NY Times Does It Right: Today’s Visual Arts Coverage (and some ObamArt musings)

Glenn Ligon, "Black Like Me #2," Hirshhorn Museum, chosen for the Obamas' personal quarters at the White House

Did Scott Veale, the NY Times' "Arts & Leisure" editor, and/or Jon Landman, the paper's new culture editor, get Ted Gallagher's memo? In a response to my two-part critique of the Times' cultural coverage, CultureGrrl reader Gallagher had criticized the paper for a bias towards performing arts over visual arts coverage. He urged the editors to "nurture long-form art criticism and reviews---3,000 words, even."

I'm joking, of course, about the supposed influence of Gallagher (or CultureGrrl, for that matter) over what the Times deems fit to print. There's no question that the three substantial, absorbing visual arts-related reads that enrich today's "Arts & Leisure" section were in the works (if not already edited and ready to go) before Ted and I vented our gripes, a couple of weeks ago.

Whatever prompted it, I hope that this beefed-up visual arts coverage is a trend, not a fluke:

---Carol Vogel's comprehensive update on the state of the Louvre (2,161 words). The article itself could have used some updating, but I assume the section's closing date precluded that.

---The always interesting and lively Jori Finkel's in-depth report on a Charles Burchfield exhibition, curated by artist Robert Gober, at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (1,546 words).

Deborah Sontag's informed look at the reimagined Museo del Barrio, which reopens this week (1,575 words).

For good measure, in today's "Week in Review" section, the Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic, Holland Cotter, opines on the works selected to be displayed in the Obamas' White House. (The online version of his piece also includes a 12-object slideshow, drawn from the group.)

Other critics have weighed in on the merits or lack thereof of the Obamas' choices. Jerry Saltz of NY Magazine has a good recap of the range of critical opinion.

I think that Barack and Michelle are entitled to their personal taste. They and their advisors appear to have done a creditable job in their selections. I was partially right in my prediction last May on New York Public Radio's Brian Lehrer Show about Glenn Ligon, one of the artists whom the Wall Street Journal had then revealed were being considered.

I told Lehrer:

Some of his [Ligon's] work is really tough on the racial issue and that's the kind of thing that, at least in the public quarters, they [the Obamas] may be steering away from.

They did select Ligon's "Black Like Me #2," above (better image here), but for their private delectation, not the public spaces. (In fact, 36 of the 45 objects, listed here by the Associated Press, were for the Obamas' personal quarters.) Cotter, in today's piece, helps us parse the meaning of the obscure phrase, "All traces of the Griffin I had been were wiped from existence," which is repeated over the entire 80 1/8-inch-high canvas.

I am a bit disappointed, though, that the arbiters of White House taste didn't take my advice to go beyond the Beltway and the mega-museums, seeking counsel from such places as the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Museo del Barrio (which could have addressed the noticeable omission of Latino art), for more diverse perspectives. With one exception---Harry Truman's portrait---all the chosen White House art came from Washington museums---the National Gallery and several Smithsonian constituents.

I was particularly struck by the new arrivals' focus on Native Americans---both objects created by them and George Catlin's depictions of them.

Is this a "change-has-come" reaction against the previous occupant's predilection for cowboy art?