I don’t know Steven M. Davis, but he’s in the running for my favorite museum architect.

Davis, of Davis Brody Bond, is an architect of the National 9-11 Memorial Museum, and last week he characterized the project for The Wall Street Journal this way:

“In contrast with museums where viewing the building exterior is part of the experience, the memorial museum will be underground and unseen from the surface, said Steven M. Davis, the museum’s architect and partner of Davis Brody Bond LLP.

‘The exhibits are the icon. It’s the inverse of a traditional museum in those respects,’ Mr. Davis said.”

I wonder if Davis could speak with the likes of Richard Meier and Daniel Libeskind.

Of course, it’s true that the 9-11 museum is different from other museums, and I don’t have anything against beautiful buildings above ground. Despite its statement as an architectural icon, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao works well for the art inside, to name one.

But it’s not news to say that museums have been trying to outdo themselves with trophy buildings that don’t always work well for the art inside. It has to stop.

Davis Brody seems to be different. Here, according to the World Architects website, is its philosophy:

Changes in architectural fashion do not divert Davis Brody Bond Aedas from our chief objective to fulfill the needs of the people who will use our buildings. A prime concern in the design of our buildings is to create environments which encourage the human spirit, while incorporating state-of-the-art technology.

The firm’s full design statement for the 9-11 museum is posted here. 

Photo Credit: Rendering of the “Last Column” within the museum, courtesy Davis Brody Bond
 

Vacation’s over — I was in Colombia (Cartagena and Bogota), more about which in another post — and I’ve spent much of today trying to catch up on what happened while I was gone.

The biggest development in what I’ve read so far is the death of the Brodsky bill to curtail museum deaccessioning in the New York legislature. That’s good news. Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (at right) says his bill is the only thing blocking the “beancounters,” who’ll sell museum collections at the drop of a hat to pay the HVAC bills, from raiding our museums. But it was a bad bill as written last winter, when it would have created an unfunded mandate for too many institutions (who’d have had to catalogue everything they own), among other flaws, and it’s still a bad bill with his proffered modifications.

Brodsky seems to have blamed opposition by some big insitutions, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for the bill’s demise, but my reporting says otherwise. Several legislators, and their staffs, were unconvinced of the bill’s overall wisdom.

As I’ve written, I believe deaccessioning for purposes other than art acquisitions should be rare, but possible in dire circumstances — only after an arbitration process proving that all other remedies had been exhausted.

Brodsky and his supporters have been using scare tactics. For example, what Michael Botwinick told The New York Times in last Wednesday’s article about the bill’s demise is ludicrous: financially troubled institutions now believe “the Rembrandts in the collection are no different than the IBM stock.”

For his part, Brodsky ended the article saying: “If we don’t act here, the bean counters will triumph, and we’ll see huge amounts of public art privatized.”

Evidence please?

Yet at the same time, Brodsky approves of a measure that would allow museums to raid their endowments without — as is currently necessary — seeking approval from the state Attorney General’s office. On that score, he trusts the beancounters — despite the fact that most museum endowments are too skimpy now. And without decent endowments, they generally can not balance their budgets without hefty efforts at fund-raising year in, year out.  

At least that’s what Brodsky thought in June. 

Now he is running for attorney general. We’ll see how he feels about giving up power if he gets the nod. 

This battle, which is really about the control of museum governance, is not over yet. Brodsky still wants to be in the driver’s seat; just watch for a change in tactics.    

 

Dear RCA readers: I’m on vacation and unsure about access to a computer. If I get the opportunity — and have something to say — I will post from time to time. If not, I’ll be back here in mid-August.

 

How would you use the last roll of Kodachrome? Renowned photographer Steve McCurry (below) clearly had something in mind last August when Kodak announced that it would no longer produce the slide film, the world’s first successful color film.

McCurry asked for the last roll, and spent nine months planning how he’d use the 36 exposures. In June, he left on a six-week trip to capture the images, trailed by a TV crew from the National Geographic Channel, which is making an hour-long documentary for the occasion. National Geographic may put some of the images in its magazine, too.

Said McCurry:

I thought, what better way to kind of honor the memory of the film than to try and photograph iconic places and people? It’s in (my) DNA to want to tell stories where the action is, that shed light on the human condition.

In the United States, McCurry shot the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central Terminal and Robert de Niro, who represents the filmmaking industry. Paul Simon, despite the song he wrote about the film, declined to participate.

McCurry then went to western India where he captured Bollywood stars and the Ribari tribespeople in Rajasthan, which is said to be disappearing (like the film).

The photographer knows his symbolism: he then traveled to Parsons, Kansas, “the home of Dwayne’s Photo, the last photo lab in the world that processes the elaborately crafted color-reversal film. Dwayne’s will close that part of its business in December,” says the Associated Press.  

He also included himself in the picture, the AP says: “In one self-portrait, he posed next to a Kodak-yellow taxicab bearing the license plate PKR 36 — the code name for Professional Kodachrome film; in another, he’s sprawled on a hotel bed at journey’s end.”

The slides will go, appropriately, to the George Eastman House in Rochester.

Here’s a link to the AP story.

Kodak and the Eastman House recently combined with the Chautauqua Institution on a Photo Week, and McCurry sat for an interview on his experiences in photography.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Associated Press

 

If museums cater to demographics — and some do — they’ll be collecting much more art from Latin American in the coming years. And we need to know more about the artists.

The Coleccion Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (and its foundation) is riding to the rescue, subsidizing the publication of a series of bilingual books called Conversaciones. Each volume consists of in-depth interviews, “some spanning decades,” with one modern or contemporary artist from Latin America. Art historians, critics and curators do the interviewing honors.

The first in the series, due in September, records conversations between Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez (right) and the Coleccion’s chief curator, Ariel Jimenez. It will cost $25. I have a copy: it contains many illustrations (sample of his art, below). So that price is a bargain.

Coming in February, 2011, will be the Argentine painter Tomás Maldonado, in conversation with María Amalia García, a researcher at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. It will include an introductory essay by Alejandro Gabriel Crispiani, of the Department of Architecture, Design, and Urban Studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

In May, 2011, comes Brazilian sculptor Jac Leirner in conversation with Adele Nelson, a doctoral candidate at New York University, with an introductory essay by Robert Storr, Dean of the Yale School of Art.

The books promise to delve into the artist’s mind — providing insight into the creative process. The interviewer was free to provide “critical reflections.”

The series will continue with books on Alfredo Jaar, Cildo Meireles, Antonieta Sosa, Luis Camnitzer, Liliana Porter, Gyula Kosice, and Waltercio Caldas.

For ages now, Cisneros has been spending her money increasing the visibility and prominence of Latin American art in other ways, too. She recently gave $1 million to Hunter College to establish a professorship in Latin American art there, and provide access to her collection, its archives, etc. She’s been showing her renowned collection in many venues.

Does she have too much influence? Probably, but no more than other big collectors.