Officially, the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art opens on Oct.2, with a free weekend for the community. But it’s tiptoeing out this weekend and over the next few days for those closest to LACMA.

The big gala honoring the Resnicks — called “The Unmasking” — is tonight.

And, from afar, LACMA has much to celebrate. The museum says “the single-story, 45,000 square foot structure is the largest purpose-built, naturally lit, open-plan museum space in the world.” It was designed by Renzo Piano, and is surrounded by a “Palm Garden” by Robert Irwin: “The palms, some quite rare, come in a wide variety of sizes, colors and shapes. They are set into orderly grids, articulated by Cor-ten steel walls and containers. Irwin has noted that certain cycads chosen for the site are among the first plants on earth.”

The pavilion opens with three exhibitions: Eye for the Sensual: Selections from the Resnick Collection; Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico; and Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915.

LACMA also seems to be lucky this time in its key donors; the Resnicks donated $45 million in cash and pledged $10 million worth of art, with no strings attached. In an article by Jori Finkel in the Los Angeles Times, Lynda Resnick says the words that would bring joy to any museum director: “We see no need to micromanage; we have seen the negative effects of it.” That’s an allusion to Eli Broad, who financed another building at LACMA, filled with his collection, but now plans to build his own museum instead of givng the art to LACMA.

The Resnicks collect Old Masters, in contrast to the prevailing tastes for contemporary art in LA — and that’s nice to hear, even though their taste sounds a little over the top. The Times calls their collection “flashy,” and says it has “an abundance of flesh, from over-ripe cleavage to outright nudity.” LACMA director Michael Govan joked that “We had trouble finding images that we could use on the street banners.” Lynda Resnick’s picture in the Times says it all; she’s quite the contrast to the stereotypical Old Master collector.

Meantime, the Times‘s architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne, gives the building itself something of a mixed review, while art critic Christopher Knight appraises the three exhibits here.

It’s hard to assess this from afar, but from the sounds of all the articles I’ve read, the pavilion has some drawbacks as a showcase for art, but nothing (so far) like the troubles on view at other museums with starchitect buildings. For a few of that, take a look at Eric Felton’s column in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, which discusses the troubles at four museums.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

Some people, and museums, stoop to gain attention, but a consortium of art centers around Buffalo today went in the other direction: they hired French tightrope walker Didier Pasquette to perform a high-wire walk between two statues atop the city’s landmark Liberty Building. It takes place at 6:30 this evening, and Pasquette will walk again at noon on Sunday in Niagara Falls.

The point, I guess, is to kick off Beyond/In Western New York 2010: Alternating Currents, an extragavanza of art at more than two dozen venues in Erie and Niagara Counties, upstate.

I’m sad that art needs a stunt to gain attention, but at least this one isn’t horrible and doesn’t lower the discourse. And maybe it will excite people to see this biennial, which would be a good thing. If you’re reading this before Pasquette takes off, you can watch it live here.

The roots of this show go back to 1934, at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, but it has gone through a couple of reincarnations (and protests) along the way. This time, it’s showing art from the region as well as, for the first time, art invited from non-regional artists, like Andy Goldsworthy and Lorraine O’Grady. I wish BIWNY had not done that: it’s hard enough for artists outside the big art centers to get showings without making it tougher on the occasions meant for them — at least by taking attention away from them.

On the other hand, I do like that this year’s theme, Alternating Currents, refers to two historical events in the area: In the 1890, the war between Thomas Edison’s view of electricity (DC) and Nicholas Tesla’s (AC) was carried out in Niagara Falls, ending with Tesla’s AC delivery of electricity to Buffalo. Two years earlier, King Gillette advocated the building of a Utopian city in the area, powered by Niagara Falls. Hopefully, many artists drew inspiration from these events or the theme overall.  

The exhibition, which was juried, is expected to attract 80,000 visitors during its run, which extends until Jan. 16, 2011. 

I’m not going to attempt to talk about the quality of the art from afar, though I have the catalogue, except to say that much looks to be worthy. Happily, the website listed above has a list of the artists, with a sample of their work and a podcast statement from each one –so you can look yourself. Nice touch, that recorded statement.

The biennial’s events, which really get underway tomorrow, are also listed, along with travel and other information. If you’re in the neighborhood, why not stop in? 

Photo Credit: Courtesy Beyond/In Western New York  

Now here’s an idea: Have a government team audit the country’s public art collections to see just how many women are included, how often their work is exhibited, and why there isn’t a greater proportion of art by women in museums.

OK, maybe not, not in the U.S. But that’s what’s happening in Sweden, where seven researchers are assessing the collections of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Goteborgs Konstmuseum, and the regional museums in Malmo and Norrkoping. Jeff Werner, research director at the Goteborg museum, is leading the effort, according to a short report in The Art Newspaper’s September issue. Werner plans to study “acquisition strategies and organizationals structures to see how they have influenced gender representation.”

And the report will be published, not hushed up like a lot of museum information in the U.S.

I’m not really advocating that the U.S. government undertake a parallel effort here. In Sweden, the project is costing $58,000, with funding provided by the Swedish Arts Council. But imagine the cost in the U.S., and the probable outrage about interference from the government and wasted spending.

Still, I would like to know the numbers; the museums should do the work or they should agree to provide access to interested researchers. A few are trying, like the Museum of Modern Art.*

The numbers would raise consciousness of the issue. Afterall, biases may be unconscious.

Photo Credit: The painting is by an artist named Marie Bashkirseff, and I borrowed the image from a blog called Art and Influence by Armand Cabrera. 

* I consult to a foundation that supports MoMA

How do artists work? As much as the creative process is a mystery, really, that’s what people often want to know. Even when artists don’t know themselves.

But they leave traces, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe has been mining the photographs, drawings, rocks, bones, artifacts, paints, brushes and other materials O’Keeffe left behind when she died in 1986.

Its new O’Keeffiana: Art and Art Materials, which opens on Friday, aims to shed light on both her technical and creative processes — a great idea, except for one qualm I have.

The show’s billing quotes O’Keeffe:

I have picked flowers where I found them, have picked up sea shells and rocks and pieces of wood where there were sea shells and rocks and pieces of wood that I liked. When I found the beautiful white bones on the desert I picked them up and took them home too. I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it.

O’Keeffe was very organized. She placed her drawings in named file folders, took photographs of her still subjects from many vantage points in different light, trimmed her brushed meticulously, and so on. Associate curator Carolyn Kastner, who organized the show, told the Associated Press that she looked hard for something “messy,” but could not find a thing. (Here’s a link to the AP story.) 

I’m all for these kinds of shows; they engage people in a different way than a traditional exhibition, and that can draw new people to look at art.

But back to my qualm. There could be a slight downside in this one: already, O’Keeffe’s life story is what so many people know, her steamy affair with a married man, the marriage, the breakup, the sexual allusions in her art that she fought, and so on — even more than the aesthetics of her art in some cases. If this show reinforces that interest in her life, over her art (and I’m not saying it will, for sure), that would be a shame.

Photo Credit: Courtesy the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

 

Now it can be told: Bloomberg LP will be giving more than $1 million to Richard Koshalek’s “Seasonal Inflatable Structure,” the blue bubble designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro that he announced last December, without providing many “why” details.

It’s a naming gift, and thus won’t be official until the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution meet to approve it this fall. But it’s real, and it comes on top of $1.5 million Koshalek has raised for another part of his $15 million project to put the Hirshhorn Museum on the world’s cultural map — a classroom of the future in the lobby.

Koshalek has never been a man of small ambitions, and his bubble combines elements of the World Economic Forum at Davos and TED (Technology Entertainment Design) conferences. He calls his attempt to insert art into to national and international dialogue “lifelong learning,” and thus part of a museum’s purview, and “a cultural think tank.”

As he told me:

I took the job because of this. If we can develop an educational program that’s national and global in outlook, we can have an impact on cultural policy in the U.S.
 

I lay the whole story out in a Cultural Conversation with Koshalek that will be published in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal — where there are many more details and examples of the programs he envisions. Let me say right here that lots of people have tried, and failed, at getting the U.S. to have a cultural policy — I’m for some elements of what people call a cultural policy, and against others — let alone inserting the arts into national affairs. So we’ll see.  

Now, if this were all Koshalek were doing at the Hirshhorn, he might deserve a little of the criticism he’s been getting for the sin of leaking the initial story of the bubble’s existence to The New York Times last December (but most of that is sour grapes. The whiners/critics should grow up: life isn’t fair).

Once he gets this funded and organized, it will  be run by his deputy Erica Clark, who was also with Koshalek at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

That will give him time to go back to the Hirshhorn’s core activities — collection-building, conservation, exhibitions, etc. That’s his main job, and while I am sure he will hobnob at the forums, he seems to know it. His actions will speak for him.