Authorities 'R Us

I am enjoying my Georgetown AMUS students' blogs posted this week and have observed a particular interest in questioning authority. The Academy encourages this mode of thought and the history of art is built upon questioning authority, history, and tradition. Where would we be if Western artists were not provided the intellectual and financial capital to probe innovative techniques and ideas? We would have a history of art that looks rather like the history of Russian icon production: an enduring and beloved art form that deviates only slightly region to region.

How does a curator decide between good and mediocre art? Why is Banksy so revered for his anti-establishment approach to exhibiting? Rob Pruitt assimilates his love for the Hollywood glamor into his conceptual work First Annual Art Awards, questioning the validity of the museum's imprimateur on artists and works of art.

Question away, artists, I say. Some will approach the past with a healthy skepticism, taking, quoting, throwing away their artistic predecessors' ideas. Others will rebel against the perceived system of acceptance and will be remembered as part of a brilliant Salon des Refusees. Not having been an art student myself, I can only speculate that part of growing into the role of artist is learning how to deal with criticism and figuring out how to navigate a profession in a very untidy context of dealers, buyers, museums, curators, and critics. Banksy has created his own exhibition environment literally working outside the museum walls and remaining anonymous to most of his viewers because of his past indiscretions. Pruitt assigns a new context of superficiality to art by using the Oscars framework to comment on the authority of museums to make and break an artist's career. While the awards are real enough, they are undermined by Pruitt's general disdain (the Guggenheim site calls it "playful critique") of art world structures.

Curators are editors of the art world. As such they are trained in art history and learn through experiential practice. There are not absolute scales of quality but I would bet that most good curators if asked to rate a group of artists, would present compelling arguments for their qualitative hierarchy, for that is what curators are ultimately hired to do. If visitors do not want to feel completely ignorant when they walk around a museum, it is likely that they also want to feel secure in the knowledge that they have entered a vetted environment. Thus the most comfortable of visitors can take umbrage with the works on display by arguing remotely with the curator or the artist. Gallery spaces present even more conflict because price tags provide the works of art with quantitative meaning in a way that museums do not. A dealer wants to make a sale; a curator wants to buy visitor engagement and engender conviction.

Is there bad and good art? Absolutely. Derivativeness, lack of originality, repetitiveness, and just plan amateurishness are evident to those who have been in the business a while and have the broad perspective to recognize a standout artist. Technical competence without much thought comprises its own category of "may be nice to decorate a corporate office or living room but not to feature in a museum." This category can be tricky, as is what I call the "one-trick pony" category of artist who manages to stir up the art world and use the same ingredients over and over.

The brain informs the gut and the gut informs the brain. The relentless linearity and reductiveness of Piero della Francesco and Mondrian compell me; Delacroix and Courbet's dynamic brushwork and shots of red paint take my breath away; David Smith's delicate use of hardcore industrial materials defies logic. I won't use this as a platform to dun contemporary art as one thing is for sure--the worst of it will self-destruct with or without curatorial assistance.

Identity Crisis

Museums should be sites for intellectual exchange, mind-bending experiences, and experimental endeavors. Last week's Sunday NY Times had three articles that I read in sequence before my head hit the pillow last night. The director of the Hammer Museum, Annie Philbin, proffered an unlikely invitation to Robert Gober to organize an exhibition of American watercolorist Charles Burchfield. In part II we learn that the new-ish director of the Louvre, Henri Loyrette, is not just an art geek but actually wants to make the Louvre breathe and expand its point of view. The charismatic leader of El Museo del Barrio, Julian Zugagoitia dominates part III which focuses on the re-opening of a new Museo with a larger portfolio than just Puerto Rican art.

Maybe journalists consider it their right and duty to position their subjects against a background of skepticism, but I found these men and their ideas to be a breath of fresh air in rather fusty frameworks. Philbin spied a Burchfield watercolor on Gober's wall and evidently found so compelling the idea of this iconic sculptor collecting a traditional American landscape painting that she asked if he would organize a Burchfield exhibition. Jori Finkel's enthusiasm for Gober's straightlaced academicism and attention to detail strikes me as a bit of a backhanded compliment (as if who would an expect an Artist, of all things, to be able to pull together an academically-rigorous, comprehensive exhibition). Yet there you have it. Gober did not stage an intervention but produced an exhibition about the artist, not Gober's overlay and interpretation of Burchfield.

Not so at the Louvre where Loyrette invited two American artists to be inspired by the doyenne of all museums. Joseph Kosuth and Cy Twombly chose areas of the Louvre that were overwhelmingly underwhelmed by popular, tourist-attraction art. I wonder if they kept a diary of their thoughts and the the process of undertaking these commissions because I want to know how they selected their locations, developed their proposals, and their observations about the various spaces in the Louvre in relation to their art. We know how Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel on his back. So how did these artists install their works? Maybe there are photo essays somewhere on the Louvre's website. Will the French people and tourists be interested in these works? Did Loyrette undertake these commissions as part of a marketing strategy to show off a new forward-thinking institution? Sure, likely, but who cares? It's all for the good and everyone benefits, so get on board you naysayers.

Zugazagoitia shares Loyrette's penchant for shattering old perceptions and glass ceilings. I grew up in New York City and considered El Barrio of no interest to me. It was one of those museums like the Museum of the City of New York and the American Indian Museum that had no identity (nor compelling programming) beyond its stolid mission. We exist because we need to, but we don't need to prove ourselves, these institutions seemed to announce wearily. These three museums have ramped it up to blossom in the 21st century. The buildings have undergone face lifts, their programming is exciting, and they often make the newspapers. El Barrio has embraced the Latino world, abrading just a few skeptics who remember the museum as a manifestation of Puerto Rican and working class pride.

Good museum directors are turning to...art to make new statements about their institutional identity and viability in the 21st century. What a relief!

Isabel Toledo and Johannes Vermeer

Designer Isabel Toledo's retrospective at the Museum at FIT in New York closed Saturday. I feel fortunate to have seen it because it was another coup for that small university museum whose creative ideas should be a paradigm for exhibitions and their execution. Toldeo's work made me want to pick up a needle and thread and sew more than a hem--or at least inspired me to think about organic relationships in the world of design and architecture.

I like obviousness in design. I like to understand its point of inspiration, mode of production, and ultimate function. During a recent visit to Denmark I had the pleasure of visiting the studio of Christina Strand and Niels Hvass, a dynamic (and remarkably good looking) duo whose furniture has the distinct appeal of being comfortable and ethereal. Strand's "Rex" chair has won a number of awards and deservedly so. Named for Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, who is expected to become King Frederik X, the chair sits on a pedestal with an "x" shaped base. Strand took a piece of paper, cut an oval with a hole in the middle with a pair of Fiskars and, voila, showed me her the originis behind her smart idea for a chair.

Toledo's designs work in much the same way and the exhibition's curators made a point of illustrating on the labels the pattern laid flat. Now I get it! Toledo thinks like a queen of origami and the body responds to the natural flow of her workmanship. The jackets, dresses, and trousers are realized from inside out, which is to say they are beholden to the very stuff that keeps them together: seams, stitches, and drawstrings. I started to wonder if I could use these types of diagrams in a traditional art exhibition to demonstrate the development of a painting's composition or the technique behind chiselling a marble sculpture. It would give the visitor the artist's eye view on the object's production which usually becomes obscured by the museum/exhibition context.

As I rounded out my day in New York with a trip to see Vermeer's Milkmaid I pondered the idea of Toledo-type labels in this exhibition of 17th-century Dutch painting. It would be overkill to describe the technical details in every work but it could provide another level of engagement, enjoyment, and insight.

artist/artisan

On Saturday I read the obituary for Bobby Model whose tragic death at age 36 and considerable obituary in the Times, with the intriguing title "Prominent Adventure Photographer," made me want to learn more about him. I clicked on National Geographic's site to view some of Model's portfolio which supports the Times's claim that indeed he was indeed an adventure photographer. If images of Crocodile Dundee and Indiana Jones crop up in your mind, you wouldn't be too far off the mark with Model's series Gustave the Killer Crocodile. Or is it that the commercial publication itself, which needs to position Model as an adventure photographer, a photographer chasing the big money shot, which obscures the richness of Model's images?

By no means a connoisseur of National Geographic, I assume it has to make sales in the same way as other media: through excitement, adventure, and terror. Ok, so I really would like to see a shot of the 20 foot long, 1-ton reptile but I was taken by the full range of Model's visual narrative, from the scientists who study the wildlife of Burundi, to the families who have suffered losses because of an encounter with the elusive Gustave. Part of this series includes documentary evidence of conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes as well as the continuing strong military presence in that country. One 2,000 pound crocodile has nothing on the human manifestations of agression, Model seems to say, in his lush, dynamic color photographs. His portrait of a soldier wearing a bandolier of bullets simulteneously provokes fear and fascination as the copper casings cascade off the figure's dark skin onto his military fatigues. Wow! This image has serious staying power. It is as beautiful a composition as you would hope to see, comprised of strong forms, transcendent color, and a powerful subject that embraces beauty as well as its ostensible focus--endless war in Africa.

As a curator I am frequently asked to comment formally and informally on the validity of a work as "fine" as opposed to commercial or journalistic art. I turned to my friend Jesse Kalisher for his comment on this question. Jesse works both angles as he sells his works through his own gallery to major outlets that pop his black-and-white images of the Eiffel Tower on hotel room walls. But he also can claim a place in major museum collections. It's a dicey question for which no flawless guidelines exist, but Jesse nailed it for me when he said "ultimately, I liken commercial work to being an artisan...a carpenter who is terrific at working with wood and following a set of plans. An artist is more like an architect who can conceive of a grand idea and then lead it to execution." On view at the New Museum, the photography of South African David Goldblatt underscores this idea that photography can be a tool or it can invite revelation, much as a house is either just shelter or an expression of the inhabitants and designer.

I take my hat off to Bobby Model who easily wore the mantle of prominent adventure photographer but whose legacy could posthumously afford him a position in the art world.

What Do We Want from Exhibitions?

In last Sunday's New York Times Arts & Leisure section, Holland Cotter gave the big shove-off to overwrought blockbuster exhibitions in favor of--and I nearly fell off my chair--university museum exhibitions. Well, hello Mr. Cotter! We have heard, read, and discussed how the recession has provided museums a much needed kick in the pants to think about core values and permanent collections. As extensions of their parent institutions, university museums serve an educational function that offers a template for large municipal museums. Of course, they can also rely on the Academy for part of their budget and are less beholden to the magical "gate" by which so much success is measured. Cotter mentions some university museum exhibitions that sound...well...academic. I would have mentioned the Museum at FIT which always has something new to tell me about the history of fashion and does it in a way that makes me look really closely at details I would have otherwise ignored. And they seem to have fun in thinking about new ways of presenting designers, couture history, and exhibition design. Fun: an element largely missing from most exhibitions I visit.

Blockbusters were conceived less to honor the entire oeuvre of an artist than to prove institutional prowess: we can spend years, salaries, dollars to round up more works than necessary or desireable to bring in visitors, press, and earned income that will boost internal numbers. Sorry to be a cynic but I have never liked blockbuster exhibitions nor understood the point of them, as the experience of navigating crowds and the extreme pressure to view all the works obliterated any pleasurable experience. As a graduate student in art history I increasingly tightened my own thumb screws "you WILL see every work in this exhibition, remember it, and understand how it differs from the other ten examples on the same wall." Forget it! I want to have a visceral connection or reaction to works of art which simply cannot happen when my brain is firing off directives to see as much as possible and ... hey how many more galleries are there in this exhibition? Blockbusters: no fun.

I very much like Cotter's respectful acknowledgement of the good curatorial work that practicing artists have achieved. They are usually less predictable than museum people because they do not work in museums! Or as the old artists' adage goes, a museum is where art goes to die. I do not think that all artists possess the capability of detaching themselves enough to organize a meaningful exhibition, but certainly those who do, encourage visitors to adopt the artist's eye. Real Clear Arts sees the success of the Morgan Library's current exhibitions in the visitors' engagement. She gives them extra credit for the ample time that people spend looking at Blake's hallucinogenic drawings and those mind-blowing medieval illuminations.

If only museums could cash in on extra credit! And fun.

The NGA's so-called America

Look at this blog post, from freelance art critic Tyler Green. How does the National Gallery of Art get away with a major reinstallation of part of its permanent collection--works by American artists no less--that offers a retrograde and reactive narrative to its visitors. Maybe their curators should take a page from the neighboring National Museum of the American Indian and use "community curators" to give voice to the complex and textured picture that comprises the history of American art. The New York Times gave the installation sufficient coverage and a light slap on the wrist for offering up such a boring installation. Green takes the nation's museum to task by chastising them for the fiction on the gallery's walls: an American art history comprised almost solely of white, male artists. With one work by a woman and one or two by African-American painters, the museum has self-styled itself as unaffected by any progress made in the fields of American history, art history, and American studies or in museums that were founded with missions to flesh out the story of art.

Ok, ok, my teenage son asks me to soften my vigilante tone but I continue to wave my arms in protest. These first-rate works themselves are muted in such familiar company like trustees who all clamber to belong to the same country club. Don't ask, don't tell, don't say anything provocative that might generate a compelling conversation. As a curator at a Washington museum with a niche mission, I imagined that one day my job would be made redundant because other museum directors, curators, and trustees would thoughtfully reconsider their collections to include the works that we display. Now I have copped a different attitude: the more exhibition opportunities for a larger arena of artists, the better. A Guerilla Girls' type of change has to come from inside these institutions, with staff members who recognize that conscious and persistent efforts are needed to acquire and display art that provides a new vision of history.

Collections are not built haphazardly but strategically with an eye toward expanding targeted weak areas. With plan in hand, directors and curators cobble together acquisition funds and identify collectors who might be invigorated by the shifting winds. Looking at the auction catalogues that hit my desk so often, it's easy to see how much further a museum's dollar can go if it focuses on works by women and minorities (examples to come). Locating the best works of lesser-known artists would go a long way toward setting the historical record straight.

At the very least, it would allow curators to participate in their favorite pastime: reveling in all the ambiguities.