Abstract
In 1994, artist Renée Green rendered the Pat Hearn Gallery as an open-ended site to study shifting taste cultures in New York City’s SoHo. The project tested the commercial gallery as a potential ‘contact zone’ (Mary Louise Pratt), where cultures meet and grapple with each other in asymmetrical relations of power. By embracing curatorial and museological tactics, she activated long-standing issues regarding the representation of race, first by ‘curating’ an exhibition of real and mimetic historical artefacts and second by refashioning the gallery as a venue for events. This article discusses how exhibitions may or may not facilitate contact zones. Focusing on postmodern ‘hipness’ in the 1990s, I argue that Green’s framing of the gallery as a site of trendiness complexifies Pratt’s idea of the contact zone as well as more classic sociological theories of class.
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