My advice would be to find a gallery or museum (or specific curator) who specializes in the kind of art you’re working on and contact him/her, or the department most relevant. At the Getty Museum we don’t typically exhibit a lot of contemporary work, but many local museums and galleries do.

I hope you found inspiration at the Getty today, best wishes for success in your project!

-Annelisa / Iris editor

Now, my projects are about choosing a team of people that will create just enough tension to hold the concept in focus but freedom to also allow the ideas to merge, integrate, and grow. Learning to let go of MY concept an allow it to become OUR concept is the lesson that pushes me forward in my own personal and professional growth as an artist. Likewise, collaborating with non-artists helps them to appreciate the process of creating art and grow in creative problem solving skills. As a professional conceptual artist I took the lead on a recent collaboration and worked as creative director. We did a photoshoot and produced and installation exhibit which was really well received and will remain on display till through October here in LA. Now we need a cutting edge curator to really take this idea forward… but first me must address these questions:

Is this “experience” art? If so, what kind? Is it conceptual art, relational art, collaborative art or something else all together? How do artists like myself present this type of project to curators and how do we communicate it with museum and gallery directors in a way that they can understand that the result of the project are not nearly as important as what happened between the people in the project and that the project is ongoing and their contribution as curator adds something to it that changes it forever?

Here is a Recent Project Profile to give you a better idea of what I am talking about.

The premise: 9 people met online and became friends, a year or so later they decided to take their relationships OFFLINE…

They met through a forum on facebook for extreme introverts, the kind of people who rarely get out from behind the computer. Somewhere along the journey several of them decided to meet in person and participate in a photoshoot with a theme of Steampunk. They collaborated and planned online for 2 months creating their own costumes and storyline and then flew to LA to spend a long weekend getting to know each other in person and participate in the creative endeavor.

The participants were not artists. Their professions included, children’s cancer research, immigration lawyer, head hunter, working with children with borderline peronality disorder, studying to be a nurse, conceptual artist and other serious professsions. They all met in an MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) forum online for INTJ’s (Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging.) INTJ’s comprise less than 2% of the population and are known as masterminds, rationals, and scientists and they usually can be found with their nose behind a book.

The experience of meeting in person was the actual art. The work they produced as a result of that meeting was nice, but the relationship development is what spurred the creative endeavor and is what is most interesting about the project.

BIG QUESTION: How do we go forward with this concept and who would be the best curator for this type of work?

BTW, I am at the Getty today and can be reached on my cell phone at 270-243-0444.
I appreciate the opportunity to ask a curator about a real life project that needs curation.

“Great excitement, pleasure, intrigue, and curiosity! It’s a sense of wonder when you see the real thing, finally, that you might only have known through photographs.” -Antonia

And here’s from Jens Daehner, curator of antiquities at the Getty Villa:

“It is intensely satisfying. Unpacking loans arriving for an exhibition are my favorite moments in an installation, especially when I haven’t seen the works in person before. I’m never disappointed!” -Jens