Douglas Gordon | Museum Keys

Douglas Gordon 

Museum Keys

Dublin, Ireland: The Irish Museum of Modern Art, 1992

15 × 38 cm.

Unlimited edition

If George Maciunas' collection of keys (see previous post) proposed the idea of random theft as a means to "purge the system", Douglas Gordon takes a more pointed approach, by invoking the art world. 

His 1992 work Museum Keys is a set of three printed envelopes containing a set of duplicate keys for the Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, as well as a set of blank keys, should the buyer wish to further duplicate (and distribute?) the keys. 

The Claire Fontaine collective produced a similar work (a stand-alone piece, not editioned) in 2006, called 371 Grand, which was a set of keys to open the Reena Spaulings gallery (see below). Jon Sasaki also explored similar ideas involving access and security in his work (see next two posts). 

Museum Keys is billed as an open edition but I've only come across a few copies online, accompanied by little or no information. Luckily, artist Ross Sinclair (a friend and collaborator of Gordon's) was able to send me photographs from an exhibition catalogue where he interviewed Gordon about the work, which I hope I have transcribed correctly:

Ross Sinclair: How did this work develop? 

Douglas Gordon: It came about through being in a situation that most artists find themselves in at some time. I was installing some work in a gallery last year and, as happens often, the gallery gave me a set of keys to let myself in and out of the building whenever I wanted. I couldn't help thinking how easy it would be to copy those keys. They might even have fallen into the wrong hands, if you know what I mean. 

RS: But it's not as if the wrong hands are going to the be the audience for the work. 

DG: You never know. 

RS: Who do you reckon is the audience for the work if it won't be the casual passerby? 

DG: Well, you have to aim for the audience that you anticipate. The people who will see the work in the museum, or those who might come across it later. ____ there to spend a bit of time on ideas. That's a situation that can be used to present the work which will involve those people's expectations and desires. 

RS: So what will the art lover get in this work? 

DG: They'll get a duplicate set of keys to the Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. I want to sell the keys as a cheap multiple to alter the significance of the originals. The originals are unique and valuable precisely because they're unavailable. I want them to be very available so that the more keys that go out the further the idea can travel, literally and conceptually. This element of distribution is emphasized by the fact that the multiple includes a set of blanks, so that whoever has a set of keys can go along to a key cutter and continue copying as many sets as they want. 

RS: Do you want to anchor the idea in the context of The Museum? 

DG: I hope that people who read the work will recognize the significance of the "keys to a museum". In recognizing this it can trigger off all the other ideas we might have about keys. 

RS: Yes, the key has a strong metaphorical value. Like in films and stories keys represent access, privilege, success, power, fulfillment, and so on. But the main implication seems to be a reconsideration of the status of The Museum. I mean, here we are being offered a set of keys to a repository of cultural and economic value. That's going to appear to some people as an odd thing to do. 

DG: The main focus of the work may appear to be the reconsideration that you're talking about. But the work needn't be limited to a pure critique of museumology. The motives are more pragmatic, less specific than that. I reckon that whilst I'm working in this museum I should try and do something here that might not be possible elsewhere. 

RS: So why the keys as opposed to anything else? 

DG: Out of all the museum accessories I could have chosen to work with, I chose the keys because they have this metaphorical and allegorical currency outside of, and as well in, the critique on the museum. It means that the keys can operate alongside all our ideas to do with relics.