The familiar installation practice of hanging neatly framed pictures squarely at eye-level on the neutral-colored walls of a gallery cube is a modern construct. Adopted in the early 1930s by Alfred Barr, and institutionalized by the Museum of Modern Art over the next several decades under his direction, this aesthetically-oriented, ordered, apparently objective approach to the display of objects rapidly became the artworld standard. Yet as Mary Anne explains in The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at MOMA (MIT Press, 1998), "these aestheticized, autonomous, 'timeless' installations, created Staniszewski for an ideal viewer, (are) modernist representations in their own right...The interiors with their seemingly neutral settings foster a sense of aesthetic experience as something segregated from other spheres of life...art as something universal and timeless."

The first decades of the 20th century had, in fact, produced a great deal of exhibition experimentation (among the Surrealists, the Constructivists, the Bauhaus, and many others), often involving interactive components, new technologies, and radical spatial transformations. These innovative approaches, however, gave way to the installation model described above - a framework perfectly adapted to fulfill the tenets of modernism. Elevating "high art" to a pure realm, it enabled each object to be viewed in isolation, "face to face," unfettered by encroachments from the outside world and, so, as a self-contained expression of artistic "genius."

Only toward the latter part of the century did postmodern thought begin to deconstruct this mode of presentation (as well as the artworks themselves). Proponents of postmodernism have argued objectivity as a myth, and explored the agendas and ideologies - conscious or unconscious - informing the practices and perceptions of institutions and individuals. In so doing, they opened ground for new readings of diverse cultural products, for interrogating established structures and systems, and, ultimately, for positing new ones. We have come to acknowledge that just as pictures speak volumes, so do the systems that frame them for public consumption. Every "text" is open to interpretation. Meaning is fluid, shaped and reshaped according to context.

Three Ring Circus was intended as an experiment, an alternative, a collaboration, a vehicle for play. Approximately forty individuals involved with contemporary art were invited to participate by taking one turn each at contributing three objects of their choice, selected in response to the choices of others before them. Unfolding like a chess-game - which will continue to expand throughout its duration as more participants contribute - the exhibition takes shape as a series of strategic moves.

By inviting a range of artists, curators, gallerists, collectors, and educators to participate, I hoped to enact a juxtaposition of multiple presentation strategies, aesthetics, and ideological viewpoints within a single space. By asking each participant to determine and install his or her selections in relation to those already placed in the gallery, I hoped to emphasize the idea that meaning is continually in the process of being defined. Each round of choices contributes a new layer of information to the show; each new object casts aspects of others into relief.

Further, as the boundaries between high and low, art and everyday life, are increasingly blurred, I wished to create an opportunity for presenting artworks alongside "non-art" objects in a manner which, truer to our lived experience, emphasizes relationships among them - a sense of integration rather than separateness. Seen in the studio, artworks remain connected to the space and materials that informed their generation. Artworks in private collections are installed in the domestic realm, amidst items of daily use. Rather than perpetuating the standard gallery practice of extracting and isolating objects from the world in which they were made and operate, and placing them in a neutral space, Three Ring Circus involves the collective construction of a context that is eclectic, layered, lively and continually expanding.

And what do the results reveal about us? Providing the public a glimpse into the personal collections of a range of creative Kansas Citians, the show, too, offers voyeuristic pleasure. Participants' contributions function as self-portraits of a sort, hinting at their personal aesthetics, ideologies, and thought processes. Rather than de-emphasizing the individual perspective of the curator, Three Ring Circus, which includes a log of statements by each contributor, articulating the rationale behind their choices, reveals it explicitly.

Finally, with this project I sought to encourage communication and a cross-fertilization of ideas among a pool of individuals, some of who have worked together in the past, others of whom have never met. Like the Surrealist Exquisite Corpse game, the exhibition is the sum of many disparate parts, each one piece of a larger picture. It is my hope that this project will lead to future collaborations in which diverse individuals are invited to step outside of their usual roles and realms to participate in creative discourse.

- Kate Hackman

3 Ring Circus Participants (in order of participation)

Sean Kelley is the Director and Co-Founder of Grand Arts, and a contemporary art collector. He serves on the selection panel for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Richard Diebenkorn Teaching Scholarship, as well as local public art commission panels. In addition, he participates in college and invitational panel discussions on contemporary art issues.

Hugh Merrill is an artist and educator.

James Martin is Curator of the Sprint Corporation Art Collection.

Michael Schonhoff is a local artist and musician at MudDauber Atelier, and Assistant Director of Morgan Gallery.

Richard Nadeau is a psychotherapist in private practice, and member of the Kansas City Municipal Art Commission.

Kate Hackman is Editor of Review and a freelance art critic, writer, curator and educator.

Mike Miller is publisher of Review.

Warren Rosser is Chair of Painting and Printmaking at the Kansas City Art Institute. He is the W.T.Kemper Distinguished Professor Painting. Currently, he has a one person exhibition entitled Repeat Offender at the Forum For Contemporary Art in St Louis. He is preparing a print installation, a collaboration with Harvey Hix, to be exhibited in March at the Powerhouse Two Art Center, Leeds University, England.

Tim Brown is an artist and owner of the Telephone Booth gallery.

Joe Nease is still hanging in there as director of Joseph Nease Gallery.

Jessica Johnson is a self-taught artist and Kansas City native.

Jenny Mendez was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. She is Director of the Mattie Rhodes Art Center.

Tamara Haddad works for the Municipal Art Commission's 1% for Public Art program and is co-owner, with Tiny, of The Telegraph at 116 W. 18th Street.

Chritopher Leitch is an artist and designer who lives and works in Kansas City with his spouse and three wild kitties.

Jim Calcara is a principal of CDFM2 Architecture. He is a founding partner of the Avenue of the Arts Foundation, now in its third year of sponsoring site-specific public installations by Kansas City-based artists on Central Street.

David Ford is a human being living in Kansas City.

John O'Brien is owner of Dolphin Gallery.

Lester Goldman is thankful for the opportunity to interact with others in an inventive curatorial project. He has been an artist and teacher in Kansas City since having given up his Philly roots in 1966.

Thomas Levitt is a local collector, student and developer.

Jim Leedy is a professor of sculpture at Kansas City Art Institute and an artist who shows his work and lectures internationally. He is the founder of the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center.

Jim Woodfill is a 1980 graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute and a working artist living in Kansas City.

Kathy Aron is Executive Director of the Society for Contemporary Photography. Recently curated shows for SCP include Thinner Air: Minimalism in Photography; Seokjung Kim: The Museun Project and Alternate Worlds: Constructing Reality.

Nate Fors is a Kansas City-based artist who shows at Joseph Nease Gallery.

Kati Toivanen is an assistant professor in the Art & Art History Department at the University of Missouri - Kansas City, where she teaches courses in digital imaging, computer multimedia and photography. In her studio practice she examines the meanings of childhood, sexuality and body image through play and games.

Brian Reeves is an artist, curator, and teacher living in Kansas City. As a certified Master of Fine Arts, he's confident you'll find his choices wholly compelling, even desirable!

Andrew Wells is a multi-media artist and assistant professor of photography and new media at Kansas City Art Institute.

Douglas Drake is an art collector, private dealer, consultant and appraiser; Marketing and Development associate at KCPT Channel 19; writer. He was a gallerist of modern, contemporary, photographic, and tribal art in Kansas City (1974-86) and New York (1987-95).

Elisabeth Kirsch is an art historian, writer, and curator of contemporary and Native American art. She is currently working on an interdisciplinary Ph.D in Global Art.

Abraham Haddad, aka Von Hodad, is an artist, musician, scooterist, familyman, community development and business executive, and proprietor of El Torreon Ballroom.

Mark Southerland is a multidisciplinary musician working in the genres of jazz and experimental music. His projects include Malachy Papers, TJ Dovebelly, Chickenhoof and Mr. Marcos V7.

Tom Gregg is an artist who exhibits locally and nationally. He is an assistant professor in the painting department at Kansas City Art Institute.

Peregrine Honig is a Kansas City-based artist who shows locally and nationally. She is owner of the Fahrenheit Gallery, an art and performance venue in the West Bottoms.

Adriane Herman is an artist interested in the social role of food and its relationship to memory. She enjoys opportunities to deduct receipts for candy from her taxes.

Tammi Kennedy is a Kansas City-based artist who works with cellophane tape. She also teaches sculpture at Liberty High School.

Raechell Smith is Director of H&R Block Artspace at Kansas City Art Institute. She serves on the advisory committees for Charlotte Street Fund and Avenue of the Arts.

Johnny Naugahyde has lived in Kansas City since 1989. He has shown at the Dolphin Gallery, the Random Ranch and other locations regionally and nationally. He will be having a one-person exhibition at the University of Missouri-St. Louis' Gallery 210 this year. Not much else is known about Mr. Naugahyde.

J.M. Rees is a geometer, a decorator and a teacher; not in that order. If the inquiry of scholasticism is what is infinity?, science is the branch of religion created to answer that question.

May Tveit is a sculptor and Assistant Professor in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Kansas. Recent projects include "Cutain Wall" for Avenue of the Arts, 2001, and Retail Therapy, her first solo exhibition in Kansas City, opening at the Gallery at Village Shalom in January.