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.