{"id":1778,"date":"2010-06-17T11:32:25","date_gmt":"2010-06-17T18:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2010\/06\/seattle_art_museum_how_to_lose\/"},"modified":"2010-06-17T11:32:25","modified_gmt":"2010-06-17T18:32:25","slug":"seattle_art_museum_how_to_lose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2010\/06\/seattle_art_museum_how_to_lose.html","title":{"rendered":"Seattle Art Museum: How to lose a curator"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Michael Darling leaves his job in July as modern and contemporary
\ncurator at the Seattle Art
\nMuseum<\/a> to become chief curator at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art<\/a>, it’s
\ngood news for Chicago, bad for Seattle. He’s an extraordinary gifted
\ncurator. Objects speak to him, suggesting patterns and relationships
\nthat root and waken in his exhibitions. <\/p>\n

(Photo, Mike Urban, Seattle PI 2007, accompanying my profile of him, here<\/a>.)<\/i><\/p>\n

\"MichaelDarlingpano.jpg\"A curator on the job for three years is cracking open the territory. Darling has the wit, energy and vision to connect part of what’s genuinely of merit in the NW to art globally. He is capable of breaking the isolationist bubble of regionalism to move artists who move him onto a larger stage. He’s leaving in part because he can’t do it alone. Having brilliant chops is not enough in the NW, either for artists or curators. <\/p>\n

Darling’s Target Practice: Painting Under Attack, 1949-78<\/a> <\/i>(June 27 to Sept. 7, 2009) is extraordinary by anyone’s measure. From my review<\/a> in Modern Painters:<\/p>\n

Target Practice<\/i> focused on artists who saw painting as a closed world
\nand attempted to pry it open. With single and multiple works by 40
\ntalents from Europe, Japan, North America, and South America, it engaged
\nwhat remains a fresh chaos of ragged representation and stands as the
\nbest contemporary-art survey in the museum’s history.
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And yet Target Practice<\/i> did not travel. Darling tried. The economics were against it, but the primarily reason it went nowhere else is that it originated in Seattle. Later, when working on Kurt Cobain’s impact on visual art (Kurt<\/i><\/a>), Darling tried less, if at all. It too isn’t going to travel. At least Target Practice<\/i> has a catalog<\/a>. Kurt<\/i> doesn’t. Its record will be the reviews it attracted, largely from Seattle. <\/p>\n

Kurt<\/i> has everything desperate art museums need. Through it they can achieve an attendance boast without sacrificing substance. (No disgraceful Star Wars<\/i><\/a> exhibit, no dubious Tim Burton<\/i><\/a>.) Kurt<\/i> is rigorous art straight up, with a built-in bridge to popular culture. Had Darling organized this exhibit for Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, it would have a catalog, and it would have a touring schedule. <\/p>\n

At SAM, Darling has no help. What he does, he does without assistance. His exhibit’s ideas, paperwork, phone calls and other legwork come from him. Nearly all art museums outside of Texas have financial problems, but SAM has the additional problem of a deal with a failed bank<\/a>. While it’s not as bleak as formerly, 60,000 square feet of space SAM needs to rent out remains vacant. <\/p>\n

Plus, the cuts continue. In May SAM announced…<\/p>\n

Immediate reductions to staffing levels, other compensation-related
\nexpenses, and a two-week furlough and museum closure…The reductions were achieved through a
\ncombination of attrition and the elimination of current positions.
\nAdditionally, after the completion of the Pablo Picasso exhibition in
\nlate January 2011, the museum plans to close its three principal
\nbuildings for a period of two weeks (January 31-February 13, 2011) as an
\nadditional cost-saving measure. Several top level administrators at SAM
\nwill accept a 10% reduction in pay for the coming year only, and
\n(director Derrick) Cartwright has planned for a still larger reduction to his own executive
\ncompensation next year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jen Graves story on cuts here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

In Seattle, Darling works with deeper and wider collections than will be at his disposal in Chicago. He is not a curator of the last five minutes. SAM’s range is a boom for him. His curatorial peers at SAM may not all be the hippest, but they are all masters in their territories, and yet Chiyo
\nIshikawa<\/a>, SAM’s Deputy Director for Art & Curator of European Paintings and
\nSculpture, says that the Chicago offer was just too good to pass up. <\/p>\n

What’s so good about it? A rosier financial picture, assistants on his team and, above all, the cache to secure the right sort of attention for his efforts. Darling will be great in Chicago. In Seattle, he had the chance to be historical. He could have undermined the art-world prejudice that continues to view the city as a backwater. In the national view, Portland is DYI cute, but Seattle is overblown and underfed. It’s not true, but no points accrue from being misunderstood.<\/p>\n

Frances Bacon, Of Truth<\/i><\/a>, 1601:<\/p>\n

What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If there’s any doubt about Seattle’s standing, the New York Times’ story<\/a> announcing Darling’s departure from SAM eliminated it. Amid minor errors concerning where Darling was when, the writer asserted that Darling was only the second to hold the position of modern and contemporary curator at SAM. He’s the sixth. I wrote about the error here<\/a>, and the Seattle Art Museum requested a correction. To date, no correction has appeared in the paper of record.  <\/p>\n

Next: Ideas for Darling’s replacement.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Michael Darling leaves his job in July as modern and contemporary curator at the Seattle Art Museum to become chief curator at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, it’s good news for Chicago, bad for Seattle. He’s an extraordinary gifted curator. Objects speak to him, suggesting patterns and relationships that root and waken in his […]<\/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-1778","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\/1778","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=1778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}