Gopnik's proposal

In Sunday's Washington Post, Blake Gopnik made a modest, gelato-free proposal (username/password here):

Let's call it the Washington Collectors' Project. Here's how it would work: A consortium of the city's best collectors of contemporary art would come together to make their art available for exhibition. They would find a modest, white-cube space and invite independent curators to fill it with selections from their holdings.

The project would be a win-win all around.

I think not. Here are a couple problems with Gopnik's idea: The art world is global, moreso now than ever, and his idea is based on a narrow, artificial, regionalist construct. Furthermore, Gopnik's idea has nothing to do with art and everything to do with the mere geography of amalgamation. When the art world is becoming more interconnected, when group shows at even medium-sized institutions are filled with loans from two or three continents, why would we want something that is so internal, narrow and exclusionary?

Why would DC collectors (and others) want their works seen only next to other DC-owned work? Or why would a collector want their $6M Richter shown in a semi-pro space? And why would a curator, a serious curator, want to confine him/herself to only using work from DC collections if s/he is trying to build a conceptually tight show?

Gopnik's idea treats DC like its collections exist on an island, apart from the "rest" of the art world. Why would the capital of the free world want to peg itself as a regional backwater (when it comes to art) by investing time, energy, and funding in such a middling concept? Why would collectors who have spent years amassing important collections (and any curator, gallerist or collector who is plugged into the art world knows exactly who Gopnik is describing in that first paragraph and each is a major collector) want to take a step down to show their work in such an empty context?

All that said, Gopnik is right-on in one key area: DC needs some form of an 'Institute of Contemporary Art.' (I've been writing about this on MAN for years... about six months ago I got so tired of typing about it that I've shut up about it, so I'm glad to see Gopnik raise the flag. As I've written here before, I'd like to see an ICA in DC's downtown MLK Library, which is a late Mies building. Either eliminate the central library or build a new one at the site of the old DC convention center.)

While Gopnik argues for a stand-in project until DC gets its ICA act together, his arguments are all strong arguments... in favor of an ICA now.