Art gallery tiptoes back to live shows
Four days before singer Rufus Wainwright’s Saturday, Nov. 21, performance at Catharine Clark Gallery, there are still sound system needs being worked out and questions about lighting, and the large plexiglass folding screen that Wainwright will perform behind has to be moved into place once the piano is delivered.
But first, Catharine Clark and gallery Director Anton Stuebner are at their computers, refreshing the sf. gov website for any news about changes to gatherings because of the latest wave of coronavirus. With reopening tiers being rolled back in the Bay Area, they are concerned about whether the event will be allowed to happen.
“I’ve been in this business 30 years. This is a level of stress and uncertainty different than anything I’ve ever experienced, including the recessions,” Clark says. “There’s a constant lowlying anxiety for everyone right now.”
They will be refreshing the city’s website up until Wainwright begins his first song.
This year has been all about adapting to everevolving COVID19 safety guidelines — for the gallery, and for society. Wainwright’s soldout performance is part of the gallery’s Boxblur series ( fiscally sponsored by the San Francisco Dance Film Festival) and is the centerpiece event for Timothy Cummings’ “Muse” exhibition. The concert was in the works well before the pandemic put restrictions on inperson events.
PreCOVID, 50 to 60 tickets were to be sold for Wainwright’s performance. But now they’re operating at 25% capacity with only 22 people able to witness the concert in person, although highlights will be released online. To make up for the lost revenue, the event sought out underwriting for the performance’s $ 12,000 in expenses, a relative bargain to bring a performer of Wainwright’s stature to the gallery.
There are plans B and C at the ready if anything changes before Saturday, including the possibility of rescheduling the performance or streaming the concert to the 22 ticket buyers, but that doesn’t change how high the stakes feel. Clark jokes, “This might be the week I start spiking my coffee.”
The 5yearold Boxblur series has centered on bringing live performance into the gallery, which has become a special challenge during a pandemic when live events and gatherings are closely monitored and limited. The gallery has hosted a few successful socially distanced events this fall, with limited capacity, scheduled viewings, additional cleanings of the space, temperature checks and using contact tracing sheets when people enter the space.
On Oct. 24, San Francisco Ballet principal dancer Benjamin Freemantle
performed “Finding Me” in the gallery’s foyer for a live audience. While Freemantle danced solo in the glassedin foyer, the small audience sat on the other side of the widow, peepshow style.
And during the opening of “Muse” on Saturday, Nov. 14, Monique Jenkinson did a durational performance in her Fauxnique persona over the course of four hours, which included interacting with the exhibition’s largest feature, a humansize reproduction of a child’s paper toy theater, complete with painted curtain, proscenium arch and a backlit moon at the rear of the installation. The length of the performance allowed people to schedule viewing times on Eventbrite, with no more than 15 people allowed in the gallery at once. Part of the performance involved Jenkinson dancing behind the plexiglass screen as a fan blew confetti toward her.
“We’re following all the rules and are very mindful we have a huge responsibility to keep people safe,” Clark says. “At the same time, I feel like to the degree I’m allowed to interpret what it means to have 22 people in my space safely, I’m going to take advantage of that. I want and need it for my social and economic wellbeing, and for our audiences.”
Given the lack of live performances this year, Boxblur has taken on an added poignancy for many.
“A woman who came to Benjamin’s performance wrote how important it is for her to be able to connect, even with 6 feet of distance between chairs,” Clark says. “I saw this deep sense of people being relieved that we can be in the same space while experiencing something we can love and care about, and do it safely.”
San Francisco Dance Film Festival Managing Director Randall Heath notes that Boxblur is the only inperson programming that the festival will have this year and says, “This collaboration couldn’t be more valuable right now.”
Three days before the Wainwright concert, Clark and Stuebner are still refreshing sf. gov. There are no new developments. The gallery had to adjust one Boxblur event this month, for Nina Katchadourian’s “Monument to the Unelected,” an installation featuring fake signs for losing candidates for the presidency. The installation of the latest sign was supposed to happen before an audience but had to become a virtual event — not because of the pandemic, but owing to delays in declaring a winner in the election. While the Wainwright concert might also have to reschedule, the “Muse” art show was created and curated to be in conversation with the singer.
Cummings and Wainwright have been longtime friends and collaborators: There are several portraits of the singer in the show as well as collaborative artwork that Cummings, Wainwright and his daughter Viva created together. More than anything, though, the baroque grandiosity of the toy theater installation speaks to Wainwright’s aesthetic: As a songwriter, he has referenced everything from Shakespeare sonnets and cult cinema to Thomas Mann and gay ennui.
“I love the visual of Rufus performing, enveloped in this operatic, art, toy theater fantasy,” says Cummings.
For many, it will be as close to a traditional theater experience as they’ve been able to get since the start of the pandemic, which is not lost on Wainwright, either. “There’s something for Timothy and I about that romantic vision of the European stage that haunts us both,” he says. “It’s really almost like an altar for us.”
Given the limitations on performance venues, Wainwright feels that galleries “could once again become a great refuge” for live performance.
“It’s a dark moment on many levels, but it also feels like I’m living in the light,” Clark says. “It’s like Timothy’s moon, it’s a metaphor for all of it, finding the space to turn the light on.”