Taylor gives background to various artists who paved the way for performance art such as Carolee Scheemann.
Andrea Fraser’s institutional critique of art museums disrupts the audience’s notion of authenticity and authority.
Fred Wilson counteracts Maryland’s colonist history and focuses on racial victimization, anonymity, and the influence of slavery.
Response:
Fraser and Wilson use the basis of their performance art by having the museum act as the actor, in which they commentate or position items in a particular fashion. In this way, they themselves are not necessarily performing but the museum is, on which they act as the intermediate between the relationship of the viewer and the museum. The question of artistry is questionable for some who believe that their work is not art, for it doesn’t involve any craft and only manipulation of objects or words to create the work. However, in this manipulation, the viewer (sometimes) becomes aware of the authority placed onto them as the viewer and the authority automatically given to the museum and its employees.
Wilson’s performance is clear, for he arranges items found in the archive and pairs them with another or positions them in a certain way, as to provoke a historical narrative that often is in contrast with the typical grandiose or “extension of European history” narrative of museums. Wilson’s rendition encourages the viewer to contemplate the forgotten, transgressive times of American history, by highlighting black servant faces within portraits of a large white family, and positioning finely crafted wooden chairs that mark American artistry around a somber, formidable whipping post.
Wilson turns Native American Tobacco store figures away from the viewer.
Fraser calls into question the authority placed on the patron and the authority granted to the museums employees, for the patron expects the usual tour of what works to pay attention to, which are famous etc. However, she offers little consolation and rambles about facts about the history of the museum itself, as she did in Hartford, or about herself, as a Daughter of the American Revolution, boosting not only her claim of artistic authority but of genealogical heritage to the town itself. She becomes unnecessary and almost a nuisance, distracting the patrons away from the art encouraging them to question her presence and her academic ability.
Fraser talks to a group of museum patrons.