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MODERN ART NOTES
Tyler Green's modern and contemporary art blog
War(s) at the Whitney
Today, my first review for Bloomberg News runs over their terminal service and over their news service. If I can find a Google News link later today I'll post it. For now, a blurb:
What if war memorials had a different goal? Instead of honoring war dead, what if war memorials reminded us how awful war is?
A show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, "Memorials of War,"' explores that possibility. The exhibit, put together by Whitney curator David Kiehl, is a small, thought-provoking presentation of alternative memorials. It's on view through Nov. 28.
While none of the art here is the best work of any of the artists, "Memorials'' is the kind of focused show that New York institutions, with their encyclopedic collections, should do more of. It does not fill a museum floor, nor does it beat visitors into submission with attitude-as-art spreads through gallery upon gallery. Sometimes a one-room show is more effective than a blockbuster. This is one of those occasions.
posted by tylergreendc @ Thursday, September 30, 2004 | Permanent
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Art and politics
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has been doing a week-long series on the confluence of art and politics. ('Confluence,' Pittsburgh, get it?) Today the paper takes a look at political themes in the visual arts world (thanks AJ) and concludes that galleries are active in the fundraising game, institutions are mostly silent and artists are... well, artists made protest art for the GOP convention.
My take: A couple of institutions are very engaged in the current socio-political dialogue and I've written about this for Bloomberg News. (Look for at least a blurb on Friday.) Galleries are active fundraisers and a few artists have been donors. But as far as art... we're in two wars right now and you'd barely know it from strolling through galleries in Chelsea, DC or Los Angeles.
One exception: Sam Durant's timely show at Blum & Poe in LA. Unfortunately, unless you're in LA you can't see any of the show because B&P has one of the art world's most useless websites.
The P-G also missed the best website by an artist-activist: Joy Garnett's NEWSgrist.
Finally, this P-G paragraph is so stupid it deserves special attention:
The Andy Warhol Museum, more fleet of foot than most institutions of its size and caliber, and sharing the gadfly cultural observer persona of its namesake, has co-organized an exhibition of the notorious Iraqi prison photographs from Abu Ghraib. While one may assume a partisan intent, the museum's publicity suggests a broader context within which to consider the images.
How is an exhibition of photos of horrid American human rights violations 'partisan?' Democrats are against human rights abuses and Republicans aren't? Showing troubling photographs is a Democratic thing or embarasses Republicans? Ridiculous. Those photographs are an embarassment to the nation, not to one party.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, September 29, 2004 | Permanent
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Back from LA and UT...
If Blake Gopnik takes two full days to do the Chelsea strip mall (password, etc.) -- he must either spend a lot more time in bad shows than I do or he needs a speedwalking course. Heck, it must take him a week to do LA. (Oh, wait, silly me! East Coast, 'national' critics gallery-crawling in LA? Hah!! Michael Kimmelman probably thinks that Bergamot Station is a casino in Vegas.)
In fairness to Gopnik, I know that when he's in LA he gallery crawls. I just kid because I care. (Well, that and because I had an opportunity for a dig at Kimmelman.) That doesn't explain why I'm randomly ranting -- that's because I barely know what state I'm in at this point.
Which reminds me, I'm just back from the Robert Smithson retro at MOCA in LA and from Spiral Jetty in northern Utah. (I'll hold my thoughts on both until they appear in the Wall Street Journal.)
I will say this: The LA gallery scene is good, not great, right now. Geographically speaking, Culver City is interesting, Chinatown is horrid, Wilshire is better on paper than it is on walls and only Regen makes WeHo worth the drive up Robertson. (Specifics later this week.)
I wasn't a big fan of my last Chelsea crawl -- and that I thought only one of the shows Gopnik named was worth a moment's consideration. In fact, when I was in Chelsea two weeks ago I thought that it was the worst September crawl I've ever done. So if LA is average right now and Chelsea is lousy, where does that leave?
Uh, DC. More later this week....
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Broads opening a public space?
In a sourcegreaser about the collectin' Podestas, Washington Post writer Jessica Dawson either goofed or has a big scoop:
With more than half their trove currently in storage, Tony and Heather, like notable collectors Eli and Edythe Broad in Los Angeles and Don and Mera Rubell in Miami, are considering buying a public space to show their works.
The Broads are considering buying a public space to show their works? That'd be news to me. There is the Broad Art Foundation in Santa Monica (which is being re-installed as we speak), but that's not exactly a space that's open to the public. I'm in LA... my ears are open...
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In LA...
Greetings from LA. So I'm in LA. I go to Bergamot Station yesterday afternoon. I see what looks like an interesting show at Richard Heller. But they're closed. At four in the afternoon. This drives me nuts.
If you've emailed me, I'm on the road, so I'm behind. I'll try to get caught up tonight.
Meanwhile, enjoy what Ionarts wrote about Peter Schjeldahl's Wednesday chat in DC.
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The skinny on the MoMA drawings deal
Bloggers Brian Sholis and Todd Gibson both noticed a slight change in MoMA's tone on the potential Harvey Shipley Miller/Judith Rothschild Foundation drawings gift. MAN knows why MoMA is changing its tune and why MoMA is highly likely to accept the entire collection, as is: MAN hears that Miller has also offered the collection to the Tate Modern. The Tate has already agreed to take the whole thing, do a show of the collection and to publish a catalogue. Ball's in your court, MoMA.
posted by tylergreendc @ Thursday, September 23, 2004 | Permanent
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Saltz does Babylon 2004
Note: To read MAN on AAMD and the MFA Boston, click here.
There is nothing in art criticism that is like Jerry Saltz' annual Babylon column. Each column is an attempt to capture Where New York Art is Now. It's an immodest concept that can only fail. Except it doesn't.
This year's Babylon installment is Saltz' fifth. I've plugged them here before, and I'll do it again: If you haven't ever printed out all five and read them sequentially over a lunch hour, try it. (Here's 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004.) There are plenty of New York critics who seem to enjoy wringing their hands in public, bitching about how they don't matter. Well, if you want to matter, go out there and make yourself matter. Saltz' Babylon columns do just that. I hope that someday I'll have the guts to try something like them.
My favorite Babylon is the 2001 version (which, incidentally, was written before 9/11). Maybe if a few museum boards, a few dealers and a few artists had paid a little more attention, the 2001 column would seem a little less prescient. Of course, why would Whitney prez Robert Hurst listen to a critic -- according to the NYT he was too busy flying from Colorado to New York, art in tow.)
The 2004 Babylon column is the most challenging one yet. It reads like a reduction, like Saltz started with 3,000 words and reduced, reduced, reduced until he got to 900 words. It is not an easy read. There are complete ideas in sentences instead of paragraphs. I've been looking forward to posting about Babylon 2004 for about a week and now that I'm doing it, I have no answers, only questions. (Good art criticism provokes more questions than answers; it encourages continued thought.) I feel like I should be at the 92nd Street Y, asking Saltz to talk more about some of these ideas. But I just have a blog, so I'll throw out some questions about specific points in Saltz' essay:
Saltz: "[New York's art scene] has overt weaknesses, including its vastness, lack of positive charge focused around change, an inability to form coherent groups and a tendency to undervalue the local." To me, in Washington, I think that New York overvalues the local, overvalues a bunch of Yale MFA students who make the same art, overvalues institutions that have been intellectually dormant and ethically bankrupt for years, and overvalues 'big-time' galleries. I mean, when was the last time you saw a good show at Andrea Rosen, one of Chelsea's big players?
Saltz: "The clashing reactions to all that doodly "termite" art suggest that oppositional forces are forming inside the Super Paradigm." Termite art... define. I talk about Brooklyn-style 'glue-and-glitter' as my shorthand for sloppily made, poorly conceived, look-alike art from New York. Is 'termite art' Saltz' term for the same?
Update: A MANpal tells us that painter and film critic Manny Farber coined the term in the 1950s. And another MANpal tells us that Saltz referenced this back in June.
Saltz: "Personally, I hope never to hear the following oft repeated, mind-numbing inanity again, whether it's applied to John Currin, Paul P., Tim Gardner, Delia Brown, Graham Little or whoever: 'They have such skill.'" This one sticks in my head. I've referred to Currin as "the Ann Coulter of painting: garish, conservative, pseudo-sexy and reactionary." Over drinks with friends I always concede that the guy can paint, I just dislike what he paints. Must consider.
There are a dozen ideas in Babylon 2004 that I'm not addressing. But here's an idea Saltz throws out in his 2001 column that is just as relevant today:
"A coterie of educated professionals, enterprising aficionados and appreciative fans, all of whom think art is in the answering business, not the questioning one, seems determined to make art safe for everyone."
Is this why there is art about war in the Whitney and in the ICP this season... but not in Chelsea?
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, September 22, 2004 | Permanent
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WSJ, MAN and AAMD
It's art-critics-take-on-AAMD week. I'm getting quite a bit of email regarding the MFA Boston post and Eric Gibson's WSJ piece. I'd like to do a post of publishable responses by Friday or Saturday. So if you're considering writing in, please do. If you're a blogger and write on this, please make sure I know about it -- my hit counter is screwy so I'm not seeing referrals.
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WSJ on AAMD
Today begins what will likely be the final round in the Barnes merry-go-round. (The Inky has a fine preview here. Password and such here.) But the Association of Art Museum Directors merry-go-round is just beginning. Last week I unloaded on AAMD for their apparent disinterest in holding any of their members to AAMD's own ethical standards. Today, in the Wall Street Journal, Eric Gibson lets AAMD have it because they've been absent on the Barnes mess.
...AAMD is mistaken if it thinks there's a safe haven in silence. By sitting on the sidelines in the Barnes debate, AAMD is gravely damaging its moral authority. You can't cherry-pick the issues you want to get involved in if you're an ethical watchdog.
Gibson is right. In choosing to pass on nearly every issue that comes before it, AAMD is about a degree away from uselessness. Is the present incarnation of AAMD a watchdog or a clubby place for a bunch of backslappers to pursue careerist goals? (Put another way, is AAMD AGO director (and AAMD president) Matthew Teitelbaum's ticket to a major museum gig in New York? You don't rock the boat when you want to captain it...) Gibson's essay is free, here.
(That's not to let the rest of the governance team at AAMD off the hook. MAN has heard that at least one AAMD trustee considered resigning after AAMD gave the MFA Boston and Malcolm Rogers a second free pass. Perhaps only a wave of resignations can prompt AAMD into acting like a responsible watchdog.)
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News and notes
Walter Robinson does the Weekend Update thang over at Artnet and it's a blast.
Robinson dishes that Tony Feher is a budget-friendly option for the U.S. pavilion in Venice next year. MAN's guess has been that the Gugg will find $1M or so to put on a Matthew Barney extravaganza... and Robinson notes that Jonathan Borofsky is now represented by Jeffrey Deitch. MAN hears that Robert Lazzarini is now in the Deitch stable as well.
Last news item of the day: The list of NADA invitees is out, as is NADA's location. The fair will be at the Seville Beach Hotel at 29th and Collins. Invitees include: NADA members Allston Skirt, Boston; Angstrom Gallery, Dallas; Clementine; John Connelly; Derek Eller; LFL; Foxy Production; Mary Goldman, LA; Guild & Greyshkul, NY; Priska Juschka; Oliver Kamm; Mixture Contemporary, Houston; Jessica Murray; 1R, Chicago; Plus Ultra; Daniel Reich; Roebling Hall; Lucas Schoormans; Schroeder Romero; Bellwether; Suite 106; Taxter & Spengemann; Wallspace; ZieherSmith; Galerie Zink & Gegner, Munich; Momenta; Participant; Sarah Gavlak Projects, West Palm Beach.
If you're in DC, New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl will speak at GWU's Lisner Auditorium on Wednesday night at 7. The registration info is here, second speaker down.
Non-NADA-member invitees include: Murray Guy; ATM; Vilma Gold, London; Rivington Arms; Cohan & Leslie; Kate MacGarry, London; Elizabeth Dee; Hales, London; Ratio 3, SF; Grimm/Rosenfeld, Munich; Sutton Lane, London; Sister, LA; Rocket Projects, Miami; Art Concept, Paris; Black Dragon Society, LA; Perugi, Italy; KS Art.
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Weekend coverage
In their arts sections this weekend, neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times had a single story about the visual arts. (The NYT featured two architecture stories and the Post did a special yawn section on the new National Museum of the American Indian. The Post has now run 345 stories on NMAI.) Pretty pathetic. Is this NYT Sunday A&L editor Jodi Kantor's public concession that contemporary art befuddles her? Or did Michael Kimmelman just veto every story idea?
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BarnesWeek. Again.
There's nothing fuzzy about this week's big Barnes question: Should the Barnes sell art so that it can stay in Lower Merion? (The Barnes is back before Judge Stanley Ott tomorrow. For a preview, kind of, see yesterday's Inky story. Get a password here. Or see this old post of mine.)
For me, the answer is no, the Barnes should not sell art. Quite simply, institutions should not sell artwork from their collections to make up for their past mistakes. (In the case of the Barnes there are two past mistakes: Barnes' own estate instructions, which required that his money be invested so conservatively that it was not possible for his endowment to provide for the long-term needs of the Barnes Foundation, and of course, the long-term ineptitude of the people running the Barnes in the last decade or two. Oh, excuse me, I lost a piano.)
The Association of Art Museum Directors, a.k.a. one of the most gutless industry associations in America, explicitly prohibits museums from doing this. I realize that there's a semantic argument to be made here, that the Barnes is not, exactly, a museum. Doesn't matter. It's still wrong. I can understand wanting to preserve exactly what ol' Al created there on the Main Line, even if he failed to provide for the long-term fulfillment of his vision. But selling off part of what he created only creates a new problem. Besides, who's to say the Barnes leadership team won't lose stuff before they have a chance to sell it?
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New AJ architecture blog
In case you haven't noticed, AJ has a new architecture blogger: Nancy Levinson. Her blog is called Pixel Points. Take a look! (The previous AJ archi-blogger James Russell is now the architecture critic for Bloomberg. Those Bloomberg people must be awfully smart...)
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As the Barnes Turns
The Barnes is back. (Screen name and password here.) The final round in court begins on Tuesday. MAN will have more later today...
UPDATE: OK, maybe I'll have more later today -- tings just got busy here. But from the story above, this cracked me up:
Q: why are the foundations in the middle of this?
A: The foundations believe relocating the Barnes to the Parkway would permanently solve its financial problems and make its collection accessible to more people - as well as attract European tourists to Philadelphia.
European tourists? So the Barnes move won't attract New Yorkers, DC'ers and LA'ers? Or do the Philly folk just want the Euro-chic?
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Museum Ethics, Part Three
Note: Before Abu Ghraib broke, this essay was slated for the Washington Post's Outlook section. After Abu Ghraib, the Post had a little less room for cultural think-pieces. As a result, this essay has been sitting on my computer while an art magazine considers what to do with it. In the wake of last weekend's must-read Boston Globe story on the MFA Boston, I've decided to post it here.
 On April 13, the lights went out in Vegas. Well, not in all of Las Vegas, just at the Bellagio hotel. The lights stayed out for three-and-a-half days as workers struggled to discover what had caused the electricity for the entire Bellagio complex to go kaput.
Several thousand miles away, where a power outage at a Las Vegas hotel would normally go unnoticed, the decision-makers at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, must have gone into a tizzy. A few months before the Bellagio power outage, the MFA Boston had entered into one of the most unusual agreements in the history of American art museums. In a brash display of cash-lust, the MFAB rented 21 Claude Monet paintings to a commercial art gallery, PaceWildenstein, that has set up shop inside the Bellagio. According to Newsweek, MFA Boston received a rental fee of at least $1 million. I could find only one precedent for MFA Boston's behavior, a deal the Phillips Collection made with the Bellagio in 2000. While there is some difference in the details, the MFA Boston and the Phillips Collection committed the same sin: they violated the ethics and guidelines of their industry -- not to mention the public trust -- by effectively renting out art.
The MFA Boston and the Phillips aren't the only museums to have demonstrated disregard for industry-accepted museum practices. In Indiana, an art center sold an Ed Ruscha painting from of its permanent collection in a way that violates flaunts industry-wide norms. And in New York, the deaccessioning of nine paintings by the Museum of Modern Art is raising a familiar question: When is it appropriate to deaccession a work of art and when is it just plain unethical? What MoMA did and what the Anderson (Ind.) Art Center did are worthy of examination. But what Boston is doing is egregious and deserves our focus.
Like most industries, the museum world has industry associations that have policing responsibilities and which are supposed to be making sure that certain ethical and professional standards are met. Industry associations serve their industries in many ways, but one of them is by enforcing mutually-agreed-upon practices so that government doesn’t feel the need to become involved in the way an industry works. The American Association of Museums, for example, runs an accreditation program that makes sure that a variety of industry-wide practices are standardized and in place at member museums. That accreditation program plays a major role in ensuring that important cultural artifacts are preserved. The American Association of Museum Directors also runs a variety of programs for its members.
Both AAM and AAMD have codes of ethics that their member institutions are supposed to respect. When it comes to the examples I've cited, both AAM and AAMD are acting like those codes of ethics don't exist. The industry watchdogs are, in effect, saying that anything goes. That needs to change.
While there are several recent examples of museums behaving badly, the MFA Boston rental provides a sadly perfect example of why museums have guidelines and why they should adhere to them. (This is not to say that what the Phillips did was any better, but the Boston case is ongoing.) A few months ago, when news of the Boston deal broke, critics warned about what might happen when a museum considered money-making to be more important than caring for and conserving art. When the electricity died at Bellagio, an academic debate was transformed into a real-life disaster.
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With the power out, MFA Boston's 21 Monets were sitting in a desert hot box. On each of the days that the power was out at the Bellagio, the sun was unobstructed by clouds, the temperature was in the mid-eighties and the humidity was in the mid-teens.
The Monets probably baked. At first, the Bellagio claimed that there was nothing to worry about. A hotel spokesman said that enough air was being circulated by the minimal emergency power that the art work should not be damaged. Later, a Las Vegas Review-Journal article quoting Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art director Andrea Bundonis contradicted the Bellagio spokesman and reported that temperature and humidity were kept at "ideal" levels.
In a conversation with me, a PaceWildenstein executive seemed to tell a different story: The executive said that the MFA Boston had sent someone from Boston to Las Vegas to monitor the conditions in the gallery as the power came back online, ensuring that the gallery was returned to optimal conditions slowly, without harming the paintings. Well, if the gallery was kept at "ideal" levels during the outage, why did it have to be returned slowly to ideal levels? Only the MFA Boston and PaceWildenstein know for sure and they both turned down my repeated requests for a look at the gallery’s temperature and humidity logs. If the paintings were never in danger, MFA Boston should simply release the logs and prove it.
MFA director Malcolm Rogers has repeatedly belittled any criticism he has received and he has failed to address questions about the power failure's impact on the Monets. Instead of answering the charges that he was renting out his work, Rogers has embarked on a public relations offensive, claiming that anyone who dared question his museum's practices was merely trying to deny the good folks of Las Vegas a chance to see great art. But Rogers had not loaned his Monets to an accredited institution, which would have fulfilled his stated goal while preserving them in a safe environment. He rented them out to a business.
According to MFA Boston's industry peers, that's not acceptable. Both the American Association of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors cite the protection of art as a major charge of museums and as the major reason not to send out art for financial gain. Both make clear in various publications that what the Phillips and the MFA Boston did is an unacceptable, unprofessional practice. For example, on page 14 of the AAMD's handbook, "Professional Practices in Art Museums," (available here) the AAMD mandates that:
"The collections a museum holds in public trust do not represent financial assets that may be converted to cash for operating or capital needs, or pledged as collateral for loans."
In explicitly renting out art to a commercial gallery, MFA Boston has converted its collection into an asset that was converted into cash.
That's not the only guideline that MFA Boston has ignored. Witness a guideline on page 10:
"In any decision about a proposed loan from the collection, the intellectual merit and educational benefits, as well as the protection of the work of art, must be the primary considerations, rather than possible financial gain."
Rogers has repeatedly said that the MFA Boston had sent the Monets out as part of its educational mission, not to make a buck. This is transparent poppycock. As we've discussed, Rogers did not loan Monets to another accredited museum, he rented them to a business, placing financial gain as the primary consideration, not the protection of the art.
Despite these (and other) flagrant violations, the industry has been quiet. After the Phillips entered into its business deal with the Bellagio, neither the AAMD nor the AAM said anything, effectively opening the door for Rogers. Neither the AAMD nor the AAM has said anything about the MFA Boston's rental deal either, although a source tells me that the AAMD discussed the Rogers situation again at its most recent meeting and that it again let him and MFA Boston off the hook. As the industry remains silent, more and more museums have tested its guidelines.
The Anderson (Ind.) Fine Arts Center offered, in the spring auctions, an Ed Ruscha painting out of their permanent collection. Industry guidelines say that this practice is permissible so long as the funds from deaccessioning go into buying new art or direct care of collections. Prior to the sale the Anderson Fine Arts Center said they hadn't yet decided how to use the $3.6 million raised by the sale, and that they won’t necessarily follow AAMD and AAM guidelines.
And at the Museum of Modern Art, the deaccessioning of nine paintings for $25.7 million at auction this spring has caused concern. While MoMA's sale isn't as egregious a museum practice as the other examples I've cited, MoMA’s sale is still troubling. Two of the paintings they sold, a Giorgio de Chirico and a Jackson Pollock, are excellent, important paintings that any museum would love to own. The AAMD lists six criteria for why a museum might deaccession a painting. None of them apply to the Pollock or the de Chirico. (MoMA has said that it has better Pollocks and de Chiricos and one of the AAMD criteria is that the "object is of pooer quality, either intrinsically or relatively, in comparison with other objects of the same type in the collection." The de Chirico, especially, is among the finest examples of the artist's work in American institutions.)
Museums operate as non-profit, public trusts. Museums are the storehouses of our cultural heritage, institutions that safeguard the objects that remind us where we come from and that record who we are. The MFA Boston’s mission statement says it well: "The Museum holds its collections in trust for future generations. It assumes conservation as a primary responsibility which requires constant attention to providing a proper environment for works of art and artifacts."
After the Phillips deal in 2000, the Detroit Institute of Arts considered a similar pay-for-view Bellagio show before deciding that ethics were more important than dollars. But as the examples cited above indicate, there are still institutions willing to sell out. In its code of ethics, AAMD promises sanctions if directors violate the AAMD's guidelines. Well, the AAMD didn’t sanction Guggenheim director Thomas Krens when he accepted $15 million from Giorgio Armani, a gift which coincided with the launching of a retrospective of the work of... Giorgio Armani. Therefore, it is difficult to be surprised when the Phillips Collection and the MFA Boston haven't been sanctioned by the AAMD for their transgressions. If the industry will not hold its peers accountable for their transgressions, who will?
Congress has shown a willingness to investigate non-profit institutions that behave badly or that misuse their tax-exempt status. If the museum industry can’t stick to its own rules, Congress should ask why not.
posted by tylergreendc @ Thursday, September 16, 2004 | Permanent
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Museum Ethics, Part Two
Note: For part one, scroll down to yesterday's first post or click here.
With the power out, MFA Boston's 21 Monets were sitting in a desert hot box. On each of the days that the power was out at the Bellagio, the sun was unobstructed by clouds, the temperature was in the mid-eighties and the humidity was in the mid-teens.
The Monets probably baked. At first, the Bellagio claimed that there was nothing to worry about. A hotel spokesman said that enough air was being circulated by the minimal emergency power that the art work should not be damaged. Later, a Las Vegas Review-Journal article quoting Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art director Andrea Bundonis contradicted the Bellagio spokesman and reported that temperature and humidity were kept at "ideal" levels.
In a conversation with me, a PaceWildenstein executive seemed to tell a different story: The executive said that the MFA Boston had sent someone from Boston to Las Vegas to monitor the conditions in the gallery as the power came back online, ensuring that the gallery was returned to optimal conditions slowly, without harming the paintings. Well, if the gallery was kept at "ideal" levels during the outage, why did it have to be returned slowly to ideal levels? Only the MFA Boston and PaceWildenstein know for sure and they both turned down my repeated requests for a look at the gallery’s temperature and humidity logs. If the paintings were never in danger, MFA Boston should simply release the logs and prove it.
MFA director Malcolm Rogers has repeatedly belittled any criticism he has received and he has failed to address questions about the power failure's impact on the Monets. Instead of answering the charges that he was renting out his work, Rogers has embarked on a public relations offensive, claiming that anyone who dared question his museum's practices was merely trying to deny the good folks of Las Vegas a chance to see great art. But Rogers had not loaned his Monets to an accredited institution, which would have fulfilled his stated goal while preserving them in a safe environment. He rented them out to a business.
According to MFA Boston's industry peers, that's not acceptable. Both the American Association of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors cite the protection of art as a major charge of museums and as the major reason not to send out art for financial gain. Both make clear in various publications that what the Phillips and the MFA Boston did is an unacceptable, unprofessional practice. For example, on page 14 of the AAMD's handbook, "Professional Practices in Art Museums," (available here) the AAMD mandates that:
"The collections a museum holds in public trust do not represent financial assets that may be converted to cash for operating or capital needs, or pledged as collateral for loans."
In explicitly renting out art to a commercial gallery, MFA Boston has converted its collection into an asset that was converted into cash.
That's not the only guideline that MFA Boston has ignored. Witness a guideline on page 10:
"In any decision about a proposed loan from the collection, the intellectual merit and educational benefits, as well as the protection of the work of art, must be the primary considerations, rather than possible financial gain."
Rogers has repeatedly said that the MFA Boston had sent the Monets out as part of its educational mission, not to make a buck. This is transparent poppycock. As we've discussed, Rogers did not loan Monets to another accredited museum, he rented them to a business, placing financial gain as the primary consideration, not the protection of the art.
Despite these (and other) flagrant violations, the industry has been quiet. After the Phillips entered into its business deal with the Bellagio, neither the AAMD nor the AAM said anything, effectively opening the door for Rogers. Neither the AAMD nor the AAM has said anything about the MFA Boston's rental deal either, although a source tells me that the AAMD discussed the Rogers situation again at its most recent meeting and that it again let him and MFA Boston off the hook. As the industry remains silent, more and more museums have tested its guidelines.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, September 15, 2004 | Permanent
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Around the blogosphere
It's been way too long since I did one of these. Included below are some blogs to which I've never linked, so click liberally.
- Anyone with Jet Blue in their town knows how easy it is to get to LA for MOCA's Robert Smithson retro. Stunner: It's even easier to get to Spiral Jetty! Greg Allen shows us.
- Modern Kicks loves Thomas Krens. And loves that Matthew Barney will likely be the US rep in Venice in 2005. Or maybe MK is being sarcastic...
- At ArtsBlogging, George Hunka discusses the Bush and Kerry positions on the arts. Or tries to.
- ArtForum secret projecteer Brian Sholis says he's going to update his blog more regularly, which is great. He's got two good posts up now (well, more, but I'm linking to two): A pretty thorough cultural roundup and some tips on good, cheap books.
- From the Floor on the absurdity of the $25.50 ticket to MoMA.
- Gallery Hopper calls Dia:Beacon a "bobo Disneyland." Not so far from what I called it: Six Flags Over Minimalism.
- Iconoduel does a round of Chicago gallery openings and finds that this season they're all presenting their very own fire code violations. In New York, James Wagner looks at a couple of openings, an SUV (ahem) and neglects to mention that I got a free martini at dinner.
- Franklin Einspruch reports that Miami Herald critic Elisa Turner was recently in a serious auto accident, is hospitalized, but is improving.
- I wanted to link to a bunch of museum guard-related stories, but Dangerous Chunky beat me to it.
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Museum Ethics, Part One
Note: Before Abu Ghraib broke, this essay was slated for the Washington Post's Outlook section. After Abu Ghraib, the Post's copy hole (understandably) shrunk. As a result, this essay has been sitting on my computer while an art magazine considers what to do with it. In the wake of this weekend's must-read Boston Globe story on the MFA Boston, I've decided to post it here. For ease of blog-reading, I'm going to break it into a few parts. Here's part one:
On April 13, the lights went out in Vegas. Well, not in all of Las Vegas, just at the Bellagio hotel. The lights stayed out for three-and-a-half days as workers struggled to discover what had caused the electricity for the entire Bellagio complex to go kaput.
Several thousand miles away, where a power outage at a Las Vegas hotel would normally go unnoticed, the decision-makers at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, must have gone into a tizzy. A few months before the Bellagio power outage, the MFA Boston had entered into one of the most unusual agreements in the history of American art museums. In a brash display of cash-lust, the MFAB rented 21 Claude Monet paintings to a commercial art gallery, PaceWildenstein, that has set up shop inside the Bellagio. According to Newsweek, MFA Boston received a rental fee of at least $1 million. I could find only one precedent for MFA Boston's behavior, a deal the Phillips Collection made with the Bellagio in 2000. While there is some difference in the details, the MFA Boston and the Phillips Collection committed the same sin: they violated the ethics and guidelines of their industry -- not to mention the public trust -- by effectively renting out art.
The MFA Boston and the Phillips aren't the only museums to have demonstrated disregard for industry-accepted museum practices. In Indiana, an art center sold an Ed Ruscha painting from of its permanent collection in a way that violates flaunts industry-wide norms. And in New York, the deaccessioning of nine paintings by the Museum of Modern Art is raising a familiar question: When is it appropriate to deaccession a work of art and when is it just plain unethical? What MoMA did and what the Anderson (Ind.) Art Center did are worthy of examination. But what Boston is doing is egregious and deserves our focus.
Like most industries, the museum world has industry associations that have policing responsibilities and which are supposed to be making sure that certain ethical and professional standards are met. Industry associations serve their industries in many ways, but one of them is by enforcing mutually-agreed-upon practices so that government doesn’t feel the need to become involved in the way an industry works. The American Association of Museums, for example, runs an accreditation program that makes sure that a variety of industry-wide practices are standardized and in place at member museums. That accreditation program plays a major role in ensuring that important cultural artifacts are preserved. The American Association of Museum Directors also runs a variety of programs for its members.
Both AAM and AAMD have codes of ethics that their member institutions are supposed to respect. When it comes to the examples I've cited, both AAM and AAMD are acting like those codes of ethics don't exist. The industry watchdogs are, in effect, saying that anything goes. That needs to change.
While there are several recent examples of museums behaving badly, the MFA Boston rental provides a sadly perfect example of why museums have guidelines and why they should adhere to them. (This is not to say that what the Phillips did was any better, but the Boston case is ongoing.) A few months ago, when news of the Boston deal broke, critics warned about what might happen when a museum considered money-making to be more important than caring for and conserving art. When the electricity died at Bellagio, an academic debate was transformed into a real-life disaster.
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The Weekend in Chelsea
(We take a break from the trek through Texas to share some thoughts from the weekend that was in New York City.)
UPDATE: Todd Gibson and I agree on way too much.
When it comes to the Chelsea crawl, I have three choices. I can:
A) Become more selective in my Chelsea gallery-crawling, choosing to skip the galleries that will likely feature photography built-by-Yale or scattertrash (read: installation art);
B) Buy new shoes and start drinking earlier in the day; or
C) Learn to provide myself with simultaneous translations of gallery press releases as a way of saving myself some viewing time.
The correct answer, of course, is all of the above. But because C) needs some special explanation, here's an example of a simultaneous translation of James Cohan's Wim Wenders press release. First, the press release:
This exhibition focuses on Wenders' panoramas—some which measure up to fifteen feet long -- from his extensive travels to Australia and Japan. Wenders' photographs act as archaeological dioramas, recording a specific moment in the life of a place. Each photograph tells not one, but many poignant stories; the transience of being, the antithesis of city and desert, the earth absent of urban civilization.
Now, the official MAN translation:
This exhibition features really big c-prints. They're pretty much like all the other really big, really colorful c-prints you can see around Chelsea, but these are made by Wim Wenders, which makes them different. Each photograph tells us not one, but many poignant, familiar stories because many of them are based on complete visual cliches: the sun coming through the branches of trees or a broad panoramic landscape, perfectly split by a dirt road heading for the nearest horizon. You'll want to own these pictures because you're so familiar with them already. Familiarity breeds sold-out editions of five. Or so we hope.
I guess that there was some solid work in Chelsea. William Swanson's paintings at DCKT are happy landscapeish abstractions. David Noonan's bleach-on-black-canvas paintings at Foxy Production were the funky-cool on-canvas hits of the weekend. At Julie Saul, Todd Hido shows some nice photographs, but lots of people make nice photographs. (Next door, at Leslie Tonkonow, Tom Bamberger does a nice job of making photographs into objects that exist as more than just images in a frame.)
It was also nice to see some favorites in some group shows: David Schnell at Boesky, a preciously twisted little Michael Kvium at DCA. Elizabeth Gray had a nice video piece at Ziehersmith, too. Pipilotti Rist's work (at Luhring) is always fun and Phoebe Washburn (at LFL) builds cool things.
Nothing I saw in all of Chelsea was so good as to stick with me much, nothing was truly fantastic. There were a bunch of good shows but nothing that lifted my spirits at the end of the day. So to make up for it, I lifted some spirits.
(Oh, and the NADA Miami list came out, more or less when they said it would (of course, it was their third try at saying when it would). It's a usual suspects list full of the usual galleries, mostly from New York. It's nice to see Houston's Mixture on the list, LA's Sister too. But Happy Lion, Kontainer and Bank are three of the ass-kickingest galleries in LA -- heck, anywhere -- and they're not on the list. (Maybe they didn't apply.) When will non-NYC galleries stop trying to get into the NYC clubs, when will they get together to do their own thing? People: it is not in the interest of NYC gallerists to acknowledge that there's good work being show anywhere else!)
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Week of birthdays (and Houston too)
ArtsJournal is five this week. Wow. Kudos to Doug McLennan! While I'm on birthdays, MAN is three years old this week (more or less). Thanks to Doug, Terry, and all of you who read the site.
Some thoughts from Houston (part one)...
Third-best art experience in Texas: Were it not for Marfa and the Ando Modern, James Turrell's Quaker Meeting House in Houston would be Texas' best art attraction. (And I'm not sure it isn't anyway.) Minimalism/earth art is deeply spiritual in a semi-pagan way. Here's proof.
Worst opening room to a decent exhibit: MFA Houston's Inverted Utopias. What a horrific jumble of low-grade, imitative Catholicism-derived pseudo-folk-art. This room is as awful as the Andre/Stella entrance to MOCA's minimalism show was great.
Worst final room to a decent exhibit: MFA Houston's Inverted Utopias. While there is no true "final" room to this sprawling show, the natural place to end up is in the op-art installation(s). After a long, dense, long show that winds all over a massive museum, the last thing I wanted to do was look at art that was built around optical trickery. Curatorial decisions like this serve as proof that lots of curators don’t think enough about how visitors experience their exhibits.
Favorite discovery of an artist of whom I'd never heard: If you live in the United States and study or look at art in the United States, you hear very little about Central and South American modernism. Two shows this summer should change that: LACMA’s Beyond Geometry show and Inverted Utopias. In Houston I 'discovered:' Waldemar Cordeiro, Lygia Clark, Carlos Cruz-Diez, and Sergio Camargo.
(Lygia Clark was recently the subject of a retro that traveled throughout Europe. The catalog looks exhaustive, but it was $80 at MFAH.)
Favorite artist at IU that I'd seen before but not lately: Five years ago Dan Cameron curated a Cildo Meireles retrospective for the New Museum. I don’t know Meireles' work enough to know if it was a definitive, complete show, but I enjoyed the heck outta it. The Meireleses at Inverted Utopias are strong -- so why don’t we see more of him in American museums?
Wee correction: Last week I said that Robyn O'Neil studied under Vernon Fisher. I got my universities of Texas confused and was wrong. Sorry about that.
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More from Dallas
Texas artist most due for a national, traveling show: University of North Texas artist/prof Vernon Fisher. (And if you know Robyn O'Neil and Erick Swenson you know two UNT students. Swenson lectures at MAMFW on Oct. 5.)
Best time to visit the Nasher Sculpture Center garden (link): In the morning. Before it gets extra-hot.
Highlight of the Nasher: Consistency. Nothing here is flashy, new or zorpy, lots of stuff is just really good.
Favorite factoid from the Nasher: They spent $1 million on special dirt. Knowing that they wanted to change the sculpture in the garden with some frequency (and knowing that their Richard Serra weighs over 50 tons), the Nasherites wanted to make sure that the ground didn’t sag or collapse under the weight of sculptures and installation equipment. So they designed their own dirt.
Most in need of repair: The Turrell Skyspace at the Nasher is showing signs of distress. Little bits of water damage are evident from the inside, as are some cracks.
Most surprising sculpture: John Chamberlain, Zaar, 1959. A Chamberlain on a pedastal? Yup. And it works.
Wonderful early Matisse: In Hilary Spurling’s fantastabulous biography of Matisse, she theorizes that Matisse was just reaching his personal artistic breakthrough when his wife’s family became caught up in a major national political scandal. During the scandal Matisse's artistic study and output all but ceased as he supported his wife. A early Matisse sculpture at the Nasher testifies to how close Matisse was in 1901, when he made Madeline, a precious little sculpture that presages many of the ideas that Matisse didn’t realize until Reclining Nude (sculpture) and Baltimore's Blue Nude (painting) in 1907. (Of course, Matisse's The Serf from about 1900 is wonderful and early, and it's here too. Spurling dates it 1900-06, the Nasher dates it to 1900-04 and their cast is from 1912.)
Strangely fascinating building detail: The Nasher's 'exit' signs. Who needs stock exit signs when you can have Piano design them, right?
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Auping: Day two, part two
Michael Auping is the chief curator at the Museum of Modern Art of Fort Worth. When I was in Fort Worth two weeks ago, we talked over lunch. I've broken down our chat into two days, two posts a day. Yesterday we talked about permanent collections in general (part one and two, or just scroll down). Today we'll talk about MAMFW's collection and Auping's installation of it. Here is the final segment:
Do you have a favorite room or installation?
I'm proud of all of it. I really am. What makes the whole thing work is really paying attention to all the works. There are really dramatic spaces.
It took me three years to find that Kiefer Wing to put in the ellipse... I needed something for that room. The oval design was there and I wanted the oval design. I supported Ando, who wanted the oval design. The board asked me if I was sure I wanted that oval design. 'What am I going to put in there?' [they asked]. You can't put paintings on oval walls. I said, 'Don't worry, it will be a sculpture gallery and I'll find some things.'
At the time I said that to them, I didn't have anything. So that was a slight source of tension. So when I found Book with Wings... If I took that Wings out of there right now they would string me up around here because that's everyone's favorite room. But that's going to change. Even a collection installation shouldn't be static. The building should be organic.
What I really wanted in that room was a Giacometti. Can you imagine? I couldn't afford one. I looked and I looked and I looked.
[Auping mentioned that before his 2005 Kiefer "Heaven and Earth" show, he'll likely rotate Aschenblume and Book with Wings out of their present spaces so that he can re-contextualize them within the exhibit. Among the artists/pieces he said he was considering for a 'replacement' for Wings are Tony Smith and Carl Andre. And when I mentioned that Anne Truitt would look great in the ellipse, Auping agreed.)
You mentioned that if or when you move Kiefer's Book that you’ll be shot. So your community has local favorites, yes? That's not an awful thing.
That sense of ownership -- you want your community to have that. It is a double-edged sword. You really want them to have it and the minute this installation opened everyone fell in love with the whole thing and then they fell in love with certain rooms. But you have to be an organic situation and things have to change.
The minute you change something you start getting -- we have those comment cards, the bane of the curator's existence. 'Where did that go?' 'How dare you take that down?' They don’t understand that the work is in a retrospective, or... So I devised a letter that says, 'So glad you’re interested, that you liked the collection, but we do have to change and there are things we hope you’ll want to see.' They’ll get so pissed because they’ll say I drove from 'X' and I brought my friend and it's not here, and what is that about? It’s all about them -- which is good. A little bit of passion is great.
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A chat with Michael Auping, day two
Michael Auping is the chief curator at the Museum of Modern Art of Fort Worth. When I was in Fort Worth two weeks ago, we talked over lunch. I've broken down our chat into two days, two posts a day. Yesterday we talked about permanent collections in general (part one and two, or just scroll down). Today we'll talk about MAMFW's collection and Auping's installation of it. Here's today's first post (I'll post the second one a bit after noon):
Let's talk about how you chose to install your permanent collection here. It's not quite chronological and it's not quite thematic, it's just a well-guided walk for the eyes, in a way.
I had a real luxury here. I don't know how many curators have ever had this so I'm kind of embarrassed to talk about it. As far as I know, I'm one of the few curators who has ever been on a building committee. A building committee generally consists of the patrons who pay for the building, members of the board, maybe the director (maybe not). Curators are hardly ever asked to be on the building committee. But our board wanted me on the building committee because this is where I work and this is what I do and they wanted me to take some responsibility for how these galleries worked.
 It was made clear to Mr. [Tadao] Ando right off the bat that he needed to work with me, that I wasn’t going to be a peripheral guy off to the side where he was just talking to the major board members. The major board members left and said, 'You two and the director work together on this. Figure it out.' ... And Ando and I became very good friends. And I supported him on a number of issues regarding the building that I know he appreciated so when it came time for my input on some of the interior aspects, part of the galleries, he was ready to listen and willing to make changes.
So to make a long story short, I got to work with a world-class architect, I got to help design the galleries with this architect, I was then given money to go out and buy art objects to help fill the galleries I was helping to design and then I got to put the stuff wherever I wanted to. I did this over seven years. These things don’t happen overnight... If you have seven years, to work with the architect, to know the sizes of the walls, to know your collection, you can do a lot better job than if you’re handed a building six months before the grand opening and someone says, 'Go to it.'
Artists must come here and love the way their work looks -- Puryear with a room to himself, or Kiefer, or Andre, for example. But not very many museums give one work by one artist an entire room.
There were moments when I worried about this approach. It takes a little bit of a leap of faith on my part and on the board's part. I had some conversations with the board and said, 'I know a lot of the reason you built this building was to show the permanent collection and everybody's going to want to see everything up,' but when you do a building like this you really have to meet power with power. So you have to take your most powerful work and just situate it on the most powerful walls with no peripheral stuff going on. I told them in a number of cases that there’s going to be a single work in one room and I know that this could be a problem for some people, but the board was so supportive. I still was up at night, the last couple weeks before we opened, waiting for a board member to come up to me and say, 'You know Michael, we gave you $65 million to build a new building so you would have all these great walls, and I see a lot of empty walls with one work in a room. What are you trying to pull?' Not one person said it.
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Auping: Day one, part two
Michael Auping is the chief curator at the Museum of Modern Art of Fort Worth. When I was in Fort Worth two weeks ago, we talked over lunch. I've broken down our chat into two days, two posts a day. Tomorrow we'll talk about MAMFW's collection and Auping's installation of it. Today we'll talk about permanent collections in general. Here's today's second post. For the first part of today's chat, scroll down or click here.
MoMA has fought with that over the years -- the so-called 'obligation to the timeline.' You don’t have that here.
They have an embarrassment of riches. You're opening a new building and you think that you have a ton of space and you always think that. When the building starts to go up and you walk into the spaces you're thinking, 'Oh my God, I hope we have enough work to fill these volumes,' but then, when you start bringing things out, you are surprised at how forcefully art can fill a room. Everyone thinks they’re going to show a billion things, but that is not a good thing in the end. You have to be very, very disciplined.
 There's a thin line between filling a space and decorating it. Making the space so that art dominates, so that the building... you don’t want to just throw stuff up all over the walls so it looks like the architecture is just a place to hang things on. You want to allow the building to come out. So to do that you have to use [fewer] works of art but you have to use really powerful pieces. At least this is my theory, not everyone does it this way. You really have to pick your guns, your big guns, and let them tell the story. You can't cross every 't' and dot every 'i.' With a collection like ours we couldn't anyway. With a collection like MoMA you can.
And while a bunch of museums are re-emphasizing the display of their collection, curators are often uninterested or bored by that.
Yes, what goes hand in hand with that is you have to be a curator who wants to spend time on [collections]. Some curators don't want to. Being a collections curator is not a flashy thing to do... it doesn't help your career. Only real insiders and people who know what you've done actually really appreciate it. To a lot of curators their career is based on the big changing exhibitions, how many big shows have you done and where it has traveled...
When I was at the Albright-Knox, I did installations for a museum that arguably has one of the greatest collections of 20th-century art, but it's small. They don’t have 10 Gauguins like MoMA, they have two [great ones], they don't have 10 Jackson Pollocks they have [Convergence]…. So we prided ourselves on the fact that people would go up to that upper-left corner (of New York). Getting to Buffalo isn’t that hard but it seems like another country away. I found that more people came to see the collection than to see changing shows. I always felt really strongly about the power to attract real art people with a collection.
Temporary loan exhibitions bring a lot of people into the building, and that is a positive development. Temporary exhibitions come and go, and people like them because they’re more akin to entertainment; more and more people require the next new thing. They’re more than entertainment, of course, because they involve scholarship. Also things are exposed in exhibitions that can’t be exposed in a collection. But there is also something to be said for visiting old friends, reconnecting with certain works that have fascinated you, maybe since childhood. You get a very different group of people who come to see the collection -- they're people I would like to have a dialogue with, more than the person who says, 'Wow, did you see that Kiefer show? Do you know Kiefer, he's that German guy.'
Another reason for working with the collection is that doing temporary shows in this day and age is such a pain in the ass. Since 9/11, and terrorism threats, and the art market booming, regardless of what the stock market is doing -- you're dealing with [say] an artist whose work was worth $200,000 insurance-wise four years ago, is now [worth] $1.5 million and if the show travels to any major city like LA, NYC, SF or London the terrorism insurance is off the charts. You can't afford to do them anymore and people don't want to lend. They don’t want these precious objects leaving their homes…. It's just not fun. The whole energy of the experience, the whole intellectual and visceral energy is just sucked out by lenders who don't want to lend, can't lend, conservators who say this painting can't be gone more than four weeks. With a collection I don’t have to borrow from anybody, I just borrow from myself.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, September 8, 2004 | Permanent
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A chat with Michael Auping, day one
Michael Auping is the chief curator at the Museum of Modern Art of Fort Worth. When I was in Fort Worth two weeks ago, we talked over lunch. I've broken down our chat into two days, two posts a day. Tomorrow we'll talk about MAMFW's collection and Auping's installation of it. Today we'll talk about permanent collections in general. Here's today's first post:
 In the last year or two the Hirshhorn, the Guggenheim and SF MOMA have all placed renewed emphasis on displaying their permanent collections. MAMFW has stressed its permanent collection’s importance ever since its new building opened. So why all the attention to collections?
Well, I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that this country has been in a building boom for over a decade and when you're building a museum you're coming up with reasons in order to raise money for why you really need this new museum. To be able to show your permanent collection is a selling point. Museums have traditionally taken pride in a certain stability -- to be able to present a piece of history, and it's not like building a new Prada shop where everything is constantly new and newer. Although there is that aspect too, we're now entertainment palaces as well as museums.
The new museum needs to have a structure that will accommodate a certain amount of entertainment but a big reason, a big pitch for raising millions of dollars is to be able to show your permanent collection on a continual basis. We couldn't show our permanent collection and have a temporary show at the same time in our old building. After all, your permanent collection is a physical embodiment of your history, and the people that are giving you the money for the building are often the ones that gave you the money to buy the paintings that are sitting in the vault.
'Entertainment.' Everywhere I've been in the last month or two curators and directors have been talking about that word, sometimes but not always using it in the context of their museums. You just used it, too.
"Entertainment" is a very broad, and in relation to museums, a very flexible term. It can have positive or negative connotations, depending on your expectations. I'd compare the building boom now to the turn-of-the-20th-century museum boom. Cities built museums as part of an urban entertainment experience. You had a city park, often by Frederick Law Olmsted, complete with a zoo, a lake, a museum. [St. Louis' Forest Park, for example.] There was somewhere to go to take a rest from the art, a variety of experiences to make a day of. When the kids got tired of the art, you could take them to the zoo.
And here [at MAMFW] you have a lake, some trees, a restaurant, a store and art -- and no one ever accuses this building of being an entertainment palace.
[Within the context of MAMFW's Tadao Ando building] museums are a place to reflect -- that's an American as well as a Japanese idea. At the turn of the century, I think it was part of a hangover of transcendentalism in the American psyche. We can be reflective too.
So now we're building museums that have all of those [early 20th-century experiences in one building or place]. When you offer all those things, you vary the experience. Visitors don’t tighten up in that 'art' way. If you have a good building with intimate spaces and if you install the work intimately and give people a place to hang out, that’s a good thing. That is a form of entertainment. However, if you talk about entertainment in terms of giving people whatever they want no matter how low the level of information then you are basically at a shopping mall. You can't let your audience train you. It's better to gently, intimately train them into seeing the world a little differently.
I think what you said a moment ago about permanent collections being a physical embodiment of institutional history is one of the most interesting things about this mini-renaissance in emphasis on permanent collections: The institutional history of a San Francisco museum couldn’t be any more different than MoMA's New York-centric institutional history, for example. You'll see Diebenkorn and Thiebaud at SF MOMA, you won’t see them at MoMA.
Everyone does it differently. Everyone has a different collection -- hopefully. The most boring thing in the world that could happen to American art is all of the museums having essentially the same collection. They all have the same Richters, they all have the same this, and they all have the same that. If you're coming from Washington, you don’t want to come to a museum in Fort Worth that looks just like the Hirshhorn. You want to see something that has a flavor of the place, a flavor of the curator, a flavor of the board, something that has something to do with very specific personalities and conditions.
MoMA is such a specific situation in New York. It has, ostensibly, a comprehensive collection with quality. But that also comes with its own kind of burden.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, September 8, 2004 | Permanent
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NADA wakes up... kind of
Be sure to take a look at MAN's excloo about the Fort Worth Modern.
This morning NADA sent this out. (For MAN's past discussion of the NADA Miami fair, see here and here.) Apply [sic] as applicable:
Dear Member or Applicant,
We hope you had a great summer!
We really appreciate your patience and support over the summer, as we have been working very diligently on producing a fair for 2004 that is even better than the first! We apologize again for any inconvenience caused by having to postpone our deadlines, and assure you that we would not have done so were it not unavoidable.
We're writing today just to give you an update, as we had said at the beginning of August that we would be back in touch by the end of the month.
The update is this: we will be announcing all acceptances, as well as the plans for the fair, by this Friday, September 10. We have exciting things cooking and cannot wait to share them with you.
As you know, NADA is a collective of dealers & is run by four very active individuals...since Janet's departure, John Connelly, Zach Feuer, Zach Miner and I have been working very diligently to keep things running smoothly both in NADA and at our galleries...we're sure that you can appreciate the amount of work that this requires. We guarantee that now that fair is more in our hands than ever, as gallerists you will be more than pleased with what we are putting together, as we are in this together as your peers & professional colleagues. We are, however, currently interviewing for someone to run the fair, whom we shall work with very closely.
We thank you again for your patience & can't wait to be in touch with you again quite soon.
very best regards,
Sheri L. Pasquarella
President & Co-Founder, New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA)
Keep in mind that NADA had most recently told MAN that gallerists would hear word about the fair by Aug. 24. Uh, the Scope deadline has yet to arrive...
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MAMFW News
MAN excloo: The Fort Worth Modern is already planning expansion. The museum owns a site within walking distance of its Tadao Ando-designed building and Ando has provided drawings for an expansion.
(At one point MAMFW and Ando considered building four piers, but decided that would push the building too close to a nearby street and settled on the existing three-pier design.)
Best reason to live in or visit Montreal, Washington or San Francisco: MAMFW chief curator Michael Auping is putting together a show of Anselm Kiefer works from 1968-2004, works that touch on Kiefer’s interest in heaven and earth. The show will fill the entire first floor at MAMFW before traveling.
Best story about a billboard: Anyone who has been to MAMFW has seen the billboard across the street. MAMFW tried to sneakily buy it, but the owner figured out who they were and asked for $1M. MAMFW is instead going to spend $300,000 on mature trees, which will be re-planted both inside and outside the museum’s outer wall, obscuring the billboard.
UDPATE: Tom Moody asks, "What billboard?" Well, I can't find a photo of it. (Who would photography the ugly billboard when they could photograph the building from another angle, eh?) But if a MAN reader has one, please email it and I'll post it.
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Revealed: The Finch Formula
Am I the only one who has noticed that Charlie Finch writes about the same four artists and the same five galleries over and over and over again? With apologies to the new Gawker-with-a-better-rack-than-Choire, MAN reveals The Finch Formula:
- Seventy-four parts Mary Boone (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and I could keep going...);
- Four parts Iona Rozeal Brown;
- Two parts Cecily Brown (other sexy hipster artists may be substituted);
- Mix in tits-and-ass references, a wisecrack about sexually needy 50somethings and stir;
- Pour concoction into the Chelsea fishbowl (thus proving that you've never looked at art outside New York, or that if you have it's not worth writing about because you don't know who their trollops and horndogs are);
- Set in fridge for one hour, then top with a whipped topping of self-promotion, and serve.
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Roberta on Goldsworthy
At first glance it appears that Grace Glueck took over the NYT arts section today. At second glance too. (You know you're A-list when the NYT gives you tons of space in, effectively, the last arts section in August...)
But don't miss Roberta Smith's excellent take on Andy Goldsworthy. Lots of good ideas, lots of smart wordsmithing.
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Notes from DFW (part one)
Best-installed permanent collection in all of America: Modern Art Museum Fort Worth. (To be fair: I haven't seen SF MOMA's new permanent collection installation.) MAMFW chief curator Michael Auping had seven-and-a-half years to think about the MAMFW's Ando and installing it – and it still shows.
Best-installed work in America: The Robert Irwin at MAMFW. Auping says that Irwin told him that it was the "most reverent" installation of one of his own works that he’d ever seen, and that Irwin confessed that maybe it was too reverent. MAMFW cleverly hid the electrical wires from the lights in the walls that frame the installation and put the other two lights on top of floating walls. (If you want to see wires with your Irwin, check out the Horn, Hirsh.)
Lesson learned at MAMFW: When one curator installs the building, the assemblages and the works have a chance to wow us, to provide a single experience and not 23 compartmentalized experiences. When a permanent collection installation is broken down into certain curators getting certain rooms, some rooms will be interesting but the walk won’t flow as well.
Reason curators should go visit MAMFW: To see the installation of Martin Puryear's Ladder to Booker T. Washington and to learn from it. Ladder begins at about eye-level before ascending up toward the ceiling of its gallery. Any visitor could grab it, touch it, or otherwise assault it. There is no tape on the floor, no electronic beeper, no 'do not touch' signs... nothing. MAMFW has recognized that a well-installed work of art has the power to create such a moment of reverence that no one will touch the art. They're right. By contrast, most museums seem to believe you have to put tape around pieces, ruining them.
Most thought-provoking pairing of artists in a permanent collection installation: MAMFW plays Gerhard Richter and Vija Celmins off of each other in two different places in its installation. (Once in a pop art room, and once upstairs where a Celmins starscape is next to a Richter sky/oceanscape.)
Fascinating pairing No. 2: In one corner of MAMFW's mostly minimalism gallery, a Robert Mangold hangs next to a Brice Marden, light-sucking beeswax painting. The Mangold never has a chance.
Only flat moment in MAMFW's installation: Bill Viola's The Greeting (1995) is projected with a projector so lousy that facial features and reactions are unreadable. MAMFW should buy another projector or fix the one they have.
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Art monographs online
 I've updated the Top Five over on the right... at left is the cover of the catalog for the forthcoming Flavin retro.
Speaking of books and from the why-didn't-someone-think-of-this-before category, Artnet has big plans that go beyond their redesign (hint: just go right to the magazine):
"In the near future, Artnet plans to launch its own series of monographs -- online, in digital form, beginning with collections of works by Richard Estes, Leon Golub, Nancy Spero, Donald Sultan and several other artists. These new publications -- the first digital art monographs on the internet -- promise to be an invaluable resource that will exist alongside more traditional art books."
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LACMA Director: Who needs me?
LOS ANGELES -- Los Angeles County Museum of Art director and president Andrea Rich has abdicated her position, turning over operations of LACMA to billionaire businessman and philanthropost Eli Broad. Broad is giving LACMA over $50 million to renovate and rebuild its campus on Wilshire Boulevard. In place of a thank you note or a follow-up phone call, Rich has allowed Broad to choose the architect, to set up an independent board to oversee construction and to oversee the acquisition fund that will stock the new buildings with art.
"People ask how I could turn over such power to Eli," says Rich. "But I ask myself, is there a member of our board who has more experience in building or working with international architects, or who has more money and viability in terms of carrying this off, or has better taste in art and architecture, or has higher standards?"
 Rich did not suggest what she would do as director while Broad is busy running her museum. Sources close to Rich have suggested that she might sit in traffic or plant some perennials in her front yard. Another source suggested that Rich might simply follow Broad around Los Angeles, nodding frequently.
While Broad is writing a big check to LACMA and will make most of the museum's major decisions regarding expansion and collecting, he has responded to critics who claim he is micromanaging the project. Broad tells MAN that he has made a key concession: He will not walk around the construction site with a rolled-up blueprint, gesturing at the new building.
"Really, this isn't about me," Broad told MAN. "I mean, it is about me, I'm obviously in charge of everything. But in a more real way it's about something else. It's about Los Angeles becoming me, it's about the identity of the city becoming inseparable from my identity. When you think about New York, you think about Robert Moses doing whatever he wanted, building the city in his image. Moses displaced hundreds of thousands of people, ruining their lives. Who am I displacing? See, I'm not that bad."
MAN pointed out to Broad that he was displacing Rich, the museum board and its staff. Broad guffawed.
"How can you compare that to what Moses did? I'm displacing a dozen or two people, not a few hundred thousand or a couple million."
Broad added that his collection will fill the new buildings. Kinda. Eventually... maybe in ten years, maybe more. For now his collection is on loan to the institution. It is unclear if LACMA's curators had any say in what works entered their collection or if Broad simply threated to encase them in Jeff Koons' Rabbit. When questioned about this arrangement, Rich rose to Broad's defense.
"The agreement," Rich says, "ensures that LACMA, in the end, is the sole proprietor [of Broad's collection]. Donors shouldn't be given control of museum operations, personnel and policy. And anything that would inhibit the institution's long-term control of a gift is not a good thing. But I figure if Eli wants to have fun with this for 10 years, if he wants to buy art, build a building and know, when it's all said and done, his contribution is part of something forever, what's wrong with that?"
When asked what museum operations and policy Broad was not being given control over, Rich made a noise that sounded like "phlbbbblt." She said that she had personally picked out the drinking fountains that will fill the hallways of the new LACMA. In an e-mail to a reporter after the interview, Rich added that one of her curators might have specified the typeface that will be used on those little cards that tell visitors who made a work of art and what it's called.
Rich and Broad both appear to be unconcerned that their arrangement violates museum industry standards. The American Association of Museum Directors' handbook, "Professional Practices in Art Museums," seems to instruct institutions to avoid arrangements such as the one made between Broad and LACMA: "Because museums exist to serve the public good and must earn and retain the public trust, they should avoid any practice that could damage the community's trust and respect for the institution. In fundraising, the concept of public benefit rather than individual benefit should apply, while recognizing that a variety of stakeholders may peripherally benefit, including sponsors, collectors, dealers, and artists. The museum must retain artistic control; sources of support must not be allowed to compromise the curatorial integrity of the program." [Bold emphasis added.]
When read this passage, Broad rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, whatever," he said.
Rich nodded.
***
Editor's note: Rich quotes in italics are actual quotes from Suzanne Muchnic's excellent story about the Broad-LACMA relationship in the Aug. 23 Los Angeles Times. The story is no longer free on-line, but MAN has an electronic copy (ahem). The final italicized passage is from AAMD's "Professional Practices in Art Museums," page 14, paragraph 44. Everything else here is made-up. Kinda.
And for fun, we just love this letter to the LAT. Don't miss the link in the letter, either.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, September 1, 2004 | Permanent
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Art and Patriotism in NYC
I've plugged this trio before, but if you want to know what's going on at the intersection of art, dissent and patriotism in New York, Roberta's roundup is now several days old. So check these three sites regularly this week:
And if readers think I should add to this list, please let me know.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, September 1, 2004 | Permanent
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Notes from Marfa
News and notes from Marfa, Texas:
 Most interesting news you'll find only on MAN: Expect a Robert Irwin installation at Chinati sometime in the next year or two. When I was in Marfa, Irwin was on site and in the preliminary stages of planning a project, probably a garden in or around a building.
Second-most interesting news you'll find only on MAN: Late in life, Donald Judd began building six concrete buildings that were to house stacks (and perhaps other objects). Two of the buildings were started, Chinati and the Judd Foundation have some (incomplete) drawings for the rest. (The sketches vaguely reminded me of a classic college quad.) Chinati would consider finishing the buildings were funding to materialize...
Chinati/Judd Foundation potential project that I hope happens soon: No one is working on a Judd biography (yet). But here's a project I hope someone funds soon: A compilation of oral histories of Judd, his pals, and other major minimalist figures. Several have passed away in recent years and others are ill. Someone's gotta get out there and get those stories before they're lost.
Best sneak preview: The Ken Price installation at Chinati. If you like Ken Price, this installation, full of natural light and cleverly staggered platforms, is going to thrill you. (It opens during Chinati's open house weekend.) I'm only lukewarm on Price and I still found myself pretty thoroughly taken in.
Observation you won’t believe until you go to Marfa: You have not experienced a perfect Judd stack until you’ve been to Marfa. (Fine, don't believe me. But go and you'll see what I mean.) The stacks here (at Judd's home in downtown Marfa) are in pristine condition, are installed at their full height and they seem all the more colorful and radiant in the high desert light. An absolute 'never-forget' experience.
Bonus treat of the trip: It's been a wet August in Marfa. The grassland is surprisingly green and wildflowers were out in abundance. As a result, Judd’s boxes and his concrete outdoor installation looked oddly... organic.
Favorite unexpected objects: The radio, studio chair and scaffolding in Judd's studio were gifts from… Barnett Newman's widow Annalee, direct to Judd from Barney's studio.
Factoid (probably) interesting only to me: Somehow Chinati operates with an annual budget of just $1.1 million. Join or donate.
Artists that would look great at Chinati: James Turrell. Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Richard Serra. Christo and Jean-Claude.
Artist that looks kind of lost in the Texas landscape: Oldenbruggen.
Favorite story told by a recent artist-in-residence: An antelope has given birth in one of Judd's concrete structures.
Best reason to visit Chinati (other than the art): The Marfans and Chinatians are super, super, super-friendly and helpful. I can't wait to go back. I'd go back next week if I could.
Best example of a story about Marfa that, thankfully, is not online: Texas Monthly runs a real estate advertisement about Marfa in this month's issue. Make that a feature story. No, a real estate ad. Heck, I can't tell.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, September 1, 2004 | Permanent
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