Best Curatorial Concepts

Davin Watne closed the doors of the Dirt Gallery in March 2003, but that hasn't stopped him from continuing to curate shows. For Alias, at the Urban Culture Project's Bank gallery this past spring, Watne asked artists to create work while assuming another identity, promising never to reveal who they really were. He had been inspired by his observations of the evolution of alternate identities in the art world; for years women and other minority artists had created aliases in order to be taken seriously, but that situation has changed. "Contemporary art is searching for these outsider artists. The art world is hungry for exoticism," Watne says. "We're from Kansas. We can't be exotic." For Homecoming, at the Bank early this past summer, Watne, a '94 graduate of the Art Institute's painting department, invited former classmates who skipped town after graduation to display their work in a show that was half exhibit, half class reunion.