9.30.2003
Philly's artblog wonders about
the lack of Philly gallery reviewing in art magazines.
People in every city but NYC wonder about this. The reason is pretty simple: the magazines are in NYC and the magazines think NYC is all that matters because that's where the money is. They're wrong of course -- every time I go to the West Coast I'm surprised at the quality of what I see, even though I shouldn't be -- but how would they know that they're wrong when they're busy being NYCentric? Do the big art magazines even have West Coast editors? (I should know the answer to that.)
Frankly, I don't think that the magazine back-of-the-book reviews matter much anyway. Almost all of them are badly written (just pick up any issue of Art Papers and wonder who let most of those people loose in front of keyboards) and what artist wants to be written about badly? With the exception of the odd Roberta Smith take on Barney or the like, I don't think that the BOTBs are influential or widely read by anyone. Agreements? Disagreements?
posted by Tyler at 3:06 PM
For the second time in two days, I'm going to try to fill up your snail mail box. (See yesterday's final post immediately below this one.) The new Taschen catalog arrived recently and it's always a hoot. (To get it for free,
click here.) The gotta-have-it in this catalog is Tadao Ando: The Complete Works, a 576-page paean to Ando. It's not online yet or I'd link to it.
Greg Allen uses his mobile to tell us that Richard Serra will be on
WNYC's Leonard Lopate show at noon (EDT) today.
Somehow I've never linked to
Tom Moody's art blog.
Last night was the first NFL game at Chicago's new Soldier Field. I think that the last art or architecture critic to win a Pulitzer is the Chicago Tribune's Blair Kamin, so it seems like a good time to link to
his recent writing.
posted by Tyler at 9:53 AM
9.29.2003
Very rarely do I promise that rote obedience will result in guaranteed pleasure. But I promise that if you email
institute@ccarts.edu and ask for a copy of the
Warped Space comic book catalog
I discussed here last week, you will enjoy the heck out of it. (And yes, they told me that they're happy to fill requests.) Art schools, museum publications departments, curators, and gallery owners should all make sure they get a copy of this one.
I also found out that the catalog was conceived by CCA Wattis director Ralph Rugoff, who curated the show, and that the comic book itself was created by CCA student Gene Shih (whose background includes working on
video games).
posted by Tyler at 7:39 PM
Proof that museums will put old, tired ideas on display when those ideas are about sex:
Reagan Louie at SFMOMA. As "profiled" (cough, cough) by
the NYT. See previously: Barbara Nitke, Nan Goldin and many, many more.
While we're in SF, Kenneth Baker
reviews Warped Space @ CCA Wattis -- kind of. (Actually, he just describes what's in the show.)
posted by Tyler at 3:00 PM
Pet peeve: What is it with galleries and price lists? Why are the prices of work on display a state secret? In New York the law dictates that galleries must have a list of the prices of the work on view available for anyone who comes into the gallery. (Yes, NYC galleries frequently ignore the law. I don't know what the law is in other states.) At one San Francisco gallery last week getting a list of works in the show (which included prices) was something that required a gallery staff meeting. Absurd. Can you imagine the same policy being in effect at Wal-Mart?
LAT'er Christopher Knight writes about
living with art -- and it's free.
New-to-me art blog:
Beverly Tang.
posted by Tyler at 9:53 AM
9.28.2003
Ah how travel slows me down on things! A couple of weeks ago DC photographer Charles Wharton sent along this
summary of tips for emerging artists, weaned from a symposium in Washington.
posted by Tyler at 10:02 PM
9.26.2003
As discussed here before (but not recently), I dislike art "reviews" that explain work rather than critique it. Witness
Ken Johnson in today's NYT on the Murakami installation at Rock Center.
posted by Tyler at 11:16 AM
9.25.2003
Upcoming speakers at the Hirshhorn: Guillermo Kuitca on Oct. 2, Ann Hamilton on Oct. 21, Jack Cowart of the Lichtenstein Foundation on Oct. 25, Dia's Michael Govan gives the Mordes Lecture on Nov. 2, and Dan Steinhilber on Nov. 13.
Jon Anderson wrote one of two books on the Barnes. His thoughts on the latest in Philadelphia in the
Wall Street Journal (it's free).
posted by Tyler at 7:15 PM
For institutions devoted to the dissemination of visual content, museums are lousy at disseminating visual content that consists of words.
Quick: Do you remember anything you've ever read on a museum wall?
Museums love wall text for a simple reason: it's an inexpensive way of communicating with visitors. Nevermind the obvious irony: museums show art that they believe to have value beyond the immediate present, but wall text about that art is so temporal that five seconds after reading it the text has gone in one eye and out the other.
Mine is not a new complaint -- art critics have kvetched about wall text for years. When the
Hirshhorn started its Gyroscope hanging by just saying no to wall text, nearly every critic who wrote about the show (me included) was thrilled that the art was allowed to talk without curatorial trap-flapping. Sadly wall text has crept into the show: There is now a tedious biographical wall text about Giorgio Morandi in the previously brilliant Morandi gallery. God forbid anyone would just happily look at the paintings and then Google the artist when they get home. (And before you say that people
just don't do that, you'd be amazed at how many Googles of works and artists in Gyroscope have made their way to MAN.
Lick and Lather is especially popular with post-Gyroscope Googlers, perhaps because the
image of the work on the Hirshhorn's website is broken.)
In addition to wall text, many, if not most, museums prepare semi-glossy little handouts that a visitor can pick up at the beginning of an exhibit. Nobody reads these things. While in NYC a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the little brochure provided at the Max Beckmann show was primarily valuable to visitors as a fan to help them through the heat between MoMA QNS and the subway. (I myself found it to be a totally ineffective fan -- MoMA used flimsy paper so the volume of air that reached my overheated cranium didn't do much to cool me off.) I didn’t see anyone read the brochure or even look at it. By the time I got to Times Square, the 7 train was littered with Beckmann brochures. Memo to museums: brochures are just as ineffective as wall text.
Several museums I've visited recently have found clever alternatives to wall-text. As part of its Gyroscope installation, the Hirshhorn is offering visitors free postcards about specific works of art or galleries. The postcards, which fit easily into your back pocket, pose questions about the art, include quotes from artists, or explain how a piece of art was made. It's kind of fun to take a postcard home with you, to show it to your friends at your local coffeehouse and to talk with them about what you saw.
One card is provided for the Hirshhorn's 'black and white' gallery, the one that includes works by Stella, Serra, Reinhardt and others. The postcard for that gallery includes a Reinhardt quote from 1957: "No colors. 'Color blinds.' 'Colors are an aspect of appearance and so only of the surface. Colors are barbaric, unstable, suggest life, 'cannot be completely controlled' and 'should be concealed.' Colors are a ‘distracting embellishment.' No white." Other cards include details about specific works or pose questions about works. "Is it possible for an artist to convey the idea of a person without using the human form?" asks a postcard available near a Balkenhol carving and a Struth portrait.
Even cleverer, is the 20-page, glossy comic book that the
California College for the Arts' Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts has produced for its
Warped Space show. The comic book (complete with a 50-cent 'price tag,' bar code and an 'advertisement' on the back cover) provides a witty tour through Warped Space led by ethnically ambiguous hipster Riley Smithson (hmmm…) who, we are told, is an "amateur surveyor of the urban grid, psychogeographer-in-training, [and] string-theory devotee." Young Riley offers clever comments that appeal both to art-lovers and visitors unfamiliar with the artists in the show. The comic book, which includes reproductions of the art in the show, is smart, funny and never talks down to the reader. Some favorites:
As Riley approaches Olafur Eliasson's
Kaleidoscope Wall, Riley asks, "Am I supposed to look at this… or look through it? Holy Gordon Matta-Clark!"
The comic book both pokes fun at the conventions of the medium and at the conventions of curator-speak. When examining Fred Tomaselli’s
13,000, a work made from aspirin and resin, Riley offers: "No doubt Riley’s parents would call it pretty 'trippy.' You, on the other hand, remark on how its fluctuating surface draws attention to the intimacy between vision and physical movement, underscoring the relativity of any single perspective, and reminding you (as if you needed reminding!) that life as a static, disembodied eye can only get you so far."
Museums would be wise to call CCA Wattis and request copies of the Warped Space comic book. Maybe it would inspire them to be a little more creative with their exhibit presentation.
posted by Tyler at 10:22 AM
9.24.2003
Ohmigod:
A visual arts feature in the Washington Post! It's about Kebedech Tekleab, who is part of the
Dialogues from the Diaspora show at the National Museum of African Art. (I wrote about it
here.)
Also,
reader reaction to Gopnik on J. Seward Johnson.
posted by Tyler at 1:05 AM
Enjoyed Tuesday’s stroll/drive through San Francisco galleries. This completes my NYC-LA-SF fall swing. LA finished first, Chelsea second and SF third, but the average SF show was better than the average Chelsea show. I know that‘s completely broad, pejorative and meaningless unless you're planning a trip next weekend, but maybe you are...
* Edward Burtynsky @
Robert Koch. I think I’ll be writing more about this show later, so I won’t say too much here. Show summary: National Geographic meets Sonnabend.
* James Turrell @
Haines. Aside from a Turrell light installation, Haines showed three Turrell holograms. National Geographic meets Robert Miller.
* I’ve seen a lot of Markus Linnenbrunk on this trip. He has an
installation up at the UCLA Hammer Museum and he has a show here @
Sweetow. Lots of bright colors in strict patterns or shapes. National Geographic meets Gene Davis and Yayoi Kusama. OK, this one is stretching the National Geographic thing a bit far, so just focus on Davis and Kusama on crack.
* Thanks to the gallerina at
Jack Hanley who pointed me to a show called
Warped Space at the CCA Wattis gallery. I think I’ll blog a bit more about this show later -- you wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to find out who curated it, for example -- but this is the best gallery show I saw in SF. If you’re in SF before November, this and Chagall are the two shows to see. If you go to SF to see Chagall, see this show too.
posted by Tyler at 12:36 AM
9.23.2003
From LA galleries…
I can’t remember seeing more painting in galleries in one area than I saw in LA last week. Spend enough time in Chelsea and you think painting is passe. Spend a couple days in LA and you think everything
but painting is passe. Some LA gallery highlights:
* The previously mentioned
Robert Olsen show @ Susanne Vielmetter.
* Brit Katie Pratt’s paintings at
Kontainer. There are clumpy strands of paint growing off of Pratt’s canvases.
* Becher student Miles Coolidge’s photos of drawbridges (in the ‘up’ position) @ Acme. Very geometric, strict, and formal. Ol’ Bernd must have been thrilled. But Coolidge’s photos play with the Becher influence in a kind of punny way -- the drawbridges are stiff and square but when I look at them it’s hard not to see movement in them. I know those drawbridges go down, which plays with the way the eye looks at them.
* Raymond Pettibon’s installation at Regen Projects is way too cute and art-world insider in some spots, but overall it was a fun show to look at. My favorite: a boy and a girl opening the cover of a giant book and trying to look/climb inside. The book? De Sade’s 180 Days of Sodom.
* Paintings by Eric Niebuhr @
Goldman.
posted by Tyler at 1:28 PM
9.22.2003
Spent the morning at the
Marc Chagall show at SFMOMA. Some random thoughts:
* What a frustrating installation. SFMOMA tried to pack as much as they could into as small an area as possible. The result is dead-end little side galleries, lots of paintings tucked into corners and the worst audience flow of any exhibit I’ve seen in a long time. An exhibit that was probably only semi-crowded felt like Macy’s on Christmas Eve.
* Only one work in the show -- a minor, fantastical goauche -- is from a German museum or collection. I obviously don't have my library out here, but I wonder if Chagalls were destroyed by the Nazis, were sold in degenerate art shows or...?
* A few weeks ago in the WP Blake Gopnik wrote about how inappropriate baroque frames were for many modern works. Blake would have flipped out at many of the frames on works in this show.
* Lots of loans in this show from Russia. Very cool. I wonder what U.S. museums (this means you High Museum, LACMA, etc.) are paying to get these paintings out of Russia.
*
White Crucifixion (1938) is one of the most remarkable paintings about the Holocaust I’ve ever seen. In it Chagall mixes Christian and Jewish iconography to tell the story of what he saw happening in Europe during the Nazi reign. The painting lives at the Art Institute of Chicago. Highlight of the show.
posted by Tyler at 8:29 PM
Greetings from the Bay Area. If you've sent email in the last few days, I apologize for not having responded yet. I'll try to catch up on Monday. Some news and notes:
* The Lincoln board has approved the Barnes move. STILL
no inquisitive reporting by Carol Vogel at the NYT or by
the Philly Inquirer. Only detail: It takes $50M to do what should be done.
*
Terry Teachout tells us that there are a bunch of John Marin watercolors up @ the Met right now. I think Marin's watercolors are some of the most underrated painting in American modern art. If you're NYC, go see 'em!
* I raised this a bit on artnet.com last week, but... I saw an Anne Appleby painting (Night from 1994) at the Berkeley Art Museum today. Why is it I never see Appleby's paintings east of the Mississippi?
* Walter Robinson (presumably)
has the skinny on the "use" of the art world in Sex in the City.
* Great stuff in the
top six or so posts on 2blowhards.
* Slide lectures are about to die out. From
one artblog (the FL one) and
the other (the PA one).
* More on LA and SF later in the week.
posted by Tyler at 2:13 AM
9.19.2003
Have any other Washingtonians noticed that the Post hasn't reviewed the Corcoran's Census 03 show in the Style section (meaning no Blake Gopnik or Jessica Dawson write-up)? Disappointing. There are so many ways that they could approach this show. (My write-up
is here.)
posted by Tyler at 1:18 PM
Other notes from LA:
* $20 for the Pushkin show at LACMA. Ridiculous, of course. I don't pay $20 a pop for my hockey tickets, for chrissake. I can't link to Christopher Knight's review of said exhib because of the LAT's annoying pay-for-view policy (a million ads and I STILL gotta pay? Pick one: me paying or ads), but he nailed it on this show. There are about a dozen
truly great paintings in the show. The rest is a lot of filler, mostly filler of the Impressionist sort that apparently inspires museum directors to charge $20 a pop these days. At the $20 price it's no surprise that the audience was 85 percent blue hairs. Yo museums: $20 a head drives away young visitors in droves.
* MAN readers were extremely helpful in pointing me toward the good stuff. Several pointed me to the George Stone mid-career show, titled "Probabilities," at the LA Municipal Art Gallery. I don't know how to describe Stone's work in a way that puts it in any kind of context. (LAT'er Christopher Knight calls it "kinetic sculpture" and that works for me. Knight's review ran on Sept. 15 but only if you pay for it.) One piece,
Unknown, Unwanted, Unconscious, Untitled featured five black bodybag thingys that would lie at rest... and then after a spell the body-like figures in them would begin to move. Completely eerie both in its visual and in its effect on the brain -- no sooner did the "bodies" begin to move than I began to wonder what happens to people when they die. That's a thought I hadn't had since I was 13 or so.
Another piece,
In the Line of Fire (Civilized, Informed, Entertained) features a TV/VCR and speakers on one side of a gallery and a black 'canvas' with holes in it facing the TV from the opposite wall. On the TV a video camera examines a black space, eventually finding a man in wrinkled clothes and CHiPs-era shades. Eventually the camera focuses on the pointed gun in the man's hand and the gun fires. When it does smoke comes out of one of the holes in the 'canvas.' Standing between the TV and the canvas is a very disconcerting experience.
Lots of disconcerting experiences in Stone's work. Too bad it's not traveling.
posted by Tyler at 12:50 PM
Even out west I think about the east. Carol Vogel is non-detail-oriented again today. No, she doesn't quote museum directors from Hartford for no apparent reason, but she does tell us about the
Met's plan to address "depressed" attendance by opening on holiday Mondays. First, Vogel doesn't cite any numbers about the Met's budget or declining attendance. She should have -- are the Met's numbers really down over the last year? Secondly, and having nothing to do with Vogel, if the Met is concerned about attendance perhaps a good place to start would be training their employees not to be rude and pompous to visitors. On my last several visits there I've ben so angry at how I've been treated by Met staff that it has impacted my enjoyment of my visit.
posted by Tyler at 12:31 PM
9.18.2003
L.A. Diary? L.A. Journal? (Could I rip off artnet any
more?)
On Monday I wandered into Susanne Vielmetter and saw a naked wall to my right. That was odd; according to my notes there was supposed to be a show at Vielmetter. As my eyes adjusted to the brightness of the gallery, I looked around and eventually found the show. There, opposite the naked wall, were eight little paintings. Each was painted on board, board exactly the size of a piece of paper. Each painting was of a gas station pump at night. Each was precious, starkly beautiful and skillfully painted. Each had a tension between the blocks of color on the pumps, the inky night rendered starless by the fluorescent light, the shapes of the pumps and the other planes in the painting. I loved them pretty much right away.
The part of my brain that responds to art began whirring: Morandi, Ruscha, Opie. I walked to the back of the gallery and started making notes in my notebook, signing the guest book, all that good gallery stuff. Susanne Vielmetter greeted me and I said hello back. Unable to contain myself any longer, I said something about how Morandi must have moved to LA because these little gas pumps were delightfully Morandi-esque in their focus, their simplicity, their color. Vielmetter politely agreed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a burly dude in an orange shirt, a really orange shirt, perk right up at the mention of M. Morandi.
The orange shirt mumbled something toward me, fiddled with a camera, and adjusted his glasses about once per word, but eventually I ascertained that he too loved Morandi. He said something about a Morandi drawing that he particularly liked. I told him a little bit about the Morandi installation at the Hirshhorn, which, until a few weeks ago, was also nothing but paintings facing a naked white wall. As Morandi lovers know, it's not everyday one can smoke the Morandi pipe with another devotee. Eventually Vielmetter interjected, "That's the artist."
It was one of those little art moments that we all particularly enjoy: see something, be reminded of something else that one has seen, start blabbering about it to total strangers and discover that everyone's reading from the same script. The artist is Robert Olsen and
his show @ Vielmetter is fantastic. We had a lovely little chat about his paintings and about M. Morandi. I don't think the online repros (
here's a semi-slide show)are particularly kind, but you get a vague idea.
(Artnet's Eve Wood
looks at some Olsen here. Artnet also has an
installation image from the current show here. I wouldn't know if the LAT has anything on Olsen because of their pay-for-view thingy.)
posted by Tyler at 2:44 PM
Hi from Oregon, where it's 75 and sunny.
Couple of really fun links this morning: Terry Teachout on
the way the eye moves around a painting (and wall text!) at a museum.
And several months ago
I wrote about my concern that the federal indemnity for museums was too low and Congress wasn't fixing it. Today's
NYT reports that the House passed a bill, the Senate already passed one and Shrub is expected to sign it. Good. But why did they only increase the max coverage by 20 percent?
posted by Tyler at 1:00 PM
9.17.2003
Even when the Philly Inquirer gets something right about the Barnes brouhaha, it's badly done, poorly researched and backed into. Witness this
Acel Moore column. He's right, but he clearly didn't report what he wrote. If he had, his argument would have been stronger.
Inky also ran an
editorial on this stuff. They fail to convince me how Lincoln has "shown courage." Per-pfiffle. If the Inquirer had done some real reporting on this stuff, perhaps their editorial wouldn't be so sappy.
posted by Tyler at 12:41 AM
9.16.2003
Greetings from Los Angeles, where MAN is doing an intensive two-day art crawl. More on what I'm seeing on Thursday, I think. Meanwhile, if you haven't been to artnet to read the latest
Baghdad Journal, it's a good one.
I haven't posted about my NYC weekend foray yet, so let me offer a few things about it.
The Max Beckmann show feels a little thin, but boy are there some really good canvases in it. The Matisse influence on Beckmann is stronger than I'd remembered it -- and I remembered more about just how strong HM's influence was on German Expressionism when I saw a Kirchner at LACMA today. No link to the image, I'm afraid. I happened to pick seemingly the only Kirchner you can't find through
LACMA's good collection site.
Back in NYC. Kelly and the Rinder show at the Whitney are as bad as you've heard. I have nothing to add.
Galleries: What a weird season in Chelsea. First shows of the season are mostly be quiet names. (Serra and Sugimoto come online this weekend, when I'm out west.) Enjoyed Kevin Zucker @ Mary Boone (
Charlie Finch: bravo), Didie Massard @ Julie Saul, Graham Parks @ Feigen and Cecily Brown's watercolor photo @ Cheim & Reid. Sorry for the lack of detail -- travel makes for brevity. Maybe more later this week.
posted by Tyler at 11:38 PM
Apparently the Philly, NYC and Washington papers are content with the state of the Barnes story. (OK, except the Post, which has never cared about this one.) Nothing new in a couple days despite
many unanswered questions. If it wasn't 3am I'd pose them!
posted by Tyler at 3:22 AM
9.15.2003
The Barnes saga is finally progressing again. Here's
the main story, and here's the (lazy attempt at the)
behind-the-scenes tale. Basically Lincoln University gets bought off and the Barnes moves to the Ben Franklin Parkway. It's the right result, regardless of how it happened.
Actually, come to think of it, we still don't know how it happened. The Philly papers are rather lacking inquisitiveness on this deal. (And there
was a deal.) Carol Vogel gives us
a similarly bland NYT version, including a quote from, apparently, the only museum director Vogel could get on the phone on Sunday.
Next, if you haven't
read the vitriol Blake Gopnik heaped on the Corcoran and their J. Seward Johnson show, you should. I've had artist
s tell me that they're ashamed to have their work in the Corcoran while that show is up.
Another major American museum is searching for a helmsman.
Alan Artner at the Chicago Trib does a good job of telling us about the opening. (Use the username and password at
ArtsJournal.)
I was in NYC over the weekend. More later but here's the tease: Whitney is yuck, MOMA is yay, Chelsea thumb-twiddles.
Ionarts tips me off to the
International Art Blog (a temporary project). It's an ugly site, but the idea and content makes it worth the visual mess.
posted by Tyler at 12:12 AM
9.14.2003
Back from NYC. Had an email glitch while I was gone, so if you tried to send me email on Friday or Saturday, please try again. NYC gallery crawl thoughts on Monday. In the meantime,
enjoy the vitriol Blake Gopnik has for the Corcoran and their J. Seward Johnson show. Must-read.
posted by Tyler at 11:23 AM
9.12.2003
My essay on
the Corcoran's Census 03 show and the trend toward local-ennials is up at artnet. Glenn Dixon's
CityPaper review is there too.
In NYC today, but...
MAN has been online for two years this week. This rather amazes me. Unlike many blogs I've never had a tip jar or any way of asking readers "for" anything, but if you feel like celebrating...
Click here and make a small (or big) donation to
Pediatric Care, a DC-based non-profit that provides
art therapy and educational enrichment to HIV-positive and HIV-affected children in Washington. I'm familiar with them because our firm does some work with them, trying to help them build their programs and such. Thanks for your help.
posted by Tyler at 8:36 AM
9.11.2003
The Village Voice pulls out some
eagerly anticipated fall gallery shows. This is the best preview list I've seen in any city, in any paper or magazine. (Yes, the HTML code seems to be a little goofy -- you may have to scroll to the right.)
Exciting for me: Shirin Neshat's
Tooba coming to the
Asia Society in October. I wrote about it
here on MAN. (In response to viewer mail: The website
is wrong: Tooba was shown at Sundance in 2003 and once in New York.)
Unrelated: MANfave pretty serendipities has a
kick-ass look at art:21.
posted by Tyler at 11:49 AM
One of my biggest (but probably unattainable) goals is to own a
Vija Celmins painting. If you didn't see the Celmins segment on art:21 last night,
buy the tape.
On the flip side, why oh why did someone choose the super-baroque Tim Hawkinson to follow a segment on Celmins?
Out in the blogosphere, 2blowhards (thanks for the birthday nod!) asks readers to choose their
favorite painting of a female nude. For me this is easy:
Matisse's Blue Nude from 1907, the one in Baltimore. (Not sure if that's high-falutin' though.) Terry Teachout
joins in the fun too.
MAN has been online for two years this week. This rather amazes me. Unlike many blogs I've never had a tip jar or any way of asking readers "for" anything, but if you feel like celebrating...
Click here and make a small (or big) donation to
Pediatric Care, a DC-based non-profit that provides
art therapy and educational enrichment to HIV-positive and HIV-affected children in Washington. I'm familiar with them because our firm does some work with them, trying to help them build their programs and such. Thanks for your help.
posted by Tyler at 9:58 AM
9.10.2003
James Wagner does a
Chelsea crawl and blogs about it. (His permalink is screwy -- scroll down a couple screens when you get to his page.)
posted by Tyler at 2:44 PM
The first night of the
PBS series art:21 is past and tonight is the finale (including Puryear, Celmins, etc.). While I thought that the Orozco segment was a little too languid, in all I found it pretty darn interesting. Two hours in a night is a bit much -- I had trouble focusing on any one artist afterward as I had six competing for attention in my mind. Which reminded me of...
Going to a museum. It reminded me one of the differences between curators and critics/museumgoers: When a curator puts together a show with, say, 12 artists, that curator probably spends at least 30-60 hours of time thinking about, looking at, researching, and such the work of that one artist. But when anyone else goes through a show, they likely spend fewer than ten mintues on any one artist. Even an art nut like me probably doesn't spend more than 30-60 minutes on an artist (this counts both time at the show and thinking abotu it or looking stuff up when I get home). Is it any wonder that the museum-going public seems to require visual engagement first and mental engagement second?
posted by Tyler at 9:55 AM
9.9.2003
(Yes, this will be a daily post this week! Please contribute!)
MAN has been online for two years this week. This rather amazes me. Unlike many blogs I've never had a tip jar or any way of asking readers "for" anything, but if you feel like celebrating...
Click here and make a small (or big) donation to
Pediatric Care, a DC-based non-profit that provides
art therapy and educational enrichment to HIV-positive and HIV-affected children in Washington. I'm familiar with them because our firm does some work with them, trying to help them build their programs and such. Thanks for your help.
posted by Tyler at 3:59 PM
I posted about this on Friday (and a couple readers emailed me about it), but the post seems to have vanished...
MOMA has named Ann Temkin as one of its new contemporary art curators.
According to Carol Vogel, she fills their quota of curators in their 40's and now they want to hire curators in their 30's. This makes very little sense to me. (Only people in their 30s can curate contemporary art? Can only people in their 140's curate Manet shows?)
Anyway, back to Temkin. Here's why this is a bold hire: Museums love to bring in customers who pay $12, $15, even $20 a pop for special exhibits. The Barney bloat-fest at the GuggEnron likely brought in around $4-4.5 million in admissions fees (300,000
Perl-ridiculed dupes @ $15 a pop), plus more bucks for gimmicky gear in the gift shop. Krensian economics at work.
Temkin's last big show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (from which she was hired) was a
Barnett Newman retrospective, as fine a show as I have seen in some time. Still, it brought in only 66,000 visitors. Even at $10 a pop (which is what I think the museum charged), that's not a lot of revenue. According to The Art Newspaper, the Newman show was the 16th
least-visited major museum show in the world in 2002. It's at the very bottom of the fifth page of a five-page attendance summary. At least 500 shows did better in terms of attendance.
But MOMAfolk know it was a heckuva good show. And apparently they valued that more than the turnstile tally. Good for them.
posted by Tyler at 10:23 AM
If you go to art museums, get to know Brad Cloepfil and his firm,
Allied Works Architecture. Colepfil is the guy behind the new
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the
forthcoming Seattle Art Museum expansion and the
next incarnation of the American Craft Museum in NYC. David Bonetti at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
tells us about him.
posted by Tyler at 8:12 AM
9.8.2003
The new season of
art21 on PBS begins tomorrow night or Wednesday or both, depending on where you live. The San Jose Mercury News
reviews.
posted by Tyler at 10:24 AM
MAN has been online for two years this week. This rather amazes me. Unlike many blogs I've never had a tip jar or any way of asking readers "for" anything, but if you feel like celebrating...
Click here and make a small (or big) donation to
Pediatric Care, a DC-based non-profit that provides
art therapy and educational enrichment to HIV-positive and HIV-affected children in Washington. I'm familiar with them because our firm does some work with them, trying to help them build their programs and such. Thanks for your help.
posted by Tyler at 8:39 AM
9.5.2003
Jerry Saltz is
excited about the current art season, but he can't quite figure out why. Something about gay New Modernists or something.
posted by Tyler at 5:40 PM
Art is fun: Apparently the husband of Montana's governor never sees her naked, but
the good people of Helena, Montana might.
posted by Tyler at 3:04 PM
I love poker, no-limit, Texas Hold 'Em style. That's basically the game that the Barnes, its funders and Lincoln University are playing. Yesterday, the Barnes put Lincoln all-in by threatening bankruptcy. Today, Lincoln called but showed its hand first.
From today's Philly Daily News (sorry, earlier I thought it was from the Inqurier -- I got confused by the shared website):
"We're not inflexible," said [University chairman Frank] Gihan. "We recognize our responsibility to the Barnes Foundation and the community. But if Lincoln's role is going to be disrupted, then we have to see how Lincoln can benefit from this. We're willing to talk."
Specifically, Gihan said, Lincoln would like to talk to "the funding community" about obtaining financial assistance for the Chester County school, the oldest historically-black university in the country.
By "funding community," Gihan said he meant Pew, Lenfest and Annenberg. He also said Lincoln would welcome state aid to help finance its $100 million capital program.
"It's not a quid pro quo, but if they agree to give up something and let this magnificent art come to Philadelphia, they're entitled to some consideration," this legislator said."
The rest of the story is just as amazing. Let's keep in mind why this is all happening: the Barnes hasn't had an active money-raising board in years. For a recap,
click here.
posted by Tyler at 9:42 AM
9.4.2003
This is a sad day for those of us who believe the art in a collection is more important than the maelstrom around it.
The Barnes Foundation is withdrawing its petition to move to the Ben Franklin Parkway. It is not clear what comes next, but it seems possible, if not likely, that the Barnes will
file for bankruptcy. I hope someone is taking care of the collection -- and this means plugging the leaks in the building, maintaining climate control to the extent possible in that creaky old building, etc. My worst fear is that Matisse's Barnes Dance mural won't survive this. It was already delicate and damaged.
Bottom line:
If you haven't been to the Barnes, go and go as soon as possible. If the Barnes files for bankruptcy it may not be open. When you're there, enjoy it -- it may be your last visit for years.
In other stuff...
Interesting AP story on a couple of corporations who still collect art and why. At General Mills, they feel like their corporate HQ is humdrum, so they maintain a contemporary art collection so that employees can choose art for their offices, for example. Fun read and thanks
AJ.
The latest issue of
Contemporary Art in the Islamic World is online. Why is it that museums like the Met haul out thousand-year old troves of art from the Islamic world, yet no major contemporary art institution has created a survey-style show of contemporary art from the Islamic world? (And yes, it's certainly possible that someone is organizing a show and I don't know about it... but that's what email is for! Fill me in!) MAN will have more on this in the next few days, work willing.
Finally, a few bloggers have visited some Washington shows lately.
GreenGourd's Garden visited several shows, including the
outstanding Persian painting show at the Sackler, and
Libby Rosof visited Gyroscope and liked the Kentridge (she also
went to the Sackler).
posted by Tyler at 9:35 AM
9.3.2003
The date and time for Ann Hamilton's talk/lecture at the Hirshhorn has been set: October 21 at noon.
posted by Tyler at 1:09 PM
I enjoyed this story in yesterday's NYT about the intersection of culture, art, art history and environmental appreciation. Why am I bothering to point out a story from the Science section? It's a great example of how art contributes to a broader cultural dialogue. Check out the
photo-collage the Times put together featuring work by Muybridge, Adams and Weston. Then
read the story.
posted by Tyler at 9:44 AM
9.2.2003
MAN got a ton of email over the three-day weekend. Thanks to everyone who sent in gallery lists, tips and the like and thanks to everyone who responded to Friday's Perl post. (Amazing: eight or nine emails and not one person who wanted their comments on the blog!) I'm way behind on email and I have a very busy work day, so forgive me if I haven't emailed replies yet.
In the meantime, check out the
Boston Globe on the new-ish St. Louis Tadao Ando.
And the
new ArtFORUM is out. Normally, this would not interest me very much. However... will Nico Israel, who again writes about stuff in the West,
again provoke Greg
Allen?
Hot tip for Washingtonians: Did you know that there's a
Yayoi Kusama installation at the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery? It's up through March 21, 2004.
posted by Tyler at 9:40 AM 
