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HUO How do you see the Pompidou today?
PH I don’t go there very often. I once made the mistake of going back as an adviser. I now no longer go back, as a principle.
HUO How does a space like the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, where they’ve always operated a bar, cinema, and exhibition spaces, compare with the multifaceted, interdisciplinary role you envisioned for the Kulturhuset in Stockholm?
PH I think a collection is absolutely fundamental. The failure of André Malraux’s Maisons de la Culture can be traced to the fact that he was really aiming at theater. He wasn’t thinking about how to build a museum, and that’s why his cultural institution foundered. The collection is the backbone of an institution; it allows it to survive a difficult moment—like when the director is fired. When Valéry Giscard d’Estaing became President, there were some rather strong-willed people who asked why the Pompidou was exposing itself to all these problems with donors. Why not just leave the collection in the Palais de Tokyo and build a Kunsthalle without a collection? There was lots of pressure to go in that direction. I managed to convince Robert Bordaz that that would be dangerous, and we saved the collection and the project.
HUO So you are against the idea of separating collections from exhibitions?
PH Yes, otherwise the institution has no real foundation. Later, when I was director of the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle in Bonn, I saw how fragile a space devoted to contemporary art could be. The day someone decides that it’s too expensive, it’s all over. Everything is lost, almost without a trace. There’ll be a few catalogues, and that’s it. The vulnerability of it all is terrifying. But that’s not the only reason I talk about collections with such passion. It’s because I think the encounter between the collection and the temporary exhibition is an enriching experience. To see an On Kawara show and then to visit the collection produces an experience that is more than the sum of its parts. There’s a curious sort of current that starts to flow—that’s the real reason for a collection. A collection isn’t a shelter into which to retreat, it’s a source of energy for the curator as much as the visitor.
HUO You’ve always insisted on the importance of a serious scholarly monograph to accompany an exhibition. This seemed especially important in the 1980s when you mounted an impressive series of retrospectives of artists who had meant a lot to you over the years.
PH Yes, it was wonderful to have the opportunity to do so. I loved Tinguely’s retrospective in Venice at the Palazzo Grassi and Sam Francis’ retrospective in Bonn. Those shows were both developed in close dialogue with the artists and marked great moments in the history of my friendship with them.
HUO What other exhibitions do you remember most fondly?
PH I did a show called Futurismo & Futurismi in 1986, which was the first show in Italy dedicated to the Futurists (Palazzo Grassi, Venice). It was divided into three parts: Futurism’s precursors, Futurism itself, and its influence on artistic production until 1930. The exhibition is considered a classic, thanks in part to the catalogue, which reproduced all the works shown, and included over 200 pages of documentation. 270,000 copies were sold. The [Giuseppe] Arcimboldo show we did was dedicated to the memory of Alfred Barr, which really upset the Italian press, who called him a “cocktail director.” In 1993 I installed the Duchamp show at the Palazzo Grassi, grouping documents and works together in sections devoted to such topics as the readymade, the Large Glass (1915–1923), and the “portable museum.”
HUO What about Claes Oldenburg’s great happening, Il Corso del Coltello [The Knife’s Course], at the Campo dell’Arsenale in Venice in 1985?
PH Oldenburg does everything himself. The exhibition organizer becomes a kind of troubleshooter, but it was a great event. One of the main props of the performance, Knife Ship, 1985, is now at LA MoCA. I played the role of a boxer, Primo Sportycuss. He buys an ancient costume that combines St Theodore and a crocodile, with which he confronts the chimera of San Marco. Frank Gehry played a barber from Venice; Coosje van Bruggen played an American artist who discovers Europe. The whole thing went on for three nights and there was a lot of improvisation. We had a good time.
HUO In 1980 you were asked to head the project to build a new contemporary art museum in Los Angeles, which became the LA MoCA. How did that get started?
PH A group of artists, including Sam Francis and Robert Irwin, wanted to start a contemporary art museum. The artists asked me to come and work with them. I got along very well with them, less well with the patrons; there was very little financial support. The first exhibition, in 1983, was called The First Show, and consisted of paintings and sculptures from 1940–1980, drawn from eight different collections. It was an effort to examine what it meant to collect art. I did a second show called The Automobile and Culture (1984), a survey of the history of cars as objects and images that included 30 actual cars. I tried to raise money for four years. I finally had to leave because I was no longer practicing my profession. I had become a fundraiser instead of a museum director.
HUO After you were back in Paris, you founded L’Institut des Hautes Etudes en Arts Plastiques, in 1985, a laboratory-school, with Daniel Buren. Can you tell me a little about this project?
PH It was a kind of café, a place where people could meet every-day, and where there was no real structure or authority figure. It grew out of a discussion I had with the mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac. We nominated four professors: Buren, Sarkis, Serge Fauchereau, and myself. Including the time it took to put the “school” together, this project lasted ten years. Then the city of Paris suddenly decided to put an end to it. While it lasted, we invited artists, curators, architects, filmmakers, all of whom came. There were only 20 students per year and we were all together for a year. The “students” were all artists who had already finished art school; they were actually referred to as artists, not students. They each got a stipend. We did great things together—including going on an excursion to Leningrad where we did a site-specific show, and building a sculpture park in Taejon, South Korea. It was a great experience for me.
HUO Who were some of your students?
PH Absalon, Chen Zhen, Patrick Corillon, Jan Svenungsson, among others.
HUO What were your most significant exhibitions when you took the position at Bonn’s Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle in 1991?
PH I opened with five shows, one of which was Niki de St Phalle’s retrospective (1992); the other, Territorium Artis [Territorium Artis. Schlüsselwerke der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts (Territory Art. Key Works of the Art of the Twentieth Century), 1992], a show of key works that marked decisive stages in the history of 20th-century art. It ranged from Auguste Rodin and Michail Wrubel to Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, and Hans Haacke. I also did a Sam Francis retrospective, a show called Moderna Museet Stockholm Comes to Bonn (The Great Collections IV: Moderna Museet Stockholm comes to Bonn, 1996), in which we showcased the Moderna Museet’s collection, and a similar one with MoMA’s collection (The Great Collections I: The Museum of Modern Art, New York. From Cézanne to Pollock, 1992).
HUO From your perspective, what does the 1990s art world look like?
PH I see little coherence, something of a crisis. But also moments of great courage and, most importantly,
