Quite by accident the other day, I found an experiment on the Museum of Modern Art’s website, which initially seemed so very disappointing. But looking further, it turned out to be an interesting, and maybe promising, exercise. It might even strengthen bonds between visitors and MoMA. And that would be a mighty accomplishment.

The feature is called “I went to MoMA and…” In it, the museum asked visitors to complete that sentence; MoMA then posted the responses on the web. Most of the ones I clicked on initially were irrelevant or vapid or both. For example:

I went to MoMA and “tripped over an exhibit and nobody noticed.”

I went to MoMA and “I’m thinking about my future house and how I and my boyfriend will create it.”

I went to MoMA and “thank Darrell for putting up with me.”

I went to MoMA and “my eyes grew fat drinking in so much delicious candy. Yum!”

I went to MoMA and “my mood was yellow.”

I went to MoMA and “I met my husband! I am forever grateful, dear MoMA.”

You can see more here. Some people made little drawings, of an eye, flowers, and so on.

Looking at this, I was rather ambivalent and decided not to waste any more time. Then I clicked on MoMA’s blog entry about the feature The writers, Brigitta Bungard, design manager in the department of graphic design, and Jillian Steinhauer, a freelance editor, had to have read more of the entries that I did — I hope. As they wrote:

Discussions about a favorite painting or reactions to the lines and rhythms of a work of art can help bring us together. It’s refreshing, too, to experience a piece you’ve already seen from a different perspective–through the eyes of a grandfather who remembers when Pollock began dripping paint onto canvas, a mother who marched with the second-wave feminists, or a toddler who hasn’t yet learned to revere Van Gogh for anything besides his colors.

The entries they highlighted (in a slide show) included a mother bringing her 12-year-old son to see AbEx works; a person having an “adventure w/ Grams;” someone who “saw Starry Night and the kitchen show and recognized a lot of it;” people who talked of getting up at 5 a.m. to get here from Boston just to see Starry Night, which made them cry; a woman who “experienced the unknown through my daughters eyes [sic]…;” someone who “never knew how inspirational it would be to my son with Asperger’s…”;  and so on.

Short as they are, those lines are powerful.

Recently, I mentioned that I was moderating a panel at the Toledo Museum of Art on “museums and memory” (an excellent show, btw, which is now posted online via YouTube), and this MoMA exercise is related. We all know that writing things down enhances our memory of them — MoMA is, I hope, encouraging people to make permanent memories of their MoMA visits and their experiences with art.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of MoMA 

Psssst: want to get a art work by Rirkrit Tiravanija completely free?

This is not a con. All you have to do is buy the June/July copy of Art in America. When I opened mine — call me old-fashioned, but as a writer I actually look at magazines from front to back, page by page — the first word of this gift came in the Editor’s Letter by my friend Lindsay Pollock. She explained that she was harking back to a 41-year-old project, when her predecessors commissioned artists to create removable original graphics that were bound into the magazine.

That was an interesting idea.

Now, it may be a bit of a gimmick, yes, but so what? As Lindsay recounts the “ask” in her letter, Tiravanija wasn’t hard to persuade. He created two works, one of which is in each magazine. Do you have to look for it? Yes, but it’s not really hard to notice if you know it’s there (here, reading sequentially turned out to be a good thing: I wonder how many other people may have torn it out without looking at it).

One of them asks, “Where is Ai Weiwei?”

There was a bit of a difference from last time. The commission didn’t involve money, Lindsay revealed in answer to my questions:

We didn’t reward Rirkirt for the project–other than by spreading his work and message to our readers–but we felt the project is in keeping with his deeply held desire to disseminate his art and messages beyond wealthy art collectors. At his last show at Gavin Brown, $20 t-shirts emblazoned with his slogans were for sale. …

…this is just part of our effort to bring more artists and artist voices into the magazine. You may have noticed artist Ellen Gallagher wrote a feature story in the same issue?

Faye Hirsch also writes a feature on Tiravanija in the issue (illustrated with a slide show, from which I have swiped on picture to post here), partly about his Untitled 2008-2011 (the map of the land of feeling) I-III, which is 3 feet high and 84 feet long. 

Considering how fleeting much of his art work is, I wondered to Lindsay if AinA‘s little freebie, though unsigned, would have a value some day… she didn’t reply. It’s serving its purpose now.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Art in America 

I was happy to hear that Ai Weiwei has been released in China, and though he’s out “on bail” some experts I’ve heard say that is a face-saving and that he is actually free, for now at least. I have nothing enlightening to say about it, though (other than an earlier post) — except that it’s a good segue to what this post is about: cultural diplomacy in a different situation.

Did any of you read the article in today’s Wall Street Journal about the infamous Mexican drug gang Los Zetas? It says that the “bloodthirsty” cartel has taken over parts of the vast El Petén province, which includes the majestic Mayan pyramids at Tikal, recently killing 27 people to gain control of the land they need as a refuge.

If they do that to people, imagine how much damage they can — and may — do to Tikal and other ruins.

All of which is one reason I am posting today about the El Paso Museum of Art, which recently learned that it has won one of only four of this year’s Awards for U.S.-Mexico Cross-Border Cooperation and Innovation, which are administered by the Border Research Partnership (made up of the Woodrow Wilson Center Mexico Institute, the North American Center for Transborder Studies at Arizona State University, and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte).

The award, meant to tell “often-overlooked success stories of U.S.-Mexico cross-border cooperation,” recognizes the museum for continuing to connect artists across the border in Juarez, possibly the most violent city in Mexico, with artists in the U.S. — and thus people, too — in its first Border Biennial in 2008 and its second in 2010.

Quoting from El Paso Inc.:

Artists living within a 400-mile radius of El Paso and Juárez submitted works for a juried exhibition that was shown simultaneously at the Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez and the El Paso Museum of Art….[In 2008] the artists dealt with topic like commerce, trade and economic issues….[By 2010, because of drug-related violence] the themes were very different…Politics, the border, abandonment….

[El Paso museum director Michael] Tomor and his staff worked with colleagues at Juárez museum, asking artists for two pieces to exhibit – one in El Paso and one in Juárez – since artists and museumgoers were reluctant to cross the border. They also expanded the area to include artists in all border states of both Mexico and the United States.

In such situations, and with such awards, the question of efficacy always arises: how can an art exhibit lower tensions, forge bonds, matter?

The answer, to me, is that those things are pretty hard to measure, and that it depends on what’s in the shows and who goes to see them. Effects may be fleeting. I doubt they’ll have any effect on the Mexcan drug cartels. though they may sensitize others to cultural losses.

So Border Biennials may do not much in actuality. But they can’t hurt either, can they? So why not, when appropriate?

Today’s Wall Street Journal carries my review of Breaking Ground: The Whitney’s Founding Collection, which is on view now through Sept. 18 at the Whitney. As a window on one part of the art world between 1902 and 1935, roughly, it’s a fascinating display — and not because all the works, even “many” of the works are good.

Inadvertently, the show makes two points. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the museum’s founder, bought “democratically,” supporting many artists, and it’s no wonder to me that in 1929 the Metropolitan Museum of Art turned downed her proposed donation and she instead founded her own museum. Indiscriminate buying is no way to stock a museum.

But neither is the market, which is what one museum director worried about to me recently, and whose thoughts I summarize at the start of my review:

Recently the director of a major American museum was gently venting about collecting contemporary art. Curators in that field, he said, are too attuned to the market, too eager to collect works by artists early in their careers, lest they be shut out later if prices rise beyond museums’ means. As a result, museums are acquiring many works that will not stand the test of time.

I end the review this way:

But if Whitney’s democratic purchasing policy didn’t work to the museum’s ultimate advantage, neither would following the market have. In 1930, for example, she purchased “Mrs. Gamley,” a forgettable portrait by Luks, for $8,000. The same year, she bought Hopper’s masterpiece “Early Sunday Morning” for just $2,000 and Demuth’s iconic “My Egypt” for $1,500. In the end, there is no substitute for a discriminating eye.

 Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Whitney Museum