In her wide-windowed office at Carnegie Museum of Art that looks onto Carnegie Mellon University and Phipps Conservatory, the 2004 Carnegie International curator Laura Hoptman talked recently about the exhibition taking form one floor above.

	Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Laura Hoptman is the curator for the 2004 Carnegie International. Click photo for larger image. Related articles: The Carnegie International artists Schedule of Carnegie International Events Festival of Firsts washes over Pittsburgh Schedule of Festival of Firsts events

"When I was a kid, I looked up in the sky and said, 'We'll never know how far this goes.' And that's, I guess, the beginnings of everybody's questioning, and the beginnings of great scientists' questioning. And their method is to gather empirical evidence. And, indeed, that's how artists are doing it, too. They're trying to puzzle out the same problems, some using scientific strategy. But others go on faith."

Citing this easy-to-relate-to experience, Hoptman offers an avenue of entry into the 54th installation of the most celebrated international art exhibition in the Americas, paradoxically de-mystifying the often foreboding universe of contemporary art while infusing the potential viewer's expectations with an overlay of wonder.

The exhibition she's spent the past three years researching and organizing opens Saturday. While the names of the 38 participating artists were released months ago, a large portion of the approximately 500 works of art to be displayed is an unknown, having been created specifically for this exhibition.

Hoptman came to Pittsburgh from The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she had been an assistant curator of the Department of Drawings. She began her global travels for the International after Sept. 11, 2001, and soon observed that the changed mood and thinking that she'd experienced as a Manhattan resident and witness to the tragic day were reflected in some of the most thought-provoking artwork she saw.

Lucid, smart, opinionated, her words animated by italics and exclamation marks, Hoptman discusses the theoretical constructs underlying her exhibition and the nitty-gritty involved in pulling it off with equal aplomb.

In the following interview, she answers questions about the show and throws in a few surprises.

Question: The exhibition has to do with the concept of "ultimates." What does that refer to?

Answer: They're the questions that don't have answers. Like, How far [does] the universe [go]? Is there something after death? What's the nature of the human spirit?

We're talking about these larger issues that are about humans, not necessarily about Americans, or not necessarily about Chinese, or not necessarily about Democrats or Republicans or black people or Asians or ... They're not about specifics; we are talking macro and not micro.

I was very influenced by this book by Terry Eagleton called 'After Theory' and what [he] says at the end of his introduction: 'At just the point that we have begun to think small, history has begun to act big.' His call in that book is for culture to rise up and meet the challenge. And I thought, 'OK, that's a challenge I can understand.'

Q: That's a big order. How do you go about making it happen?

A: Big exhibitions like this are an enormous struggle ... but the main struggle is how to make a contemporary art exhibition relevant to a community -- Pittsburgh community, Pennsylvania regional community, and in this case the world also. That's a heck of a big community to make it relevant for.

That's the kind of thing that we search for -- how to make this an exhibition that people might need on a certain level. ... So I was struck by [Eagleton's comments] because I felt the same way, that history was beginning to act big and somehow this exhibition had to be a part of that. And I thought, 'Well, what are the things that are consuming us, consuming me, regular people? And maybe those things are consuming artists as well.

And indeed a lot of interesting artists were grappling with the same issues we all grapple with -- a kind of powerlessness, a desire to try to find some answers.

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Laura Hoptman, curator of the 2004 Carnegie International, studies some Anne Chu sculptures as the Carnegie Museum of Art prepares for the exhibition's Saturday opening. Click photo for larger image.

Q: That seems to be a switch from the recent emphasis on the everyday and the banal.

A: There's a metaphorical quality to everyday notions that broaden out to have larger implications. But what I chose to emphasize in this exhibition are ambitious works that wrestle with big ideas in a head-on fashion.

For example, you're not going to see a crucifixion in this exhibition, but [you will see] art that has to do with spirituality and belief systems.

All art -- great art -- has to do with these big issues. I'm not saying that it doesn't. It's just a switch of focus for this particular International, and for this particular moment in the United States.

Q: It sounds like a pretty intense presentation.

A: We've got a lot of difficult work in the exhibition. ... Looking at this exhibition, there's more problematic and more controversial work than I had expected, number one, and, number two, than I had originally sought out because in my curatorial history this is not the kind of work I'm usually associated with or was interested in.

That's because my exhibition history really resides in the 1990s, when there was a different feeling in this country and there was a different kind of art that was popular. To a certain extent, yes, it's my point of view of what's happening in the world today, but to a certain extent it's also the world today and what artists are producing. And artists are producing -- not in general but in some of these specific cases -- work that's much more difficult, that's much more controversial if you want, problematic, much more ambitious in a certain way, work that takes certain risks.

Q: Can you give some examples?

A: Araya Aasdjarmrearnsook, this middle-aged artist from Chiang Mai [Thailand], blew me away. It's horrific for me but also enormously interesting. This is a person who talks to the dead -- this is her thing. She's convinced. This is not an empirical experiment that she does. She does it over and over again because she has faith that she's reaching these souls who have died, and I think she's trying, in those works, to transfer that faith to us.

It's very different than Carsten Holler, who's [applying a scientific methodology and experimenting with] chemicals to try to recapitulate the feeling of love on a chemical basis.

And then there are the ideologues or the anti-ideologues ... who are grappling with 'why are we who we are?' through the language of politics -- not specific political issues, but ideology, the way that Neo Rauch uses the language of Socialist Realism of his youth to interpret his dreams, if you will. And then there's Harun Farocki ... great, great independent filmmaker, who has been collecting video footage over the past 10 years -- television and film footage I guess, media footage -- of remote control weapon systems, systems that take the moral onus out of bombing somebody. His tapes are about that disconnect between technology and humanity.

He's an example of being an empiricist, and he's an artist who is also deeply involved in ideological issues, political issues if you will.

Anne Chu has this bronze figure in a peaked cap dressed in a flowered costume standing on a stump. So I immediately said Green Man ... the [Western] notion, of course, is connected to Pan and also to pagan rites. Mr. Natural, nature guy, right? And she said, 'Oh yeah, that's a Filipino figure.' I said. 'Wow. But can I also say he's a Green Man?' She said, 'Sure.' Because, in fact, all of her works have that kind of slippage. She's a big science fiction fan, so some of this ... is Philip K. Dick, as far as I can see, I mean really alien looking. But also some are probably based on Han Dynasty figures. So we're talking about archetypes here.

Q: So some of this work is going to fairly straightforwardly reflect these "universals" while some will be rather nuanced?

A: Metaphor and allegory are rife in this exhibition. To a certain extent this notion of commentary upon something is not in this exhibition. These are works that are things, they're not about things. By and large.

The artist Mangelos, whose work spans from the '50s to the 1980s, is definitely commentary. He writes these pseudo manifestos about the age of functionality that has taken over the age of metaphor -- at least for him. And God bless him, I would have been like this, too. He was born right before the Second World War, so he grew up in Fascist Croatia and then, of course, he had that kind of modified Socialist system under Tito. That was his entire life. So who could blame him for saying that technology and fact have replaced poetry and metaphor for good? And this was sort of his absurdist conclusion, and he created these manifestos, these pieces of art, that were manifestos that said exactly that.

It's pure function, no belief, and, of course it's highly ironic. So it's commentary on something -- although he put his money where his mouth is and created these manifestos. They're not artworks with commentary, they're actual things: This is the manifesto on energy, this is the manifesto on non-belief, this is the manifesto on no art. So to a certain extent, I can justify my notion that these are things as opposed to commentaries about things.

Q: I see there are abstract paintings in the exhibition, something we're not used to.

A: There's a resurgence of a high modernist ideal. ... I was very jazzed by these artists who decided to be purely abstract, and I couldn't find very many. There are two in the show. Eva Rothschild has a kind of hybrid abstract figurative vocabulary, as does Jim Lambie, but then you have Tomma Abts. I was just thrilled to see those pictures, they're so unrelenting, they're absolutely non-objective. It's so exciting. Why? Because this is "discredited," no? But there she is, again because SHE BELIEVES!

Q: But it's also because you, as curator, believe.

A: Yes, also, but I found her, and I think she's terrific. Very doctrinaire, interesting artist. Doctrinaire using the language of art, not doctrinaire using the language of politics like Mangelos. But using the language of art. All the tools she needs are paint and canvas.

In graduate school, my contemporary art education [ended with] the abstract expressionists. We went on to learn [more], but I went to a very conservative school and that was where history ended in the '80s. The '60s would still be created as history.

I just remember we really scoffed at the post-war Americans, particularly with this notion that a painting could be an archetypical example of the suffering of the world. That [Adolph] Gottlieb could dare to say that he's painting not just a nuclear explosion but summing up a kind of existential feeling, or that Barnett Newman had the hubris to say that he was painting, in a certain way, God with a vertical line. I mean, where do these guys get off? It was just unbelievable.

And you know more and more, over the past couple of years, I've been thinking, 'Wow, wouldn't it be great -- I'm not saying that they did it -- wouldn't it be great to have that kind of ambition again, for contemporary art?' And just using the limited language of art, of abstraction. It morphed into somebody like Frank Stella and Minimalism and that kind of notion of the sublime that we got in the mid '70s with the earth artists -- male, very male attitudes.

Q: So you picked up that line of thinking and reconstituted it?

A: I threw aside all those blinders, cultural studies blinders, and asked, 'Well, is there anybody going for it with the language of art?'

Q: And the answer was?

A: Yes. And it turns out they're women -- I think that's interesting. Abts, Rachel Harrison -- they're talking about seeing as a vehicle for enlightenment. Wow! It's like those guys, post-war guys, in a sense. In a sense.

It really infused me with hope. We're not lying down, we're not, we're not ... [she pauses, then softly] I don't know.

Q: Just before leaving MoMA you launched your exhibition "Drawing Now: Eight Propositions," which was called "a trailblazing event for an art world that has sorely needed one" by Peter Schjeldahl in the Nov. 4, 2002, New Yorker. And The Village Voice's Jerry Saltz wrote, "A good half of 'Drawing Now' stands as a rebuttal to those who say contemporary art is in the dumps. It is proof that large-scale surveys don't have to be bland, preachy or prim." So you seem to have gained a reputation for risk-taking that pays off.

A: This is an art world thing, but I wanted this particular show this time to be a platform, a magnet for the cognoscenti to see something they've never seen before.

Q: You've invited a large number of artists to submit new work for the exhibition. Is that at all problematic?

A: Saul Fletcher, for example, usually creates one new work a year. He created 20 new pieces for the International. If he has the guts to put out the new work, then I should have the guts to show it, and Pittsburgh should -- and they do, this I know -- Pittsburgh will have the open heart to accept these things, even though they're not tried and true. They're not. Not one of them. Not one of them is tried and true. Not one thing in this exhibition can I say, 'Well, it's all completely been sanctioned so we have no problem. New York loved it, Pittsburgh's going to love it. London loved it, so Pittsburgh's going to love it.' No. New York hasn't seen it. London hasn't seen it. Pittsburgh hasn't seen it. We're all going to be in this one together.

Q: Are you worried about it?

A: There's confidence. I have a certain kind of confidence in what we're doing. Put it this way: I have supreme confidence at this point that I am representing the artists the way they want to be represented. Do I have my hands firmly on the reins? Well, it's really been a very collaborative process here. [Laughs.] A much more experimental show than the last one. I don't think it's better, I'm not saying it's better, I really am not. But I can say it's more experimental.

This, of course, is not the case with Robert Crumb, [Lee] Bontecou and Mangelos [each of whom is featured with a concentration of work within the larger exhibition].

Q: How did you become interested in such an esoteric profession?

A: I have wanted to be a museum curator ever since I was a tiny child. I grew up in Washington, D.C., and we went to the museums every weekend, and it was my joy. It's among my first memories. I loved painting. I loved art.

I suppose my interest in contemporary art started with the opening of the Hirshhorn [Museum and Sculpture Garden, part of the Smithsonian], and I don't know when it opened. I think it was '68 or '69. ... It was a long time ago, and I was not old. And I was appalled, actually. And I decided that contemporary art really needed me, so that was when I decided that I was going to be a contemporary art curator.

I remember my elementary school was interviewed on local television about what we wanted to do when we grew up, and I said I wanted to be an archaeologist or an art historian. And they were like, 'What?' I really knew very specifically, and in high school I took this advance placement exam in art history that had never been given in suburban Virginia before. I just never wanted to be anything else.

I went to Williams College because of the art history program and then I went directly to the Institute of Fine Arts [New York University]. I'm enormously lucky because I ended up being [a contemporary art curator].

Q: What do you hope to accomplish with this exhibition?

A: I would like to make a connection with the public. Not with everybody -- I know I can't. But if this exhibition, if something in this exhibition can make a connection to the public, then we've succeeded. It's as simple as that. Sure, I'd like to educate everybody and convert them all to contemporary art mavens.

It's that moment, when you see something that's just right, and you go, 'Yeah.' That epiphanic moment.