{"id":1234,"date":"2009-11-01T22:34:23","date_gmt":"2009-11-02T06:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/11\/waiting_in_vain_for_a_positive_1\/"},"modified":"2009-11-01T22:34:23","modified_gmt":"2009-11-02T06:34:23","slug":"waiting_in_vain_for_a_positive_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/11\/waiting_in_vain_for_a_positive_1.html","title":{"rendered":"Waiting in vain for a positive review"},"content":{"rendered":"

If the Seattle Art Museum<\/a> is waiting for a thumbs-up on its Michelangelo<\/i> debacle, it’s going to have to write one for itself. Walt Whitman did so under a pseudonym for Leaves of Grass<\/i><\/a>, and his reputation remains unsullied. <\/p>\n

The closest thing to favorable are Victoria Ellison’s three paragraphs tacked on to the end of her Calder review<\/a>.
\nThe decision to turn Michelangelo into a Calder postscript pushes in
\nthe opposite direction of her generous comments. (Whose work got the
\nillustration? Calder’s.)<\/p>\n

(My Michelangelo review here<\/a>. My Calder here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

In his fine Calder review<\/a>, Stephen Cummings reduced his reaction to Michelangelo to the following:<\/p>\n

It may go without saying that SAM has a bit of a (deserved) reputation for mounting second rate shows. (Michelangelo<\/a> certainly qualifies.) <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If
\nSAM has this reputation, it is unearned. At the region’s flagship
\nmuseum I’ve never seen an exhibit as overblown and underfed. It’s the
\nkind of thing John Buchanan<\/a> used to surround with superlatives when he was fund-raiser-in-chief<\/strike> director of the Portland Art Museum<\/a>. He has since taken his brass-band personal style to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco<\/a>, causing Kenneth Baker<\/a> great dismay.<\/p>\n

Back to Walt Whitman:<\/p>\n

The 1855 publication of Leaves of Grass<\/i>
\nwas heralded by anonymous reviews printed in New York papers, which
\nwere clearly written by Whitman himself. They accurately described the
\nbreak-through nature of his “transcendent and new” work. “An American
\nbard at last!” trumpeted one self-review. (more<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Anyone caught doing that today would surely share the fate of James Frey. He took a beating for his memoir, A Million Little Pieces<\/i><\/a>, discovered after publication to be partly fictionalized.  In response to his critics, Frey commissioned a painting by Ed Ruscha<\/a>. (Story here<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\"edruschastoning.jpg\"No story ever happens the way we tell it, but the moral is always correct.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Donald Barthelme, from The Dead Father<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If the Seattle Art Museum is waiting for a thumbs-up on its Michelangelo debacle, it’s going to have to write one for itself. Walt Whitman did so under a pseudonym for Leaves of Grass, and his reputation remains unsullied. The closest thing to favorable are Victoria Ellison’s three paragraphs tacked on to the end of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}