The Oracle gathering? An International Mob of Mystery? Well, not exactly but given that Oracle is the main meeting of the world’s most influential people in the museum/fine art photography scene it is amazing the gathering flies under the radar year on year.
I’ve done some internet sleuthing to tell you some of what you need to know about the Bilderberg of the photography world.
Okay, it might not be so cloak and dagger as I have set it up, but The Annual International Conference for Photography Curators dubbed ‘Oracle’ has no web presence and no connection to the circles outside of the attendees. This (presumably intended) detachment is – simply put – a shame. Granted, these are people predominantly involved in museum curating, but still wouldn’t it be great to know what they are talking about when they meet each November?! Museums still feed into the photography ecosystem, and often define it.
Oracle began in 1982 as an informal gathering. In 2003, Deidre Stein Greben wrote, “Attendance at Oracle […] has grown from ten to more than 100 over the last 20 years.”
With such an organically unhurried growth, why should curators care to share their dialogues? Hell, the week might be the closest thing many of them get to a holiday. Add to that the fact that there’s no external promotion or grand narratives to push, it makes sense that no-one would take on the extra workload of interfacing with the public and all that entails.
I also think of photography curators as a similar breed to university professors; the culture of research, writing and custodianship of department agendas does not dovetail with blogging the discoveries and knowledge from their daily work. (David Campbell summarises well how the reluctance of universities to adopt social networking is to their detriment.) It’s a shame. How good would a Sandra Phillips blog be?!
The 2010 Oracle is ongoing right now in Israel (Jerusalem, I think).
This is where my sleuthing gets patchy but other host institutions/cities have included; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1992); George Eastman House, Rochester (1993); Washington (1999); Finnish Museum of Photogaphy, Helsinki (2000); Goa, India (2003); Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (2004); Artimino, Florence (2005); Prague, Czech Republic (2006); Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ (2007) and Paris, France (2009).
My guess is attendance is invitation only or some approximation thereof. Just because I gleaned a smattering of names, I’ll share them. Attendees have included Britt Salvesen, Director of photography and prints at LACMA; Doug Nickel, Professor of Photographic History at Brown University; Sunil Gupta, Artist, photographer, curator and educator; Allison Nordstrom, Curator of photography at George Eastman House; David E. Haberstich, Associate Curator of Photographs at the Smithsonian; Celina Lunsford, Director of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt; Olivia Lahs-Gonzales, Director of the Sheldon Art Galleries in St. Louis; Dr Sara Frances Stevenson, Chief Curator of the Scottish National Photography Collection, National Galleries of Scotland (retired); Mary Panzer, freelance writer & curator of photography & American culture; Ms. Agne Narusyte, Curator, Vilnius Art Museum Photographic Collection, Vilnius, Lithuania; Shelly Rice, Professor of Arts at NYU Tisch School of Arts; Enrica Viganò, curator and fine art photography critic; Duan Yuting, founder of the Lianzhou International Photo Festival; Mark Haworth-Booth, Head of Photographs, Victoria & Albert Museum; Anne Wilkes Tucker, photography curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Sandra S. Phillips, Senior Curator of Photography at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Quite the list. And I can think of many other photography curators who presumably would attend (Rod Slemmons, Anthony Bannon, Brian Wallis, Charlotte Cotton, Malcolm Daniel?) Who knows?
It’s not a totally closed shop though. Despite the 2006 shuttering of the Oracle listserv, some plucky “Independents” have set up a NING type forum, Oracle Independents. It is sporadically updated with links to articles and events about historically significant photography. Currently there are 40 members, some names recognisable. But this doesn’t get us to the meat of those dialogues currently ongoing in Jerusalem.
Last thing to say, is that the museum world is separate from the worlds of gallery, photojournalist, fine art, auction house, social documentary, magazine, fashion and art-school photographies. Even if we did have a line in on the world’s leading curators’ discussions, the information may have no bearing on our aims, art or careers. Heck, we might not even be interested. But it’d be nice wouldn’t it?
Not wanting to be pessimistic, but unable to help myself, consider this quote from Marvin Heiferman, freelance author, editor and curator and “champion of the blue-collar nature of the silent majority of photographs.” Bear in mind he’s talking about very early Oracle, but nonetheless, the quote highlights potential disconnects between different orbits of the photography world.
“When I started looking at this new [Postmodern] work, I loved its nonchalance, intelligence and cheekiness, the fact that it was interested in both seeing and seeing through images. The photo world, though, wasn’t as amused, and didn’t have a clue what the small group of us was getting so jazzed up about. Toward the end of my stint at Castelli in the early 1980s—and then when I went off on my own to work with photographers and artists and produce exhibitions—I attended some of the early annual meetings of Oracle. This was a conference of photography curators from around the world who gathered together supposedly to talk about the future of the field, and was funded by Sam Yanes at the Polaroid Corporation. Polaroid supported a lot of progressive photographic projects in the 1970s and ’80s. It was, to say the least, disappointing to me that most of the attendees were more excited to fuss over 19th- and 20th-century work and issues of preservation and storage. But there were a handful of us—including Andy Grundberg, who was writing for the New York Times, and Jeff Hoone from Syracuse—who did our best to raise interest in the new work we were so excited by. No one seemed to care.” (Source)
7 comments
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November 11, 2010 at 11:23 am
Zarina
Well, now we know 🙂
September 13, 2011 at 4:03 pm
Marvin Heiferman
Pete, no wonder I don’t get invited back to Oracle anymore! (And funny to come across this terrific piece, so long after it was posted, as I was struggling to find out, online, when and where Oracle was happening, this year…)
Oh well, the more I work on projects about photography’s power, uses and impact, the clearer it becomes that art museums are probably not (sad to say) the most hospitable place for that kind of discussion to take place.
September 27, 2011 at 11:17 pm
William Messer
You don’t exactly get invited to Oracle as much as invite yourself. For years I stayed away believed it was some sort of cabal to which I had no access, until Nathan Lyons, a founding spirit of Oracle, straightened me out, explaining I was exactly the sort of person Oracle wanted and needed to attend (I was curating a small, not-for-profit photography center in Ohio) and to just get in touch with whoever was the host that year and find out what do I have to do next to attend. Polariod is no longer underwriting so the principal obstacle is financial (cost of travel, room, meals, organization, scholarship contributions). It’s not only museum curators attending (although there are many, and this can mean curators of collections from the 19th century as well as those mounting exhibitions of contemporary work); there are those from smaller institutions as well as directors of dedicated photography museums, plus independent curators (as I am now). There are virtually no rules other than only one representative per institution may attend and it is not intended for commercial galleries. The meetings’ agendas are established by consensus the first night or day. It’s all very democratic and colloegial, networky, etc.
Your sleuthing was indeed patchy of late: 2009 was in Arles and 2010 was at the Dead Sea, but most Oracles include post-meetings visits to other cities/countries in the region. The next one is stateside, outside of Philadelphia, FMI (for Marvin’s information).
September 28, 2011 at 7:10 am
Marvin Heiferman
William, thanks for that heads up!
September 28, 2011 at 9:38 am
petebrook
Marvin. Thanks for stopping by. It is clear, to me at least, that museums have never been at the forefront of the debate for what photography can do. They remain focused on what photography has done. Sometimes they take a punt at what photography is doing if they have an acquisition budget. In terms of non-traditional discussions, I think that is why SFMoMA and MFAHouston are well regarded. They can hop the customary tracks for some exhibition cycles. I hope and I trust you will get back to Oracle very soon; it needs your voice!
September 28, 2011 at 9:54 am
petebrook
William. Thanks for the information and I am somewhat relieved to hear Oracle has no intentions to keep itself exclusive. The non-visibility of the event is down to its modesty and not its elitism.
Although, you now suggest that only people who can fund the trip themselves or get some support from an institution are likely to attend, so there exists a financial bar to entry but not too dissimilar to other industry gatherings. This is all very interesting and quite a relief.
Philadelphia in November, eh? I’ll be in the region, but I know I can’t commit to three days. On behalf of Marvin (if he’ll allow), who would one contact in the first instance to get some details on the event?
September 27, 2013 at 1:15 pm
gingerleefrank
Peter and Marvin,
Sorry I missed your request, Peter (failed to check “notify me” box). You can get when and where info about Oracle meetings from any of the attendees (many of whom where listed in the above blog). Philly Oracle is long gone but 2013 Oracle takes place this November excitingly in Greece – in fact, in Delphi, site of the original Oracle. Host is Benaki Museim. Contact Aliki Tsirgialou. Next one may be in St. Petersburg, Russia but that’s not certain. I’m planning to invite the Meetings back to the US for 2016.