Hannah Cohen
For nearly as long as there has been art, there have been technicians in the background who enabled the artist to realize her creative vision—from those who prepared paint to those who quarried marble, made canvas, built galleries, and constructed museums. The size and scope of contemporary art, however, have made these technical specialists even more critical to the creative process—and more of a part of it. It is the work of these craftspeople—from the fabricators, riggers, preparators, and crane operators who install massive pieces of modern art right on up to the engineers and architects who design and build great museums—that 2022 Harvard Horizons Scholar Hannah Cohen seeks to highlight in her research.
“When you go into a gallery and you see a Monet,” she says, “that painting is only there because there’s an architectural space engineered to support it. The spaces put in place the conditions of possibility for the artworks to exist. And a lot of the craft and art of engineering museums and fabricating artworks involve the individuals who were part of that process making their work disappear.”
As a particularly prominent example, Cohen, a PhD student in art, film, and visual studies, points to Shibboleth, a 2007 installation at London’s Tate Modern Museum by the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo. The piece consisted of a quite prominent 548-foot-long rift in the floor of the Museum’s cavernous Turbine Hall. The effect on visitors was arresting. Critics and the public admired the work as a commentary on modernism and the cracks in British society over the issue of immigration. Some had safety concerns. (The fissure was, in one place, large enough for a small child to fall into.) What was perhaps most notable about the response, however, was the curiosity about the technical aspects of the piece. How on earth was Salcedo able to create such a large rift in the massive space?
She didn’t, says Cohen. Or, more accurately, she didn’t do it alone.
“It was a huge problem,” she says, “one that was ultimately solved by an engineer who worked for the British multinational firm Ove Arup & Partners, which was the company that had engineered the Tate Modern in the first place. He figured out how to crack the floor through this really careful collaboration with the artist. He doesn’t want anyone to know how he did it, but he says that when he dies, his work with Salcedo will be the thing he’s most proud of.”
Whether or not they can figure out how Salcedo’s engineer cracked the Tate, Cohen wants viewers to “see behind the curtain” to where art is created and appreciate the contributions of the technicians—who range from blue-collar workers to executive engineers—who are part of that process. Her goal is to normalize the inclusion of people who might not usually consider themselves academics or aesthetes in the conversation about art.
“A person who works in an autobody shop can appreciate an artwork,” she says. “I want to help create a more democratic way of thinking about art that brings in new voices and doesn't lose any of the intellectual sophistication.”