What Does Success in the Arts Look Like? - Interview XXII with Merle Radtke
/Merle Radtke - Director Kunsthalle Münster (Germany)
Merle Radtke (*1986) is an art historian, curator, and author. She worked as a curator for the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Jürgen Becker Gallery, and the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, amongst others. From 2015 to 2017, she was a member of the graduate program “Aesthetics of the Virtual“ at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HFBK Hamburg). Her work focuses on the practice and theory of the internet, (post-)digital art practices, feminism, simulation, film and video. She publishes regularly texts about contemporary art and culture in magazines and catalogs. Since July 2018, she has been the director of the Kunsthalle Münster.
***
What are your thoughts on fame in the arts?
Fame in the arts has a lot to do with visibility and often depends on your network – where are you exhibiting, who is writing about you, who has written about you, who published the latest review, who is following you on Instagram. And if you are good in this “attention game” it helps you a lot to create a visibility for your work and your thoughts. But at the same time, it is interesting to question what “fame in the arts” actually means. The art scene describes a closed circle and I would love to reach with my work and my programme people outside of this bubble.
What is your approach to rejection?
Rejection never feels quite nice and I guess everyone prefers success to rejection, but at the same time they are probably two sides of the same coin. Even if rejection or sharp criticism is tough and not always easy to endure, it might be also an opportunity to reflect on your work, your thoughts, and your decisions. And I think it is important to question your own position from time to time: Which will inevitably lead you to the question why things didn’t turn out the way you wanted them to. This could either guide you to the realization to do things differently the next time or result in a strengthened self-confidence, because there were good reasons for your decisions.
Any thoughts on income and financial stability and success?
Financial stability and success in the arts are not congruent, often unfortunately quite the opposite. Even if you are “successful” because you are curating an exhibition in a museum, running a small institution, publishing in magazines, writing for publications, exhibiting in art institutions, giving lectures at universities, it doesn’t mean you have a sufficient income to cover your living expenses. So, what you might call “fame” does not necessarily translate into financial stability. And to talk about financial success is probably way too euphemistic as the reality is often about practical everyday issues like how to make a living, how to pay the rent for your apartment, for your studio, or how to pay your health insurance. You often don’t even get a chance to think about something like retirement arrangements when you work as a freelancer in the art scene. And I think it is significant that you acknowledge labour and wage labour as two simultaneously existing categories of work, both are mutually dependent. To be frank, in the art world more than in other fields, there is this huge disproportion between creating content and payment and that includes nearly everyone who is involved: artist, curators, researchers, institutions, magazines.
Merle Radtke, Director Kunsthalle Münster
Photo © Volker Renner
How do you define success in the arts?
A lot of this has already been mentioned in my answer to the first question. Of course, success in the arts means that you have huge visibility as an institution with your collection or through the projects you are realizing, as a curator, as a writer, or as an artist. And, if that means also financial success, even better, at least that means that you can really focus on your work and don’t have to take dissatisfying jobs to finance your life. But there is also a more personal answer to this question which gives at the same time an impression of the various facets of the term “success”. First, success means to me to be satisfied with what I am doing. And as a curator it feels great when an artist is happy with the presentation we worked on together. And then the moment comes when the public sees what you have been working on for the last months and of course positive reactions are a huge success. Or if people just start a diverse discussion in front of an exhibited piece, cause there is an immediate reaction–I love to see that; however, an exhibition success does not just mean necessarily that the visitors reactions are just positive about what they are seeing but that they are engaging with what they see and share their impressions.
Do you have role models for success and who are they?
This is difficult to answer as there is not “one person” but more a mixture of people with whom I have worked with in the past, especially as there are so many ways of defining it. But I would like to mention at least one person, I had to think about quite a lot, since I took over the position as director of Kunsthalle Münster. It is Gregor J. M. Weber who is Head of the Department of Fine Arts at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam for a few years now. Back in 2007, he was director of the Gemäldegalerie in Kassel and I did my first internship in his department. I have to say, I was more involved with old masters when I started to study. Now and then, he took all the interns and trainees to the gallery after lunch. We had a little tour with him through the collection and picked three or four pieces to talk about. I was impressed by his art historical knowledge, and one could sense his passion for art. It was great that he just took the time to share his knowledge, especially as nobody had to ask for it and he certainly had a lot of other things to do. But for him personally it was an actual part of his job and important to him to take the time for these gatherings in the collection with the interns and trainees. And he conveyed the feeling that it is a huge privilege to be surrounded by such beautiful objects, which is super important for students who know at this point in their career art often solely from the books. This commitment is a rare gift as time is really scarce when you have a position like that. I experience that myself now as the director of Kunsthalle Münster. It is often not a given these days to just spend some time with your interns and trainees looking at art interested to hear their thoughts, but it is incredibly important.
Which advice on success would you give your 18-year-old self?
Don’t give up too soon and give yourself some time, if you really want something and especially if things don’t work out the way you want them to. If something is not going as expected, there might be another way. Try out different things to gain experiences and to learn about yourself. And travel a lot because there is nothing better.
Your thoughts on success in the arts and race/gender
I think we are lucky to be living in a time where more attention is being paid to questions of race and gender, but I think it still has to become more of a lived experience and not only an interesting and important theoretical topic. There should really be more honesty and transparency when it comes to the question of who really gets the job as a director, the solo exhibition, discussions about the funding, about equal pay or thoughts about equality in a space–which goes beyond including a lot of artists with different nationalities and different sexes and asks questions of hierarchies within the space: who has the best position in a space, who shows a large series of works, who just a small drawing instead. This is the reason why you have to get really deep into the structure to answer these questions with facts as it is much more complicated then it seems at first glance. Currently, it has become quite fashionable to work on topics like race and gender, but I see a risk of cultural appropriation through the privileged white (male)-centred institutions, which do not reflect their own role within the system, it provides visibility for important topics but unfortunately no real change behind the scenes or of the structure.
