What do you do if you’re an artist, a museum, a theater or any other cultural creator/presenter in a locale that lives in the shadow of a bigger city? I’m thinking here of Westchester County, New York, for example, or Newark. 

Four cities in the East Bay area of northern California (Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland, and Richmond) have joined in a response: Their most recent effort is the creation of an arts web portal called “510 Arts.com” with the motto “World Culture in the East Bay.” They hope to bring artists and arts institutions together, market them, increase their visibility, and use them as catalysts for economic development. There’ll be events listings, online exhibits and social networking opportunities for artists.  

As the San Francisco Chronicle reported last week:

The portal received support from Leveraging Investments in Creativity and the community foundations in San Francisco, Irvine, Hewlett and the East Bay. LINC is “newish” to me; I’ve seen it mentioned before but… It describes itself as “a ten-year national initiative to improve the conditions for artists working in all disciplines.”

This can only be a good thing — unless it raises false expectations.

Regional collaboration is the way to go for many arts groups, I think. Last year, I wrote here about the Fairfield/Westchester Museum Alliance. There are many others, I’m sure. The 510 Arts claims its portal is unique — I’m not sure about that. What about the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance (which btw released ten findings from its studies on cultural engagement last fall)?

No matter. At least they are taking the initiative, instead of moaning about economic conditions.

As I’ve said, this is a really busy arts week in New York, not allowing me (at least) much time to reflect much here. But here are few developments worthy of notice.

• The Nelson-Atkins Museum in KC has told reporters that it’s holding a 2 p.m. press conference on Friday for “an important announcement.” Sounds like, to me, a new director has been chosen to replace Marc Wilson, who announced his retirement last year. Any guesses on who it is?
• No wonder the mood was good at The Art Show last night and that some auctions are doing better than expected. TEFAF – Maastricht, the great European fair that begins next week and is pictured here, has just issued The International Art Market 2007-2009, Trends in the Art Trade during Global Recession — and it found that “Wealthy buyers have been switching away from expensive cars, yachts and jets in favour of assets with long-term tangible value such as art and antiques. These ‘investments of passion’ have meant that, although the world market in art and antiques has suffered during the economic downturn, it has performed far better than expected.” The spread of wealth also bolstered the market. More here.
• The MacDowell Colony has chosen jazz composer Sonny Rollins as the 2010 winner of the Edward MacDowell Medal. (Last year, it was Kiki Smith.) Gary Giddins will be the presentation speaker at the award on Aug. 15.

And now for a little unabashed boosterism:

This week, as New Yorkers and many others know, is a big week for art. The Armory Show, on the West Side’s piers, has been joined by the Art Show of the Art Dealers Association of America — the ritzier jamboree that in the past has taken place at the Park Avenue Armory in February.

You can tell this is important because Mayor Bloomberg got into the act. This morning, at a press conference, he threw out some numbers:

New York City is home to the world’s most vibrant and diverse arts and cultural community, and this growing week of events underscores that. Over the years, the success of the shows has spurred other new events and fairs throughout the City, and the week of activity continues to grow. This year, we expect it to generate nearly $44 million in economic activity, and the timing couldn’t be any better.

That translates to $1.8 million in tax revenues, according to the press release. I’m not sure how that number was calculated. But since our tax rate is 8.875%, it seems to imply that the fairs will do nearly $20 million in sales. (In the picture are also ADAA President Lucy Mitchell-Innes and Armory Show Founder and Vice President Paul Morris.)

The number of satellite fairs is nowhere near the total at Art Basel Miami Beach, but it’s still too many for one person to see all of, if you ask me: VOLTA, Pulse, Scope and Dutch Art Now, Fountain New York, Independent, Pool Art Fair, Red Dot, Korean Arts Show and Verge.

Other groups are hosting activities this year too. Among the free public programs, the city said, are Uptown & Museum Mile Day on March 2nd, SoHo Night on March 4th, Long Island City Night on March 5th, Chelsea Day and Brooklyn Night on March 6th and Lower East Side Day on March 7th.

And they didn’t mention the number of exhibitions opening this week.

But here’s the kicker paragraph of the release, which is something to cheer about:

Nearly half of all visitors to New York City come for culture. In 2009, more than 20 million of the more than 45 million total visitors to New York City participated in a cultural activity. Approximately 80 percent of international visitors (13.7 million) and 40 percent of domestic visitors (6.7 million) enjoyed a cultural activity, regardless of the main purpose of their trip. A recent study conducted by NYC & Company, in collaboration with cultural groups from across the five boroughs, confirmed the strength and resilience of the City’s creative sector. The study found that during the downturn, people would rather reduce other expenditures, as opposed to not participating in their preferred cultural activities.

Back to my usual self tomorrow.

UPDATE, 9 p.m.: Just back from The Art Show opening — the mood was terrific! It seemed way more crowded than last year, right from the start at 5:30, according to those who were there. I arrived around 6:30, and it was jammed.

I don’t know if people are buying but they sure are looking (and talking, and eating and drinking). 

As for the art, quality was very high. Better than last year, I’d venture. Some booths were outstanding: Menconi & Schoelkopf has wonderful works by Marsden Hartley; Cheim & Read has Louise Bourgeois and Joan Mitchell; D.C. Moore has some lovely works by Jacob Lawrence. There’s a lovely Joseph Cornell at CRG (I think); William Kentridge “nose” works at Marian Goodman.

Those are just a few examples. Go!

Photo Credit: City Hall

I don’t think Jeff Koons did himself any favors by agreeing to be interviewed by The New York Times for yesterday’s Arts & Leisure section (here), did you?

He agreed to talk, the Times said, partly because he is controversially curating Skin Fruit, the show at the New Museum drawn from the collection of Dakis Joannou, a trustee. And he agreed to discuss his own collecting, a topic many people have been wondering about for years — partly because he’s been buying Old Masters and 19th Century works, rather than contemporary. He paid $6.3 million at Sotheby’s for Tilman Riemenschneider’s beautiful limewood carving of St. Catherine, circa 1505, at right, for example. He also purchased a nude by Courbet, 1886, at Sotheby’s for $3.2 million, which he lent to the Metropolitan Museum’s 2008 Courbet exhibition.

In April 2008, Apollo magazine wrote:

…there is something very encouraging about this unexpected link between an Old and a New Master in an age when contemporary art has become a lifestyle statement that has more to do with fashionable interior decoration and the luxury-goods market than it does with the history of art.

But Koons seems to have trouble articulating the connection. Asked what drew him to a different Courbet, of a bull, for which he paid $2.5 million, ” ‘I like this type work,’ he said simply about the Courbet, then pointed to a brown patch on the bull’s fur…” He also likes a stomach crease in a Manet nude and a spilled chamber pot in a Knüpfer Venus. 

About the only coherent thing he said, imho, was the kicker:

When I view the world, I don’t think of my own work. I think of my hope that, through art, people can get a sense of the type of invisible fabric that holds us all together, that holds the world together.

Hardly a new thought.

No wonder Randy Kennedy, the writer, decided to quote Koons at random, saying things like art “lets you kind of control physiology and the secretions that take place within the body.” Another time, Kennedy cites Calvin Tomkins, who in a 2007 profile of Koons wrote:

…it is possible to argue that no real connection exists between Koons’s work and what he says about it.

Bottom line: Koons, as uncommunicative as ever, had it both ways. The article’s main beneficiary is the New Museum, which received more publicity for a troubled exhibition. Score another point for the PR machine.

But Koons has been busy, and not just directing the assistants mentioned in the article. According to today’s New York Post, he just agreed to pay $20 million for a 10,000 sq. ft. “palatial” townhouse at 13 East 67th St. — “the longtime home of the late Barbara “Bobo” Rockefeller, who turned its lavish interior — with 19-foot ceilings, a squash court and a pool — into a must-visit stop on New York’s society circuit for decades.” It has since fallen into disrepair, the Post says, leaving Koons lots of work to do.

What art-lover doesn’t have mixed feelings about crowded museums? Even as many took encouragement from the statistics released by the Association of American Museums last week, which show attendance rising at many museums (by at least 5% at more than 40% of the self-reporting museums), we probably grumbled about the impact. 

(I will not digress here, much, to note that AAM’s statistics — while better than nothing — leave much to be desired. For one thing, the response rate was just 21%, and those with good news were more likely to respond. RCA readers know of my regular advocacy for good studies/statistics, e.g., here.)

Still, it was fascinating to see Rob Storr, Dean of the Yale School of Art, artist and onetime curator at the Museum of Modern Art, take up the subject of crowds in the current issue of Frieze Magazine.

No, the trouble in Paradise – where multitude once morphed into solitude – is the inexorable logic of ‘crowd management’ to which every sign and didactic label, corridor and door width, lobby and gallery dimension, security checkpoint and sales point, moving walkway, escalator and exit indicator conforms.

Skipping an amusing reference to Willem de Kooning, we go to this description:

…the mechanisms in play are horridly like those of a sci-fi monster that ingests people in great gulps, pumps them peristaltically through its digestive tract in a semi-delirious state, and then flushes them out the other end with their pockets lighter and with almost no memory of their ‘museum experience’ other than a mild anaesthetic hangover. In short, one leaves the halls of culture much as one does a colonoscopy clinic.

That bad?

Storr concludes with a story about a recent, better experience in Austria, too difficult to summarize, but which you can read here.  

These are things many say to each other — in milder language, of course. Storr just puts it out there, no holds barred. I don’t know what we can do about it, but it’s a description of the bind museums are in — and food for thought.