Sydney Briggs, Amy Brost, and Mike Gibbons Interview December 2019

Interview

Sydney Briggs, Amy Brost, and Mike Gibbons interviewed by Glenn Wharton, December 11, 2019.

Sydney Briggs, Amy Brost, and Mike Gibbons are respectively the collections associate registrar, assistant media conservator, and audio visual technician at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This interview focuses on their work for the 2019 installation of Joan Jonas’s Mirage from each of their professional points of view and how that differed from when the work was installed in 2009.

Transcript

• “Sydney Briggs, Amy Brost, and Mike Gibbons interviewed by Glenn Wharton, December 11, 2019 (Interview Transcript).” Joan Jonas Knowledge Base, Artist Archives Initiative, 2021.

Abstract

This interview begins with each staff member describing their typical role in researching and installing media installations in the museum, then their specific parts in installing Mirage [0:08–17:22]. Gibbons walks through the decision-making process for determining audio visual equipment, describing Jonas’s involvement in regards to monitor and projection sizes, and points out variation from 2009 to 2019 before having to leave the interview [04:28–12:27]. At this point, Briggs touches on the fact that there are several levels of installation when it comes to a large-scale media installation. One of the big differences between 2009 and 2019 is that the room for the later installation is much smaller [06:00–07:32]. Brost jumps into the conversation to speak about her experience working with a conservation team who knows the work and artist well. This helped them to install and document the work successfully while updating the installation instructions to reflect new understandings of the work [12:56–15:26]. Wharton then asks Brost to expand on her specific decision-making in terms of media migration, specifics of the monitors and projectors, placement of objects in the room, etc. Brost reveals that the chalk drawing on the stage was newly recreated for this installation [15:28–17:22]. Next, Brost and Briggs describe what it was like working with Jonas and her studio, specifically on arranging elements in the space and creating primary groupings. One example Brost gives was the placement of the two CRTs May Windows and Good Night, Good Morning [17:25–23:28]. Briggs and Brost also describe what it was like to have Jonas in the space for her first and second inspections of the installation, diving deeper into their collaboration with an artist at the museum to make creative decisions for a site-specific piece. During this portion of the conversation, the two staff members recall the differences in Jonas’s approach to the installation from 2009 and 2019, like how the hopscotch drawing was created and Jonas’s use of color filters in 2009 but not in 2019 [23:48–37:20]. This prompts Wharton to ask if MoMA would have the right to reinstall the work the same way from the first installation for conservation purposes, or if they must go with the artist’s latest set of decisions [37:21–40:55]. From here, Briggs and Brost comment on other physical aspects of the installation such as room dimensions, lighting, wall color, and labels, and they relay these decisions were made [40:46–46:35]. Wharton then asks Briggs and Brost, from both a registrarial and a conservation point of view, to touch on the kind of documentation the museum would ordinarily create for the collections management database that would correspond to an installation like this. He also asks how that documentation would be used by staff in the future when the piece gets reinstalled [46:36–55:02]. Along these lines, Wharton inquires if the staff embeds questions into their documentation and if they currently have any specific concerns about the installation that future staff should know about [55:23–56:26]. The interview ends with Brost and Briggs mentioning interesting aspects about the video files that MoMA has and the documentation of Jonas’s hopscotch chalk drawing [56:30–1:01:13]. 

Related Materials

• Joan Jonas, Mirage, 1976/1994/2005. Installation Documentation, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2019.

• “Collection 1940s–1970s. 418: Joan Jonas’s Mirage.” The Museum of Modern Art, New York.