Five things I think I think

1.) In an art world where way, way too many people are way, way too full of themselves, Robyn O'Neil is having a kick-ass time. Good for her. Fresh off her Howard Stern appearance, O'Neil talks with Howard Stern fan and Boston Globe scribe Geoff Edgers. It's the must-read Q&A of the month. Robyn O'Neil is my new hero. (That's O'Neil's Homer-recalling 2007 The Fall at right.)

2.) I think that the reason the area around Spiral Jetty should remain as natural and unencroached upon as possible has nothing whatsoever to do with anything that Robert Smithson did or didn't write. At some point after an artist dies, it is up to us to determine how to take care of his art, not him.

3.) I think that people who have done no actual reporting and who don't know what's going on behind closed doors should stop throwing names at the Met job (and others) to see if any of those names stick. It's a lazy, amateurish practice that is relentlessly unfair to the people whose names they bandy about, to the museums at which those people work and to the boards for whom those directors work.

4.) Twice in the last couple weeks the issue of museums and the artists who happen to be women that they don't exhibit have been in the news. Christopher Knight pointed out the males-heavy installation at BCAM @ LACMA, and Timothy Buckwalter found SFMOMA's permanent collection to be mostly about men and talked with curator Janet Bishop about it. Jerry Saltz has been saying this kind of thing about MoMA and Chelsea for years. Ed Winkleman mea culpas. So why does nothing change? What will it take for this to change? I don't know the answer, but there are lots of smart curators who read this blog...

5.) In the last month or three: Dia has spent six days waiting to release a Spiral Jetty statement, Richard Serra's Shift has faced preservation issues, land bordering Chinati is/was for sale for development purposes, and Dia has been wisely raising money to buy up land around Lightning Field. There are long-term 'maintenance' issues with many iconic earthworks (and their cousins) and I don't see those issues being addressed in any kind of pro-active, save-the-art kind of way. Some group -- the National Trust for Historic Preservation in association with several art groups, perhaps? -- should come up with a list of the 10-15 most important earthworks, assess their condition and threats to their existence, and then should work to make sure they're preserved as best they can be. And this should happen soonest.