, giving birth to a new school of non-art?

Bourgeau: So much so that a recent winner of Britain's Turner Prize, Martin Creed, simply created an empty gallery where the lights periodically went off then back on again.

Q: His inclusion seems important to what we've been talking about. Does his portrait feature prominently in the Biennale?

Bourgeau: Unfortunately, his portrait was shot at the end of a film roll and just as the gallery lights went out. The negative was ruined and the print came back totally black. But this seeming disaster inspired us to a totally new vision for the biennial. At that moment, we decided to go figurative, rather than literal.

Q: But of course, all the artists are "figuratively" represented by their portraits?

Bourgeau: We had to devise a knock-your-socks-off biennial representing the current national and international art scene. It wouldn't fly any other way. At the same time, we had no money at hand. With the museum's lack of funds and support, we decided simply to move ahead without the art. That was the challenge. To create an exciting biennial without the selected artists' actual work.

And we met that challenge head-on, I think. No original paintings, no sculptures, no photography, no prints, nothing! What we did instead was to allow the museum visitor to create an even more accurate portrait of the artist than if the artist had actually posed in person. So it's all in the figurative sense, that's what I meant.

Q: Can you really do that?

Bourgeau: Without funding, we had no choice.

Q: So even the portraits are not authentic? But simply museum visitors posing as the actual artists?

Bourgeau: We allowed MONA's visitors to create an even more accurate picture of the artists selected than if that artist had actually posed in person. Yes. Utilizing those vivid impressions we first spoke of, the museum collaborated directly with its audience, - serving up a collective composite of the world's most famous and infamous artists.

Q: Do you have a word for what you've done?

Bourgeau: We've kicked around a few. Since we tapped into the public's collective impressions to create these portraits, "brain-graph" is the current favorite. With "pict-a-brain" a close second.

Q: I was thinking more on the line of fraud. It suddenly seems to me that you've created, not a collaboration, but a fraud on the public.

Bourgeau: The Biennale is not a fraud. Art is never a fraud. No one is ever hood-winked in this business. Because, at the door, art is already a conspiracy. A co-conspiracy between artist and audience. An open collusion of the two. A truth or dare. And there's no art of deception, only of surprise. That's the animal that needs to be fed. And, I guarantee, this biennial has more than enough to satisfy any appetite!

(At this point, Bourgeau abruptly ended the interview.)

The Museum of New Art (MONA) will celebrate the Midwest's first biennial beginning May 15 through June 26.

An opening reception will be held from 5 to 8pm on Saturday, May 15.

Regular hours: 12-6pm, Thursday through Saturday.

The museum is located at 7 North Saginaw Street, Pontiac Michigan.

telephone: 248-210-7560

email: detroitmona@aol.com

web: detroitmona.com