Green also disapproves of museum’s hosting exhibitions featuring work from a single private collector, arguing that such displays give too much of a market boost to their owner as well as undercutting curators on staff. (How about if curators select work from a single collector, which is nearly always the case?)<\/p>\n
In any event, with big budget cuts<\/a> in virtually all art museums, curators are likely to appreciate the breathing room a packaged exhibit provides. Even where curators remain in full force, their support staff is a shadow of what it was. The work load increases as resources erode.<\/p>\n Ideally, curators would be able to borrow important art from banks just as they do from individuals without ceding control to either. But given a choice between empty galleries and first-rate work presented by Bank of America, I’ll take the latter. <\/p>\n Anyone out there who still thinks the Brooklyn Museum<\/a> shouldn’t have taken Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection<\/i><\/a>? <\/p>\n Yes, museum authentication boosted Saatchi’s bottom line. And yes, if anyone deserves disapproval for his ethics, it’s him. Talk to artists whose work he has bought and sold. He’s not Santa. <\/p>\n And yet Sensation<\/i> was an important exhibit to bring to the U.S. Exhibitions are about art. Where it comes matters less than what it is. <\/p>\n When art exhibits are little more than a pretext for trustees or favored patrons to pad their bottom line, it’s great that watchdogs like Green are on the job. Before I get interested in writing those stories, wrong-doing has to stink like a corpse in a closet. Good morning misogyny! This week in poorly executed photography projects, Chad States discusses his series Men at Their Most Masculine <\/em>at the Morning News<\/a>. Why the attitude? Because some of States’ models are dicks. Dear Art Fag City: They’re not people you’re sorry to have invited to dinner. They’re part of an art project.<\/p>\n And your point about States’ project being simple, and its initial contact with subjects a “banal solicitation”? To paraphrase Robert Morris, simplicity of design does not equate with simplicity of result. <\/p>\n Besides selecting themselves, States’ subjects posed themselves in the attire and setting of their choice. They are strangers who dispensed with the conventions of their anonymity to tell all to an artist with a camera and recording device, the 21st century’s version of a priest’s confessional. <\/p>\n I saw a portion of Men at Their Most Masculine<\/i><\/a> earlier this year and was fascinated by its deadpan Surrealism. <\/p>\n I Almost as good as,<\/p>\n A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Getting Fired at at the Seattle Art Museum<\/b>: Artist (and security guard) Amanda Mae was fired for picking off pieces of paper left by the audience on Yoko Ono’s Painting to Hammer a Nail<\/i>. Story here<\/a>.
Moral judgments continued:<\/b> From Art Fag City<\/a>: <\/p>\n
\nThe project is simple. The photographer places an ad on Craigslist
\nreading, “I am doing a photography project on masculinity. If you
\nidentify as being masculine, please get back to me.” Then he
\nphotographs selected respondents in their homes, and places a quote
\nfrom the session alongside the work.
\nThe results from the banal solicitation are pretty much exactly what
\nyou’d expect–a cross section of various misogynistic statements,
\npeppered with a few other predictable interpretations of masculinity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n![\"chadstatesluke.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/chadstatesluke.jpg\")
<\/span>You can leave your hat on. (Or, in his case, socks.) Below, what came out of his mouth when he spoke:<\/p>\n
\nam masculine because I abandon women after taking their love. Because
\nwhen you study Freud you don’t let him study you. Because I study
\nphilosophy not literature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nMuseum spokesperson Nicole Griffin is right in saying that Ono’s piece
\ninvites adding on, not taking away. Plus, employees owe the museum the
\ncourtesy of at least asking before changing an artwork in its
\ngalleries. I like Amanda Mae as an artist<\/a>.
\nAs an employee, she falls short. Firing her might seem harsh until you
\nknow that she’d already resigned. Both museum and artist chose this
\noccasion to make a statement.<\/p>\n