No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man
No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man was organized by Nora Atkinson (in collaboration with the Burning Man Project) for the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Visit here for extensive information on the show and artists.
NOTE: The phone rang. Cameron Kitchen, director of the Cincinnati Art Museum called to ask if I had seen the show in DC. He said, "the museum has no budget for this; no galleries available; all his curators were otherwise engaged but they wanted to host the show anyway, and asked if I was interested in leading their effort!" I told him thats one of the craziest intros I've ever heard...and I'm all in. I signed a year contract and worked (Guest Curator of Special Projects) with the museum staff to host what became the largest attended exhibition in the museum's a 135+ years history. You can access a 'Burning Questions' interview I did here.
Happening every August in Nevada’s inhospitable Black Rock Desert, a thriving metropolis rises from the playa dust for a single week. During that time, many societal norms are put on hold as a unique civic structure emerges based on ten guiding principles that includes radical self-expression, collaboration, and a glorious gift economy. Multi-story art structures and massive, interactive art installations are erected and explored; some are burned to the ground and at the end of the week, the city vanishes without a trace.
No Spectators: the Art of Burning Man offers some of the stunning, sometimes participatory works that has emerged from this annual gathering by some of the artists and collectives who have become synonymous with the event. The exhibition also celebrates its importance to the American story as one of the most influential cultural events of our time.
Burning Man has always been difficult to characterize. Variously called an arts festival, a bacchanal, and a utopian experiment, it exists outside the boundaries of everyday life, where immediacy and serendipity reign. Attendees call it transformative. Its organizers describe it as “a city in the desert, a culture of possibility, a network of doers and dreamers.” Now, just over thirty years since it originated as a small bonfire on San Francisco’s Baker Beach, it draws over 70,000 participants annually, rivaling the largest art fairs worldwide, and has evolved beyond its temporal limits into the largest year-round “intentional community” in the world. (For a week, it becomes the third largest city in Nevada).
Though artistic expression has always been a part of the Burning Man experience, the past decade has seen the artwork grow in scale and complexity and draw global attention for its imagination and ingenuity. As significant, the work of Burning Man references past artistic movements: from dada and land art to the ‘prankster’ culture arising from San Francisco. Today, Burning Man is a creative laboratory where ideas about art and society are inspired and tested, free from the confines of the market.
Duncan Rawlinson, Sanctuary (deviant art vehicle), photograaph
On the playa, there are over 400 works of art/installations (some multiple stories tall, others small and intimate) spread throughout 7 sq miles of inhospitable desert. You cannot experience them all nor is there any map to find them. The Cincinnati Art Museum is 6.5 times larger than the Renwick gallery (where the show was designed for) and there were no dedicated spaces available for the exhibition. Like the wandering playa experience, we placed the works throughout the entire museum, creating relationships with the various collections, letting viewers chart their own journey of discovery.
Duane Flatmoe, Tin Pan
Dragon (minus flames)
Ten Principles
Additions to the original show included:
-a national call for Burning Man photographs, any size, unframed. We received more than 100, from small snap shots to a 6-ft mural. Following one of the Burning Man principles, we gifted all of the photos to visitors at the close of the show.
-Samantha Krukowski, then at UC, worked with her architecture and design students to build a 'temple' on the grounds, made from vines harvested on the property.
-Sean Pace was in residence throughout the city for a week with his Art Crawler, a 1970's era gull wing, former Army fuel truck turned rolling sculpture studio, where anyone could created works with his guidance.
Sean Pace, Art Crawler
