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When Josh T Franco taught a minimalism seminar at Ithaca College, he had students copy an essay by Donald Judd to get them to think about how art historians understand the past with materials they have now.

Franco created his own “Scriptorium,” Latin for a room for writing, in the SU Art Museum to provoke the same feelings. He set up one part of his gallery with a table and chair, books relating to his profession as an art historian and free temporary tattoos that said “C/S,” meaning “con safos,” a way that Chicano artists like himself mark their artwork.

“What (Franco) was trying to do with this Scriptorium, in particular, was to really visualize what the transmission of knowledge, what does art history look like on a college campus,” said Melissa Yuen, interim chief curator of the SU Art Museum. “And so he’s created a space where all museum visitors can come in, engage with the books that are on view.”

Franco spent 16 months working with Yuen, finding pieces from SU’s permanent collections to put in “Scriptorium con Safos: Syracuse.” In addition to curating the collection, Franco will also perform in the Scriptorium later on in the semester. During the performance, he will transcribe these books, but students are free to come and participate at any time to look at a common art history practice.

“It’s definitely not theatrical, so it’s very durational like there’s no beginning or end; it can totally be framed as very boring,” Franco said. “It’s literally: read a part of a book, transcribe it in my own hand and then read the transcription and do it over and over again for two hours. It could be three hours. I could do a marathon one day.”

When Franco started envisioning the exhibit, Yuen and the museum allowed him to go through the whole university’s collection. He explored different thematic throughlines from what the university already had.

Maxine Brackbill | Photo Editor

The SU Art museum’s new display aims to explore the idea of what an art historian does. Josh T Franco combines his own work with SU’s collection for the exhibit, which will be on display for the entire academic year.
Maxine Brackbill | Photo Editor

“I wrote all the section labels and determined what the sections are in. They’re kind of a random group of topics,” Franco said. “And I’m just eager for how other people make sense of that, students who are interested in thinking about that.”

Many of the pieces contain the colors black and red, Yuen noted during the tour. She said that this choice called back to one of the first pieces in the exhibit that Franco created. The piece has two panels with these colors and a quote from Heinrich Wölfflin, who championed the practice of compare and contrast, a foundation of the art history profession.

Franco used this to highlight one of the main ways art historians conduct their work and further wanted to ponder the questions of the advancements in technology like phones.

Yuen hosted a public tour of Franco’s exhibit on Wednesday as an introduction of their work together through an in-person and live-streamed tour. Museum patrons from anywhere could join the livestream, meaning more people could connect with Franco’s message.

“We are always trying to share the work that we do here at the museum with as wide of a public as possible, we recognize that it is a weekday launch on the SU campus and may not be the most accessible to members of the greater Syracuse community,” Yuen said.

These kinds of outreach programs are important to reaching a wider audience. People who joined were from central New York or even as far as Austin, Texas. Franco was able to join from his home in Washington D.C.

JD DiFabbio, a non-profit development consultant based in Austin, follows his work because she loves how he brings a bunch of research into it. She said his art pieces are not too dense because he incorporates humor, which she was able to see virtually.

“Unfortunately, I won’t be able to visit the SU Art Museum from Austin … but now I feel like I walked through the space with the curator, which is a richer experience than seeing still photographs of the installation,” DiFabbio said.

The exhibition is on view for museum patrons the whole academic year, Yuen said. Franco is curious how the public will respond, beyond just others in his field. He wonders if the variation between his own work and other works in the collection will be clear to people who are not familiar.

“I’m not the curator, and I am an artist,” Franco said. “I use four of my own works throughout the show among the rest of the permanent collection. I am curious how that reads or is it very clear, institutionally, this art is on loan from an artist, or is this a permanent collection?”

Published on September 6, 2023 at 11:32 pm

Contact Rosina: rlboehm@syr.edu