Forum 90

Systems of categorization and inevitable mislabeling, material preservation and eventual degradation, and an impulse to record in the face of inherent forgetfulness—these contradictions inform Gala Porras-Kim’s (b. 1984, Bogotá, Colombia) interest in museums and their practices. In dialogue with curators at Carnegie Museum of Art over the past two years, Porras-Kim has been trawling the museum’s database to better understand its holdings and the Carnegie Institute’s evolving cataloguing systems and acquisition history. Her findings reveal overlapping areas in the collections of Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and Carnegie Public Library, where each institution stewards their objects differently—as art, science, and information respectively. Porras-Kim proposes that art is not a fixed category, and questions the conceptual frameworks and individual subjectivities that go into presenting and understanding an object as a work of art.

Gala Porras-Kim is organized by Liz Park, Richard Armstrong Curator of Contemporary Art, and Cynthia Stucki, curatorial assistant.