Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Still from Archivo (2001), video. Courtesy of the artist.
In 2002 I was invited to be a juror for a contemporary art award in Puerto Rico, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of San Juan. I had never visited San Juan before, so I was excited by the opportunity.
I was picked up at the airport by the husband of the chief curator of the museum. As we drove toward my hotel, he revealed to me that he was a painter and one of the participants in the competition, adding, with a wink, “you will see my work tomorrow”. That information automatically made me uncomfortable, but I tried to laugh it off.
I didn’t know anyone in Puerto Rico those days. He offered to stay around to accompany me for dinner at the hotel, to which I agreed. Then, toward the end of the dinner, he told me that he had an unusual request: could he sleep in my room? He explained that he was in the military and his base was very close to the hotel, whereas his house was very far, and he needed to be at a training at 4am. He would sleep on the floor of the room. I was so startled by my host’s request and so confused by the context I suddenly was enveloped in (my host, the husband of the chief curator, whose painting I was judging tomorrow, asking me to sleep in my room) that I didn’t know how to say no. So, I had to go to sleep with an artist/military guy on my hotel room floor.
The next day I met with the other jurors, the Dominican curator Sarah Hermann and Puerto Rican theater director and playwright Nelson Rivera. We had several awards to give, including a first prize which was an acquisition award to enter the contemporary art museum’s collection.
We started the judging. The work of the chief curator’s husband— a gigantic canvas with a colorful tropical landscape— was among the first to be eliminated. I want to clarify that the piece was eliminated strictly under the criteria of its artistic merits (or lack thereof) and the fact that he had requested to sleep in my room played no part in the group’s decision.
Later, as we continued doing the selection and as we eliminated several other local artists, we started having the feeling that the museum curators were peeking into the room to see which pieces we were discarding and secretly commenting on our decisions with great surprise, particularly the elimination of some artists that they considered important.
The review of hundreds of works —mostly paintings— was exhausting and dispiriting. We were not finding much to select and were starting to worry about the dearth of strong submissions. At some point, we found a video and sat down to watch it. It was titled “Archivo”, a piece by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz. It is a work where the artist engaged with non-actors to recreate scenes of the history of Puerto Rico (particularly of places where these people lived and worked), mostly left outside of the official narratives. It is a moving and powerful work that speaks about how family and local memories get bypassed by recorded history and steamrolled by the forces of urban development. In addition, Bea Santiago’s abilities for convincing everyday people to act in nuanced anecdotes and stories was extraordinary. The three of us agreed it deserved the first prize.
The news of our awarding the acquisition prize of the competition to a video caused a controversy amidst the local art community (dominated by painters): never in the history of that museum had a video been acquired for the collection , let alone winning first prize in this annual competition. So much was the uproar about the video and the selection of works in general that we had to organize a press conference the morning after the award announcement to explain our decisions. The local artists were not happy, to say the least. “This is a selection from New York!” accused one of the artists, while various menacing looks were directed at me. But in the end the award went forward. As to Bea Santiago, years later she told me that she was greatly surprised by having been selected as the winner, as she had almost not even participated assuming that an artist like her would never be considered. She is now one of the leading Latin American artists working today. I consider “Archivo” to be a key early social practice work.
A couple years later, in 2004, I was invited to be in a jury again— this time as part of the Bienal de Arte Paiz in Guatemala. My fellow jurors this time around were the critic and Art Nexus editor Ivonne Pini and Uruguayan painter Ignacio Iturria. When I arrived, I learned of the interesting history of this biennial, founded in 1978 by the Paiz family, a family of collectors and philanthropists. I was told at the time (and to be clear I have not been able to corroborate this story as of press time) that the first biennial did not have a very strict selection criteria: when asked who could participate, the organizers said it was open to all. So countless Guatemalans submitted works, including school children. They exhibited every submission. Perhaps because of that experience they later decided that there should be a jurying process instead.
As it was the case in San Juan, the submissions for this biennial were made in person, with the physical artwork present. We were faced with a warehouse with hundreds and hundreds of works. I particularly recall a giant old bank safe made of iron and lead, decorated in Ab-Ex style, probably weighing half a ton. The act of the artist coming to physically deliver the work for consideration was a piece in it of itself, worthy of a Richard Serra.
We were then told by one of the coordinators of the biennial that about half of the hundreds of submissions in the warehouse “were already selected”. We looked at each other in puzzlement. The coordinator explained that given that those artists had been selected in previous biennials, they had automatic admission into every subsequent one including ours. We told the coordinator that such system then made the jurying process a futile and unnecessary exercise (and I thought that it was just an incremental approach to the open call from the original biennial, working its way to a stadium-size exhibition), but they stood firm in exhibiting those works. In the end, we came up with a proposal for them: we would create a section of the exhibition that would be titled “Selection of the Jury” and they would show everything else on another space. They were not entirely happy with our proposal, but they accepted it. We ended up selecting around 30 art works and all the hundreds of “pre-selected” pieces were exhibited in an adjacent, sprawling space ( I believe the biennial has now updated its curatorial process to avoid situations like these).
Not dissimilar from the San Juan experience, most of the now internationally recognized (then emerging) Guatemalan artists of my generation did not participate in this biennial (and I wish I had known of them during those days). It seems to me that artists such as Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Helen Ascoli, Jorge de León, Regina José Galindo, and many others built their careers mostly independently from those local contexts—something that perhaps speaks more about the tension between the local art and the international art scenes.
These two examples I have provided might make it appear that I want to make a critical comment about the systems of art validation in Latin America ( and I do concede that the anecdotes narrated here fall somewhat in the hypnotic storytelling realm of Macondo). But this is not my intention, nor do I mean to disparage regional exhibitions, which do play an important role in supporting artists and serve as important steppingstones for their careers. The point I want to make is broader and not region-specific: it is that the jurying system, not the cultural framework, is what makes these events problematic, including in major art centers.
I recall another instance, this one in New York (the city reviled by the Puerto Rican painter), where I was part of a grant panel for an art foundation. For the sake of expediting the process the staff had determined that we would hear a staff member read the artist’s statement while we looked at the projected images of the submitted works, shown in pairs for a period of 20 or 30 seconds each pair. In the case of some artists, this system worked, but in the case of others— particularly those involved in practices like socially engaged art like I was— the selection dynamics made it impossible to grasp anything meaningful about the work. This was the case of one artist that I personally know, whose images and statement said nothing to the other jurors and was not selected despite my vote. This same artist went on to participate in Documenta a couple years later.
Exposition au Salon de 1787, etching by Pietro Antonio Martini
The juried art exhibition —the idea that submitted works are selected by a jury with some receiving awards— finds its roots in the 17th century, probably dating back to the academic art salon in Paris in 1667, later evolving into The Paris Salon at the Palace of the Louvre on 1725. This 18th century model is ill-fitting for 21st century art, not least because the expectation of an art competition today is that a winning artwork would ostensibly need to possess qualities such as rising above commonplace approaches and breaking molds (as opposed of efficiently fulfilling, say, existing academic parameters). So, it seems incongruous to expect mold-breaking artworks to emerge from a process that has deeply rigid models of selection dating to the Rococo era. It is a format that arguably can still serve certain forms of art, but it is very challenging for others, including process-based conceptual practices as well as works that rely on the in-person experience. In the case of works like these it hinges then on the jurors to make an accurate assessment, and this might only be possible if the jurors have had previous knowledge of the participating artist’s work (which tends then to be the reason why artists who win some of these competitions often to be the ones that the jurors know and support best, which reinforces the perception that winning depends on “who you know”).
For reasons such as this one, it should surprise no one that juried art exhibitions today largely target non-professional artists and are of a predatory nature, often asking for ridiculous “participation fees” in exchange of narcissistic satisfaction and a false promise of visibility in an art world that does not give any credibility or attention to the unwitting victims of these for-profit enterprises. But even if we think that these formats belong only to the amateur realm, we should think again, as one can often find remnants of them in the selection processes of reputable foundations, artists residencies, and other programs.
It is essential to reconsider the selection mechanisms that we have historically inherited to discern, select, curate, and award contemporary art practice. First and foremost, it is important to understand that certain formats of selection might preclude the understanding and accurate judging of some works that do not conform easily to those formats (as was the case with the static-image viewing and judging of a largely contextual, socially engaged artwork). If context is everything, why do we continue following review formats that force the artist to present the work out of context and then pretend that the submitted work, decontextualized for the comfort of the jurors, can be accurately evaluated in any way?
My suggestion is simple: eliminate all juried exhibitions altogether as they currently exist. Accept them as a relic of the pre-modern era and come up with a new model. Embrace new ways of support the constant transformation of artists and artworks, the evolving contexts and climates under which art is made, and enthusiastically support these practices in ways that are in tune with them. We should perhaps conduct a juried competition for alternative models of juried competitions. I will gladly offer to serve for free as a juror if you fly me in wherever needed to work on this and help eviscerate unintentional magical realism from art jurorships once and for all. And I promise to keep my ideas “from New York” In check.
Just this time please don’t ask to sleep in my hotel room.
Excellent, timely article. And, applies to many areas in the art realm. I was on a panel to select faculty at a well known art school, when, much to my surprise the chair announced that the applicants we were considering had been 'pre-screened' by herself. Illegal! but, probably common practice. The process was skewed to deliver insiders. I say this is timely because in the past few years, there was rebellion in NYC - an attempt to break away from the insular world of Manhattan museums and galleries, and even from curating. We got Dumbo, Bushwick, mass, salon style pop-ups. Then came covid, and juried online shows proliferated. In part, okay, we were shut in - yet juried shows still proliferate, with those fees I've always wondered about. As you point out, time for imagination, and strength, time, again, to question certain practices and 'opportunities', and create meaningful ways to show work, and be an artist.
What you say about juried exhibitions here applies to grants as well. Most of us in the arts believe that the Artworld is a meritocracy in which the “best” artists rise to the top, purely on the basis of the the “quality” of their work. Alas, your picture of the conflicting agendas of presenters, curators, artists, etc. results in a kind of randomness as to who does and who does not succeed. I have sat on many panels, and have repeatedly felt that the group process skewed in ways that I personally didn’t like, feeling like I was fighting against the tide. I’ve also had bureaucrats undercut or over-rule even the most even-handed jury deliberations. Years ago, a friend had been asked to speak to people at the NEA, who explained to him the process and varying agendas involved in granting. He tuned to them and said, “From what you’ve said, this process is completely random. You should take the applications to the top of a big staircase, and drop them. Those that land closest to the top of the stairs get funded.” I’ve come to think that’s a pretty accurate description of all of it.