Dave Hickey at SITE Santa Fe

Dave Hickey, art critic, author of Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy (1997), and organizer of ultra-hip exhibitions such as this year’s “Ultralounge: The Return of Social Space (with Cocktails),” isn’t typically associated with the international bureaucracy that arranges biennials. Thus it’s a bit surprising to learn he’ll be curating SITE Santa Fe’s Fourth International Biennial (July 14–Nov. 25, 2001). Titled “Beau Monde: Toward a Redeemed Cosmopolitanism, ” the exhibition will eschew many of the trappings of an international art event. “I’ll try to do an art-first, meaning-second show,” Hickey explains. “I’ll try to assemble an exhibition of works that I think may hang well together and then, after it’s up, see what it means. I’m not going into it with an ideological agenda. I am, however, going into it with an interest in showing some younger artists and some older artists. I’ve been beguiled by the way artistic habits tend to skip generations. Your dad really pisses you off, but your grandfather can’t do anything wrong. That sort of thing.” So Hickey’s twenty-eight artist show will omit many of the mid-career biennial-circuit regulars. Who’s in? The curator’s not saying, but in the past he has championed a number of Californians, from Ed Ruscha to Jeffrey Vallance.

“The thing I like to do best is install art in spaces, ” says Hickey, who used to run a gallery in Austin, Texas. “And I have a mild talent for it.” So how will Hickey’s beau monde “hang together”? “Rather than fly in artists to adapt to the site, I’ll try to adapt the site to the art,” he explains. Having recruited the LA-based German collective Graft Design to reconfigure the space, Hickey envisions his show as more than just a warehouse full of regional art. “I want to make the budget as visible as possible,” he says. Knowing Hickey, the art he selects should look good anywhere—and will look even better once he’s installed it.

—Daniel Birnbaum