The first ever Picasso exhibition in Ireland was held by Trinity students in a library storage room. From the 17th of May to the 30th of August 1969, the basement of the newly built Berkeley (now Boland) Library held 97 works by the renowned Spanish artist. This ambitious, groundbreaking exhibition was organised, fundraised, ticketed, and curated entirely by the student-led Trinity Arts Committee. Attracting 42,000 visitors across the summer, it featured paintings, ceramics, prints, and drawings.
“I do not know how they did it,” laughs Janet McLean, curator of Modern Art at the National Gallery of Ireland. She is also currently curating their upcoming Picasso: From the Studio exhibition, the first in Ireland since that of the Trinity students to showcase a similar breadth of Picasso’s mediums of work. The exhibition is a run-through of his life as an artist in France from 1913 until his death in 1973, bringing together a wide range of his artworks, as well as photography and audiovisual works of the artist.
I spoke with McLean about what guides her choices as a curator, and what goes into creating an exhibition space. Curation, for McLean, is primarily about connection. Exhibiting is like creating a “conversation” between pieces. In regard to the permanent collection, she feels that “it’s like organising a dinner party,” “the works are like family members” which she strives to put into a harmonious dialogue. For a temporary exhibition like Picasso: From the Studio, on the other hand, the connections are driven by a “key message” or “overarching narrative”. McLean wants to show “how Picasso evolved, and changed, and pushed himself”. Showcasing his development in “key locations that defined him,” McLean aims to display “the human side to [Picasso]” as a “collaborator,” and “as part of a bigger picture”.
Nonetheless, balance is central to curation. “Sometimes you can’t say everything you want to say in an exhibition,” admits McLean, “if you put everything in, you can’t see anything.” As such, curation becomes an act of reduction, as much as one of presentation. “I like to have breathing space in the rooms,” she reflects. This is to imbue a sense of rhythm into the exhibition. It also helps to avoid fatigue in the audience, “so that people aren’t feeling like they’re on a conveyor belt.” This reduction and rhythm allows the exhibition to remain focused, and “true to the spirit of the artist”.
This balance is also in response to technical aspects of exhibition curation. “There’s a huge amount of work in the background,” stresses McLean. There are, first, practicalities of the space which limit curatorial choices. Many factors have to be considered, such as light levels, copyright, image clearance, the colours of walls, layout, accessibility, and more. Additionally, all decisions have to be made with the approval of lenders of the artwork. “It’s a long process of many, many conversations.”
Luckily for McLean, Picasso: From the Studio has a sole lender, the Musée National Picasso-Paris, with all works, apart from two, coming from there. This is usually the case for an exhibition of a sole artist, such as McLean’s previous exhibitions centred on Giacometti in 2022, and on Mondrian in 2020. It allows things to be much more “streamlined,” a contrast to themed exhibitions which have many more lenders, whether private collectors or other museums. In these cases, the acquisition process becomes increasingly complex; “you’re negotiating, negotiating, all of the time … You have to be airtight. You have to have a really strong argument to convince [them] to lend key works.”
Playfulness is still an important facet of curation for McLean, despite technical demands and limitations. She reflects on the challenge of her 2014 exhibition Lines of Vision, held in conjunction with her book of the same name. Irish writers discussed art, and themselves each chose an artwork to be paired with their writing. This led to “the craziest mix of art that you would never have in one room in the gallery.” In response to such an exhibition, which broke all of the academic rules of curation, McLean, with the previous NGI director Sean Rainbird, printed out images of the works, laid them on the floor, and “played with them visually,” arranging them with “an element of surprise”.
Janet McLean oozes passion and enthusiasm for the art world. She sees art history and curation as a “living,” “gorgeous,” “wonderful” thing, and most of all doesn’t want people to be intimidated by it. On being asked the truly terrible question of what advice she offers to young people seeking to enter the art world, she states: “read broadly and widely.” “Keep reading, keep looking, keep curious.”
Picasso: From the Studio will be open from October 9th to February 22nd at the National Gallery of Ireland.
