Trust the Audience. MIA Viewers Respond to “More Real: Art in the Age of Truthiness”

Phantom Truck by Inigo Manglano-Ovalle

It was my great pleasure this year to be invited to go to Minneapolis Institute of Arts in residency, to capture audience interviews around the opening of the contemporary art show, “More Real: Art in the Age of Truthiness.”

During the planning process for the residency, curator Liz Armstrong spearheaded at her organization all kinds of meetings about the meaning of audience engagement in the museum context, which of course cheered my journalist and editor’s heart. It is frequently a conversation in my profession regarding trusting the audience; regarding concepts that are very new to these our times in which people “co-curate” their meaningful experiences online. But still, we were tossing things to the winds of chance and interview serendipity when we began a five-day long experience of investigating how an art show named for a concept, “truthiness” —  that means our collective preference for the little or big white (or black) lies, over verifiable facts — would hit the art-going public.

They were grand. Listen for yourself.

image: Phantom Truck by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle. Other works referenced include: Ellen’s Gift, by Iris Haussler; Lunchbreak Photos by Sharon Lockhart; Colored Vases, by Ai Weiwei.