David Barrie

My starting point is a discovery I made when, together with colleagues at The Art Fund and the Hayward Gallery, I was developing our plans for the exhibition in 2003 that marked the centenary of the Fund. The Fund has played a part in the acquisition by museums and galleries all over the UK of hundreds of thousands of works of art – of almost every conceivable kind, from every era, and from every corner of the globe. Our job was to choose a sample of about three hundred and we were faced with a real embarrassment of riches.

It was quite a challenge but among all that wealth of material, we discovered that in one very significant respect our public art collections were extremely poor. Although there was no shortage of modern and contemporary work to choose from, nearly all of it was home-grown. There were works by everyone from Epstein to Emin but hardly anything by modern and contemporary artists from overseas.

In part this came as no surprise. It is well-known if sad fact that in the first half of the 20th century British museums and galleries missed many opportunities to acquire works by the great artists then working in Europe. Little or no effort was made to buy the likes of Picasso, Braque and Matisse – at a time when their prices were still within reach. This we knew already, but as we selected works for the exhibition, it became clear to us that this historic failure of vision was part of a much bigger and more persistent problem. Very few museums or galleries in the UK had made any active effort to acquire works by any living artists from outside the UK.

We speculated at the time about the reasons for this strange narcissism. Was it just another aspect of that British aloofness which has so often infuriated our European neighbours? Was it curatorial laziness, or ignorance? It certainly wasn’t just about money or the lack of it.

There are two related problems here. First, there is the insularity, which has allowed us to think that we are right to focus our collecting efforts on the home-grown. If resources are limited, then they should be devoted to saving what is ours, rather than reaching out to enrich our public collections with the best work from overseas.

The second problem is even more serious. If living artists from the European and North American mainstream have been largely ignored, those from other parts of the world might just as well not have existed. When our collecting habits have not been insular, they have been profoundly Eurocentric. This is the problem I want to focus on.

Now before I go any further I must acknowledge that some progress has been made in the last few years. Some of our major public galleries are now working hard to broaden the geographical reach of their permanent collections. Tate, in particular, has since 2000 started to build a collection of modern and contemporary art from Latin America, and more recently it has launched parallel collecting initiatives in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East, as well as sub-Saharan Africa. India is due to follow. And temporary exhibitions of non-British art are, of course, increasingly frequent.

These are steps in the right direction, which should be warmly applauded. But we have a very long way to go before our public art collections even faintly reflect the richness and diversity of the art currently being produced around the world. This is a matter that is far too little discussed outside specialist circles, and it is one about which we should be seriously concerned. I shall explain why in due course, but first I want to explore the some of the complex challenges that confront curators who may wish to put it right.

First let me go back a little. The two museums in this country that offer the richest and most cosmopolitan mix of art are the British Museum and the V&A. And I’m not just talking about old art. Both museums also now actively collect international contemporary art, though the resources they devote to this process are necessarily limited. The BM, for example, has made determined efforts over the last fifteen or twenty years to collect outstanding examples of art by living African artists, some of whom, like the Ghanaian, El Anatsui and the Beninois, Romuald Hazoumé, are now well-established international figures. The two museums have recently started collaborating on the development of a shared collection of modern and contemporary Middle Eastern photography. This is an innovative venture that promises to open our eyes to aspects of Middle Eastern culture that might otherwise be largely invisible to us.

The new collection will, of course, benefit greatly from its association with the older – sometimes much older – works of art from the Middle East housed in the two museums. This is an important point because, of course, new or ‘cutting edge’ art cannot escape its origins, even if, as is so often the case, the artist seeks to reject or challenge them. Context matters. The new collection will be all the more instructive precisely because the two museums are in a position to make such interesting comparisons between the new material and their holdings of historic art from the same region.

To that extent, these historic collections have a distinct advantage over those, like Tate Modern, that are exclusively devoted to modern and contemporary art. But the problem facing modern art galleries is not just that they lack the historical context that the BM and V&A can provide. The large majority of works they contain derive from a limited range of sources, predominantly Western European and North American. Although supposedly ‘international’ in character, their collections are actually very narrow both in geographical and in cultural scope. In fact, oddly enough, a map showing their origins would closely correspond with that of NATO membership. The consequences of the Cold War were not just political and military but also cultural – they run much deeper than we normally recognise or admit!

The range of artists represented in such collections has, it is true, widened a good deal in recent years and, in addition to Japan, it now often includes China, South Korea, India, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil. This is not an exhaustive list, but it is not a misleading one, because artists from outside Europe and North America still represent a very small fraction of the total.

The very narrow scope of our modern art collections should not really surprise us. It is just another reflection of the massive inequalities that continue to divide the world so deeply – and dangerously. How can an artist working in a very poor country hope even to be visible, let alone gain recognition in the wider world? It is almost impossible for such an artist to reach an audience beyond his or her home country without the support of an energetic and commercially successful dealer. But dealers of this kind – almost by definition – operate almost exclusively in countries that have ready access to a significant body of private collectors. And where do those collectors come from if not the rich countries?

The commercial art market is a decisive factor in the shaping of public and critical taste in the visual arts – and nowhere more so than in the field of contemporary art. The lavishly catalogued shows that the big dealers put on, the grand art fairs and auctions, the champagne receptions, the media coverage, the books, the TV and radio programmes, the websites – all of these help not only to sustain public interest, but also to determine which artists will get the solo museum exhibitions, win the awards, get the big commissions and fetch the highest prices.

Publicly-funded bodies, including major museums and galleries, cannot ignore the market – not least because dealers and auction houses are important sources either of direct funding or valuable discounts. They can also help in less obvious but equally important ways – for example by making introductions to private collectors, or encouraging private sales on advantageous terms. And of course private collectors are intimately involved in the art market as buyers and sellers, as well as often being major supporters of museums and galleries. The commercial art market is a complex ecosystem that supports a rich variety of animal life.

There are grounds for concern about the extent of the market’s influence over what kinds of art get bought and shown by public galleries. If curators were to get too friendly with dealers, or perhaps accepted too many favours from them, could this possibly affect their judgement? What if major players in the commercial art market were to sit on gallery boards – a not-unknown occurrence? Might this in any way influence the choice of works to be acquired or which exhibitions were put on? Even if these (and other) risks could be avoided, it remains very hard for the curator to ignore the massive presence of the art market.

It may be objected that an indigenous commercial art market already exists in some parts of the developing world, but these local markets are still small and relatively undeveloped. I wonder how many collectors or curators travel from Europe and the USA to attend the Dakar Biennale?

Two important lessons can now be drawn. First, our knowledge of the art being produced around the world is to a large extent determined, directly or indirectly, by the activities of the market. An artist undiscovered by the market is virtually an unknown artist. (I use the word ‘undiscovered’ with full awareness of its irony.) Secondly, artists in countries that have not yet been grasped in the octopus embrace of the market are largely invisible to us. An artist working in one of those countries and who wishes to achieve international recognition has little choice but to travel– typically to Europe or North America – and perhaps to settle there. Both for economic and political reasons, these options are not widely available. Migration from poor to rich countries is not getting any easier.

Does any of this matter? If so, what can we do about it?

Let me start with the second question before returning to the first. I want to acknowledge at once that expanding the scope of the contemporary art collections in our public museums and galleries to embrace these ‘undiscovered’ artists will not be easy. In fact it poses many challenges. Not only will it require a determined change of collecting policies, but it will also call for a sustained intellectual investment in research and, more importantly, in the development of new relationships with artists and communities in the source countries.

A new breed of curator is needed – one who is prepared to travel and travel often to places that may not necessarily have all the comforts and conveniences of London, Paris, Berlin, New York or Tokyo. Whether a training in art history at the Courtauld is the best preparation for this task I leave you to decide! It is one that has in the past often been left to anthropologists rather than art historians. Perhaps contemporary art galleries should open their doors to more of their number?

Finding the right people and doing the research will, however, only take us part of the way. There will be many fascinating and difficult choices to be made in building the new collections – choices that have ethical as well as aesthetic dimensions. I wish I had time to explore this subject more thoroughly tonight, but let me make a few basic points.

First, though we cannot avoid our own prejudices, we should try our hardest to be aware of them. Great care needs to be taken in applying our own canons of taste to work from radically different cultures. To dismiss a work of art that we don’t immediately like or understand would be arrogant, to say the least. On the other hand, it makes no sense to try to escape our prejudices by collecting indiscriminately. As I have said already, resources are limited, and judgements have to be made. The question is: how and on what basis?

Although I am not an expert in these matters, I think it is salutary to contrast two very different curatorial approaches.

On the one hand there is the romantic attitude typified by Jean-Hubert Martin, the director of the huge exhibition Magiciens de la Terre – Magicians of the Earth – first shown in Paris in 1989. This show brought together an astonishing variety of living artists from all around the world, and tried to present them on, as it were, a level playing field.

For all its ambition, or perhaps because of it, Magiciens de la Terre was apparently not a big popular success, but it did trigger the formation of Jean Pigozzi’s private collection of art from sub-Saharan Africa. According to André Magnin, its lead curator, ‘When the collection was first established in 1989, not a single African artist was truly well-known. The western art world was either unaware of, or had overlooked, contemporary artistic creation on other continents, and particularly in Africa’. Under Magnin’s direction, the Pigozzi Collection has grow steadily and selections from it have been shown in galleries all over the world.

Magnin is suspicious of western influence. The goal in building the Pigozzi collection has apparently been to find works of art that exhibit a certain kind of ‘authenticity’, works that are uncontaminated by colonial or post-colonial influences. In other words, a kind of ‘innocent’ art practiced by artists unsullied by the teaching of western-style art schools or the influence of ideas imported from the western art world.

There is something appealing about the desire to preserve, and indeed protect, art and artistic communities that may be threatened by the impact of a homogenised, global visual culture. The world would be a poorer, much less interesting place if all art ended up sharing a strong family resemblance with what’s on show at Basel or Frieze – but I would hope that some at least of the many indigenous artistic traditions are strong enough to resist this outcome.

Pigozzi and Magnin have brought a lot of previously unfamiliar African artists to the attention of the outside world, some of whom have no doubt done well out of the transaction. However, their approach to collecting is vulnerable to the charge of ‘primitivism’ – the patronising enjoyment of the exotic and quaint, coupled with the infantilising desire to arrest development. They would hotly deny that they are holding any of their artists back, or treating them with any kind of condescension. But for their critics, this is just a new imposition by the rich on the poor: in short, neo-colonialism.

Whether or not this criticism is justified, Magnin’s curatorial approach is based on an aesthetic article of faith that is worth examining. He maintains that a work of art can be read and understood anywhere, and by anyone, regardless of its provenance, even if it bears some features that are distinct to a certain culture, set of beliefs, and specific context and history. This is a big claim, though a vague one. Jean-Hubert Martin, who curated a show appropriately entitled ‘Against Exclusion’ at last year’s Moscow Biennale, has put a bit more flesh on this idea: ‘All artists’, he argues, ‘are humans who share the same condition and can communicate it…It would be incorrect to assert that we cannot understand foreign cultures. A minimum of information is usually enough to arouse interest and inspire the viewer to understand and interpret works of art from a foreign place…Today there are no contexts and issues that are entirely foreign to us’.

I would like to believe that this is in some sense true, but the very notion of ‘understanding a work of art’ is notoriously problematical. Do works of art have fixed meanings at all? Is it not more likely that each individual’s ‘understanding’ of a particular work of art is to some degree personal, and fluid, reflecting their own memories, feelings, attitudes and so on? And surely our personal circumstances – where we live, what we do – will also affect our understanding of a work of art?

Yet, in fairness to Magnin, I think he is onto something when he says that artists everywhere ‘share the same condition and can communicate it’. It’s very hard to say how this works, and it’s certainly complicated, but I share his belief that works of art can and sometimes do speak to us across wide gulfs of space, and indeed time. This is a point to which I will return later.

A very different curatorial attitude was reflected in Africa Remix, a touring exhibition that came to the Hayward Gallery in 2005. Here the goal was to include a sample of art produced by artists with roots in many different parts of Africa, including white South Africans, and actively to embrace artists who had been trained in the west, or indeed lived and worked there. This show attracted plenty of criticism, but here the main complaint was – bluntly speaking – that the art on display was just not very good.

Obviously it’s hard to please everybody, and no doubt Africa Remix had its shortcomings, but it cannot be the case that no art worth seeing is being produced in the continent of Africa. Yet it is hard to avoid the suspicion that such an attitude lurks somewhere in the minds of many western art critics and curators, even if not consciously recognised.

Most of the leading actors in the contemporary art world no doubt see themselves as impeccably liberal, so there is more than a little irony in the fact that they do not always appear to be entirely open-minded about art from sources outside the mainstream. I have observed the tendency of contemporary art curators not merely to neglect art that does not fit comfortably into their intellectual categories, but to dismiss it. I have, for example, heard modern and contemporary Aboriginal art from Australia disdainfully described as being merely ‘decorative’ – perhaps the most damning indictment in the curatorial lexicon.

I mentioned earlier Tate’s ambitious plans for collections of art from Latin America, the Asia-Pacific, Middle East and India. I understand that the key factor in deciding what Tate will collect is ‘connectivity’. The aim is to find works that stand in some kind of demonstrable relationship with Tate’s existing collections. A good example would be the Brazilian, Hélio Oiticica, whose abstract compositions and installations have close affinities with works by European Modernists like Mondrian and Malevich.

This cautious approach is understandable, but it is not without risk. If art that is not obviously connected with western artistic traditions is excluded, the resultant collections are bound to have a strongly Eurocentric feel. It is not difficult to imagine the kind of criticisms that such an outcome would evoke, but once Tate has started to explore these new collecting areas, a new momentum will perhaps develop and the parameters will be adjusted to permit a more inclusive approach.

The development of new collections of art that reflect the creativity and the experiences of communities in countries with which most of us are very unfamiliar obviously gives rise to many challenging problems. These deserve to be debated more openly and actively. Outside the museum world, organisations like the British Council, ACE, and INIVA surely have an important role to play in this process, though I am not sure they have yet risen to the challenge.

You may however wonder whether it’s worth making the effort. Would it really matter if our public art collections continued to be dominated by work, most of which is produced in rich countries for rich collectors under the powerful influence of the commercial art market?

Yes, I think it does matter.

We know from the archaeological record that people have been making art for at least 50,000 years. I don’t want to get into a debate about what we mean by the word ‘art’ because, although there is room for argument around the edges, I think we actually have a fairly clear operational idea of what the term applies to, even if we cannot define it very satisfactorily.

We also know that the propensity to make art – in all its different forms – crosses every cultural and ethnic boundary. Like language, art-making is a very deeply-rooted part of the human behavioural repertoire. Everybody, everywhere makes art – whether it’s carved walrus ivory among the Inuit, or video installations in Tokyo. Well, that may be a slight exaggeration. Josef Beuys wanted everyone to be an artist, but his vision has not yet been realised! Nevertheless it is true that pretty well everyone enjoys looking at art.

Of course there are many puzzles. Why people make art, what if any social or other purposes it may serve, whether it makes us feel better about ourselves – these are some of the important questions to which we still have no clear answers. Yet we can state with some confidence that art exercises a strange power over us. Art – and the making of art – fascinate us.

Perhaps this is because art gives us a window into the lives of others. It is not a perfectly transparent window – there are plenty of problems of interpretation. This is true even within our own culture. But if we want to get to know another culture, it is not enough to accumulate statistics, to study the history, to read the newspapers, or even to learn the language. We need also to explore its expressive life – the language, if you like, of its art.

If we make the effort to understand the art of an alien culture, we will learn many things, but there is one important outcome that can almost be guaranteed. However hard the struggle, we will find that, beneath all the superficial differences, we are all pretty much the same. People everywhere share the same human characteristics and face the same fundamental challenges – of living, loving and dying – even if their circumstances may vary enormously.

Art really can help us to recognise our common humanity, and perhaps art can achieve this more effectively than any other medium – apart from direct face-to-face contact. This is, I think, the point that lies behind Jean-Hubert Martin’s claim that artists everywhere ‘share the same condition and can communicate it’.

Travelling to a foreign country is not always possible, of course, and this is one of the reasons why museums and galleries matter so much. Through their temporary exhibitions and more still through their permanent collections they give us all the chance to encounter and explore the expressive lives of other peoples. In doing so, they enable us to recognise our common humanity.

News coverage of the developing world is very patchy and usually dwells on war, famine, pestilence, corruption and incompetence. Of course there are terrible problems out there, and we need to hear about them, but there is clearly a danger that the endless tales of misery and failure may dull our senses and mislead us about the true nature of the living reality. It is vital that we should not adopt a patronising pose or lose sight of the fact that the people of let us say, Sudan or Colombia, are still people, just like us. They may lead lives that are in some respects very hard, but they are not lives of monochromatic misery or degradation. In some ways perhaps they may be richer than our own.

If we had the chance to see more of their art, we would gain a much livelier appreciation of what life in those countries is really like – both the light and the dark. This would in turn encourage us to think more carefully about what our responsibilities towards them might be, and also to reflect more deeply on our own priorities.

Lastly, I want to make a very simple, selfish point. We already know of some brilliant artists who come from poorer nations or oppressed minorities, and, unless I’m much mistaken, we must be missing out on many more. I am genuinely curious to see their work and I’m frustrated that it is still so hard to do so.

One thing is certain: if there is to be change, we had better not rely on the art market to deliver it. Our museums and galleries will have to devote far more energy and more resources to establishing links with those parts of the world that they have for so long largely ignored. Contemporary art curators will need to get out more. And if this means that we cannot to do so much to preserve what we’ve already got, so be it. I would happily trade yet another Old Master costing tens of millions of pounds for the chance to find out what the many ‘undiscovered’ artists around the world are doing – right now.

[This article is based on a lecture given at the University of East Anglia in May 2010]

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