Guggenheim Forum: What's It All About?

Hey, want to chat? Online? About art, specifically Kandinsky?

The invitation comes not from me, but from the Guggenheim Museum. Nowadays, it's holding online discussion and chat sesssions called Forum, which it billed as "innovative" in a recent Guggenheim Magazine. The point, it says, is "to discuss and debate topics related to major museum exhibitions."

Its seems a bit retro to me, but I'm withholding judgment. According to the Guggenheim's website, the first Forum was last summer. It was titled "Between the Over- and Underdesigned." I read the posts and the chat and felt -- under-enlightened. It was bland, deadly bland. See for yourself at that link.

But there's another chance coming this week, starting on Monday and through Oct. 23. This panel of experts will talk about "Spiritual (Re)Turn" in relation to the musem's Kandinsky retrospective:

This...Forum takes as its point of departure Vasily Kandinsky's famous advocacy for a union of the spiritual and art. Overall, however, modernity has seen fine art and religion diverge. Now that spirituality has become increasingly divorced from religion--Kandinsky himself approached the issue through the esoteric belief system of Theosophy--is it possible that we could see now see a reunion of the two?

The online chat part starts on Thursday at 2 p.m. EST and involves moderators Krista Tippett, the host of the popular public-radio program, Speaking of Faith, and Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., the William M. Suttles Chair of Religious Studies at Georgia State University.

The other panelists, who'll comment during the rest of the week, are Huma Bhabha, who won the 2008 Emerging Artist Award from the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion and co-director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life at Columbia University.

And good luck to them. Still, I thought, haven't we been here before? I decided to consult Max Anderson at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, who's usually up to date on museum activities on the web.