July 2006 Page 3

> Long-time Frisco colleague, Jeremy Stone, alerted VAA to the following explanation given by a Curator who resigned from University Art Museum (Berkeley) on grounds which he will explain for himself (with which I strongly disagree, BTW.) The story is a useful object lesson, for curators and for artists. This is an excerpt. For the entire thing see www.stretcher.org

CHRIS GILBERT RESIGNS
By Chris Gilbert

"Editor's note - Curator Chris Gilbert joined the Berkeley Art Museum as Matrix Curator in September 2005, following a two-year stint as curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art. He resigned his Matrix position late last month. Stretcher has received Gilbert's resignation statement which is here posted in its entirety as a contribution to the ongoing dialog about the cultural impact of contemporary art. Readers wish to respond to the statement may use the "Add a comment" button at the end of the page.

I made the decision to resign as Matrix Curator on April 28, but my struggles with the BAM/PFA over the content and approach of the projects in the exhibition cycle "Now-Time Venezuela: Media Along the Path of the Bolivarian Process" go back quite a few months. In particular the museum administrators—meaning the deputy directors and senior curator collaborating, of course, with the public relations and audience development staff—have for some time been insisting that I take the idea of solidarity, revolutionary solidarity, out of the cycle. For some months, they have said they wanted "neutrality" and "balance" whereas I have always said that instead my approach is about commitment, support, and alignment—in brief, taking sides with and promoting revolution.

I have always successfully resisted the museum's attempts to interfere with the projects (and you will see that the ideas of alignment, support, and revolutionary solidarity are written all over the "Now-Time" projects part 1 and part 2—they are present in all the texts I have generated and as a consequence in almost all of the reviews). In the museum's most recent attempt to alter things, the one that precipitated my resignation, they proposed to remove the offending concept from the Now-Time Part 2 introductory text panel (a panel which had already gone to the printer). Their plan was to replace the phrase "in solidarity" with revolutionary Venezuela with a phrase like "concerning" revolutionary Venezuela—or another phrase describing a relation that would not be explicitly one of solidarity.

I threatened to resign and terminate the exhibition, since, first of all, revolutionary solidarity is what I believe in—the essential concept in the "Now-Time" project cycle—but secondly it is obviously unfair to invite participants such as Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler or groups such as Catia TVe to a project that has one character (revolutionary solidarity) and then change the rules of the game on them a few weeks before the show opens (so that they become mere objects of examination or investigation). At first, my threat to resign and terminate the show availed nothing. Then on April 28, I wrote a letter stating that I was in fact resigning and my last day of work would be two weeks from that day, which was May 12, two days before the "Now-Time Part 2: Revolutionary Television in Catia" opening. I assured them that the show could not go forward without me. In response to this decisive action—and surely out of fear that the show which had already been published in the members magazine would not happen—the institution restored my text panel to the way I had written it. Having won that battle, though at the price of losing my position, I decided to go forward with the show, my last one..."