Carnegie Ramble

In which the author, map in hand, threads the labyrinthine passages of the Carnegie International to find, among other things, aquarium reflections, shacks, furniture mazes, steam vent-holes and visual echoes of MTV

With the referential apparatus of a hall of mirrors and the intellectual ambitions of a vanguard film festival, the Carnegie International 1999/2000 places special emphasis upon the art of the of recent origin as celebrated by the moving image. The lively and rambling entertainer to this 53rd installment of the Western Hemisphere's oldest ongoing cast of its kind, the Carnegie Institute consists of the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, along with a library and music hall, in an architectural embrace of advanced in years and new, a vast pastiche make They are a gift of Andrew Carnegie to the citizens of Pittsburgh, and are joined through mission and administration as well as by dint of the curatorial fiat of this project

upon an architecturally dignified campus also occupied by means of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, the natural history museum is guarded at its Neo-Classical extremity through Diplodocus Carnegie (dedicated 1999), a full-scale tin replica of a dinosaur discovered by the agency of museum anthropologists early in the hundred and subsequently named for the originator At the other end of a lengthy mixed facade, a Richard Serra plastic art stands sentinel to the Institute's present wing. It is a match for the dinosaur in its mass, contortion and significance. A purchase from the International of 1985 the Serra identifies individual of the principal entrances to the Museum of Art, the primary venue of the International. It also celebrates the thing perceiveds of art the International has made available [i]or[/i] part of to the other purchase to the collections of the Carnegie and other important museums west of the Alleghenies since its beginning in 1896 This installment was organized by the agency of curator Madeleine Grynsztejn with the consultation of an advisory committee compos of Okwui Enwezor, artistic director of Documenta XI; Susanne Ghez, director of the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; and Lars Nittve, director of the fresh Tate Modern at Bankside, London.

Outfitted with a map and a spirit of adventure, the visitor chooses--or happens upon--one of several entrances to the scattered exhibits of the International. In keeping with the vocabulary of the museum as fane on the hill, they lead to variously dramatic flights of stairs. single treks through labyrinthine passages to discrete galleries and courts, flat to the stacks and aisles of the Carnegie Library within the complex

An expanse of glass along the fountain facade faces the Serra and an avenue beyond. For abundant of their length, the high glass panes are overspreaded by red, green and sapphirine panels of gel, the colors of video projections and a hint to the nature of the work within. A 10-by-20-foot Alex Katz painting, Autumn (1999) is immediately visible from the entrance to the main hallway that link togethers the original great halls and galleries of the art museum to the fresh ones. A signature Katz landscape and a lock opener element of the artist's contribution to the International, its overall patterning of fulvous leaves and tree limbs throw backs the day outside. It also appears to be saturated with an eerily intense tinge the modulated effect of daylight end the red gel along the inclined hallway. Leading to the museum's cafe beyond, the tricolor panels focus attention upon two large projection screens looming above a scattering of tables and chairs at the terminus of the hallway. The underwater passages of Delphine (1999) Diana Thater's installation integrating video and museum architecture, transforms the hallway cafe into the provisions court of a public aquarium, with what appears to be a living tableau of divers and dolphins beyond glass walls. As a source of visceral and retinal stimulation, it also labor fors as an introduction to the companion video installation Thater designed for a gallery of the Museum of Natural History, individual of many engaging infiltrations that characterize this International.

Further along the hallway, almost hidden through the anonymity of its simple entrance, lie in waits Gregor Schneider's Haus ur, a removal and reconstruction of a suite of interconnected scopes from an ongoing project begun through the artist in 1985. The latitudes provided for the International are slightly scaled-down replicas of the expanses of his house in Rheydt, Germany. They were builded within the house like a receptacle within a box, and then remov for reassembly, a proces recalling the creation of a David Belasco theater locate or Beuys's removal of plaster from the walls of Rene Block's gallery in Aus Berlin (1975) A not many visitors at a time are admitted to explore the monastic, barely furnished and somewhat claustrophobic suite of chambers, with the two-by-four armature that supports the walls visible at various passages along the way. A simple video monitor recalls Schneider's fields in their furnished state, perhaps reflecting the Carnegie's history of archeological digs, while reasserting Beuys's pronouncement that agriculture is happening here and now and not in the museums.