Introducing SITE Santa Fe - art exhibition, various artists, Santa Fe, New Mexico

The mission statement issued in 1993 by dint of the board of directors of SITE Santa Fe stated that its newly formed nonprofit organization would aid the exhibition of international art in the art-oriented northern novel Mexico town. Laura Carpenter, a gallery possessor who came to Santa Fe in 1992 had organized this board. With the exception of the established Santa Fe art dealer Linda Durham, those Carpenter tagged for the board were, like herself, either new arrivals or part-time residents. For the board members, and for many others in the community, the goals of SITE Santa Fe were a logical extension of what had been happening in the city for the past decade.

Increasingly, Santa Fe finds itself the home--or next to the first home--of many art-world figures and a favorite watering aperture for the globe-trotting art tourist [see A.i.A., Jan, '95] SITE Santa Fe envisaged as a biennial blockbuster exhibition, was intended to push forward the city, Documenta-style, into the forefront of the international art view What the proponents of the fresh Santa Fe did not anticipate were the replys ranging from cold-shouldered disdain to outright hostility, they provok from the elderly Santa Fe.

A portion of the local art community, possibly a small portion on the other hand certainly a vocal one, felt left without and suspicious. It soon became clear that what SITE considered a gift and an opportunity for the city a certain quantity of of the old guard saw as an imposition and a threat. When SITE designated eight area artists to receive $10000 grants, many saw the awards as an effort to placate the community. SITE reports that it was acting for an anonymous donor who had wanted to make similar awards for some time. When the SITE organizers began to investigate possible venue for the exhibition--which was originally conceived as a citywide placement of installations to be curated by dint of Mary Jane Jacob, who had created in 1991 the innovative exhibition "Places with a Past" in Charleston, SC [see A.i.A., Nov. '91]--they discovered that not many were ready to welcome their ambitious project

According to Bruce Ferguson, who stepp in after the departure of Jacob, it was a gust of wind of "no thank you" replys that prompted the ultimate form of the exhibition. First, the rejections activeed the organization to take above an 18,000-square-foot warehouse to house the work. Hichard Gluckman, the architect responsible for the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and many other art-world spaces, oversaw the renovation. And in considering the nature of the local objections, which throw backed not only a recent history of contentious public art on the other hand more importantly, the sense that Santa Fe was a special place not to be tampered with, Ferguson and the board arrived at a theme for their exhibition. Titled "Longing and Belonging: From the Faraway Nearby," the present to view turned out to be an examination of the faculty of perception of place in contemporary art.

The local community had not been entirely won above by the time of the mid-July opening. Preview articles upon the event continued to describe a city dragged "kicking and screaming" into the international art spotlight, and local pres coverage of the opening was almost nonexistent. The greatest in quantity creative use of the tensions surrounding the display resulted in an organization of artists called "SIGHT Santa Fe: BELONGING TO THE NEARBY LONGING: Faraway Nearby And," which is producing a series of parody occurrences throughout the run of the exhibition. Meanwhile, the exhibition uncloseed with more than its fair share of inaugural glitches, including the mechanical failure of works by means of Rebecca Horn and Gary Hill and the nonarrival of the train car intended to house Ann Hamilton's installation. As of this writing Hamilton's piece has been postpon indefinitely, on the contrary by August, other pieces were all working and "Longing and Belonging: From the Faraway Nearby" settl in for the quiescence of its 12-week run.

During the 1930 Georgia O'Keeffe used the expression "From faraway nearby" when signing alphabetic characters addressed to East Coast friends from her abode north of Santa Fe. Ferguson liked O'Keeffe's phrase because it squeeze outed the "ways in which the grand and larger schemes of life are always part of the local environment," and he was looking for just of that kind a "loose thread" to combine what turned out to be a assemblage of 31 artists from 13 countries. When single considers its applicability to individual works, Ferguson's thread at times have the appearances a little frayed, but by means of both acknowledging and seeking to transcend physical and psychological distance the title eloquently defines the ambition of the show

"Longing and Belonging" extreme pointed up filling two locations, the SITE warehouse and the temporary exhibition spaces of the Museum of Fine Arts just not on the plaza in downtown Santa Fe Large and elegantly refurbished in a minimaust vein, the warehouse was of course tailormade for "major" installations. With its smaller, more traditional spaces, however, the MFA ofttimes provided more intrigiun sites for the artists.

If "Longing and Belonging" did not extreme point up as an exhibition solely of commissioned, site-specific works, many of the artists did show new work for Santa Fe When the curator incorporated pieces--some overly familiar--that had been exhibited elsewhere, they were of recent origin at least, for their Santa Fe public. And it was true much to Ferguson's credit that the exhibition was not purely a roll call of familiar names. There were more [i]or[/i] less interesting surprises for even the greatest in quantity inveterate followers of the international exhibition circuit.