For a welcome moment, BAM Director and ARC Affiliate Larry Rinder took a break from his administrative duties to talk with us about his expansive vision in curating his “Hauntology” exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum.
Inspired by Jacques Derrida’s use of the term in Spectres of Marx, the exhibit was also an implicit mediation on the status of the museum as a living archive of artworks that ghost the institution that stores them. Hauntology brought together a varied array of works—from Luc Tuymans to Carrie Mae Weems, from Tadeuz Kantor to Diane Arbus—whose diverse forms and capacious content dramatized how life in the present is buoyed and shadowed by the life of the past. We were especially pleased that Larry’s co-curator Scott Hewicker could join us for the private tour and discussion which, along with the delicious reception, offered an enriching space of thoughtful exchange.