Gallery R's In the Mix: A Curatorial Critique

I think that Gallery R has a nice, atmospheric space that would seem to be appropriate for almost any show. Yet, there were several things I think they could have improved upon to strengthen their In the Mix exhibition. For starters, they accepted some bad art. The piece that screamed this for me was a lousy painting from a Cornell artist that sat in the corner beside a piece titled 'Eyesore', which I also thought was a pretty poor selection (though maybe I'm different by not believing in intentionally making art to hurt the viewers eyes). Returning to the Cornell piece, my explanation for taking this work, as well as a few others, was accepting pieces purely to have the opportunity to advertise a wider selection of represented colleges. A very lame reason from the jurors point of view. But I'm hard pressed to understand any alternate reasoning, especially since just about everywhere, they boasted the names of all the represented universities including beneath the title on the title wall of the show (which I think was actually a really nice touch, it just should've included a couple fewer names).

Following a similar trend, most of the photography submissions they accepted were truly unspectacular and lacking noteworthiness. Again, my only understanding for accepting those pieces was to offer as diverse an exhibition as possible, despite the overall quality of the show suffering. Of the 34 pieces in the exhibition, only about a dozen were in the first room, with the rest spilling over into the second, significantly overcrowding it and taking away from individual pieces that deserved more recognition. When podiums sit just six inches offset in-front of a wall piece, you've made some mistakes, perhaps in the number of works you've accepted, perhaps in the installation of the pieces, maybe quite a bit of both. What makes this worse was not all of the accepted work was displayed. Unless it was sold, packaged up, and drove off within the first half hour of the opening, where did it go? It is inexplicable to not feature every work you accept.

All and all, I think there were some truly beautiful pieces that demonstrated some of the talent of some of the regions student artists. But in this case, the opportunity for publicity ended up being a detriment to the show and a number of the artists who deserved a more substantial, uncluttered platform to display.

P.S. My personal lesson from this show is to not be surprised when there is a preference to accept the majority of the work from the parent university (23-26 of the 34 pieces were from RIT students).

-Ciarán