Mary Jane Jacob in relation to Miwon Kwan

“These artists eschew the constricting limitations not only of artistic conventions but of the traditional institutional spaces of their production, such as studios, museums and galleries.” -- page 106-107

Mary Jane Jacob focussed the beginning part of her lecture on “making space.” This space she refers to deals with the location and setting of the art work. It contributes to the viewer’s overall art experience, which Jacob finds particularly thought-provoking. She asserted that museums are considered conventional spaces, or more specifically, gatekeepers. Since an art piece or installation resides in such an institutional space, a museum’s own identity is thus reflected in the art it features. According to Jacob, museums reflect cultural status, and a museum’s own interests might be placed before those of the art piece. This factor causes one to ask, “who is the show actually for?” One of Jacob’s primary goals is to eliminate the middle man-- in this case-- the museum. By doing so, there is no buffer zone between art and the people; there is pure, natural interaction between the two entities. Both the viewer and the artist must start with art at the raw, forcing both parties to find a safe space for the art. The people and the art must coexist and make conversational with one another for such dialogic art to be successful.