In November, 2011, Claire Carter, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA), was invited to present some “complex artwork [with] often ambiguous conclusions” to the Arizona chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers at an educational event in Scottsdale. A former art history major who studied international politics, she jumped at the opportunity to meet such elusive intelligence figures. Carter curated a presentation of images from artists such as Trevor Paglen and David Taylor, who use deep investigative research methods to inform their work — Paglen, for example, often finds the names of classified military programs by searching for government job listings. Both men create work that discusses the covert culture surrounding intelligence in America, often shedding light on information that would otherwise be unknown to the public.
