Power to the People?

Jennifer Blessing

Kristen Lubben

Sarah Hasted

Laurel Ptak

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Yancey, what do you think about the concept for “Click!”?

I love the idea. It reminds me of the ongoing, evolving exhibition that happened after 9/11, “Here Is New York,” which was a wonderful idea of gathering all these photographs taken by a variety of people — amateurs, professionals, artists, journalists — and putting them together. There is something about photography that is essentially democratic, and I think that both of these exhibitions speak to that.

As a curator, how do you feel about the idea of “crowd-curating”?

As a regular practice, I don’t think it makes any sense, for the same reason that you have leadership as opposed to decisions being made by crowds. But I love the idea of the public interacting with the museum. I’m a big fan of anything that engages the public in looking at things and in the critical process that curators, and all art professionals, have to go through, which is looking at things and evaluating them for their artistic merit.

The Brooklyn Museum underwent a controversial reorganization of its curatorial department a few years ago, in which curators were assigned to one of two departments: exhibitions and collections. Do you think this exhibition relates to the museum’s new curatorial philosophy?

I couldn’t comment on that. There are certainly other installations and works in museums that are interactive, and I think they’re important, because however you can engage people who are not directly involved with the art world and are trying to stick a toe in is important.

What I thought you were going to ask me is whether I felt the opinions of the evaluators who are non-professionals would have the same merit as those of professionals.

What do you think about that?

On the Web site, you can see the levels of experience that the groups of evaluators have, and there was a fair amount of consensus. I’ve found that in my own experience in the gallery, very often people who consider themselves non-collectors and untrained still respond to the strongest work, because that work resonates in a certain way. It’s like delicious food or beautiful music.

What I think is interesting about the classifications on the Web site is that they are based on self-evaluation. So you have “experts,” but that’s a very flexible term.

Yes, exactly. Somebody considers himself an expert, but who knows? He might teach Photography 101 at a school.