interview with Eunsong Kim on TNI

Just read this interview (hoping to use it for class):

It reifies this argument that I think is naturalized for so many people, that art is an exceptional thing that you do at the benevolence of somebody else. Somebody granted this to you, and you have to go and be really respectful and in reverence of this institution. But these institutions are fundamental sites of expropriation. From when you're young to when you're old, they're always these exceptional spaces. Our definition of art making is constantly removed from this thing called life.

At the end of the book, I'm really trying to think about, what else can art and aesthetics and all of these words that are incredibly fetishized be? Is it just this professionalized site that's the place of the institution, or is it something that is part of our lives?
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I actually think it feels like the worst kind of individual liberal thinking, because I do think that, in fixating on the individual artist, what gets missed is the entire history of the structure of the institution. We bypass what the roots really are like, what the power structures in place are doing, because we're fixated on the "good" artists or the "bad" artists. And I think even if we have our fan favorites, which I do, that conversation makes it so that even if you get one board member off, how do they get appointed? What's that process? When I was in the Frick Collection, the one thing that was so clear to me was that someone needs to write a book on the history of board formations. How was this decided that all of these institutions just have boards? And I can say that for some of the earlier museum boards, it's not like there was an artist, but if there is, there's one or two. Board members are mostly other billionaires. They're mostly other corporate executives, so they're all run like corporations. With the board members of the Frick, like Rockefeller and Mellon, how did all of these people who profess that they don't know anything about art become the board of this museum? They're prioritizing financial immortality.

I think a bigger question is, what if some people have more agency than others? What's the conversation going to look like when everyone has equal access to this thing called agency? Why do some people have more agency in an institution to do certain things, to fire people for signing letters? I think rather than fixate on what does it mean for someone to say yes or no, the question should be flipped and say, why is it that some people can fire other people?

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