UPDATE AND REFLECTION
I am presently in residence at the Insel Hombroich Foundation in Germany, where I was solicited for a summer fellowship this August. I am sitting at a large conference table, handmade by a permanent resident sculptor, Katsuhito Nishikawa, looking through a large picture window on to an orchard carpeted with wildflower meadow. My working space for the next ten days is the Alvaro Siza Pavilion, one of the many buildings on this artist residency campus designed first as sculpture and second as architecture. The comparison with Times Square’s environment might seem startling, but actually it is helping me to see Times Square more clearly.
There are artists and academics of many disciplines here choosing places/sites in which to work. The director of the foundation has worked in Kulturmanagerin, a German equivalent of revitalization or UK regeneration. I come from a background of establishing residencies in unique settings, and they want me to help them reflect about their site, resources and unique offerings to shape a vibrant residency program. Yet, I have also come here to reflect upon the curatorial process for our own public spaces in Times Square and to take time to thoroughly explore the notion of public/private from both the arts and urban sectors.
Instel Hombroich is like an artificial village and as I deconstruct its complex history and development into core elements, I am reminded that I can also deconstruct Times Square. As I patiently consider this during my time here, it makes me recognize the ‘organic’ process that I have employed for years breaks down into an official, tested methodology. The current process of researching in an environment where I am living, working and sharing with artists aligns with my reading of Terry Smith’s Thinking Contemporary Curating (2012). I find that ‘public art’ is perfectly positioned within the contemporary art world’s questions and Smith's reflections on the curators of today and tomorrow as ‘process-shapers, program builders and infrastructural activists.’ There is no need to create a separate genre. All institutions are exploring ‘the array of interzones between public citizenship and private selfhood.’ Our refined mission, “Times Square collaborates with contemporary artists to experiment and engage with one of the world's most iconic urban places," hits this on the head.
RECENT WINS
Vision and Mission
The granting of the ArtPlace America award timed well with a thorough repositioning of the program and its vision, mission and goals. The award challenged us to ensure that the work we do is relevant to the urban sector as well as the arts sector. The core values we have agreed upon are referenced in each decision we make.
Revised Selection Process
We have been reviving our advisory and review panels to ensure we have rounded viewpoints in shaping the future of the total program, as well as the individual initiatives. We have added some valuable, new stakeholders as a result of the previous year’s experimental programming.
New and Revised Partnerships
As we program forward, we are including longer-standing partnerships such as Performa, the performance art biennial, as well as The Metropolitan Opera's Opening Night simulcast broadcast across our electronic billboards. Our second year with Crossing The Line festival has produced two works that play a central role for their month of programming. We are also forming dialogues with new partners for the winter, spring and summer programs, including major artists and institutions which now see Times Square as a serious, viable platform for the exploration of contemporary work.
INSIGHT
Stepping outside of one’s environment is necessary to see oneself more clearly. The time here with international colleagues reminds me that playing on an international level is less about ‘being international' and more about maintaining a foreign eye and fresh perspective: seeing what you already do and what you may not have recognized.
Pondering the role of curation and programming in isolation, in a place that could be considered the antithesis of my platform, has actually brought me closer to Times Square. It has reminded me that our new core values can be employed in this rural place on another continent as well as in our iconic urban district. This seemingly unrelated site and my research here, married with the ArtPlace America principles, are now being applied not only to our program, but also to how we frame, moderate and support the arts’ creative placemaking role within the International Downtown Association’s World Congress being hosted here in New York City, October 6-9, 2013. And so Times Square continues to share its experimentation.