An installation view of "Time and Place" at the new Kunsthalle Detroit
By Julia Halperin
Published: June 30, 2011
It sounds like a "20/20" special or an inspirational
Hilary Swankmovie: Jaded international art consultant sees television news report on a poverty-stricken Midwest city and spontaneously drives there to see the physical devastation for herself; bowled over by what she finds, she packs up her New York apartment and ships out in a matter of months, leaving behind everything she knows in order to build a museum in one of the most dangerous parts of a lawless city.
This is the real-life story of Tate Osten, a Russian-born, New York-based art consultant, who left her job in 2009 to foundKunsthalle Detroit, a museum of multimedia and light-based artsthat completed its phased opening to the public last week. Osten purchased the abandoned bank branch that would house her museum with $60,000 of her own money, selling personal jewelry to pay her expenses. The building was refurbished entirely by volunteers, often out-of-work locals who responded to Osten's ads on Craigslist. Sometimes, after a long day of construction, she would drive them all home herself. "They didn't have cars," she said by way of explanation.
But Osten seems uninterested in romanticizing the Hollywood arc that has made her story immediately compelling to mainstream news outlets like the AP and NPR. In a conversation withARTINFO, it's clear that she wants her museum to win bona-fide art-world cred based on the quality of its program rather than its appealing backstory. (It's like pulling teeth to get her to admit that she is the one-woman "private funding" that established the museum.)
Marketed as the first museum of light-based arts in the country, Kunsthalle Detroit's first exhibition, "Time and Place," features work by an impressive roster of artists, including Jesper Just, William Kentridge, Hans Op de Beeck, and Bill Viola, all of whom agreed to participate for free. "The purpose was to gather together a really strong roster of artists who have shown all over the world," Osten said. "And we put them in a group show, which is very unusual."
Osten is one of a growing community of artists and art professionals drawn to Detroit for its cheap real estate, striking urban decay, and atmosphere of simmering creative energy far removed from market pressures. The trend began as early as the 1980s, when wealthy residents began fleeing the city for the suburbs in the notorious "white flight" epidemic. The city's art scene began to morph into a less monied, more community-driven environment, best epitomized by artist Tyree Guyton's Heidelberg Project, an outdoor art installation that he launched in 1986 to attract artists and revive his neighborhood.
More recently, the city has drawn art professionals from more conventional cultural centers in the United States and Europe itching to make their mark on an emerging scene. Beginning in 2009, artistsMitch Cope and Gina Reichert sold refurbished abandoned homes to artists for as little as $100 as part of their wildly successful "Power House Project." That buyers included a group of Dutch curators is a testament to the city's appeal to European art professionals, who see it as a kind of proto-Berlin — a struggling, industrial city with the potential to become a creative hotbed.
"Berlin is what current Detroit reminds me of," agreed Osten, who lived in the German city for several years before coming to New York. Like Berlin two decades ago, she said, Detroit is home to great creative talents but has struggled to overcome poverty and disunity to achieve its potential as a legitimate arts hub. "Every little art community or every artist here is self contained. And they think, 'We have our art community.' But we see it from the outside as a disconnected art community," she explained. "Our mission here is to connect all the art areas in Detroit."
Osten is currently in talks with the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit to plan shared events and shuttles between the two institutions. In the long run, she is working to initiate an exchange program with Kunsthalles abroad, offering to host temporary displays of work by international artists in exchange for sending work by local Detroit artists overseas. She also hopes to create a biennale devoted to light arts, similar to Frankfurt's "Luminale."
How does such a Euro vision for a museum adapt to a crime-riddled neighborhood of Detroit? According to Osten, the inaugural exhibition of 12 films is inextricably linked to the spirit of the city. Jespur Just's "Sirens of Chrome" and Tim White-Sobieski's "The Sound and the Fury" were both filmed locally. The centerpiece of the exhibition is Bill Viola's 54-minute film "The Passing" which captures a figure alternatively emerging and sinking into the water, perhaps a metaphor for the stalled nature of the city itself. Each film speaks in some way to the city's complex relationship with the passage of time, said Osten. "Everyone lives a little in the past here... Letting it go is a big problem."
Although immediate neighbors have not visited the exhibition — they may be deterred by the $5 suggested donation, according to Osten — the show has been well received by the larger community. The neighborhood is undoubtedly dangerous: thieves raided the site last year and Osten has been told not to paint over graffiti or risk incurring the wrath of local gangs. Despite this history, the opening drew over 200, with people coming from as far as Ann Arbor. Visitors "tied up their bikes at the lamppost, not afraid that the bikes might be stolen," she said. "They come here without fear, and that's very encouraging, because that's what most artists feel as well: No fear."
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