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!