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Milton Fletcher: Brett, what do you do at P.S.1?
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Process & Fabrication – Milton Fletcher
Milton Fletcher: Brett, what do you do at P.S.1?
Brett Littman: As Deputy Director of P.S.1, I am responsible for overseeing the museum’s day-to-day operations which include: the finance department, education and public programs, development, human resources, visitor services, acting as executive producer of “Warm Up” (our summer concert series), consulting on www.wps1.org activities and liaising with MoMA on shared institutional projects.
MF: How did your personal background and education prepare you for what you do now?
BL: Since I was a philosophy major at the University of California, San Diego, and spent a lot of time in the creative writing department as well, I had plenty of practice formalizing complex ideas into understandable language. I was also very active as a performer, poet, photographer and filmmaker in those days, so I was able to experience the creative impulse firsthand.
My first forays into arts management were primarily on the fundraising side. I was a development associate and then development director and found that I was actually pretty successful at writing grants and selling ideas to funders. I was also very good at project managing and special event production, which I attribute to publishing a magazine in college and making films which required meeting production deadlines, trouble shooting and managing budgets.
MF: Before joining P.S.1, you worked for UrbanGlass in Brooklyn and Dieu Donné Papermill in SoHo and have written about the mediums of glass and paper as art forms extensively. What intrigues you?
BL: I love process and fabrication. For me, the best part of working at UrbanGlass and Dieu Donné was facilitating the interaction between artists and fabricators and watching how artists dealt with the challenge of working with new materials. In my writing, I have always been interested in the relationships between materials and ideas and also the reasons why artists choose to work with glass, ceramics and paper. For me, making art is about making decisions. It is my hope that the more insight I have and can give to the reader about choices that artists make, the more the work becomes transparent and understandable.
MF: In what publications can your writings be found?
BL: GLASS, American Ceramics, Object, Art on Paper, Blackbook, artkrush.com, Craft Arts and I have also written some artist catalog essays and, even more recently, some essays on contemporary Scandinavian design.
MF: What is the basic process of selecting, mounting, exhibiting and promoting exhibitions and artists at P.S.1?
BL: We have an active curatorial department. Alanna Heiss is the Director of P.S.1 and leads the curatorial and artistic vision of the museum. We have a Director of Curatorial Affairs, three Curatorial Assistants and an active group of part time Curatorial Advisors. The curatorial department meets regularly to go over proposals and makes decisions about which shows P.S.1 will produce. I would say, about 90% of the time, P.S.1 generates its own content. From time to time, we do take traveling shows if they fit well within the context of the building. P.S.1 produces about 40 to 45 exhibitions each year, so the curatorial department is fast-paced and often curators have about three to four months to research and create checklists.
After the exhibition gets a green light, Tony Guerrero, our Director of Installation and Exhibition Design, usually meets with the curator and the artist to discuss the installation and show details. P.S.1 tries to promote the reception of the work from the vantage point of the artist’s eye. We try and create an unmediated experience with the art in the building and do not provide much didactic or educational wall text or other materials to contextualize the work. I think our goal is to make culture in the present rather than to interpret it.
To promote exhibitions, we work with Time Out New York, who is our print media sponsor and MoMA’s press and marketing department. We have a director of press and marketing and also a press associate who works full-time on pitching and placing stories. Additionally, we have a growing list of people receiving P.S.1’s E-news, which contains our most up-to-date information.
MF: Given your background both as an artist and as an arts administrator, what are the differences and similarities between what an individual artist and an art institution strive for in the execution and presentation of contemporary art?
BL: Contemporary art institutions strive for artistic excellence, consistent relevance of exhibitions to contemporary issues and, also, I think they look for innovative installation and display opportunities.
Artists are primarily interested in finding flexible space, curators with open minds and a proclivity for risk-taking.
MF: Please tell me about P.S.1’s internet radio station, wps1.org.
BL: It was always a dream of Alanna Heiss’ to have a radio station that could highlight the relationships between music, sound and contemporary art. Since the launch on April 19, 2004, wps1.org has had more than 1,000,000 worldwide listeners. We have more than 5,000 hours of programs in the archive, and work with numerous program hosts to develop radio shows. The mix is about 60% DJ music, experimental music and sound art, and about 40% art, book, film and culture talk.
We have been working to increase our outreach through many means. I think our focus will be to stabilize the long-term, financial viability of the project by partnering with other organizations in Lower Manhattan in an effort to create an umbrella under which it can be the audio site for a myriad of art entities.
MF: What is the nature of P.S.1’s affiliation with MoMA?
BL: The affiliation between P.S.1 and MoMA started in 2000. On the surface, it is a simple agreement which outlines the following: P.S.1 retains it status as a publicly funded institution that is housed in a city-owned building and reports to the New York Department of Cultural Affairs; MoMA provides financial, fundraising, press and marketing support for P.S.1. As of January 2007, MoMA will control the nomination of P.S.1 Board Members, Alanna Heiss is a Deputy Director of MoMA, and P.S.1 can request works from MoMA’s contemporary collection. P.S.1 and MoMA’s curatorial departments can also collaborate on exhibitions.
MF: What are your goals for P.S.1 for the future?
BL: To increase our audience and to provide more opportunities for creative people in New York to have access to P.S.1 as a place to learn about and exchange ideas on contemporary culture.
MF: What do you consider to be the current contemporary trends in fine art? Where do you think it is going?
BL: There seems to be more drawing, more performance-based work and more intersections between craft and fine art. The pace of artistic production has also accelerated in the past five years as artists try and keep up with the increasing exhibition potential, gallery shows and art fairs.
Where is it all going—well, for the moment it seems like the contemporary field and the market will continue to expand. More contemporary galleries, museums and art fairs keep popping up all over the world. Of course, when the art market bubble bursts, it will be interesting to see how much of this survives.
