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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Sep. - 4 Oct. 2000 Issue No. 501 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Sep. - 4 Oct. 2000 Issue No. 501
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Elections Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters In search of controversy
By Nigel Ryan
Slowly but surely the past five years have seen a steady consolidation of exhibition spaces across the city, most noticeably in the public sector where the completion of several ambitious Ministry of Culture projects has resulted in a considerable expansion of available space.
First came Horizon One, attached to the Mr and Mrs Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum, which opened with a marvelously sepulchral showing of Egypt's holdings of Fayoum Portraits, before going on to host the French curated Modernism, from Delacroix to Matisse, a small but entertaining romp along the byways of European modernism and a landmark show by any standards.
Next came the much trumpeted opening of the Palace of Art, the rather pompous name given to the conversion of one of the old exhibition halls in the Opera House complex. The publicity surrounding the opening tended towards the boastful -- it was very much a case of dazzle with zeros, the scheme had cost so many millions, was totally state of the art, etc etc.
The conversion of the old exhibition hall, in the end, proved rather more tricksy than inspirational. One knew what it was driving at: someone was reasonably au fait with the mass of theorising that surrounds contemporary museum design. Circulatory patterns, delineated pathways, described routes were all in place: the only problem being that they do not really fit in the existing structure. But rather than devise a scheme that would fit the existing building, which would have been a creative challenge, the architect's response was to fussily carve up the limited space, the impetus being to fill it with as many theoretical prerequisites as possible rather than construct an exhibition scheme suited to the volume of space available.
If the interior was to prove a disappointment, so did the opening show. Like the gallery itself, the idea, on paper, sounded convincing. The Palace of Art was to open with The Orientalists, paintings, engravings and drawings culled from the Gezira, Diplomat's Club and Mahmoud Khalil collections. It was accompanied by a coffee table book size catalogue, lavishly illustrated in full colour, with a number of incomprehensible essays and every single artists' name spelled back to front. The show itself contained some striking oddities, placing, alongside the impressive and familiar setpieces -- Chasserieu's Turkish Bath, Gustave Moreau's Salome -- worthless paintings attributed to Anonymous, and a couple of excruciatingly tacky, hobby-box mosaics. These went more or less unnoticed in the surrounding furore -- a presidential opening, LE17 million spent on the conversion, and a lot of glossy paper in the catalogue. But shiny paper does not a decent catalogue make, and if multiples of a million are to denote a commitment to exhibiting art, they must be well spent and not wasted.
The result, though, is another gallery, a difficult space, admittedly, given the unsympathetic carve up, but one that could, given a competent curator, be used effectively. Since the opening, unfortunately, it has tended to be used for the big, art calendar events, the Cairo Biennale, Print Triennale, and such like, which adopt a bargain basement hanging policy of stack them up and cram them in, which serves merely to emphasise the shortcomings of the interior.
The original home of the Mahmoud Khalil collection, an ornate, Islamic revivalist pavilion in Zamalek, was next to be given a makeover, being reborn as the Gezira Arts Centre, home to a permanent collection of ceramics and three spanking new galleries for changing displays of art. Recently the galleries hosted the high profile portrait exhibition, and currently are showing cool abstract pieces by Scott Bailey, and a series of still lifes, spongy roses in virulent colour schemes, and badly painted Egyptian landscapes that are hardly worth the Woolworth's frames in which they hang.
As the new season begins, then, the public gallery infrastructure is stronger than it has ever been. It is just that, as yet, no headway has been made in tackling the perennial problem of what to show. The result, as usual, will be that by accident, rather than design, several good shows will be featured in these prestigious spaces, surrounded by a far greater number of exhibitions given over to incoherent dross. The latter will so outnumber the former that one might be forgiven for assuming that the bad shows are staged less by accident than design.
At immense cost Cairo boasts several new, impressive galleries. The challenge, now, is to use these spaces in a meaningful way. Sadly, to say there is a lack of curatorial expertise is to strike an optimistic note: there is a complete absence of curatorial skills, an absence of any coherent vision as to how the exhibition spaces should be used, and a failure to impose even minimum standards of display.
One possible strategy to fill this gap would be to invite guest curators: a high-risk move, perhaps, in that the usual tut-tutters with a vested interest in mediocrity, those who find it perfectly possible to write glowingly about the current state of affairs, will undoubtedly be drawing daggers ready to stick them in anyone who disturbs the status quo. A little controversy, though, could do wonders in energising an increasingly desultory art scene.
The holdings of Cairo's permanent collections could furnish material for any number of small scale, focused shows. Why not let a sculptor lose in the storerooms of the Egyptian museum and see what he or she can come up with, or let a painter rifle through the holdings of the plastic arts sector? Why not court a bit of healthy controversy, and let people moan that such and such a person is unworthy of such an important space, as if those who currently command easy access to the most prestigious spaces do so by dint of the importance of their works, rather than the effectiveness of their networking, or simple longevity?
