The Doctor Rates Your Pain with Brett Littman

The Doctor Rates Your Pain is a new (hopefully) recurring feature in which MCA Denver Director & Chief Animator Dr. Adam Lerner interviews visiting artists and guests about hypothetical scenarios that might evoke pain. The featured guest today is Brett Littman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center in New York and curator of Guillermo Kuitca: Diarios, on view through September 15, 2013 at MCA Denver.



The doctor makes a hypothetical statement that might evoke pain.
The patient indicates the level of pain, on a scale of 1-10 (1= hardly noticeable, 10=unbearable)

Dr. Adam Lerner: You are working with an artist on an exhibition and the artist wants to change the exhibition after the show is hung.
Brett Littman: 8

You are working on an exhibition with an artist who doesn’t care one way or the other about what you include.
3

A collector doesn’t lend you a crucial work for an exhibition for seemingly no good reason.
10

You get a negative review of an exhibition you curated in an anonymous blog.
10

You get a negative review of one of your exhibitions in Artforum.
3

Your exhibition travels to another venue, where it gets a positive review in Artforum, but you or your institution is not mentioned.
6

Your relatives complain that your exhibitions are too highfalutin.
10 and that’s actually happened to me.

Your relatives give you suggestions for what exhibitions they would like you to do.
1

You forget to thank a major donor in your remarks at exhibition opening.
7

A major donor gives you excessive praise in the donor’s public remarks.
1

You realize after a catalogue is printed that you got the title wrong on a major work.
10

You invite your relatives to dinner with an artist and they show up 30 minutes late.
3

At the dinner with the artist and now your relatives after the opening, the waiter interrupts you three times to ask if you are enjoying your food.
9

At home, after dinner you look in the mirror and realize that you have a red sauce stain on your lapel.
9

At home, after dinner, you think you there is a chance that you left the door of the gallery unlocked.
10

Denver, June 21, 2013


image: Dr. Adam Lerner (right, in stripes) asks Brett Littman "Rate your level of pain," which is typically how MCA Denver greets guests and visiting curators. Photo by Erin Algiere.