Becoming The Contemporary

An interview with George Ciscle and Lisa Corrin
by Irene Hofmann

In May 2010, I had the great pleasure of sitting down with The Contemporary's founding director, George Ciscle and its first curator, Lisa Corrin.  We met in George's serene mid-century high-rise Baltimore apartment the morning after we had all gathered to celebrate The Contemporary's twentieth anniversary. Our gala anniversary event honored George and Lisa and welcomed back Fred Wilson, the artist who produced Mining the Museum, one of The Contemporary's most ambitious and enduring projects to date. Fred spoke to a capacity crowd the night before, sharing memories of his work with The Contemporary in its early years that led to the landmark exhibition in 1992. When I sat down with George and Lisa they started at the beginning, sharing the details of the formation of The Contemporary. 

As the director, curator, and steward of The Contemporary for nearly five years, it was my great honor to conduct this interview, although in truth, there wasn't much work for me to do but listen.  George and Lisa needed little prompting--it was as if they had waited two decades to share their story in this way. They talked for over four hours and before our time together was finished, there wasn't a dry eye in the room.  There was a powerful realization of the boldness of their work together, the magic of their partnership, and the legacy that we all shared. I am grateful to them for their openness, their humor, and their contribution to this document of the vision they introduced into the world.  What follows is an excerpt from our conversation that focused on the thrill and uncertainty of The Contemporary's first year and the beginning of George and Lisa's extraordinary partnership.

Irene Hofmann, Executive Director, The Contemporary (2006-2010)

IRENE HOFMANN:  I want to start with a question to George about the very beginning of The Contemporary.  What was it that was going on in Baltimore, in the art world, and in your own career that led to the founding of this new museum?

GEORGE CISCLE: I had a commercial gallery in Baltimore for four years, which became a gathering place for artists and collectors and the press and critics treated me very well. However, what I realized after the fourth year was that as much as I loved working with artists, my interest and talents as an educator were being lost in the gallery. I had been a high school educator for fifteen years, so I knew what it was to be a teacher and to work with a diverse population. 

That is when I knew I needed to close the gallery. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but felt I needed to go into hibernation, into retreat, to figure out what my next move might be. I was very fortunate that a major collector from my gallery, who then subsequently became one of the early major funders of The Contemporary, came forward and sent me on a paid trip to St. Bart’s.  “You need to go somewhere where you don’t know anyone,” she told me, “where there’s no art - to just go and retreat, sit on the beach and reflect on your life.” And that’s what I did for three weeks in May of 1989. 

By June I was back in Baltimore and announced the closing of the gallery, which surprisingly, made the front-page of the Sunpapers. After the gallery closed, I didn’t know where I was headed but I began to meet with people to talk about my ideas about art and institutions. I also started to research interesting new models for art institutions and the world of alternative exhibition spaces. I went to the Whitechapel Gallery in London, Headlands Center for the Arts in California, and I met with Marcia Tucker at the New Museum in New York. I really looked at what was out there, and began to imagine what could be collaged together and adapted to our situation here. 

By the end of that summer after doing all this research, my ideas for a new museum were coalescing and I sought the council of Michelle Moure, a very close friend of mine at the time and an important member of the Baltimore art community.  She was working for the Maryland State Arts Council, and I went to her for a reality check. I wanted to create an organization that would bring the art, artist, and audience together, in a dialogue, in a forum in some way. Michelle was someone who could understand what I was trying to do. 

At that point, the concept for The Contemporary was not to be nomadic.  I was looking for a building then and pursuing two places: the vacant warehouses behind the Shot Tower and the abandoned whiskey warehouse on Key Highway.

That’s when architect Steve Ziger came aboard to help conceive of a space. I hadn’t met Lisa yet and everything we were talking about was very hush hush.  It was important that our plans not get out too soon because it was still only a crazy dream. I didn’t want some rumor to circulate that there was going to be a new museum, when we couldn’t even say what it was yet. It would have been disastrous. But ultimately, it did get out and as I had feared, we ran into some trouble.

LISA CORRIN: At that time the cultural institutions in Baltimore struck me as rather competitive. The resources necessary for starting and sustaining a new museum would be viewed as cutting the funding pie into even smaller pieces. The creation of a new museum could also be viewed as an implicit criticism of the existing museums. Why would you need to start a museum for contemporary art if they were already committed to supporting it in their programs? But for George, presenting contemporary art wasn’t just about exhibitions. It was about how to directly connect artists and audiences through the ways in which a museum might bring art into being. Think about it: an upstart institution might engage the broader community in ways the other institutions had not just at a time when our field was widely discussing this essential role of museums. 

George had a following in the arts community, he had integrity and imagination. He wanted to do something for the city and for artists. The Contemporary was never about George. That was the biggest threat of all—his sincerity. It was clear to me even in our initial conversation that, despite the amorphous quality of his vision, George’s idea really had legs because of his values.  

GC:  Well, it was also the right timing for this idea. It was the period of the Culture Wars, the funding controversy at the NEA, and people questioning the elitism of the art world and who art was for. All these things were in the air when Michelle Moure introduced me to Lisa.

LC: I was very young, I had never really worked in a museum, but there were things that George had to say about the world, not just about museums, that struck a chord in me and opened something up. I had come to Baltimore to become a Ph.D. candidate at Johns Hopkins University and wanted to write about medieval Italian sculpture. But I always felt a tug towards contemporary art, too. I ultimately decided that Hopkins wasn’t the right fit for my interests and I intended to transfer after one year. In the meantime I started going around to the Baltimore galleries and introducing myself to people. I was looking for a job or at least some volunteer work in the art community. That’s how I met Michelle. She told me about George’s idea for a new museum and suggested an introduction. I thought it was intriguing even a bit nuts, but I figured, I’m only going to be in Baltimore maybe another year, so why the heck not? It’s a job, right?

During my interview with George, he shared how he felt about his city, what he was hoping to do, and what was important to him. It was an essential and very honest conversation. Then he said to me, “Tell me your story,” and I did. There was an incredible level of authenticity in our exchange. And then he asked, “Do you think we could work together?” He wanted me to be the assistant director of a non-existent museum! There was no humor in his question, no irony whatsoever. It was earnest. I thought, “Why not?” What he actually should have said to me was “Do you want to assist me in starting this museum?” But typical George, he empowered me immediately by making me an equal, even though I hadn’t yet done anything to earn that. The only museum experience I had at the time came from an internship in the library and archives of the Phillips Collection where I did a little research for curators and catalogued ephemera for artist files.

So George and I teamed up. I was the academic, George was the educator. He was the one who had an affinity for working artists and is the reason why The Contemporary’s program was so innovative from the outset. George worked like an artist; he worked very organically. It was a bit like when an artist is faced with a blank canvas. You don’t know where you’re going, you don’t know what you’re going to do, but you trust instinctively that your creative actions are going to lead to something. That’s how The Contemporary worked. As a partnership we were never afraid to present each other an idea that was in its nascent form. We just let the ideas fly and trusted that they would get tested through dialogue and that the best ideas would stick. 

George taught me a great deal about strategic thinking, how first and foremost everything we did had to connect to the unique mission of The Contemporary. We didn’t try to replicate what was already out there; we created a model that complemented and, sometimes, mischievously, challenged the perspectives of other institutions. We also privileged the collaborative process, connecting artists with target audiences. The Contemporary’s vision was for the different communities we worked with to feel liked the museum really belonged to them. Baltimore is a city of fascinating and diverse neighborhoods and we wanted to draw them in one by one.

IH: Where was the money coming from in those early days?

GC: For the first six months we didn’t have any money! 

LC: I didn’t get paid for the first year and took a day job and George didn’t get paid for at least the first six months.

LC: But also we were both completely naïve. We knew nothing and I think that’s why The Contemporary was a success, we didn’t have to unlearn.

GC: We didn’t have to model ourselves on anything that already existed.

LC: Nothing stood in our way! There wasn’t anyone saying, “You can’t possibly do that,” or “That’s no way to go about it.” There was no voice in our head that was ever prescriptive. Consequently, whatever the idea demanded is what we did to serve the idea.

Something else that occurs to me--when we worked together on The Contemporary, it wasn’t an interest in museology that drove how we programmed or how we conceived of the institution. There were certain ideas in the air that we were imbibing although I don’t know how consciously we were doing it. I had a certain background in theory; however, what really moved this institution forward and shaped it was an approach to museums needing to be in and of the daily lives of communities. The museological self-theorizing came later when we reflected upon each project and had to articulate what we were doing to our peers, to funders, to artists. Self reflection and self-evaluation were at the core of our practice.

GC: And change.

IH:  Can you describe you curatorial approach or philosophy during this time?

LC: George taught me an approach to working with artists and exhibitions that is based on faith in the creative and collaborative process without any knowledge of where it will come out. We embraced a way or working that held the belief that the glorious failure is as important as the brilliant success.  We created an environment where these things can play themselves out which is very different, from traditional, flagship institutions. They need to earn income from admissions numbers and can’t afford to have failures, however glorious.

So much about what The Contemporary was in those days was breaking down the boundaries between artists and the people in our community which was primarily blue collar and about 70% African-American. What did Baltimore need? How did those constituencies engage with what artists do in a way that could enable them to see art as a part of their lives?  How could they become the fabric of the museum? George raised these questions and they set the dialogue between us into motion. We developed an ability to refine and sharpen each others thinking. By the time we got to actually implementing projects, (remember there were only two of us most of the time) George would take on one task and I would take on another, but we were still completely in sync. There was a melding of sensibilities and ongoing dialogue united core institutional and personal values. At a certain point not only did I know what George expected, what he would want me to do in a situation when I wasn’t able to ask, but I knew what the mission and values of the institution demanded of me and could act accordingly. We had so internalized the mission that, regardless of our lack of staffing or resources we could get the job done. So much time is wasted in some institutions with meetings and checking in because you’re not sure if everybody is on mission. But we were always on mission.

George and I both have an appetite for risks. Many people need to know the outcome of a project in advance. It would be too unsettling for them to operate the way we did at The Contemporary. Artists are very courageous and work this way everyday. Their courage inspired us. I don’t think we always realized that what we were doing was so risky. There were some people who found this rather odd.

GC:  And irresponsible.

We should tell you more about Sally Kearsley, an artist and a philanthropist who was vital to The Contemporary’s beginning and the patron who sent me off to St. Bart’s to reflect on my future. As Lisa and I were developing the museum and beginning to search for a space, I had been keeping Sally abreast of everything that had been going on. She knew what was being developed and was very interested in it. She got it, and I remember her saying to me, “How much do you need?” She wanted to know how much it would cost for two of us to spend a year of work devoted to launching the museum.  She donated the resources we needed and we were on our way, building a board, filing incorporation papers, researching our programming, and writing a plan for the development of a space for the museum.

I mean, it was unbelievable! Steve Ziger was helping us to conceive the interior spaces of potential sites; we were meeting with developers, while at the same time creating a logo and letterhead for our still non-existent museum.

LC: I have to say something about the letterhead.

Remember, we didn’t have any museum experience. All the theory books I read couldn’t have prepared me for the kind of nuts and bolts that we were working out at this time. George understood instinctively that once we got incorporated, that we needed to look like a “real” museum. This was almost like a Marcel Broodthaers project.

GC: Very much so.

LC: So we needed letterhead! We worked on the letterhead and the design of the business card for as long as you might work on an exhibition. It had copper ink, on this green-ish paper; the cards were magnificent. It looked like the business card of an established institution! 

GC: It was pretty fabulous! And it even said Administrative Offices! Offices, plural. Remember, we were working out of my basement and, later, from the rectory of Corpus Christi Church! The way we framed the museum became, almost like a comedy routine, because the great irony was, The Contemporary was still in the process of becoming. We had no idea what it was the whole time we worked together, it was always in the process of defining itself. 

But it was more than just the letterhead and business cards. We wrote a complete prospectus describing the museum and its activities. We wrote this to build support and to make our case as we searched for the ideal building location for the museum.

Let me read you the final paragraph of one of the sections from the prospectus, it’s incredible. This is under “Exhibit”: “We anticipate that our innovative exhibition installations will motivate intersections between audience and artworks, challenging viewers to make the nexus between the work and their own experiences.” 

LC: Remember, we wrote this before we had done anything! But then came George’s idea for our first exhibition, Visual Aids. It was not a very big leap from the words on that page to the way we conceived our first exhibition. 

GC: We finished the prospectus of our proposed museum and its site. We submitted it, made a presentation to the city, and then waited.  It wasn't a long time after that I got a call and learned there was a problem. They told me: “You've done everything we asked and we think it sounds great. We have no criticism of your proposal, but we have to tell you that we've never had so much lobbying against something that doesn’t even exist yet.”  As we learned later, they were getting calls from board members of several Baltimore cultural institutions, who were also making calls all the way up to the governor’s office. 

LC: Clearly our idea was very powerful. And perhaps it was an indictment on what they weren’t doing. 

GC: I think so, although a number of Baltimore’s key players at the time privately supported our idea. I personally met with them but they wouldn’t support us publicly. For some, it was out of concern for the “Small economic pie in Baltimore,” and for others, it was their belief that contemporary art already had a sufficient platform in the city. The Maryland Institute College of Art and Baltimore Clayworks were the rare exceptions. 

LC: I think we struck more than a few nerves. In addition to tapping into fears held locally, there were national discussions about the role of museums in their communities that were gaining steam.

GC: There were.

LC: It was a growing feeling that many museums were out of touch with their context. American museums, including those in Baltimore, were caught up in this discourse. The Contemporary’s mission offered a model that reflected the fraught spirit of that time, however unwittingly. 

IH: So what did you do next in the face of all of this resistance and hostility?

GC: We followed the advice of one of the city developers we were in conversation with, who said that if we were committed to doing this, the only way to possibly win over the skeptics was to show them what our vision looked like. He said, go rent an empty store front on Charles Street, put up a show, and build a track record so that no one could question the uniqueness of our vision.

I remember we talked about it, we met with the board, discussed the push-back we were getting and our difficulty securing a building.  I told the board about the advice I had received and they were ready. They weren’t going to throw our idea away.

LC: We were galvanized. I remember, exactly what George said. He said, “This is going to happen. We exist. We’re doing it!”

GC: That’s what led to the development of Visual Aids, our inaugural exhibition opening on the occasion of a “Day without Art” on December 1, 1990. This was a large-scale community-based exhibition and examination of the AIDS crisis through art.

Visual Aids marked the beginning of The Contemporary in Baltimore and it reflected a moment of great change in the field.  It was the early 90s when a number of alternative spaces formed in response to an increasingly narrow program of contemporary art in the nation’s established museums.  There were changes in the guidelines of national grants with increased emphasis on audience and widespread discussions about diversity. Extraordinary things were happening across the entire country. There was Exit Art and the Alternative Museum and, bless her, Marcia Tucker at the New Museum. They were our beacons. Even though they, too, were figuring it out as they went along, they were deeply engaged in the conversation--they had an incredible will to change. There was a lot of courage out there. 

So, to finish up about our first year….After our first shows--Visual Aids in the fall of 1990, followed by Photo Manifesto: Contemporary Photography in the USSR in the spring of 1991--everyone was talking about the museum and we were getting great press. The Contemporary was real. Then in a defining moment, the mayor called. He called to congratulate us on our first two shows and to offer his assistance securing one of the original buildings we had been seeking the year before. We went back to the board of trustees to share the news but found ourselves less than excited about this offer. We realized that our idea for a museum was not dependent on a building and that Lisa and I wanted instead to continue to develop exhibitions and work with artists using our newly adopted methodology.

LC: When people heard the name “The Contemporary Museum,” they made conventional assumptions about what our museum looked like, what it did, the roles we played. But we were always in the process of becoming. We didn’t know from year-to-year how we might define “museum.” The Contemporary was and is always in the process of reinventing itself.  This is what continues to make its modus operandi especially relevant today. Its ongoing process of self-definition embodies the conviction that all museums are living entities that can continue to evolve, adapt, and re-imagine themselves. This was the basis of Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum, our collaboration with the Maryland Historical Society. Realization of Fred’s project would have been inconceivable without the ethos behind The Contemporary.

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Irene Hofmann is an independent writer, curator, and art museum thought leader based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. From 2010 until 2021, she served as the Director and Chief Curator of SITE Santa Fe. Over the last two decades, she has curated or co-curated large-scale group exhibitions, including Broadcast (2009–10), Agitated Histories (2011), Unsettled Landscapes (2014), Future Shock (2017), and Displaced: Contemporary Artists Confront the Refugee Crisis (2020) and solo exhibitions and new commission projects by artists including: Dawoud Bey, Kota Ezawa, Futurefarmers, Joseph Grigely, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Enrique Martinez Celaya, Marjetica Potrč, Michael Rakowitz, Regina Silveira, and Mungo Thomson. Before assuming the position at SITE, she held positions at The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, the Orange County Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Walker Art Center, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. 

George Ciscle is the founder of The Contemporary and served as its director from 1989 -1996. He has mounted groundbreaking exhibitions, created community arts programs, and taught courses in the fine arts and humanities for 50 years. He is currently Curator-in-Residence Emeritus at MICA, where he consults on the development of community-based and public programming. He also led the Exhibition Development Seminar, a course he created to provide artists with the opportunity to learn all aspects of the process of producing an exhibition. Trained as a sculptor, Ciscle studied with Isamu Noguchi and worked for seven years as a studio artist before turning to focus on balancing his interest in educating artists and on creating new models for exhibiting and experiencing art. 

Lisa Graziose Corrin is the Executive Director of the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, a dynamic, interdisciplinary center of research and learning and a vital part of campus and community life in Chicagoland. Her previous appointments include Director, Williams College Museum of Art; Deputy Director of Art, Seattle Art Museum and artistic lead for SAM’s Olympic Sculpture Park, an 8.5-acre downtown waterfront park for art; Chief Curator, Serpentine Gallery in London, and founding Curator/Educator at Baltimore’s nomadic The Contemporary. Lisa has curated or co-curated over 60 exhibitions and has published widely on contemporary art and museology including serving as editor of The Contemporary’s landmark publication, Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson (The New Press, awarded the Wittenborn Prize), and a monograph on artist Mark Dion for Phaidon Press.  She holds an affinity appointment in Northwestern’s Department of Art History.