Chris Gilbert's Resignation and the Politics of Curatorial Practice

In May 2006, Chris Gilbert resigned from his position at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive after the institution attempted to suppress his curatorial expression of solidarity with Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution. His resignation statement, which called for 'bringing down the US government and its imperialist system,' sparked debate about art institutions' complicity with power. Gilbert had already realized two parts of his project 'Now-Time Venezuela: Media Along the Path of the Bolivarian Process' at Berkeley, and co-curated 'Exhibiting US Imperialism and War' for the 2006 Gwangju Biennale. The essay by Peter Osborne, published in Afterall Journal 16 in November 2007, argues that the critical issue is not institutional resistance but how such political projects are actualized within a system that increasingly embraces political representation. Osborne examines three conditions: the integration of autonomous art into the culture industry, the state of institutional critique, and the displacement of left discourses into art spaces. He contends that political curation often serves to legitimate institutions and distract from market dominance, especially in the absence of effective oppositional politics. The essay references documenta 12's magazines project as an example of this new affirmative culture, and notes the historicist trend in political exhibitions focusing on the 1960s and 1970s.