Vergne heading to the Empire State

by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet • June 23, 2008 • Just across the wire: Philippe Vergne, chief curator at the Walker Art Center, is heading east to take a position with the Dia Art Foundation.

Paul Schmelzer at our media partner Eyeteeth offers a succinct summary:

Vergne, who co-curated the ’06 Whitney Biennial, has been a driving force behind some of the more interesting Walker shows during his 10 years in Minneapolis, from the recent Huang Yong Ping retrospective to his three-artist Heart of Darkness show (which featured Thomas Hirschhorn’s haunting Cavemanman) to How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age, a curatorial group effort that benefited mightily from his vision. In 2005, he left the Walker to head up a new art center in Paris funded by Francois Pinault, but the project never materialized as planned, leaving Vergne free to return to Minneapolis. Last year, when his mentor, Walker director Kathy Halbreich, announced she’d be leaving (she landed at MoMA), Vergne was rumored to be on the short list to replace her; Olga Viso, former Hirshhorn director, was named to the post instead.

I agree with Paul that Cavemanman was haunting…but haunting in the sense of a benevolent spirit with an urgent message, or haunting in the sense of a poltergeist? The past ten years have seen the Walker move aggressively—physically, aesthetically, and digitally—to occupy an ever-more commanding position on the contemporary art scene. There’s been some understandable local grumbling about whether the museum’s administration has sold Jasper Johns’s soul to Wolfgang Puck, but even the grumblers have smiles twitching at the corners of their mouths, like a father complaining that he never sees his son any more because the boy’s always hanging out with that homecoming-queen girlfriend of his. It’s certainly been gratifying to see that the museum hasn’t forgotten its roots—for every blockbuster show reviewed in the New Yorker, there’s been a locally-focused initiative like the tremendously useful mnartists.org (another of our media partners). Here’s hoping Vergne’s successor is able to keep his or her eyes on the stars and feet on the ground.

Arts Orbit is a multisource blog about the local arts scene, featuring both original contributions by Daily Planet writers and entries reprinted from partner blogs and online publications.