Exhibition Plan

Primary Information

Exhibition Title: What Is a Trade? Donald Fels and Signboard Painters of

South India

Exhibition Dates: September 13, 2008 –

January 18, 2009

Coordinating Curator: Rock Hushka

Originating Institution: Tacoma Art Museum

Additional Information

Gallery location at Tacoma Art Museum: Annie’s Gallery

Approximately how many objects and what medium? 16 large-scale

paintings; oil enamel on aluminum

Rough range of dates for the artwork? All paintings created in 2005

Brief Description:

Northwest artist Donald Fels has been creating work around the connections
between trade and culture for over a decade. For this project, Fels took as his
conceptual starting point the Portuguese explorer Vasco Da Gama’s voyages
to India as a spice trader. Fels commissioned sign painters in India to
collaborate with him to create 16 large enamel-on-metal panels that examine
the legacy of trade in India and how trade impacts cultures and populations
beyond the simple exchange of goods.

Exhibition publication citation: Bell, Greg, Donald Fels, and Samuel K.

Parker. What Is a Trade? Donald Fels and
Signboard Painters of South India,
Seattle: University of Washington Press,
2008.

Tour Schedule: Northwest Museum of Arts and

Culture, Spokane
May 2 – June 29, 2008
Hoffman Gallery, Lewis and Clark
College, Portland
January 21 – March 18, 2010 (tentative)

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Questions

What are the key ingredients of this exhibition that make it right for Tacoma
Art Museum?
 Don Fels is a Northwest artist.
 This exhibition is part of the Northwest Perspective Series, which
provides scholarly insight into the work of established regional
artists. Don Fels has been creating artwork in the Northwest since
1974. He had an exhibition at Tacoma Art Museum in 1994. Called
Trading Stories, the exhibition was an early investigation into trade.
Fels is particularly well known for his public artwork.
 What Is a Trade? forms an imaginative pairing with Oasis: Western
Dreams of the Ottoman Empire from the Dahesh Museum of Art,
which will be on view simultaneously. Both exhibitions address
Western perspectives on and representations of the East. Both raise
questions about how these views affected and continue to affect
relationships and cultural exchange between the West and the East.
 The exhibition considers the process of collaboration and as
continues a theme in recent exhibitions (Chuck Close, the Saint
John’s Bible, the work of Dale Chihuly).

What is the value of this exhibition to the Tacoma Art Museum visitor and
community?
 Visitors will learn about a Northwest artist and see how his work is
situated in a global context.
 The exhibition investigates trade, which affects everyone, but may
be of particular interest to this region since Tacoma and Seattle both
have major international ports that serve as gateways to Asia.
 The exhibition provides an opportunity to examine our notions of
history. This project uses historical events as a means for
investigating contemporary issues of trade and cultural exchange. It
questions our received versions of history and challenges us to ask
questions about whose history, whose point of view, and whose
agenda is represented in a particular historical narrative.
 The exhibition examines and challenges ideas of collaboration and
art-making.

What essential understandings do we want a person to take from this

exhibition?
 Art can be employed as a means of cultural critique. This project is
not about self-expression, or formal considerations. The paintings
themselves are just one aspect of the project. Just as ideas
generated by the paintings and the process of making them are as
important to the artist as the end results. This is one of the reasons
Don chose to work in a medium that is associated with commercial
art rather than fine art.
 Art may be made collaboratively and by people other than the
artist. This example of collaboration highlights the value of equal
exchange and cooperation.

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  Tacoma and the Northwest are part of a larger world of global
interactions that affect each of us. As individuals, what we buy and
consume has an impact on others.
 The histories we are taught are constructed from a particular point
of view and often have a cultural, national, or personal agenda. A
more complex story usually comes to light when these histories are
questioned and explored further or from other perspectives.

How will museum visitors reach the desired “essential understandings” of

the exhibition?
 Most of the paintings are quite narrative; many employ a
combination of graphic narrative and text to illustrate a story.
 Wall and label text will be essential to help tell the complete story of
this project and provide context, especially regarding the
collaborative process, the story of Vasco da Gama, and the tradition
of billboard painting in India.
 The catalogue should be available for use in the gallery. It offers
multiple perspectives on this project, including Don Fels’s own
writing about the project.
 Other possible ideas include: a reading area in the gallery; photos of
the painters working as part of the exhibition layout.

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