Following the Form of Exhibition Design

One aspect of the ongoing institutionalization of the arts is the emergence of academic programs designed to provide training and credentials for future curators, critics and arts administrators. Over the last decade, university art departments and independent art schools have begun to grant degrees in curatorial and critical studies. It’s too early to tell whether these fledgling programs will improve the way art is consumed by viewers and managed by institutions.

At the UCLA Hammer Museum, a mid-size gallery has been given over to a three-artist exhibition organized by Lisa Henry, a master’s candidate in the department of art’s critical and curatorial studies program. Titled “I’m Thinking of a Place,” the tightly focused show is a fairly formulaic exercise in professionalism.

It brings together four drawings and five prints made between 1991 and 1998 by three critically acclaimed African American artists: Gary Simmons, Lorna Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems. Visually, the images fit together seamlessly. Black-and-white and sepia-toned pictures create a hushed atmosphere of somber thoughtfulness. Their collective quietude has the presence of a meditative retreat.

Simpson’s “Still,” an approximately 9-by-18-foot image of a tree-encircled pond in a city park, sets the tone by giving viewers a backdrop for pleasant daydreams. Although the pretty picture’s stillness is not interrupted by any people, 10 snippets of text, printed across its surface, jerk you out of your reverie.

Each matter-of-fact passage describes the activities of other park visitors, who, like you, were looking for a little privacy. Turning viewers into voyeurs, Simpson prevents art from becoming an idealized escape from everyday life.

Likewise, Weems juxtaposes or superimposes images and texts to trigger memories that are anything but soothing. In an untitled diptych, she pairs a photograph of an empty landscape with a panel on which is printed a 19th century song about a runaway slave. Here, the psychological escape associated with art is bound up with escapes that were matters of life and death.

For their part, Simmons’ blurry images of a boarded-up doorway, a rickety water tower, an abandoned schoolhouse and a passenger train’s placard evoke the elusiveness of fading memories. After making a contour drawing of each image in pastel or chalk, the artist uses the palms of his hands to smear its crisp lines. Resembling partially erased blackboards or the charred remains of burned wood, his works on paper and vellum haunt the present like ghostly apparitions.

As a whole, Henry’s exhibition tidily maps an interior landscape. Rather than describing specific locations, its generalized images are mood-inducing stage sets that function as springboards for a range of socially charged recollections.

Well-planned, well-executed, well-installed and well-labeled, the show has the presence of an admirably completed assignment. This is appropriate. A major component of Henry’s master’s thesis, it is meant to demonstrate competence and impress professors.

However, it also resembles a highly polished version of many exhibitions that filled commercial galleries and university art museums over the last decade. This leads visitors to wonder about the scope of the curatorial program and whether it is already dated, stuck in an era when curators behaved as if they were social scientists instead of passionate connoisseurs.

Historically, art students have made names for themselves by pushing beyond what their instructors tell them. While it remains to be seen what the next generation of curators will deliver, something less cautious and rougher around the edges would be more promising.

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* “I’m Thinking of a Place,” UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood, (310) 443-7000, through April 15. Closed Mondays.