Over the weekend, the new head of the Miami Art Museum — Thom Collins (below, with Suzanne Delehanty, former MAM director) — had his say in the Miami Herald. On first glance, the article makes him look good, perhaps the right choice. But a close reading throws some doubt on him and his take about art.
Among my quibbles:
- “Miami is the only major city in the U.S. that doesn’t have a major art museum of its own,” he said. Would that this were true. Perhaps he forgot that the Las Vegas Art Museum closed last year. Perhaps he doesn’t realize that, say, Fresno, is another city with a larger population than Miami’s, but no “major” art museum — and a struggling non-major one. Mesa, AZ, has more people than Miami — according to Wikipedia’s list of the largest cities in the U.S. In other works, many Americans have little opportunity to see good art.
- ” ‘To engage people, they have to be able to see themselves in some aspect of what you do, whether it’s their histories and issues that are important to them or just fleshing out how best to communicate with audiences, how best to serve them through education and in our various neighborhoods,’ said Collins, a trim, effusive Pennsylvanian who describes himself as an ‘anti-elitist’ when it comes to art.” I take issue with the “see themselves” argument, which is made by others as well; not only is it not universally true, but also I believe that such thinking undermines one of art’s greatest virtues – its universality.
- “A public institution is committed to collection growth with an eye to putting together a more-or-less encyclopedic survey of major developments in its area . . . and to protect and preserve those collections in perpetuity. When this building opens, I trust that all of us in public and private institutions will coordinate what we are doing so we can really together make the case for
Ok, he’s an enthusiastic guy — why cavil? Because Collins is raising expectations, and that’s a dangerous game: he is bound to disappoint.