CultureChat Reminder: Today’s Live Online Chat at 3:30 p.m.

Please do join me today at 3:30 p.m. for our second online CultureChat: The topic is "Single-Collector Museum Shows"---the upsides and the pitfalls. I've described the kind of issues we''ll be discussing here.

You can get an idea of the format of the chat by clicking the replay button for the first CultureChat. The technology is simple and similar to instant messaging: Just type your comments or questions in the box you'll see at the bottom of the page and click "Send." I decide what to post, and I can edit for grammar, coherence or civility, should I choose to do so. (Last time, I used everything; edited nothing.)

Having read David Littlejohn's excellent article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, SFMOMA Fills in Some Blanks, I thought we'd expand the conversation to include the logical (but problematic) extension of the museum show of one's own to the permanent-collection museum galleries of one's own within the context of a large, comprehensive museum. David's article dealt with the inaugural exhibition of the Donald and Doris Fisher collection (on loan for 100 years, renewable), now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

As described by Littlejohn, SFMOMA's planned new Fisher Wing will display some non-Fisher works, but "75% of the works there...must always be drawn from the couple's collection." At the Metropolitan Museum, there are several exclusive enclaves for the benefactions of generous donors whose troves aren't integrated with related works in the larger permanent collection.

Donor-dedicated spaces are a powerful wooing tool, but represent a capitulation of curatorial authority to collector-ial ego. I have my own views about this; many reasonable people will disagree.

These are the issues we can bat around today at 3:30, in a live-and-lively back-and-forth, to be conducted here on CultureGrrl.

Hope to see you soon!