Sneak Peak at Boston ICA (and CultureGrrl!)

As I've mentioned, I can't blog about the Boston ICA, because the Wall Street Journal wants my first words on the subject. But I CAN link you up with some good photos from the press preview on Artblog.net. Scroll down, and you'll see that Franklin Einspruch caught me in my signature pose, notebook in hand, during the tour given by director Jill Medvedow and architect Ricardo Scofidio. But Frankie, how come you praised another onlooker in your photo as "handsome," but you didn't describe CultureGrrl as "gorgeous"? Have you no eye for beauty? (See update below.)

An even better sneak peak of the facility, which opens to the public on Sunday, is this segment on New England Cable News by Boston Globe reporter and blogger Geoff Edgers, with interviews, views of the interior spaces and the exterior, and some installation shots of the galleries. The big news is that Geoff is telegenic and has a great broadcast voice---from writer to blogger to television star. Next stop, Hollywood?

I wish I could give you my own take, instead of others' links. One day, when blogs are more accepted by the Mainstream Media, it will be okay to blog one's immediate impressions and then do a more considered, in-depth piece for a daily newspaper (just as it is now okay to do a piece for a newspaper and then do a more considered piece for a magazine).

But we're not there yet. The one praiseworthy exception that I've encountered is the LA Times, which (slightly reluctantly) broke the post-then-print taboo, with its recent adaptation of a CultureGrrl post on the J. Paul Getty Trust, which appeared on that newspaper's Op-Ed page.

I feel, strangely, like I'm shirking my duties to my blog-readers. If you feel I've short-shrifted you, my apologies. Posting (and, I hope, reading my posts) has become an addictive habit! But it's also a costly one: Time spent blogging could be spent writing pieces that I actually get paid for. One thing that keeps me blogging (others are here and here) is that, in my travels, I increasingly encounter artworld professionals who are familiar with the Jane-come-lately "CultureGrrl," but don't know the veteran journalist "Lee Rosenbaum."

Is this a GOOD thing? I'll have to ponder that.

UPDATE: In an update of his own, Frankie makes amends for insulting CultureGrrl (scroll down to the 10th photo):

Make that "the gorgeous CultureGrrl." To answer the question [see above]: because the word fails to do you justice. Plus, I was joshing Gamber. One doesn't josh CultureGrrl. One respects her.

Well said, and all is forgiven. But he must have written this before I proved unworthy of such deference, in this post!