Joyce Goss, Goss-Michael Foundation

By Claire Ruud

Tim Noble & Sue Webster, The Joy of Sex, 2005, Lithographs; Set of 40 prints; Edition of 25, 16 3/8 x 11 ¾ inches. Courtesy Goss-Michael Foundation.

Joyce Goss is Director of The Goss-Michael Foundation, a Dallas-based foundation established in 2007 by Kenny Goss and George Michael for the exhibition of their collection and the support of the Dallas arts community. Ever since the Foundation received a feature in the 2007 Holiday issue of The New York Times Style Magazine, we've been wondering whether Goss-Michael is a vanity project or a non-profit committed to the community. So, on a recent trip to Dallas, we met with Joyce to get the inside scoop on the Foundation's mission and upcoming projects.

…might be good: In 2005, Kenny Goss opened the Goss Gallery—a commercial gallery—in the space we’re sitting in now. But two years later in 2007, this space became The Goss-Michael Foundation. Can you tell us about the motivation behind this transformation?

Joyce Goss: Kenny opened the former Goss Gallery in May of 2005. He wanted to bring a new, edgier art to Dallas—an art that Dallas and the surrounding areas had never really had access to before. Kenny and George Michael were traveling a lot internationally, and they slowly became involved in collecting. Particularly, they became very interested in YBA artists and began to focus on collecting their work. Since they live part time in London, they were able to build relationships with many of these artists.

The Goss Gallery was very successful, but Kenny and George realized they were less interested in running a commercial gallery and more interested in sharing their rapidly growing collection with Dallas. They live here on a part-time basis and it’s Kenny’s home town, so they really wanted to invest here as well. So they decided to convert this space to the Foundation.

…mbg: So the primary focus of the Foundation is to present Kenny and George’s collection to the public?

JG: Yes, but with a particular focus on education. Kenny and George have a niche by collecting YBA artists. The Dallas metropolitan area museums have great collections, but they don’t really cover British art, especially the YBA’s who captivated the art world during the 90’s. They want their collection and their desire to educate to work in tandem.

In addition to having exhibitions, we also offer scholarship programs. Last year we initiated our first scholarship program with scholarships for two young artists, one for music in George’s name and one for visual art because of Kenny. This year we awarded four scholarships.

…mbg: When did Kenny and George start collecting the YBA’s?

JG: Definitely within the last few years, but I’m not actually sure when they purchased their first YBA piece. But over the last several years they’ve become good friends with Tracy [Emin] and Damien [Hirst].

…mbg: How did you become involved with the Foundation? Do you have a background in the arts?

JG: Well I’m still learning. Kenny’s my brother-in-law, so there’s a little family nepotism. I got a finance degree at UT Austin and I was in the mortgage business for twenty years. When Kenny started the gallery here, he intended it to become a family business, but he also really wanted something that would grow into a world class institute. Even the Foundation has a business side, and requires someone who is financially-minded, so Kenny thought I would be the natural person for this position. I don’t have an art history background at all and that’s why we have a curator [Filippo Tattoni-Marcozzi]. He actually lives in Germany, but he creates a lot of our exhibitions. We have several staff members that have a background in art history, so every project is a collaborative effort.

…mbg: What have been the major differences between running a gallery and a non-profit?

JG: Obviously with a commercial gallery you need to make money to stay in business. As a non-profit we have more budgetary constraints. The Foundation is partially funded by the Platinum Trust, which is the biggest trust in the UK. But we are pushing to raise more money because we want to expand our scholarship program. We did our first state scholarship this year. Within the next couple years, we want to expand to $400,000 in scholarship awards, probably nationwide.

We also need to overcome the public misconception—due in large part to George’s status as a pop-star—that the Foundation has a lot of money. Kenny and George are obviously extremely generous, but there’s only a certain amount that they can contribute to the Foundation. The artists have been very generous helping us raise money. For example, Tim [Noble] and Sue [Webster] designed a beach towel and are allowing us to sell them and have given us the copyright. So any money we raise from the towels will go to the scholarship fund. And Tracy Emin is going to work on a special edition print that we can use so that all proceeds go to the Foundation.

…mbg: It sounds like you’re juggling two objectives at the Foundation. On one hand, you are collecting and presenting work that can be somewhat edgy—for example, Tim and Sue’s The Joy of Sex (2005). On the other hand, your primary focus with these scholarships has been high school students. I’m interested in why, given the type of exhibitions you do, you feel it is particularly important to reach out to such young students.

JG: Well, it’s true that the current exhibition of Tim and Sue’s work is edgy. And this is the edgiest show we’ve done by far. That’s part of the reason that we chose to display this work in the summer, when most kids are not in school and probably are not going to be touring the museums. The Goss-Michael Foundation is rather conservative because of all our students. So we ask all youngsters that come in for their I.D.’s. Otherwise, I won’t let them in.
In general, teachers love the fact that we’re here as an educational resource. We’re building a library that’ll have a lot of periodicals and books that cover a lot of the artists we represent. We already have a lot of books from the U.K. that are not readily available here in Dallas. And we are going to start the artist talks, so in the fall I believe Sarah will be able to give a talk that students will be invited to. We really want them to be able to come and see what makes the artist really tick.

…mbg: Why are the YBA’s particularly important to Dallas?

JG: It’s obviously part of Kenny and George’s passion and their collection. We’re working in tandem with other Dallas-area collectors like the Rachofskys, the Hoffmans and the Roses. They all have wonderful collections and have made generous donations to DMA. But the YBA’s were not well represented by any of their collections, so the Goss-Michael Foundation really provides the missing link in the whole picture.

…mbg: To me, it seems that the public awareness of YBA is already relatively high, so I’m wondering why Kenny and George didn’t choose to work with some lesser-known emerging artists.

JG: Working with emerging artists is in our long-term plans. Kenny and George’s collection may have started out with YBA’s, but I think it will evolve. We have plans to build our own building for the Foundation and in that building, we’ll host residency programs for some of the YBA’s and possibly local artists as well.

…mbg: What is Tattoni-Marcozzi’s role in shaping the Goss-Michael collection?

JG: He’s constantly paying attention to the art fairs, but we also have an art advisor. In general, Kenny and George’s art advisor helps them assemble their personal collection and Filippo creates the exhibitions at the Foundation.

…mbg: Where is Kenny and George’s art advisor based?

JG: She’s based in the U.K. and right now they’re continuing to focus on collecting YBA’s.

…mbg: So far, your curator has only organized single person shows. Are you planning on doing any group exhibitions?

JG: We probably will. It’s just that we’re such a young organization. This is only our third exhibition. These one-person shows allow us to show the core of the collection.

…mbg: Let’s turn our attention to your scholarship programs. It sounds like you have big plans for the program.

JG: This year we offered our first Texas-wide scholarship and we sent out announcements to all the art teachers in the state. Ultimately we’ll do a national scholarship as well, but next year we are focusing on expanding the Texas scholarship.

...mbg: Will you expand the program to the college level?

JG: Quite possibly, if we have the funds. For Kenny and George, although they want to showcase the collection, they’re primary goal is to educate and give back to the community.

…mbg: What does your programming look like this fall?

JG: Well since we’re still kind of limited on space, it’s going to be on the smaller side, but we hope Sarah [Lucas] is still going to do something for us. Also Michael Craig-Martin, a friend of Kenny’s who basically helped start this whole thing, has said that he would like to come to Dallas and do a lecture for us.

…mbg: You mentioned buying property and building a space. Do you have a time frame on that project?

JG: Yes. Our goal is to have the property secured within the next several months. We’ve already met with the architects and have a plan in the works. The actual building process will probably be about two years from start to finish. When the building is completed, we’ll probably do a really big group show and publish a Foundation catalogue. In addition to exhibition space, we’ll have our library and classrooms and perhaps a sculpture garden.

…mbg: Does the Foundation have a board of directors?

JG: At this point, it’s George, Kenny, my husband and I and our attorneys in London. But we will expand and we already have people in mind that we’d like to ask. But as yet we’re still in our infancy stages.

Claire Ruud is Editor of ...might be good.

Andrée Bober, Landmarks Public Art Program

By Claire Ruud

Tony Smith, Amaryllis, 1965, Painted Steel, 135 x 128 x 90 inches. Lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Anonymous Gift, 1986, 1986.432a,b. Image courtesy of Landmarks.

Last week in the Life Science Library, while her team installed a piece from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's loan to The Univeristy of Texas at Austin, Andrée Bober, Director of Landmarks, talked with ...might be good about the role of the public art program on this university's campus. During our conversation, I learned, disappointingly but not unexpectedly, that UT Austin will be assembling a rather conservative public art collection.

…might be good: What were the events that led up to the establishment of the new public art program, Landmarks, at the University of Texas at Austin?

Andrée Bober: Landmarks has its origins in conversations that began around 2005. Leading up to that point, the University had been engaged with Peter Walker Partners Landscape Architects, working to reconstruct Speedway and the whole East Mall. That effort, like all of the architectural construction that occurs on campus, conforms to the Cesar Pelli Master Plan from 1999. I was not involved with the conversations during that time, but my understanding is that Peter Walker was thinking about the Speedway and East Mall projects as a defining part of the entire campus and questioning how the new construction would support the Campus Master Plan. From what I’ve reconstructed, Peter suggested that the University had been doing a really good job of following its Campus Master Plan in terms of the spatial orientation and the architectural character of the buildings, but it had been very building-focused. Peter pointed out that the University should give greater attention to the spaces in between buildings—those patches of grass, those big corridors and gateways—the spaces that really begin to create a sense of place and experience for people walking around the campus.

Out of those conversations, the university realized that one way to address those concerns was to develop a public art program. Pat Clubb, the Vice President for Employee and Campus Services, forwarded an initiative in 2005 to develop a policy for public art on campus. The policy—Art in Public Spaces—set a goal to devote 1-2% of the construction cost from all major renovation and new construction projects on the main campus for the acquisition of public art.

When the University adopted that policy it was an exciting moment: it was the first time in the University’s history that there had been any kind of a push for ongoing support of public art at UT. And so Landmarks was born. I came on board shortly after that policy was put into place, and my job has been to develop the architecture of the program and to define its curatorial scope.

…mbg: Why was Landmarks established as a separate program from The Blanton Museum?

AB: The Landmarks Program operates in the College of Fine Arts, alongside the Blanton. If you look at other public art programs at other universities, they are often closely associated with museums, but they’re typically separate entities from the museum. The reason for this separation stems from a difference of mission and a difference in the way those missions are carried out. At UT, there’s certainly a lot of coordination and collaboration with the Blanton. For example, there’s an upcoming project—we haven’t announced it yet—in which Landmarks is going to install a monumental outdoor sculpture to coincide with an upcoming exhibition at the Blanton.

…mbg: What is the selection process that the University has established for public art?

AB: Any proposal for the placement of public art in the campus landscape begins with the Subcommittee for the Review of Artwork, lead by Ken Hale. That subcommittee predates Landmarks by a few years. It was put in place to respond to requests made by the general public (or from deans or other university officials) for works of art or monuments on campus. The Subcommittee makes recommendations to a committee called the Faculty Building Advisory Committee. From there, the proposal goes to Pat Clubb’s office in Employee and Campus Services, and then to the Facilities and Space Council—that’s the President’s committee—and from there certain proposals may be reviewed by the Board of Regents for final approval. That’s the official process for any proposal. Landmarks is simply one of the entities creating proposals and sending them to the University for review through this process.

…mbg: And you have your own advisory committee?

AB: Landmarks has its own advisory committee. It’s made up of student, faculty and staff representatives. On a project-by-project basis, the committee may also include other expert professionals in the field and individuals who are associated with a particular project—for example the architect of a particular building or the staff and faculty most affected by the site. We really try to keep an open, transparent process.

...mbg: Who are the core people on your committee?

AB: Sarah Canright from Studio Art; John Clarke from Art History; Mirka Benes from Landscape Architecture; the Art History graduate student is Amanda Douberly; and a UT museum curator is also included—that seat is currently held by Annette Carlozzi from the Blanton. So with Annette’s participation, the Blanton remains closely involved although our organizations remain separate entities.

…mbg: What is the Public Art Master Plan?

AB: When I started to develop Landmarks, we approached Peter Walker and asked if he would develop a Public Art Master Plan. He very generously consented to create a plan as a pro-bono contribution. The plan is not meant to be prescriptive, but it’s designed to create an inventory of opportunities across campus and establish guidelines for criteria that we’ll want to consider for any public art project we might propose. By following this plan, the University will build consistency and cohesion in its public art placement over time.

...mbg: So how do the Met sculptures fit into the Master Plan.

AB: With the Public Art Master Plan in place, I began looking at our campus and thinking about an appropriate curatorial scope for this program. There seemed to be no compelling reason to narrow that scope thematically or to one movement or era of art history. That was one consideration, and the other was economic. Resources aren’t infinite and I realized we would have to be smart and resourceful. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that we should follow the model of other successful campuses that work with artists of our time. Eventually, with patience and consistency, such programs develop an art-historical perspective within the collection. That’s what lends depth to the collection and the kind of cohesiveness that our campus should strive to achieve.

So how do you start? My concern was that if we just chose an artist and commissioned a work, chose another artist and commissioned another work, then we’d end up with what I often call “Spray and Pray.” You put one piece here and another one there, and hope that over time they all begin to make some kind of sense. Our challenge in building a campus collection is that we needed to start from some kind of foundation. The difficulty has been that in terms of 20th century pieces, there are few examples and the quality has been rather uneven.

So I began to imagine the possibility that we might borrow some group of works, bring them to campus and have that group serve as a foundation for the Landmarks’ curatorial scope. I learned that the Metropolitan Museum of Art had a collection of sculptures that they’d exhibited in the past, but that they were no longer able to show because of a lack of space. So I approached the Metropolitan and pursued the opportunity. People on campus seemed enthusiastic and people at the Met seemed enthusiastic, so it was a very happy marriage. Now with these works coming to UT on long term loan, we have precisely that art historical perspective from which we can begin to build our own collection.

…mbg: So you’re imagining that this group of works will remain on campus for ever?

AB: We intend them to be here indefinitely, however the terms of the loan agreement are for five-year renewable periods.

…mbg: What kind of an art historical foundation would you say the loan creates?

AB: Well, all of the pieces are sculptural. I would say that’s the biggest difference between this group of works and Landmarks’ scope because the Landmarks collection should be broader. But the group does provide a very deep representation of major artistic trends that are happening in the second half of the 20th century. The earliest Met sculpture is from 1948 and the latest is from 2000. Because these pieces provide important examples from this 50-year period of time, they represent many of the major artistic trends that occurred during this vibrant era of art history. In these works, one can see the vestiges of Surrealism alongside major examples of Abstract Expressionism, Feminist Art, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Post-Minimalism, Pop…

…mbg: When I hear that the University loaned 28 works from the Metropolitan, I imagine that must have been very expensive. And I wonder why you decided to borrow these works rather than spend the money on commissioning works by emerging artists.

AB: Well it might surprise you to know that the cost of this loan to us was very reasonable. The Met did not charge us its typical fees for labor, mount-making, borrowing of the work, or insurance. They waved these for us because of the long-term nature of our arrangement. Moreover, because the costs for UT are only for transportation, installation and ongoing maintenance, the overall cost is commensurate with a typical museum exhibition that would last about three months. And we wouldn’t have been able to purchase work of this quality and rarity. It really is a privilege for us to be able to have them here on campus and extraordinary that we were able to realize the project with such little expense.

…mbg: I’m worried about how the students will treat the works—vandalism.

AB: I am too. But I worked with the Met team to choose pieces that we felt were of a durable enough construction and material to be on display 24/7. We also carefully considered placement of the works—traffic patterns, exposure and so forth. We wanted these pieces to have the greatest possible public visibility and to be in places where the landscape and architecture would complement them and vice versa. But we were also thinking about whether placement would invite some kind of problem. Many of the pieces have camera surveillance; some of them have vibration alarms. You hope that people realize that it’s a privilege to have these objects and, as they become part of the landscape and identity of the campus, people will want to protect them.

But we’re not being Pollyanna about this. Things happen. Even in museum galleries or in storage, works of art can get damaged. For that reason, we have a conservator on call. Fortunately for us, the Metropolitan’s attitude is that it is better for these works to be in circulation with the risk of something happening than to be locked up in storage.

…mbg: One last question about Landmarks and then I want to hear briefly about your background. In Landmarks’ mission statement, it says that the public art on campus will convey the University’s “standards and ideals.” Can you explain how these works might convey the University’s standards and ideals?

AB: As a leading research institution, the University has the responsibility (and privilege) of introducing people to ideas and to standards of quality about ways of thinking and being. Artistic representation provokes criticism and dialogue about ideas. But moreover, certain works of art have, over time, proven to be of greater quality and enduring resonance. For the university to take a position and say, “we are about understanding those distinctions and bringing to our campus the best quality art that we can,” supports the institution’s standards and ideals in the broadest sense.

It’s true that there are a lot of different kinds of public art programs. But I think that for The University of Texas at Austin, it makes sense for the public art program to be about the best quality it can be.

…mbg: What do you mean by quality?

AB: Well, that can be tricky. I think it’s important to encourage audiences to experience works of art, to find their own personal meanings, resonances, and to express their ideas and opinions. This creates teachable moments about the nature of art and why it is a meaningful cultural endeavor. But it’s also important to distinguish between casual engagement and connoisseurship, especially here at the university level. Identifying quality in visual art is a skill that comes from a great deal of critical examination. When you’ve spent your entire life looking at and thinking about art, you’re better prepared to make judgments about quality.

The reason why Landmarks operates in the College of Fine Arts is because the college is principally concerned with the examination of the history, meanings and the appreciation of works of art in all its forms. I worked with several experts in the college to develop a whole set of selection criteria for public art projects. These have to do with the formal qualities of the work, its artistic and art historical merit, the reputation of the artist, the appropriateness of the work to the site, and the relevance to other works in the collection. Some people might be surprised to learn that among experts who have spent their entire lives looking and thinking about art critically, there is a good deal of consensus about which works are of greater or lesser quality.

I often like to use wine as a good analogy. I love just about any Barolo, but I’m no sommelier. In my mind, the question of which vintner or vintage I prefer is a matter of personal preference, but I’m hardly prepared to build a critical defense for my judgment. A great wine critic could, and I suspect that the independent opinions of other informed critics would result in considerable overlap.

…mbg: So what’s your background? Where are you from?

AB: Well, I’m originally from Beaumont, Texas, and I did my undergraduate work in Art History here at UT. Then there were years where I practiced painting conservation, studied arts administration at Columbia, and worked on several administrative and curatorial projects for different museums. Most recently I came from Cincinnati, where I was Deputy and then Interim Director for the Contemporary Arts Center there. I was at the CAC for five years, leading the project to build Zaha Hadid’s first American building. After two years of long-distance marriage to my husband Jonathan Bober [Curator of Prints, Drawings and European Paintings] at the Blanton, we finally managed to share a roof.

…mbg: What are your particular interests in Modern and Contemporary art?

AB: That’s a really good question and one that nobody has asked me since I founded Landmarks. I tend to be most drawn to experimental work. It’s an interesting process for me to identify and understand my personal interests, but to see them apart from what the curatorial scope of Landmarks is and ought to be. Certainly, my personal interests inform my ability to lead Landmarks, however, these aren’t necessarily appropriate a university public art program, and I know that. I have developed a curatorial scope for UT that is appropriate for it as an academic institution. Does that make sense?

…mbg: Yeah, it does, and it sounds extremely difficult in some ways.

AB: Well, it’s actually not because the things I like tend to be rather challenging and experimental. Experiments are extremely important, but a lot of experimentation gets lost over time. The works of art that have real resonance and continue to engage people over time become the canon of art history. The curatorial scope for the Landmarks collection at UT is and should be more aligned with artistic achievements that are tried and true, that demonstrate quality over time. This is not to say that the University shouldn’t look forward; it should and it must if we want to remain current and continue to build a relevant collection. But it shouldn’t be a risk taking institution. That’s the role of a great kunsthalle.

Claire Ruud is Editor of ...might be good.