Secret exhibition 1: ON FIRE

The exhibition begins with a reproduction of Los Angeles County Museum on Fire, a painting from 1965–68 by Ed Ruscha. The County Museum opened in 1965, and it was not on fire at that time. Ruscha took a series of photographs of the museum from a helicopter, intending to create a realistic and architecturally accurate representation of the institution—but set on fire. In an interview a few years later, Ed Ruscha explained: “Around the time I was painting this picture, I had some personal gripes about the art world in general. I felt like museums were not really doing their jobs when it came to opening their doors to contemporary art. I didn’t have a hatred for museums, but maybe I had a healthy distrust of them. So I guess part of this painting grew out of that.”

Alternatively, the exhibition could begin with a song by Alicia Keys: “Girl on Fire.” The singer-songwriter co-wrote the song with Jeff Bhasker and Salaam Remi. Various versions of the song have been produced, with some including new fragments of lyrics, but the original opens the pre-chorus with the lines: “She got both feet on the ground, and she’s burning it down.”

The exhibition could also start with a selection of news stories about art institutions that have caught fire: the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, the National Art Gallery in Abkhazia (Georgia), the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, the Glasgow School of Art (which suffered two fires), and the National Museum in Jakarta. Press coverage often included images of destruction. Remy Demytrie, the gallery director of the National Art Gallery in Abkhazia, said, “It went up in flames in seconds.”

This exhibition was presented at Index during CALL IT MUSEUM as part of a program of secret exhibitions. Some visitors found these exhibitions, located in a secret space created specially to define other exhibitional temporalities and ways to understand curatorial and institutional practice.