Page - 134 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

134 siting futurity In issuing an invitation to Anderson, Sharp did not reckon with the fact that, unlike the two previous curators in the se- ries — pop art artist Ed Ruscha, who put together The Ancients Stole All Our Great Ideas in 2012, and Edmund de Waal, who is best known for his porcelain ceramics and his memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010) and who assembled During the Night in 2016 — Anderson had no previous experience with curato- rial work. Working together with his partner, fashion designer, writer and actor Juman Malouf, who also does not speak much German, Anderson began the project with typically grand ambi- tions. As reported in the New York Times, “Mr. Anderson wrote in the exhibition catalog that he hoped the show might unlock some new way of seeing not just the museum’s collection, but also ‘the study of art and antiquity’” (Delistraty 2018). How- ever, the couple soon began to appreciate the daunting nature of the task they were facing. After “digging through 4.5 million works — most of which are stored in a warehouse near Vien- na’s airport,” they ended up selecting over 400 objects, many of which were kept in storage and had never before been displayed (ibid.). As Sharp related to the New York Times, “[a] project that was meant to take two and a half weeks took closer to two and a half years.” For his part, Anderson described the exhibition in his opening-night speech as “the culmination of several years of patient, frustrating negotiation, bitter, angry debate, sometimes completely irrational confrontation, and often Machiavellian duplicity and deception” (“Wes Anderson — Opening Speech”). That the exhibition was not an easy process is underscored by Sharp’s comments that “[t]his was an incredible headache for them” and that “putting the show together felt at times ‘like we were in some kind of insane Japanese game show’” (Delistraty 2018). One suspects he had occasion to hear about Anderson’s plans for future projects. As disdainful art critics relished pointing out, neither An- derson’s filmmaking nor Malouf’s novel-writing and illustrat- ing could prepare them to curate an exhibition because of the fundamentally different nature of these forms of artistic en- gagement. Whereas in films, fiction, and drawings “the artists