November 2008 Archives

Christopher Knight updates us on the MOCA board situation via the LAT's Culture Monster blog. As I wrote (again) on Thursday, it's time for the trustees who don't want to save MOCA to get out of the way (read: resign) so that those who value MOCA can try to save it. And those trustees who want to save the place ought be more public in their support. The current stasis is doing no good.

Monday, Dec. 1 is the 19th anniversary of this sad day. The Getty has a nice page. 

Nearly a week ago, Eli Broad dropped a $30 million bombshell on MOCA. So far, MOCA has not publicly responded, no trustee has made a public pledge of dollars, and, remarkably, MOCA's director failed to show up for what was effectively a 'save MOCA' (and his own job) rally at his own museum.

(Heck, MAN's DonorsChoose.org arts education-in-public-schools challenge has raised more money from more donors this week than MOCA's board has... And you can help show 'em up by clicking on that link and supporting America's arts educators!)

Instead it has been a week of fundraising stasis. In a situation such as this stasis leads to terminus. It's time for some game-changers. Here are two suggestions.

First, MOCA director Jeremy Strick (above) should announce to his board that he has decided to pursue the vacant Hirshhorn directorship. The MOCA angle: It is unlikely that if MOCA survives, that Strick will survive as its director. Nearly every involved figure with whom I've spoken in the last two weeks speaks of MOCA's eventual "new leadership." (Obviously: The museum's fundraising has been non-existent, it has spent far beyond its means, strategic planning has been nil, the museum's permanent collection is not on permanent display, and, well, look at the mess they're in.) If MOCA survives -- and that's still very much up in the air -- I can't imagine a scenario under which Strick sees the end of his contract. If Strick makes it clear to his board that saving MOCA is different than saving Strick (or that Strick has a landing spot), then I think the 'save MOCA' cause is furthered. His potential departure removes an obstacle to giving. (Also true: It's not as if MOCA's trustees or large Los Angeles institutions are rallying around Strick's leadership.)

From the DC side of the equation: Would Strick make sense for the Hirshhorn? Yes. The Hirshhorn has been effectively without a director for 442 days. (And how's that search coming? As recently as last week staff was still being asked for candidate recommendations.) The Hirshhorn search has turned into a very public institutional embarrassment. [Photo]

Strick would be a strong candidate. Over the last year or so, numerous Hirsh donors and potential Hirsh donors have told me that they're disappointed with the condition of the institution: It isn't scholarly enough. The museum's public programs have oft been uninteresting and even inappropriate. The Hirshhorn needs professional upgrades in almost every department. Meanwhile, at MOCA, Strick ran the most important, impressive, scholarly contemporary art museum in America. He'd be the right guy to upgrade the Hirshhorn's programming. He has a long-standing relationship with ex-MOCA curator and current Hirshhorn chief curator (and acting director) Kerry Brougher. The transition to new leadership would likely be smooth.

But what about Strick's apparent ineffectiveness as a fundraiser? Wouldn't they be a problem for the Hirsh? Well, yes and no. The Hirsh's federal appropriation covers most museum costs. With the Smithsonian Institution in the quiet phase of a ~$1 billion fundraising campaign, it's not clear that individual Smithsonian museum directors are going to be able to raise much money in the next few years anyway. The Hirshhorn is also in a chicken-and-the-egg situation: It won't be able to successfully raise money until it upgrades its programming. I say start with the programming.

Finally, why would the Hirshhorn trustees hire a candidate whose current museum is approaching failure? A key endorsement would help. Eli Broad is a Smithsonian regent. Broad could quietly vouch for Strick to the Hirshhorn trustees, perhaps even with some cash attached. (The Hirshhorn director's salary and related package has not been competitive with other 'top' jobs. Broad could help with that, and by so doing express confidence in Strick.)

Second, it's time for the MOCA trustees who want to save the institution to stop being so deferential to the trustees who want to kill it. MOCA trustees who are willing to put money on the table should make their pledges public. They should do it in a way that excites the institution's supporters in a way that could translate enthusiasm into an increase in memberships. (And in a way that might put peer pressure on the lagging trustees...) So instead of leaking word of, say, $1 million or $2 million pledges to the usual place, the LA Times, a few trustees should jointly 'announce' their pledges on the 2,200-strong 'save MOCA' Facebook group. (At least one trustee is a member of the group: Beth Swofford.) What could be more 'contemporary?' And of course the LAT (and MAN) will pick up the story anyway. Here's the link, trustees...

Lock the doors and don't let anyone out until they pledge cash. If they won't pledge, send 'em home -- for good. The LAT's Mike Boehm has the deets. Also, sign this online petition to express your support for MOCA.They're shooting for 10,000 sigs.

DonorsChoose.org update: MAN readers fulfilled Project No. 1 in mere hours! Projects 2-5 are here, more later.

One of the joys of visiting the Getty is finding what software publishers call 'easter eggs' throughout the permanent collection galleries. At the Getty 'easter eggs' take the form of non-Getty paintings that happen to pop up in the galleries because of a one-off loan agreement. Who knows why they're there -- a conservation arrangement, perhaps or hands-across-the-sea -- but the surprises are always fun to find.

For example, this is Goya's Suerte de varas (1824), one of the last paintings he made on canvas. In 1792-93 Goya suffered a serious, unknown illness that seems to have left him deaf. In the wake of that illness he made several dramatic, gory bullfight pictures, and returned to the subject time and time again over the next three deacdes. Goya painted this one four years before he died. Click here to see a larger version, to see how truly gored and bleeding that white horse is.

To the left of the Goya the Getty has installed Delacroix's Evening After a Battle, on loan from the Museum Mendag in The Hague. The Delacroix is also a painting about violence and the bloody remnants there of. It's, er, fun to compare Goya's handling of the end to Delacroix's portrayal of the same.

This is all a long way of saying that in a time of reduced museum budgets that 'trading' single paintings is a good way to provide accents to a museum's collection. I wish more museums would consider it. The National Gallery of Art, which recently enacted a staff travel ban (a minor cost-cutting move that screams Congressional appropriations-season symbolism more than it says substance), would be a great place to start. (The NGA already sends effectively a picture a year back and forth with the Norton Simon.) [Update: I should have been more careful in my wording: An NGA spokesperson says there's no "ban," but did not further clarify. The item comes from multiple NGA staff who have told MAN there's a freeze, etc.]

In the spirit of helpfulness, I'll propose the first exchange: The NGA owns this fantastic 1783 Goya portrait of Maria Teresa de Borbon y Vallabriga as a child. About 20 years later Goya painted Maria Teresa again, when she was the Condesa de Chinchon. (He painted her four times in all.) The Prado owns that one. Visitors would have the opportunity to compare Goya's changing style, his treatment of his sitter, and so on. And it would be relatively cheap.

Related: Bloggers are invited to come up with similar 'trades' for their local museums over the long weekend. If there are enough, I'll do a roundup post early next week. Email 'em to me at LinksforMAN-blog (at) yahoo (d o t) com.

This can't be real: Ed Winkleman says that Linda Yablonsky has penned an Artinfo essay about cults of personality. Well, I guess Yablonsky, who wrote one infamous GawkerForum article that was so leaden with bold-type references that one out of seven words was someone's name, should know. And know. And know. And know. (I could keep going. I won't.)

(At the risk of sounding like an old fogey: I think art writing ought to be about art instead of being typewritten voyeurism awestruck at the intersection of charisma, ego and self-inclusion.)

Oodles of research reveals just how important arts education is when it comes to developing young minds. According to Americans for the Arts, young people who participate in the arts are many times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, to be elected to class office within their schools, and are more likely to participate in a math and science fair. My mother was an art educator, so I'm particularly disappointed in how a lack of prioritization, the so-called No Child Left Behind law and other factors have driven the arts out of public schools.

Last December I spotlighted seven school arts projects here on MAN, and MAN readers donated over $1,500 via DonorsChoose.org to help over 1,000 students have art-related instruction as part of their education. The DonorsChoose.org concept is simple: When school teachers have programs they want to implement that go beyond what their (typically disadvantaged) schools will support, they post 'proposals' to the DonorsChoose.org website and ask microphilanthropists for a few hundred dollars in direct project support.

Between now and the end of the year I'll be posting on arts-related projects from DonorsChoose. Most of them will require less than $500 to fully fund. DonorsChoose accepts microphilanthropic gifts of $10 and up. I urge MAN readers support worthy projects either as individuals or as a group. I'll list donors early in January. If you put a little at-your-office group together -- say the 'Springfield Art Museum curatorial department' -- email me so that I know to list you as such. I've started a web page where you can see a list of proposals, where you can donate and where you can track our progress. This year's first project (and first picture, above) comes from southern California:

I am the team leader for 3 classes of second graders at a Title 1 school where over 50% of the students receive free or reduced lunch. We are a small school that has students from multiple low socio-economic groups...

Our supply budget was significantly reduced this year. Our Parent/Teacher organization proposed these art projects to supplement our curriculum. It will provide a more well rounded education for our students. The art projects will expose them to a creative side of people that includes; art history, shape, design, form, linear proportions, colors, and more.

These art supplies: paper, glue, paint will enable 60 second graders to complete a series of art projects based on the work of famous artists. This project will enable students to work on some of the state standards in Visual Arts.

These art projects will provide our students with hands-on experience and knowledge that they would not have without this support.

My students need 14 art supplies such as construction paper, tissue paper, glue, and watercolor paints (for all 60 second graders) to complete art projects based on famous artists' works throughout the school year.

Help 'em out here.

In the wake of the $30 million Eli Broad bombshell, what next in the MOCA saga?

Waiting and seeing. The future of the institution is in the hands of its trustees, which given their performance in recent years is not entirely encouraging. Little has changed since Friday night: They each need to decide who is in and who's out, who is for saving the institution for which they've taken responsibility and who doesn't care, who is going to fulfill the obligation of trusteeship and support their institution, their collection and their staff, and who won't.

Leaks from key players (at least to me) have slowed dramatically in the last couple days. Maybe that's a sign that the board is sorting itself out.

Meanwhile, the 'save MOCA' Facebook group is approaching 2,000 members.

Has any artist had a better year than Robert Irwin? Late in 2007 the MCASD launched a thrilling collection-driven Irwin survey, an exhibition that moved from Irwin's David Park-meets-abex paintings to his latest incarnation as a post-Flavin light sculptor. The Chinati Foundation, the West Texas museum where minimalism has found its utopia, announced plans for a permanent Irwin installation. Most recently, the Indianapolis Museum of Art became the first American museum to install a permanent indoor Irwin.

Irwin's success here is all the more striking because the IMA gave Irwin a space reminiscent of a food court. The IMA has doubled down on museo-architectural orthodoxy by installing two atriums: First visitors encounter a soaring glass entrance hall that welcomes them in from the museum's parking lot. (The space can double as a contemporary sculpture hall; right now it holds an Orly Genger installation.) After passing through Atrium I, visitors glide up an escalator, walk past an information desk, wait for automatic glass doors to open, only to enter the mere outer-chamber to Atrium II, home to a pleasant Sol LeWitt wall-drawing that seems to promise that this trek will end at art.

But first, after passing the LeWitt, a visitor has six (!) choices: To enter the IMA's superb Pont-Aven and neo-impressionist collection, to enter the museum's less superb modern art collection, to enter a temporary exhibition, to enter the museum's American art collection, to ascend a bank of escalators leading to the museum's Asian, African, European and contemporary collections, or to walk into Atrium II, where the visitor might simply catch her breath and damn I.M. Pei for making all these silly atria fashionable.

The IMA Irwin is in Atrium II. After the trek I found myself too busy processing my options to consider it: I turned heel and walked to Pont-Aven. (I noticed that most other visitors did about the same thing -- having finally arrived somewhere, they wanted to be in galleries, not in yet another big open space.)

Over the next four hours, I slipped from the Brittany coast to Victor Higgins' Taos to Bosch's nightmares. I shared a 400-year-old Cupid joke with Caravaggio and discovered that at 20 Titian couldn't paint hair or a beard without making his subject look like he was in the Venetian Witness Protection Program. I felt Fred Sandback in a spare gallery, and the installation left a ball of yarn in my gut. In between floors and collections I stole glances at the Irwin, and it grew on me.

Light and Space III shares one of the atrium's four sides with a bank of escalators and five-story-tall white scrims. The Irwin doesn't front the escalators -- that is, it doesn't act as a barrier between the escalators and the atrium. Instead it both fronts and backs them. As museum visitors go up and down between floors, they move through the piece. Think of it as relational aesthetics without Rirkrit's lousy cooking.

The relationship between IMA's Light and Space III and MCASD's Light and Space is plain: While in residence at MCASD last year, Irwin developed a new way of marrying light, space and sculpture: short, perpendicularly-opposed white fluorescent tubes installed in a kind of grid. (Irwin also created a second new piece for MCASD, Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue.) The juxtaposition of those two pieces in MCASD's new Jacobs Building, emphasized that Irwin was still happily engaged in two of modernism's principle arenas: the deconstruction of color into the primaries and the elimination of perspectival depth in the pursuit of flatness.

Light and Space III is all-white, but it shows that Irwin is using his perpendicular fluorescents -- his T-lights -- to explore the push-me-pull-you of depth vs. spatial recession. While Irwin's lights are installed on both the wall behind the escalators and on the drywall in front of them, from across the atrium the affect of the cold fluorescent lights is to flatten the work, to make it appear as if all of Irwin's lights are on the same vertical plane. (This flattening effect is magnified by Irwin's use of scrims on the two sides of the installation.) Only when a museum visitor traverses the escalator is it obvious that Light and Space III is ten or so feet deep. Irwin has found a way to have spatial depth and flatness too, all in one work of art. 
 
Related: Rikrit Tiravanija joke conceputally borrowed from Peter Schjeldahl.

• That's an actual ad, recently spotted on LAT.com.
• Paul Schmelzer and artist Paul Shambroom discuss photographing government proceedings... such as the Minnesota Senate recount.
• Regina Hackett on the vulgarity of Grant Barnhart's football paintings.
• LATer Diane Haithman reports that 450 people turned out yesterday in support of MOCA after an artist-led, Facebook-based group put together a last-minute rally at the Geffen Contemporary.
• The Baltimore Sun's Tim Smith takes an admirably sane look at how the financial crisis is impacting Baltimore arts groups, including the Baltimore Museum of Art. Good graphs, smart quotes, no panic.
• I ran a Saturday post explaining what the Broad offer means.
• Speaking of arts coverage, you won't believe the "arts" story the Washington Post ran over the weekend. It's in the jump.
  
• I enjoyed Christopher Knight's Morandi review, but I did not take out an LAT ad about it.
  

Last night's Eli Broad LAT op-ed is a game-changer. Here's what it all means -- for now. (I can't remember the last time an art world news story changed so fast.

• Part of Eli Broad's legacy is the founding of the most important contemporary art museum in America. Broad does not want the failure of that museum to be part of his legacy too. His bailout offer says to MOCA's trustees: Consider your legacies. If MOCA fails, its failure forever will be tied to you.

• LACMA seems to have over-reached. On Thursday MAN published a post in which LACMA director/CEO Michael Govan acknowledged that he was open to MOCA and/or its collection somehow coming to LACMA. Govan's comments were the first public indication that LACMA leadership was willing to make room to absorb MOCA. I hear that MOCA figures took Govan's comments as an indication of eagerness, as an attempt to signal to some MOCA board members that the "spirit" of a contemporary art museum could and would live at LACMA if MOCA failed.

• Also notable: Thirty-six hours after Govan's comments were published on MAN, the Broad offer was made public. Throughout the Broad op-ed are passages likely meant as an extremely public way of Broad saying, 'Hands off, LACMA.' For example: "It is vital that the museum remain on Grand Avenue, keep its collection and continue its tradition of world-class exhibitions," and, "While the MOCA board evaluates its options, the overarching priority should be to keep MOCA independent. Being merged into another institution would destroy the fabric of a great museum and would sacrifice the independent curatorial vision that has created an extraordinary collection and many unparalleled exhibitions."

• In a related story, the Broad offer has taken the MOCA collection off the table, at least for now. Any MOCA staff or trustees that were pushing to sell off parts of the collection know that's no longer an option. For now, MOCA's path to survival is through Broad's $30 million (or more) offer.

• MOCA trustees and staff who agitated for deaccessioning (or forms thereof) are now on notice that they erred. The Broad offer says to those trustees, 'You did not understand what trusteeship or stewardship is, nor did you understand your obligation to Los Angeles and to the art world." MOCA trustees who pushed deaccessioning should resign so as to make way for leadership that wants to save MOCA and not break it up.

• As noted here and elsewhere last night, the Broad op-ed lists no details about Broad's $30M offer. A Broad spokesperson told the LAT that no further details would be released last night. Read the op-ed as an emergency bailout offer, an indication that MOCA's trustees were wandering so far down the road of unacceptable-to-Broad 'solutions' (such as noted above) that a bailout offer had to be made before the bailout details were final.

• For now anyway, Broad's offer seems not to come with any mandates to MOCA's board about their own financial involvement in MOCA's future. That is to say, I can't find any evidence that the Broad offer has a 'string attached' that would require each MOCA board member to put up $1 million or $2 million (or whatever) in order to 'earn' Broad's $30M.

• That gives MOCA director Jeremy Strick and his board co-chairs room to effectively attach that proviso themselves. If trustees won't open their wallets, 'ask' them to resign effective immediately. Requiring MOCA's trustees to put up or shut up would seperate the dedicated and the committed from the panicky. It would also lay the groundwork for a stronger MOCA board if and when this is all over. (And for the MOCA trustees who don't have that kind of liquidity and who are on the board because they're young collectors, tell them that they may make their commitment to the institution in a different way: Through gifts of art and public promises of gifts of art. It's time to bind MOCA's trustees to MOCA, to require them to be personally invested. That's been missing.) 

MOCA founding chairman, collector and philanthropist Eli Broad takes to the LAT op-ed page to offer MOCA $30 million "with the expectation that the museum's board and others join in this effort to solve the institution's financial problems." The op-ed does not explain how the "board and others" would do that.

Broad also says that MOCA must not sell any parts of its collection to cover operating shortfalls, and that MOCA is the "most important contemporary art museum in the world." At the end of the op-ed Broad evokes the memory of the long, difficult fundraising road that gave MOCA a Gehry-designed neighbor: "We came together to save Disney Hall. We can do it again."

UPDATE: At LAT's Culture Monster blog, Mike Boehm and Diane Haithman report that "Broad said through a spokeswoman that he would not elaborate on his written commentary, except to add: 'The investment would be some immediate cash and some over a period of several years.'" Also from Boehm & Haithman: "In other breaking MOCA news, the museum announced this afternoon that the California Attorney General's office is looking into its finances." The post also explains that the inquiry may be routine.

I can't decide if this is bad timing or good timing. I think it's the latter: MOCA's exhibition archive is now available online. Funded by the Getty, this new site features almost every MOCA exhibition from 1983 to 2004, complete with background information and installation shots. It's quite a walk down memory lane. (You can find shows from 2004 to the present here.)

Now picture LA's cultural scene over the last 25 years without MOCA.

Continued from here.

• Agnes Martin, Untitled (drawing), 1964
• Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting, 1974
• Matthew Monahan, War Never Ends, 2005
• Lee Mullican, Scatter Walk, 1958
• Wangechi Mutu, She's Egungun Again, 2005
• Bruce Nauman, Four Corner Piece, 1971
• Thomas Nozkowski, Untitled W-73, 1992
• Tony Oursler, Glimmer, 1999
• Lari Pittman, Untitled #12, 2003
• The world's largest collection of Rauschenberg combines.
  

One of my favorite American paintings at LACMA is Millard Sheets' Angel's Flight, a picture of what the Bunker Hill neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles looked like before... well, before MOCA was there. Devi Noor's blog post at LACMA's Unframed provides an opportunity to think about what Bunker Hill then, now, and...

Continued from here.

• Nicolas de Stael, The Football Players, 1952
• Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled (drawing), 1965
• John Divola, N34.10.744' W116.07.973', 1998
• Neil Jenney, Atmosphere, 1985
• Ellsworth Kelly, Chatham IV: Blue/Red, 1971
• Toba Khedoori, Untitled (Seats), 1996
• Wolfgang Laib, Milk Stone, 1976
• Barry Le Va, Shatterscatter (Within the Series of Layered/Pattern Acts), 1968
• Helen Lundeberg, Double View, 1970
• Kim MacConnel, Made in Korea, 1977
  

Express your support for saving MOCA via this Facebook page. It was co-founded by Cindy Bernard, an artist whose work is in MOCA's collection.

There are over 6,000 works in MOCA's collection. For the rest of the day I'll be spotlighting some favorites. This won't be a creme de la creme list (this is), nor will it necessarily be a list of the biggest names. (My list is, however, limited by images that are online.) It's just a reminder of the singularity of the collection and the obligation the museum's trustees have to that which is in their care.

• Lewis Baltz, The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California, 1974
• Michael Borremans, The Spell, 2001
• Vija Celmins, Night Sky #4, 1992
• Olafur Eliasson, Beauty, 1993
• Robert Gober, Cigar, 1991
• Joe Goode, Untitled Window Painting, 1965
• Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (three-tiered perspective), 1997 (bonus link)
• Michael Heizer, Double Negative, 1969
• Robert Huot, Nylon One, 1967
• Robert Irwin, Untitled (Dot Painting), 1965

I hear that the Minneapolis Institute of Arts is hiring the MFA Boston's Thomas Rassieur as its new prints and drawings curator. Rassieur as recently curated high-profile shows on Rembrandt and early 20thC British prints. This is on top of a number of other high-profile MIA hires, including OCMA's Elizabeth Armstrong to run contemporary art.

The MIA has a dedicated source of local government funding. It's nothing like the famous St. Louis funding formula, by which the St. Louis Art Museum (and four other cultural non-profits) receive money from a local property tax. SLAM receives about 70 percent of its annual budget from St. Louis city and St. Louis County.

But it does have me thinking: Especially in a climate such as this, potential staff are likely more interested institutions with secure funding. Funding formulas aren't sexy, but they're important.

From the LAT's Culture Monster blog: Christopher Knight says that MOCA's trustees are prepared to "formally approach" LACMA about a "merger." As I reported this morning: LACMA's various entrance gates/pavilions are wide open.

In an 'open letter,' Christopher Knight calls out MOCA's trustees, instructs them on what to do now. Inside baseball: I hear that within mere minutes of Knight's 'letter' being posted on the Los Angeles Times website, it was passed around MOCA's then-ongoing board meeting.

No sooner than I published yesterday's MOCA post, parts of it were practically obsolete. The latest: Yesterday afternoon MOCA's board began serious consideration of its fiscal crisis, a.k.a. the board's years-long failure to adequately plan for MOCA's then-present, for the current present, and for the future. MOCA director Jeremy Strick sent out a we-still-have-a-pulse email to the museum's supporters.

As luck would have it, I happen to be in Los Angeles spending a day with the Getty/USC Annenberg School of Communications arts journalism fellowship program. We spent the afternoon at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, including 30 minutes with LACMA director/CEO Michael Govan. The vast majority of the conversation was about MOCA. I asked Govan: If it becomes possible or 'necessary,' would LACMA be interested in purchasing or otherwise acquiring MOCA's collection?

"Last I checked, we didn't have the money," Govan said with a laugh.

But LACMA's board is loaded with billionaires, and there's every reason to believe that should MOCA's superb collection of contemporary art become available, that LACMA has both the engaged trustees and the institutional capacity to make that kind of substantial acquisition both happen and work. (Remember: The major Govan-driven successes of the Govan tenure have been acquisitions.) So I pushed.

"We all want MOCA to exist with its spirit intact," Govan said, adding that he understood and admired the MOCA's regional role and national import.

But, I countered, there's a difference between existing with 'spirit intact,' and existing with collection intact. And was LACMA interested should MOCA decide that it has to sell its collection and, say, become a kunsthalle (or, gulp, less)?

"I don't want to say I'm open to [MOCA's] collection coming here because their process is underway," Govan said. (MOCA's board meeting was taking place as we were meeting at LACMA.) "They've got to figure out what their spirit is."

We went back and forth like this for a few minutes. I noticed that every time I re-asked The Question, that Govan found a smart, careful way to leave the door open. Govan could have said that LACMA had no interest, or that it was working with local government in support of MOCA, or so on. But he didn't. After much conversation, Govan acknowledged that LACMA could ultimately be open to buying/absorbing MOCA's collection.

Later, Govan stressed that the most important thing was that the MOCA collection stay together as a unit, that it not get broken up into pieces. And LACMA contemporary curator Lynn Zelevansky, who participated in the meeting, pointed out how many great Los Angeles-built collections have left the Southland over the years. "I feel the collection has to stay in Los Angeles," she said. Govan agreed.

Especially interesting: Govan made the point about MOCA's entire collection staying together as a whole at least three times. I don't know whether or not Govan meant to imply that LACMA could be/would be/might only be interested in MOCA's collection as a whole: paintings, sculpture, works on paper and photography. But I got that impression.

So it's up to you MOCA trustees: Honor the artists, trustees, donors, staff and community who preceded you by saving the museum that was entrusted to you (translation: write checks, finally, and big ones), or think about how 'your' art would look in BCAM.

By coincidence I'm in Los Angeles this morning: Good timing because the art world's two biggest stories are here. I'll tackle the MOCA issue in this post. The possible/future Beverly Hills Broad Art Museum will have to wait.

MOCA, arguably America's most important contemporary art museum, is in trouble, big trouble. To be clear: MOCA's financial problems were not caused by the global financial crisis; they are many years in the making. As recently as March I wrote in an LAT op-ed that MOCA's endowment was down to $20 million. Today's LAT hints that MOCA's endowment is a mere fraction of that, at least down a third, maybe down two-thirds. The LAT doesn't say how much cash MOCA has left, but MOCA admits that a merger with another institution is a possibility. That may indicate that the museum lacks the cash to make it through its fiscal year. [Photo]

So how did this happen? For years MOCA has been a powerhouse -- at least programmatically. In fact, MOCA may be the contemporary art museum most admired by other museums. Recently I asked the new head modern/contemporary curator at a major Eastern museum whose program he most wanted to emulate. Without needing to think about it, he pointed to MOCA and said that he admired the way the museum approaches contemporary art with the scholarly and art historical rigor with which other museums approach, say, 16th-century Italy. Since that conversation I've heard variations on that theme from several chief curators and museum directors.

But alas, financially MOCA has been a mess for almost a decade. The museum hasn't launched any kind of capital campaign in over ten years, nor has it undertaken an endowment-boosting expansion drive. (The one gap in MOCA's programming -- and its a big one -- has been a lack of space to install the museum's permanent collection. The museum has blueprints for how to expand gallery space in its Isozaki-designed downtown location, but it has never had the money to implement the plan.)

So what's the solution? Small ideas won't cut it. MOCA doesn't just need a cash infusion, it needs a nine-figure campaign that addresses both its space and endowment issues. That doesn't seem likely in this economic climate -- and it's extra-unlikely given how disengaged MOCA's board has been for the last half-decade. (Worse: Many board members have left for LACMA or the Hammer.)

What about a Getty bailout? There's no indication that's in the works, but MOCA director Jeremy Strick and Getty boss James Wood have a decades-long relationship going back to their days in St. Louis. That's enough to start the gossip mill, but so far it seems that's about all its worth.

The Getty factor is an important one: It's hard to imagine any MOCA bailout without a $20 million-plus infusion from either the Getty or former MOCA board chair Eli Broad, who for years now hasn't seemed terribly inclined in MOCA's direction. Any infusion would have to be married to a massive Southland-wide effort on MOCA's behalf. That would have to include fundraising assistance and pledges from the Getty and its many-tendriled board (which has regional influence and connections that MOCA's board can't come close to matching), from the city of Los Angeles and from MOCA's board. Given the economic climate, that would be the kind of Herculean effort of which MOCA seems utterly incapable. The big question in that scenario is how much do the Getty and Broad want to do? Or can they do?

And then there's the merger option. None of the merger options make immediate sense: The Hammer would sell another codex in order to get its hands on MOCA's collection. (We kid, we kid!) No doubt LACMA would love the trove too. However: Neither has the space to display MOCA's art and neither would seem to have any particular use for two downtown Los Angeles properties, especially considering the attendant operational costs.

Still merger ideas are clearly being discussed: The addition of MOCA's staff and collection would make the Hammer the top contemporary art museum in America and they'd make LACMA the most energetic, forward-thinking-and-programming encyclopedic museum in America. A merger would require substantial thought -- and fundraising -- by either museum.

In short, there appear to be no good options. This story is only just beginning.

LATer Mike Boehm has your must-read of the day on the financial problems at MOCA. I'll be back later today with some thoughts.

In a semi-related story, Eli Broad seems to have decided to build his own museum. This will not come as news to MAN readers, who would have read this and this back in January. (Which, apparently, NYTer Edward Wyatt didn't. The latest story was first broken by the Beverly Hills Courier, followed by Bloomberg.)

There are new sites everywhere this week. Here's the Menil's new site. And the Hammer's (which seems not to be Firefox-friendly, but maybe that's about my add-ons).

(In an unrelated story, apparently just about all the Frick's supporter$ are women.)

The National Medal of Arts is the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the United States Government. As such, you'd think that medals would be going to some pretty major figures in the visual arts. After all, the USA is full of major visual artists of great distinction, artists such as Johns, Puryear, Celmins, Thiebaud, Serra, Irwin and so on.

So it is with befuddlement that I pass on word that one of this year's medal winners was Jesus Moroles, a granite sculptor. Apparently he's worthy of national recognition.

(And no, this isn't a major issue. Just a way of previewing a post to come soon on arts policy in an Obama administration.)

• Richard Lacayo remembers Grace Hartigan. If you're in Baltimore for Franz West, don't miss several Hartigans in the contemporary wing of the BMA.
• Perry Garvin likes the new SFMOMA website more than I did.
• Ed Winkleman is always smart, but this post on artists, their galleries, and their expectations of each other given this economic climate is extra-smart.
• Nice story about a new MAMFW installation and the museum's Rauschenberg.
• This is unrelated to the proposed Koons 'train' at LACMA, but what the heck...

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has an inconsistent collection of American art. Its exhibition program often seems to have been determined by focus group -- what other explanation could there be for a production that inexplicably pairs Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams? The museum takes shows from too many second-tier venues that circulate exhibitions not up to best-of-the-best standards. (For example, I think that there's room for a thorough, illuminating Aaron Douglas retrospective, but the small, scattered show recently at SAAM wasn't it.) The museum's interest in contemporary art seems limited to a drive-by annual award, the Lucelia. Most damningly, collection-building seems not to be a prime concern. Or capability. [Photo]

Instead, survival is: The Smithsonian's last undersecretary for art, Ned Rifkin, even commissioned a blue-ribbon panel that issued a report that found SAAM boss Betsy Broun to be an ineffective director and all but begged her to resign. She ignored it.

SAAM features a confusing program in an historic building in the heart of Washington's artsy, crowded Seventh Street neighborhood. If any museum of American art is well-positioned to re-define the field during a period of increasing globalization - of art and everything else - it is SAAM. Instead it inexplicably lurches through mediocrity, from John Alexander to Barbara Bosworth to Ruth Duckworth, with a Roy Lichtenstein sculpture dropped in for good measure.

The Smithsonian should eliminate SAAM as a distinct entity, merging it into the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. (It's not immediately clear whether the terms of Joseph Hirshhorn's gift to the nation would allow such a clear merger, but surely something along those lines could be finessed.)

Hirshhorn and SAAM curators would have to make some fascinating choices. What year would be the 'line of demarcation' between the two buildings, or would work from all periods be shown in both buildings? Would special exhibitions be shown in both facilities? Both institutions have office-space issues that would have to be addressed. And ideally any plan would include changes to the Hirshhorn's Bunshaft building that would open up the office-filled fourth floor for art.

There are parts of both collections that would seem not to fit well within a new, consolidated museum: SAAM's folk art collections are exhilarating, but would they fit better at the SI's Renwick Gallery? The National Gallery of Art might well be interested in some long-term loans. (Of course, many of SAAM's American landscapes would fit beautifully in a new museum, and could help make clear the relationship between the American landscape tradition and, say, abex or light-and-space.)

In the end, a combined Hirshhorn/SAAM could be a Walker or SFMOMA-style museum with almost a Walker- or SFMOMA-sized budget. (Today the Hirshhorn and SAAM have combined budgets in the low $20 million range. Precise figures are difficult to come to because Smithsonian museums share some costs and because SI budgeting is labyrinthine.) The result could be a powerhouse museum of modern and contemporary art with a distinctly American twist, a museum whose collection would make it clear how American modernism and post-war art are indebted to previous American art. It's a story that few American museums tell. Washington is a good place to try.

• In the LAT, Leah Ollman finds Morandi in Whiteread.
• Nicolai Ouroussoff looks at America's most underrated architectural wonderland: Buffalo.
• Grace Hartigan dies at 86. Jacques Kelly's Baltimore Sun obit.
• Latest newspaper to lose its art critic: the Seattle Times, says Regina Hackett.
• The Boston Globe's Sebastian Smee on Sol LeWitt as delightful lunatic.
  

• Three great posts from Richard Lacayo this week: Visiting Sol Lewitt part one, part two; and visiting Paul Rudolph. Great images too.
• Veterans Day and underrated Western landscape painter William Wendt: LACMA's Unframed starts a meme, Christopher Knight finishes it.
• Regina Hackett suggests an Obama administration national arts program.
• United States Artists announces its 2008 fellows.
  
• "The olives!! How wonderful they were, as I looked on them that day in Greece. How terrible Orange is and life!" (I think Ed Schad should write/post more.)
• MTAA is doing fun participatory-type stuff at SFMOMA.Check out part of it here, and more of it elsewhere on their blog.
  

What is the Corcoran Gallery of Art all about these days? Is it about researching and building its well-known collection of 19th-century American art? Is it about exploring how its modern and contemporary collections relate to its American collection?

No. Over the last year or two under new-ish director Paul Greenhalgh, the Corcoran's spin into confusion has continued. Curators have left and have been let go. The museum is launching a strange deaccessioning plan, strange because it's not remotely clear that the current museum administration has any vision at all for why it is deaccessioning or why it is doing it now.

For years now the Corcoran has careened back and forth between attractive collection installations, bizarre collection installations (the 'art of the banjo' comes to mind) and exhibitions that are more about flash and spectacle than anything else. Those shows have alternately been about celebrity and sheer size -- witness the way the museum lurched from a bizarre, out-of-place $2 million 'Modernism' extravaganza to a dreadful Annie Leibovitz exhibition. The museum has all but stopped adding anything resembling major works to its collection. The museum's longtime signature show, the Corcoran Biennial, has been suspended. Sure, the Corcoran has a fantastic photography collection, but recent photography exhibitions have included a pointless Ansel Adams rehash, a Richard Avedon (mostly) celebrity pix show, and Leibovitz.

It's not just the administration of the museum that's crumbled either -- long-deferred maintenance has rendered the Corcoran's building a leaky white (Georgia Cherokee marble) elephant. (Estimates on the work that needs to be done on the Corcoran vary widely, but it's easily in the tens of millions of dollars. Some work is underway.)

The Corcoran's mission, identity and even its reason for existing are no longer apparent. It's time for radical changes, changes that acknowledge that the museum as currently constituted has run out of gas. [Photo.]

The Corcoran's trustees should explore two courses of action: First, explore the possibility of a deal with mega-collector Alice Walton, a merger that would create 'Crystal Bridges at the Corcoran.'

Walton is one of the two biggest collectors of American art. Her focus that fits the Corcoran's collection. She's currently building Crystal Bridges, a Bentonville, Ark.-based museum scheduled to open in 2010.

I think that Walton and her team would be interested in having bricks-and-mortar presence outside Bentonville. (Whether they'd explore it before 2010 is another question.) Given the interest that both Walton and the Walton Family Foundation have in education, the marriage of the Corcoran and Crystal Bridges could work for everyone: Walton would gain a high-profile, White House almost-adjacent venue for her collection and her museum, she would be able to fully capitalize the Corcoran College of Art and she and her family could create a major center that could advocate for the importance of arts education in American schools. (The family foundation's education-focused grants have been mostly in other areas, but it has done some work around arts education.) Walton and the family foundation have the money to renovate the Corcoran's properties. The Corcoran collection would stay intact, and the new museum could emerge as a major center for American art. It would be a winning situation for everyone. [Photo.]

Second option: Close the Corcoran. Disperse its art to other area museums, especially the National Gallery of Art and the Hirshhorn. Offer what's left to other America museums. Also: Do it fast. The Corcoran's announced deaccessioning of 10 American paintings is a troubling indicator of how the museum sees itself. Any possible further art sales by the Corcoran should be stopped before they can start. Works given to the museum to be held in the public trust and works bought by the museum should, if possible and if wanted, remain in public collections.

So if the Corcoran closes, what to do with the school and the physical plant? American University or George Washington University could each absorb relevant parts of the college. The physical plant could go to the National Gallery of Art, which would have to renovate the buildings before installing its American art and photography collections. (The NGA desperately needs space. The NGA would still need to find new office space and possibly library space somewhere.)

Also, remarkably, the Corcoran still has some highly-regarded staff, especially its photography curators and an American art curator. Fortunately, in either of the above scenarios there are logical places for them to land: Either with the newly expanded Crystal Bridges or at the NGA (which is in the market for at least one photography curator anyway).

For the last year I've been thinking (and occasionally posting) about the uncertainty in Washington's art scene. DC is not like Los Angeles or New York, cities in which the art community is centered around artists and/or the art market. Instead Washington is an institution-rich, collection-rich town, a place where the community is substantially made up of curators, scholars, conservators, administrators and the like. When there are problems at local arts institutions, it's a bigger deal here than it would be in LA or NYC.

In a number of posts and stories over the last year I've laid out Washington's challenges: The Smithsonian has been leaking oil for some time. The Smithsonian American Art Museum is so poorly run that a recent public Smithsonian report all but begged the director to resign. The National Gallery of Art is the only major American museum that hasn't substantially expanded in the last 30 years, and immediate prospects for expansion are poor. That's too bad: The NGA lacks the space to adequately show its collections from about 1890 forward, and many of its special exhibition spaces are badly outdated. The Corcoran Gallery of Art is one of the most dysfunctional museums in America. The Hirshhorn also lacks adequate space to show its permanent collection. (The Hirshhorn also lacks a director -- it's been effectively director-less for 428 days, a lengthy period that speaks to the diminished quality of the job and perhaps to the commitment of the board.) The nation's capital, the capital of the free world, has no public art program to speak of.

So for the rest of this week I'll be suggesting some major changes to the Washington arts scene. First up tomorrow morning: The Corcoran.

This sign should be on the door of every art gallery in California.

Over the summer I argued that arts leaders in and around Iowa needed to do more than tell their boards that they were opposed to the University of Iowa assessing and/or potentially selling Jackson Pollock's iconic 1943 Mural. I wrote that they needed to be be publicly out front on the issue, telling Iowans about their treasure, about why the work was important, about why putting dollar values on art held in the public trust was silly, inappropriate and irrelevant.

Virtually none did. (Several outside figures, such as the relevant AAMD committee chair and major university art museum directors did.) Major regional players, such as the Art Institute of Chicago's Jim Cuno said nary a word about the University of Iowa Museum of Art's treasure. True: The director of Iowa's largest museum, the Des Moines Art Center's Jeff Fleming, belatedly came out opposed to any sale. However he complained to me about being 'made' to publicly walk the plank and said: "I don't think that anyone should ever have a bully platform on which to speak. I think perhaps there are better ways to get things accomplished."

All of which makes Monday's so-stupid-it-hurts Erin Jordan Des Moines Register story rather maddening. The story asks "Should U of I art collection raise awareness -- or cash?" Now, I'm not sure why it should do either; the question is a ridiculous, fictional construction. ("Awareness?" Huh?) The story makes it obvious that Jordan doesn't understand what museums or non-profits are or what they do.

She seems to base her premise/story on this quote: "It's reasonable for the school to have some investment in art because that's what it's teaching students," said Ed Failor Jr., president of Iowans for Tax Relief. But "is it responsible to have that much capital when tuition rates keep climbing?"

Memo to Jordan, the Register and Failor, Jr.: The Pollock is not a 'capital' asset. It is a painting, part of America's cultural heritage. It is in a museum collection. Besides: Is it responsible of the school to have capital tied up in science labs and libraries when tuition rates keep climbing? Stop trying to treat a painting like a bank deposit. 

Of course this latest brouhaha never should have gotten to the point where this kind of silliness is still being discussed. It would be silly to lay one dumb newspaper article at the feet of any one individual. But clearly Iowa's arts leaders missed an opportunity for leadership when the Pollock issue was burning hottest. 

Leaders such as Fleming should have led. They should have been on NPR, on the local evening news, and on Iowa's op-ed pages seizing upon an opportunity to explain the importance of art, museums and museum collections. Instead they turned an opportunity into a continuing siege. While the University of Iowa regents have tabled the sale idea, Jordan's story makes it clear that the Iowa Pollock is likely to remain an issue in the months ahead.

Let this serve as a reminder to museum directors: Your job requires you to do more than just raise money. You have the power -- the responsibility -- to be the leading pro-arts voice in your community. If you don't advocate for the importance of art and artists, who will? If you don't make the case for why your institution matters, for why collections matter, for why America's cultural heritage matters, who will? If you keep silent while other museums and collections are attacked, who will be there for you?

When you shirk the responsibility of leadership, you are doing art, artists and your fellow museums a disservice. If you aren't willing to be public in your support of what a museum is, what art means to a community, about how culture and the preservation and display of it is critical to the American story, get another job.

Related: The Dallas Museum of Art and the Frisco kids.

If you're in or near Indianapolis, please come hear me speak at the Indianapolis Marion County Public Library on Thursday at 7pm. My talk, 'Ten Things I Hate About Contemporary Art' was arranged by the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art.

This is Steve Mumford's Sgt. Nick Pritsolas, 1st Platoon, Alph Co., 2-63 Armor, Baqubah, July, 2004. (Collection of the Harvard Business School.) Back tomorrow with posts on the latest Iowa/Pollock brouhaha and a three-day series on changing Washington's art scene. Related: LACMA's Unframed.

For whatever reason, 'tis the season for new museum websites. SFMOMA's new site is here. Major museums such as LACMA and the National Gallery of Art are working on new sites too. So how'd SFMOMA do?

It's a mixed bag. Outside of the Pulitzer, I've not seen a museum use so much Flash. In fact, you don't so much as see SFMOMA's website, you hold still while it throws itself at you. One of the things we love about art is that we can take our time to look, to discover, to make a work of art part of us. SFMOMA's front page mostly fills me with the desperate need to blink more often.

Then there's SFMOMA's ArtScope (above), a single page on which the museum presents 3,500 works of art sub-thumbnail style for us to click on. Because apparently some people prefer looking at 3,500 artworks at once instead of... one. Why was this a good idea? (Preferred.) (FWIW, SFMOMA describes the page thus: "This visual browsing tool features more than 3,500 objects from our collection, arranged in a continuous, map-like grid. Zoom in on an eye-catching image, search by keyword or artist, or just have a look around. In any case, we suspect you'll see our collection in a different light.")

It's not all bad: The collection section of the site is a massive improvement over SFMOMA's old presentation: More works are online and more pictures of more works are online. For example, at the old site not all of SFMOMA's 30 Clyfford Stills were online. Now they are. SFMOMA does fab-cool online features. SFMOMA's resources for educators are easy to find.

Still, there's nothing here that's both new and interesting. San Francisco is ground zero for web and software innovation, but you won't find evidence of that here. (Instead, try here.) The museum hasn't tried to integrate much that's new and interesting -- say, Twitter -- into how it interacts with its audience, not does it provide new ways for its audience to interact with it. SFMOMA's site is mostly more of the same.

(And from the usual mistakes file: Most museums are afraid to tell us who they have on staff, what they do and how to contact them. I have no idea why.)

Story to watch over the next six weeks: Expect an uptick in Congressional earmarks for art museums this year. Earmarks are often tucked into appropriations bills at the last moment, but I see that two art museums have worked their way into the Senate committee report of the Labor/Health and Human Services/Education appropriations bill: The Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Rochester, NY's Eastman House. (Note: Just because a museum worms its way into a federal appropriation doesn't mean that it necessarily struck earmark.)

Previously: The federal cash-tap opens. Among last years art museum earmarkees: Allentown, Everson, Figge, Heard and Heckscher.

In the wake of the WSJ's recent unfortunate, under-informed, and unclear-on-the-concept story on museums and the economy, MAN will be evaluating whether doom-and-gloom museum stories are legitimate or if they're manufactured.

By my count, there are three prominent art museums that face real financial issues: MOCA, which has spent down its endowment in recent years; the Corcoran, which has struggled for a decade and which lurches from 19th-century landscapes to splash/glitz/celebrity with all the smoothness of Sarah Palin's elocution; and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

So this one's legit: The troubles at the DIA are coming into clearer focus in Mark Stryker's must-read story in the Detroit Free Press. Stryker outlines the DIA's troubles and reveals that the museum has already opened talks with cities and related bodies in the Far East and in the Middle East about renting the DIA's art out for cash. (The Freep's page design makes it impossible for me to link to the sidebar that lays out the DIA's dial-for-cash efforts. It's on the right-hand side, under a photo of Alfred Taubman.)

• The LAT's Diane Haithman runs through Southland museums and possible recession-related issues. Nothing too dramatic for art museums. LACMA: A hiring freeze. OCMA: A 10 percent budget cut. (Prudence does not equal crisis.) MOCA: Some first-stage cutbacks -- and stay tuned.
  
• Kenneth Baker is not a fan of SFMOMA's Art of Participation show. In a related story, SFMOMA has a new website. The front page needs Ritalin. Someone tell it to hold the heck still. (More on the new SFMOMA site later today.)
  
• Baker also reviews Martin Puryear at SFMOMA.
• SF Chron architecture critic John King says that a number of Ess Eff architecture types aren't thrilled with the idea of Donald Fisher putting his museum in the Presidio and have created/suggested some alternatives. 
• David Bonetti loves the Pulitzer Foundation's installation of Old Masters in Tadao Ando's spaces. The Pulitzer has some cool videos about the installation, especially this one about using only natural light.
• In Philadelphia Weekly, Tara Murtha profiles Zoe Strauss. Strauss has been chronicling the melancholia of the Bush years.
• The Harvard Art Museum or the Harvard Art Museums, or HAM, or The HAMs, or whatever that place is called just scored a trove of German modern and contemporary art. Geoff Edgers has images here and here.
• Ugo Rondinone goes up in Boston and in San Francisco. The Globe's Sebastian Smee is OK with his ICA Boston installation -- but only barely.
• Apparently the MFA Boston has a bleak future: "In my eyes, [director Malcolm Rogers] can do no wrong," trustee Frederic A. Sharf says. "From the beginning, I fell in love with his vision. . . . He's a genius." That's from a Geoff Edgers profile of one of America's most, er, questionable museum directors.
  

It's been a content-packed month or so on MAN (scroll down and down and down), so I'm taking a couple days off. See you Monday.

• The private non-profit that operates LACMA spent nearly $1 million on a Los Angeles-area ballot initiative. Christopher Knight parses why. One little side-note: Michael Govan sort-of bemoans that The Grove gets 13 million visitors a year and LACMA doesn't. I understand where he's coming from and it's not a bad thing when art museums attract visitors... but I attendance is not -- and should not be -- a primary indicator of mission success.
  
• This Geoff Edgers-quoted email from a Mass MoCA staffer is a doozy. It sounds like time for the museum to re-educate its staff on what it means to work at a non-profit, and how a museum's mission and finances are different from, oh, I don't know... a publicly-traded, for-profit company. (In a related story: Ditto the Corcoran. In a related-related story, AAMD's guidelines strongly urge museums to make sure that their staffs know what the heck it means to be a non-profit, and what they can and can't, and should and shouldn't do as a result of that status.)
• Unrelated story: Geoff Edgers' story on Mass MoCA's Sol LeWitt extravaganza.
• Iowa has chosen to restore its flood-damaged Steven Holl arts building.
• The Houston Chron's Douglas Britt has some nice video from Prospect.1 in the Lower Ninth Ward.
• Groaner of the day, from the New Museum: "The New Museum joins Elizabeth Peyton in paying tribute to incoming First Lady Michelle Obama, whose portrait with her daughter Sasha will be unveiled today on the 4th floor as a new component of the exhibition Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton. This is the first time this newly created painting is on public view. Please join us in celebrating as we look forward to rousing changes both large and small." A little lot too pop-curating, finger-to-the-wind, stunt-like for my taste.
  

From Lawrence Weschler's essay 'Vermeer in Bosnia,' published in the Weschler compilation of the same title:

Or consider the magisterial View of Delft -- as I now did, having arrived at the Mauritshuis and taken a seat before the magnificent canvas up on the second floor. It is an image of unalloyed civic peace and quiet. But it is also the image of a town only just emerging from a downpour, the earth in the foreground still saturated with moisture, the walls of the town bejeweled with wet, the dark clouds breaking up at last, and the sunlight breaking through, though not just anywhere: a shaft of fresh, clean light gets lavished on one spire in particular, that of the radiantly blond Nieuwe Kerk, in whose interior, as any contemporary of Vermeer's would doubtless have known, stands the mausoleum of William the Silent, one of the heroes of the wars of Dutch independence, assassinated in Delft at the end of the previous century by a French Catholic fanatic.

Image removed at the insistence of the Newseum. (Ahem. Instead of fighting them I'm just going to point out that the Newseum insisted on the removal of the image. The Newseum. Update: The Newseum says it did not demand the picture's removal. Fine, it urged its removal. It pointedly suggested it. It complained loudly, apparently failing to understand how ironic it is that a journalism museum would fail to understand fair-use law.)

These three men were among those who died trying to make today possible.

On June 21, 1964, Neshoba County, Mississippi law enforcement officials and Ku Klux Klansmen killed Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman because they were going to help black men and women register to vote. Today, 44 years after they were murdered, a black man is on the verge of being elected president. 

Voting is something that most of us take for granted. I know I did. As a child I remember going with my parents to vote: We walked a block up Montero Ave., across Hillside Drive and into someone's garage. My parents stepped into gray metal booths, pulled shut some cheap black curtains and cast their ballots while I waited outside. Back then I assumed that voting was something that everyone did and that everyone always had done.

Bill Owens' America, where I grew up, is a long way from central Mississippi. It takes an enormous amount of imagination for me to understand what it must have been like for millions of Americans to be denied the most fundamental tenet of participatory citizenship and to fight back. I wouldn't have any understanding whatsoever if it had not been for the brave photographers who chronicled the civil rights movement and the images they left behind. These pictures are arguably the most important pictures ever taken in America. Along with the video shot by television news reporters in the South in the mid-'60s, they forced our nation to confront the racism and the violence it tolerated. They helped make today possible. This seems like a good time to remember them and to remember how those photographs made us pay attention.

When I paid attention
Thirty years after Freedom Summer I was in college. I started learning about the civil rights movement in class. It was fine and interesting, but little of it stuck.

Shortly thereafter I moved to Washington, where as a young sportswriter I wrote a story on a Baltimore Ravens football player who as a child had been the plaintiff in a major civil rights lawsuit. The story fascinated me -- how did I not know about all that stuff? -- so I decided to find out more. At the time I didn't think I knew any civil rights-era heroes that I could just ask about it, so I thought I should find a book to read. (As it turned out I was wrong, I did, but they just never talked about it.)

I walked across the street from my apartment and bought Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters, the first of Branch's trilogy of books about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. At the time -- and this is embarrassing -- I had little idea who Branch was or that the book was particularly good. My first response to the book was to this picture on the cover. It was taken by James Karales in 1965, on the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march. I bought the book.

(Karales was a 35-year-old photojournalist who had been making photographs about race in America since the late 1950s. Edward Steichen bought several of Karales' photographs of an integrated Ohio mining town for MoMA's collection in the 1950s, helping to encourage Karales to continue his focus on race issues. In 2005 Duke launched a posthumous show of Karales' work.)

Vince Aletti wrote that Karales' photographs have "the weight of history and the grace of art." It's a smart way of saying that the great photojournalism of the civil rights era isn't exactly art, but because the best of it is so imbued with the right stuff, who cares?

Aletti was right. Great art allows us to feel and compels us to receive. The best photojournalism of the civil rights era does that too. It laid bare a fundamental truth about an American lie and the heroism that responded to it that nothing else could. For those of us who are too young to have lived through those years, or who lived too far away to grow up with the heroes of the era, photographs are the best way -- often the only way -- for us to try to understand how they overcame.

Each hour today I'm going to post an image from the civil rights movement, an image about voting. Maybe without these pictures equality would have come to America. Maybe Barack Obama would have run for president anyway and maybe he'd win. But maybe not.

On the flag:

• A beat!
• Michele Pred's U.S. is made out of razor blades (almost at bottom of page);
• Ed Kienholz (of course!).
• Some flags, lots of other cool stuff: A new Chris Sollars 'collection rotation' via SFMOMA's blog. (All works shown are in SFMOMA's collex.)
  

Baseball!

• Regina Hackett takes a look at baseball art at the Seattle Mariners' stadium.
• Alice Thorson offers John Hull.
• Ralph Fasanella.
• Reader CA tells us that George Krevsky Gallery does a baseball show every year.

Tomorrow on MAN: Special election day posts. Expect one-an-hour or so.

The big art story of the week tells you the difference between the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times: The NYT leads its Sunday arts section with a business story, the kind of numb, mindless, pretending-to-be-about-art tripe that the paper features so regularly. Meanwhile, earlier in the week in the LAT, Jeffrey Fleishman examined how Iraqi artists at the Baghdad University College of Fine Arts are taking to the US-built blast walls that are around the city to paint murals. It's a story about how post-Saddam Iraqi artists are playing a key role in deciding just what Iraq is. Advantage LAT. UPDATE: The WSJ wrote about/photographed blast wall-mural projects back in August. [via]

• Holland Cotter has a strong piece on the Miro show at MoMA. He should have mentioned that the curator of the show he so admired was Anne Umland.
• I also enjoyed Ken Johnson's take on Jan Lievens at the National Gallery. Two days later I was amazed by Blake Gopnik's write-up of the same show in the Washinton Post: It's a Gopnikian classic, a review that is first about Gopnik and his self-puffing contrarian pronouncements and that is only secondarily about the art, the artist, or the exhibition.
• The LAT's David Pagel reviews an unexpected (to me, anyway) Craig Kauffman drawings retrospective. (Finally art that the Pompidou can't break!)
  
• Time's Richard Lacayo on William Eggleston at the Whitney. 
• Just judging from my email, many of you were as dumbfounded by this Chicken Little-style Alexandra Peers WSJ story as I was.
  
• This feature gets shorter and shorter every week, doesn't it? Tells you something about the condition of arts journalism in America...