Viral Tunnel Vision and Institutional Withdrawal
06/07/20
By Rhoda Rosen and Amanda Leigh Davis
In order for the spread of a virus to seem like it is nobody’s fault, it has to appear natural. Isn’t it just bad luck that a bat infected a civet which, in turn, infected a human in November 2002, causing what is now commonly known as SARS (properly SARS-CoV)? Who can be blamed for the fact that a dromedary camel infected a human in September 2012 (at least first reported in September 2012) causing what is popularly known as MERS (more accurately MERS-CoV)? And isn’t it just a whole lot of bad luck that whichever animal infected whichever person late in 2019, caused a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 to spread throughout the world, indiscriminately killing, by May 10, 2020, a reported 280,697 people in a brief few months? It’s sad but natural: the animal didn’t bite or spit and wasn’t ingested maliciously, and therefore no one can be blamed for a pandemic anymore than anyone can be blamed for an earthquake or a hurricane or the horrific outcomes for individual people that these disasters bring in their wake.
It is precisely this natural self-evidence of viral tunnel vision which, in the name of good citizenship, conceals the very institutional withdrawal that is at work in the case of the two sculpted lions standing guard at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). The stony lions have long been iconic of this institution, and the museum has long made a practice of decorating them in ways that advertise special Chicago events--from Christmas holly, to Chicago Cubs outfits and a Blackhawk helmet with ominous parallels to riot gear. The lion decor during the COVID-19 crisis, at the request of the mayor (but on AIC’s buck to design and install), was to manufacture giant cloth masks decorated with the city government flag. An enormous visual for how art institutions market, in seemingly playful, light-hearted ways, city and consumer identity.
Ironically, this marketing advertisement for an institution, city and pandemic, really became a work of art, when some faceless and as-yet unidentified individuals intervened at around 11 pm on Thursday, April 30, by pulling up in a car and stealing one of the gargantuan masks. Lions temporarily asymmetrical--one unmasked by individuals, the other protected by state order--for a short time they spoke their truth through conceptual aesthetics. Of course, because institutions are well endowed, AIC replaced the mask by mid-afternoon the next day to return the aesthetic back to its proper commodity status. Make no mistake though, we cultural workers recognized the real masking by the institution of that faceless individual who exposed the unequal support offered by institutions to individuals.
The theft throws into relief the gigantic proportions of the empty "protection" that is offered - an institution provides massive amounts of cloth to protect a single inanimate object, while the most vulnerable individuals of our city, including artists with precarious livelihoods, scramble to find appropriate cloth coverings and safe shelter. Interchangeable with holly, or baseball caps, masks seem to demonstrate our most well endowed cultural institutions stepping forward with a public service announcement; but in point of fact, with prolonged closings, they withdraw. The theft highlights the double workings of an institution that actively protects and shelters its commodities while offering the human community only withdrawal, isolation, and a PSA that says: cover your own selves.
While we use AIC as our example here, of course we extend our call to all our large cultural institutions: Use this time of closure to make an aesthetic shift, a shift based on the virus’s stickiness, its indiscriminate attachment to host bodies regardless of their demographic, and its asymmetrical impact on vulnerable chromosomes and populations. And, an aesthetic shift away from projected earnings to thinking on a human scale.
Our cultural institutions might have reached out to us, Chicago’s cultural workers, to help set themselves up as distributors of meals, or much needed testing stations, or turned those large empty halls into housing for the increasing numbers of people without homes or, if AIC was going to mask the lion, we could have at least helped them pay for and distribute masks to people - this would have been both useful and in alignment with the socially engaged art practices Chicago’s artists do best, but which they can’t do without institutional support - not just to get the projects off the ground but to pay the makers fairly. Moving forward, will our largest cultural institutions continue to chase and suck funds that limit what is produced and seen in Chicago; will they continue not to support, develop and cultivate individual Chicago artists but maintain the monstrous expenditures that keep the objects safe and buildings solvent; and will they continue to fail and ignore audiences who can’t pay the exorbitant ticket prices or, for whom, the spaces are simply not welcoming and are often hostile? Instead of yet another virtual tour, might they spend some time thinking about ways to center more individual cultural workers and diverse audiences? Unless they do, theirs will not be a natural attrition but a hemorrhaging caused by their cultural decision-making. The point of an institution, by way of reminder, is to amplify social engagement to volumes otherwise impossible for individuals to reach on their own. Yet in this crisis cultural institutions have ceded the action and work to individuals and are, therefore, culpable for driving our contemporary crisis. It behooves us all to be on the lookout for the failures embedded in their messages of solidarity and to hold our cultural institutions accountable.
Rhoda Rosen and Amanda Leigh Davis are participating artists at Red Line Service.
Led by people with a lived experience of homelessness, Red Line Service wields art world resources to build community, generating the sense of belonging and mutual care essential to securing and retaining housing. We collaborate with artists and cultural institutions to expand access to the art world avowing that art can break the bounds of ingrained social roles and structures and forge new realities in which all can flourish.
Contact Red Line Service via email: admin@redlineservice.org
Rhoda Rosen and Amanda Leigh Davis worked on this piece with Marc Fisher, and first published it in Quaranzine, his project under Public Collectors. Marc is also the Quarantine Times special editor. Occasionally, Marc selects a Chicagoan to share a commissioned creative response to the pandemic.