Kenneth Baker: Prophet

Remember this ending to SF Chron art critic Kenneth Baker's Hiroshi Sugimoto-at-the-de Young review?

Probably the de Young has never seen an exhibition of gravity and elegance to compare with "Hiroshi Sugimoto" and a look around the institution suggests that the next one like it will be a long time coming.

Now we know what Baker was expecting: FAMSF released its 2007-2009 exhibition schedule yesterday. It reveals that FAMSF is well on its way to becoming the worst-programmed major museum in America. Heck, considering its programming and ethics problems, by the end of 2009 FAMSF might not be a major museum.

The schedule is not online. (UPDATE: It is now.) So I'll hit some, er, highlights:

  • When I first met FAMSF director John Buchanan a couple years ago he told me that he was a big fan of craft, contemporary craft in particular. He was especially proud of this gallery and asked me what I thought of it. I changed the subject. (I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd said that it was an embarrassment to consider some of the artists in it to be craft-ers and that the true craft in the gallery didn't seem to fit the museum's mission.) There are numerous craft exhibitions on the FAMSF schedule, so many that I wonder if the 'Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco' should consider renaming itself.

    Not even a museum-penned press release can put lipstick on this pig (would that be craft?): "Sandy Besser's collections shatter the barriers between high art and craft. This exhibition looks at 200 of the finest examples from three of his extraordinary collections: teapots, drawings and African beadwork." Teapots and beadwork together?!

    And there's a Chihuly retrospective. A new one.

  • FAMSF is the latest museum to take the Annie Leibovitz show. Roberta Smith on the exhibit: "It is fueled by an obsession with celebrity and accented with the trappings of first-class travel, serious real estate and privilege. Its revelations are mostly inadvertent." That fits Buchanan's program perfectly. In fact...

  • How about "Artistic Luxury: Faberge, Tiffany, Lalique?" I think FAMSF puts it best: "Artistic Luxury will explore how these designers responded to the demand for luxury goods among the world's Gilded Age consumers in the years leading up to the first world war." Apparently 'shopping history' is a new discipline.

  • There is good news: The previously-announced King Tut show seems to be kaput. (MAN hears that the museum was afeared that the contract between AEG and FAMSF would leak out. Which is smart, because it would have.)

  • Worst of all -- and yes, considering the previous few paragraphs that's really saying something -- the FAMSF continues to act like it is not in one of the world's great cities. There are no FAMSF-created historical exhibits that explore San Francisco artists or architects. Buchanan seems to think his museum is in France, instead of in a city and state with rich artistic legacies. I tried to help the museum with an ideas list here.

    • August 2, 2007 8:45 AM |

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    About this Entry

    This page contains a single entry by Modern Art Notes published on August 2, 2007 8:45 AM.

    Who says August is quiet? was the previous entry in this blog.

    Shop at the museum, see art at the store? is the next entry in this blog.

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