Where is Chris Gilbert?

Sometimes I feel like I live in an information vaccuum--very ironic considering how much I am on the internet all the time! But I just stumbled across a post about the resignation of the Berkeley Art Museum's curator Chris Gilbert (way back in May--yeesh!) over the institutional flap he received regarding an overtly political exhibition he instigated on Venezualan contemporary art practices, "Now-Time Venezuela: Media Along the Path of the Bolivarian Process". After reading his publicly-posted resignation letter on stretcher.org, a Bay Area online art publication, I am feeling completely saddened that he has left and can only imagine the amazing things he could have done as a local curator. He came from the Baltimore Museum of Art and after less than a year at the Berkeley Museum, is now gone.


view of the "Now-Time" show at the Berkeley Art Museum

I am quoting the end of his public resignation letter below...My mouth dropped open when I saw that this was coming from a major contemporary art museum curator. The museum had attempted to neutralize some of the language of his wall text. As someone who has worked as a graphics and exibitions designer at a science museum for over eight years, I know full well the desire of the institution to create neutral and "pleasingly distanced" language so as not to offend any viewers, or even hint at controversial subject matter. Issues of global warming or stem-cell research would get dealt with as a matter of its scientific workings as opposed to any relation to political/economic/social policy. And since museums are traditionally funded via tons of corporate money, the higher-ups are particularly wary of any "conflicts of interest" which may arise due to exhibition content ruffling the funder's feathers.

Chris Gilbert:

"...With conditions as they are, a different strategy is required: there should be disobedience at all levels; disruptions and explosions of the kind that I, together with a small group of allies inside the museum, have created are also useful on a symbolic level. However, the primary struggle and the only struggle that will result in a significant change would be one that works directly to transform the economic and political base. This would be a struggle aiming to bring down the US government and its imperialist system through highly organized efforts.

"We live in the midst of a fascist imperialism—there is no other way to describe the system that the US has created and that exercises such control through terror over populations both inside and outside. History has shown that to make "deals" or "compromises" with fascism avails nothing. Instead a radical and daily intransigence is required. Fascism operates to destroy life. It installs and operates on the logic of the camp on all levels, including culture. In the face of that logic, which holds life as nothing, compromises and deals at best buy time for the aggressor and symbolic capital for the aggressor. One should have no illusions: until capitalism and imperialism are brought down, cultural institutions will go on being, in their primary role, lapdogs of a system that spreads misery and death to people everywhere on the planet. The fight to abolish that system completely and build one based on socialism must remain our exclusive and constant focus."

Which begs the question for me now: WHERE IS CHRIS GILBERT? I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT WHAT THIS MAN IS UP TO AS A CURATOR!!!! Do you know how rare it is for someone to make this sort of statement from within an institution? Call it the irony of biting the hand that feeds you (anti-bourgoise, anti-captalism as a MUSEUM director?), but how does one have such a radical outlook and try to infiltrate from the inside like this? I'm still contemplating the possibilities and conundrums, but also feel Mr. Gilbert is trying to accomplish something through contemporary art institution channels that few even dare to address or believe is truly possible.

Read his full letter of resignation here...
Related article published by UC Berkeleyhere.
And an interesting blurb which echoes my own questions at Mute Beta.

and...GO CHRIS!