"Speaking of walking, I often saw myself walking through those galleries before the museum opened. There was always something thrilling about that solitude, of walking in front of priceless artworks, all the result of complex life stories, many of which we will never fully know in-depth, made by artists who largely didn't know that their works would be hanging on the public spaces of a major museum like that, one hundred years from when they were made. Sometimes I would ask myself about the meaning of this container, and of my role in it.
This beautiful showroom of modernism, this public space that documented private creative expressions by some of the best minds known over the last hundred years, sometimes felt detached, clinical, academically remote. Its cleanliness felt oppressive.
And as much as I loved those artworks and found them inspiring, within this highly-designed, quasi-sacred architecture, I often saw myself, the art technician, as nothing but something closer to a museum label, a support mechanism. Like the household objects that take over our life, I became the subject of those museum objects. I was part of their collection. I was a forgotten wish, a handwritten crumbled piece of paper inside the darkness of the Chinese goddess."
Pablo Helguera (Mexico City, 1971) is a visual artist living in New York. His work involves performance, drawing, installation, theater, and writing. Recipient of international grants and awards, he is often considered a pioneering figure in the field of socially engaged art. He is currently Assistant Professor of Arts Management and Entrepreneurship at The College of the Performing Arts at The New School. He writes a weekly column titled Beautiful Eccentrics.