Photos For Tino
Ben Davis of ArtNet writes about Tino Sehgal. Good piece to be read in conjunction with the more general NY Times article from 2009 and the one from 2007.
Artspeak of the Day
Here’s a delicious nugget of artspeak. Let’s hope it’s a translation problem.
“The city is the privileged field for the exertion of power. Subjugation procedures are deployed everywhere (on bodies, on language, on places). But nothing is in itself political for the mere fact of hosting the exercise of power relationships, and yet anything, upon the right occasion, can become so.”
DIANE CARR: Cold Comfort
Diane Carr, Thicket, 2009, 30" x 48"
Diane Carr – a painter I particularly admire – is back with another gallery show. December 9 – 11, 2009 at Gallery SATORI, 164 Stanton St, New York, NY.
I thought she had a website but since I can’t find it you can see more of her work at the White Column’s Artist Registry.
“The New Spirit of Collecting” by Paco Barragán
Roberto Coromina, Untitled, 2002, oil on paper, 25.6”x32”. Courtesy Magnan Projects, New York.
“Collectors have achieved a central role in contemporary art, not that the spirit of today’s collectors has less or nothing to do with yesteryear’s philanthropist or maecenas. With the advent of neo-capitalism and neo-con philosophy, new players and distant economies have descended upon the arts with a set of new motivations that loathe the great charm of the cultural benefactor in his relationship with “the men of genius” who formed his circle. The original simplicity, cordiality and sincerity have given way to aggressiveness, benefit-seeking, and vanity. This attitude, that for decades was considered by Europeans typically “American,” is finding its way among European private collectors.”
Florian Slotawa at Nordenhake
Nothing new here but I’m a sucker for nostalgia.
From the press release, “Florian Slotawa has ripped out pieces of his studio’s walls and transferred them to the gallery space. During the duration of the exhibition, the physically displaced architectural pieces are layered against the storefront window, through which the gallery space opens onto the street. The installation changes the usual spatial impression of the gallery and conceptually links both the artist’s workspace and the exhibition space.”
Whitney Ponders Problem of Replication in Modern Art
“How do you acquire or display a work of performance art that exists only in the form of an instruction sheet? What should conservators do about works that are deteriorating because they were made from unstable materials, such as neon, or sharks? If you want to exhibit a huge work of conceptual art that is housed at another museum, does it make sense to pay for shipping when you could probably just get permission to make a copy?”
via Copy That! Wait, Don’t. Whitney Ponders Problem of Replication in Modern Art | The New York Observer.
Whitney Website Redesign
The Whitney Museum of American Art has needed a new website for years. Information was increasingly hard to find, navigation was inconsistent, and the site’s design was of variable quality. Some sections were outstanding but many more areas were confusing and poorly laid out. Overall, the site struggled to clearly present the museum’s wide range of programs. It also wasn’t suited to showcasing multimedia and integrating with social media services like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter which are increasingly driving museum visits.
Fixing all this required a redesign and after a long incubation the Whitney has relaunched their new site.
They enter a highly innovative field. The past three years have seen growing recognition among museum management that mission is enhanced by a robust online program. The Indianapolis Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Walker, MoMA, and SFMOMA have upgraded their sites to enterprise-level content management systems delivering gigabytes of audio, video, and text to millions of viewers annually. As museums have increased their digital output and come to recognize that “audience” includes a vast online public, directors are coming to realize that an intuitive, attractive website is a worthwhile, mission-critical investment.
2008 saw many museums of the Whitney’s caliber relaunch their websites including the Hammer Museum, Guggenheim, MoMA, SFMOMA, and Museum of Art and Design. These organizations produced polished, professional sites to serve as content delivery platforms for a swiftly expanding online audience hungry for museum content. It’s against this backdrop that the museum community has been eagerly awaiting the Whitney’s entry into the field.
It’s a shock, then, that the new Whitney website not only fails to improve upon its old website but actually ends up being worse. Visual confusion, counterintuitive navigation, and illogical organization put it on par with its predecessor but setting it a step backwards is an absence of a compelling design that knits the site together into a coherent whole. The lack of color, proper division of page elements, and clear information hierarchy leaves the viewer with pages where content floats without clear order or priority. Perhaps more dispiriting is how generic the site feels. It’s lifeless. More a wireframe suitable for preliminary development than a digital platform to project Whitney mission and programs.
If this was a lesser organization such a website would be a shame. But for the Whitney it’s a liability. In a highly competitive culture industry, the Whitney needs to continue to assert itself as the dynamic, relevant, and high-quality organization it is. When its website declares the opposite – that it’s pedestrian, unsophisticated, and banal – the brand takes a beating and its reputation is called into question.
Breaking It Down
12 RSS feeds are available for fine-grained subscription to specific site content and 9 iCal feeds allow for users to keep tabs on the museum’s date-based programs. A “Your Collection” feature allows users to select and save images, video, and web pages from the site. Internet art projects will be integrated into the site which – while at first blush appearing little more than gimmickry – will likely be worthwhile given the Whitney’s strong track record of supporting digital art through its ARTPORT.
The site features a completely new design and re-ordered information architecture. And this is where the site’s problems begin to appear. 7 main categories on the old site have ballooned to 17 main categories on the new site. Redesigns usually reduce and simplify than expand and complicate. The new site obfuscates a clear visual flow of hierarchical information. Little is grounded by bordering, shading, or sectioning (the common methods in web design). Instead, content blocks float in white space without adhering to a consistent grid. And within that white space, text leading is used to differentiate sections but that type is of inconsistent style and positioning across the site.
I counted over 12 different link styles: blue underline, bold black, bold grey, bold blue, bordered black, green background, light blue background, yellow background, grey background, white text on black background, white text on red background, bold black with grey underline, and orange. It’s such an overwhelming array, it suggests that anything could be a link – a paralyzing position to put a user in.
Since the site is designed exclusively with text and that text is styled in no consistent way, the site’s color palette is hard to define but if pressed I’d say it’s black, white, and forest green. When I think of the Whitney I think of slate grey – the color of the building. A proper design should build off of this color and incorporate complementary hues that draw connections between the website and the museum location.
Navigation Problems
The main vertical navigation bar breaks basic user interface design rules over and over again. First, its 17 top-level options need to be reduced. Even the old Whitney nav bar was better than the new one.
The priority of information within the bar is also questionable. Is “Support” and “Membership” – the first two links – more important to a visitor than “Visitor Information” or “Exhibitions?” Certainly not. Is “Support” and “Membership” of greater importance to the museum than its exhibitions and events? I hope not. The “About” section features fascinating information about the organization’s past and promising future but isn’t even a link on the nav bar. It’s sunk to the bottom of every page, relegated to what is effectively a website’s graveyard. Is the museum’s history that irrelevant? I doubt it, but it’s sending a disconcerting message. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter that increasingly drive word-of-mouth traffic are hidden in the “Feeds and Email Notifications” section. They’re doing great things on these sites and should elevate them to the top-level or at least group them in a logical category.
The navigation bar violates the most fundamental rule of user interface design: persistence. Instead of remaining in the same place when you click a top-level link, that link is pulled out and elevated to the top of the list.
Before clicking:
After clicking “Exhibitions”:
When you click into certain sections – “Education,” for example – links that were once in the nav bar disappear (“For Kids / For Teens”).
Sections two-levels deep make the higher-level parents disappear.
Inconsistency like this is considered unsound by professional web designers because it breaks the convention of a persistent navigation bar where high-level content sections stay put no matter what. A nav bar with sections that move or even disappear makes a site feel unpredictable, leading to visitor exasperation.
Other oddities include subsection links that because of their green color appear visually to be of higher priority than their desaturated parent and horizontal navigation links within a vertical link structure. “Film / Performance” are actually two separate sections masquerading as one. When you click “Film” it’s pulled to the top leaving “Performance” behind even though it’s on the same line.
Visual Design
Visually, the site’s elements are adrift as if they’ve been casually dropped onto the page. The lack of a uniform grid and an absence of grounding makes viewing page content difficult because everything appears of nearly equal importance.
Let’s look at the “Exhibitions” page:
The top “Your Collection” strip should be sectioned off from the rest of the site content because it’s part of the website and does not specifically refer to the page. The Whitney logo should be flush with the vertical nav bar’s left margin. The nav bar should be drawn up to match the horizontal alignment of the page title. Images should be equally sized and in horizontal alignment with one another. The border around “more info” should be removed to indicate its lesser importance in the order of title and date.
Problems like these abound on nearly every page but a redesigned template could pretty easily fix them.
A harder fix is the “Education” section where a collection of ambiguous phrases in orange lettering appear on the top of that section’s landing page.
It’s unclear what one is supposed to do here or how one should choose where to click. “Curiosity” may be an option they provide but “Confusion” is really what I’m thinking. I don’t know where I’m going to go or what I’m going to get when I click one of these links (I assume they are links – but perhaps I shouldn’t since they aren’t underlined – another convention disregarded). When I do finally decide that I’m “playful” I am presented with a page but no indication through a bread crumb or a nav bar entry where I am. The navigation system here completely breaks down and a user is adrift in a sea of links without reference or bearing.
“Your Collection” vs. “The Collection”
The “Your Collection” feature allows users to collect pages, images, and video from across the site and store it in a personal user account for future access. This would have been innovative had MoMA not already introduced an identical feature more elegantly implemented on its own site months ago. I’m skeptical of the utility of such a tool. I think a more effective approach is to design a site that enables visitors to easily export site content to whatever content aggregation service they’ve adopted (Delicious, Evernote, Facebook, Tumblr, bookmarking, etc.). I suppose these “collections” features are supposed to increase site stickiness but I think they probably just go unused.
“Your Collection” is not to be confused with “The Collection” which is a growing online database of the museum’s permanent holdings and is the new website’s highlight. Images are impressively sized, and navigation – though rudimentary – is at least functional. This section holds great promise.
In Conclusion
I’m not sure what went wrong here. How could a museum as first-rate as the Whitney have produced a site so inferior? Linked by Air – the development company the museum hired – should shoulder much of the responsibility. Apparently the backend is robust and well designed for the staff but this must not come at an expense to the end user. The failure to successfully integrate a strong back end and an elegant front end throws the firm’s credibility into serious doubt. I would also venture to guess that the museum had no dedicated project manager familiar with the web to help guide the museum through the thicket of options. There may also not have been the will to redirect a project going down the wrong path.
I have great confidence in the Whitney. The staff is enthusiastic and recent hires indicate an institutional understanding of the importance of the web. Although this particular site is stillborn, I’m certain that with a new developer and a strong project manager the Whitney will retool their site into something they – and the museum community – can be proud of.
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Update 11/13/09: In the interest of full disclosure, I’m the Digital Projects Manager at the New Museum of Contemporary Art.
Bad Political Art: “Go Get Your Shinebox”
The gall.
From the press release of an upcoming show at the Brooklynite Gallery titled “Go Get Your Shinebox”:
With the global economic downturn and the hardship it has caused blue-collar workers throughout, we find it fitting to explore the world’s simplest way to make a living- SHINING SHOES. We are planning an exhibition around just that— SHOESHINE BOXES.
And how will they “explore” it? By taking replicas of shoeshine boxes, decorating them, and plopping them in a gallery.
It gets worse.
However a “SHOESHINE BOX” should not be taken in the most literal sense of the words. These objects, our inspiration, have all been created out of necessity – a need to earn money, or further, to survive. We push “the need to survive” beyond its literal context, commissioning our favorite established and emerging artists to design their own, “SURVIVAL BOXES”.
This is a classic example of political art done wrong. Here’s the pattern:
1. Take an object associated with a subjugated group of people
2. Reproduce and decorate it
3. Assert a political critique
What’s so frustrating about work like this is that it simply aestheticizes a political symbol without getting to the bottom of the core issues that political symbol represents. A pure visual product alone is silent and – because it’s a work of art – open to multiple interpretations. This is the opposite of assertion. It’s suggestion. And suggestion and open-endedness is what makes art great. But when an artist traffics in political subjects that have real-world affect on subordinated peoples’ lives, simple open-ended “visual inquiry” by priveleged artists producing for a priveleged audience is an offense. It exploits serious social problems for cultural capital gains.
This Shinebox project is even worse because it ignores the issues behind shoeshiners and focuses on the damn box. And then, in an extraordinarily outrageous move, leaves the box behind and sets up a show of “survival boxes” drawing attention to the individual ARTISTS leaving behind the source subjects.
If you want to, you can visit their atrociously designed website and then navigate to the exhibition page. Only to find it broken. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Claes Oldenburg: Conservation of Floor Cake
The Museum of Modern Art’s blog blasted onto the scene a couple of weeks ago and has been pumping out smart, solid content since. Case in point: this “behind-the-scenes” dissection of a Claes Oldenburg sculpture. Keep track of the MoMA blog; there are good things afoot.
Map as Art
OK, so there’s nothing “new” here with this theme but, still, could be a hoot. From their release:
“The Christopher Henry Gallery invites you to the exhibition The Map as Art , a group show curated by Katharine Harmon and Christopher Henry opening November 5, 6 – 9 PM.. The exhibition presents a diverse group of work in a variety of media, all of which use mapping concepts to explore uncharted territories both formal and intellectual. The show is presented concurrent with the launch of Harmon’s book, The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography Princeton Architectural Press. The exhibition features works by: Doug Beube, Matthew Cusick, Joshua Dorman, Jerry Gretzinger, Ingo Gunther, Jane Hammond, Emma Johnson, Karey Kessler, Joyce Kozloff, Hayato Matsushita, Meridith McNeal, Florent Morellet, Vik Muniz, Aga Ousseinov, Matthew Picton, Karin Schaefer, Dannielle Tegeder, Heidi Whitman, and Jeff Woodbury.”
via Opening reception November 5: Christopher Henry Gallery.
Mai Ueda, Family Dinner in a Parallel Universe
“Artist Mai Ueda invites a selection of her friends–musicians, fashion designers, and artists–to perform, dine and play music at the same time. A not-to-missed neo-fluxus event that will recall the Fluxus Dumpling dinner staged by Maciunas in 1971 in SoHo.”
Emily Harvey Foundation
537 Broadway, 2nd Floor
Saturday, November 14 7:00pm
FREE
via Performa
“Scenarios: Scripts to Perform ” by Richard Kostelanetz
This massive anthology collects scripts in the form of notes, instructions, drawings, graphs, charts, and more from artists of varied backgrounds and styles whose shared interest is in the performative. With contributions from Marina and Ulay Abramovic, George Brecht, John Cage, Peter Frank, Philip Glass, Dan Graham, the Living Theater, Claes Oldenburg, Rachel Rosenthal, Gertrude Stein, and Robert Wilson to name only a few. Over 700 pages.
Early Computer Artist Mark Wilson
“While a computer program may use a complex series of mathematical algorithms, the visual artist generally uses simpler procedures. But the process is similar whether the algorithms are simple or complex. Artists like Larry Poons, Sol LeWitt, and Jackson Pollock sometimes used structured visual procedures—or algorithms—to generate their images.”
Maria Eichhorn: The Artist’s Contract
Between 1996 and 2005, Maria Eichhorn conducted interviews with artists, gallery owners and others–including Carl Andre, Michael Asher, Paula Cooper, Hans Haacke, Jenny Holzer, Adrian Piper, Robert Ryman, John Weber, Lawrence Weiner and Jackie Winsor–about sales of artworks, speculation, the role of collectors and museums and artists’ rights.
Bruce High Quality Foundation University
Bruce High Quality Foundation, Bachelors of Avignon*
The Bruce High Quality Foundation – the precocious little collaborative than can – is launching an arts education university to redress the “problem” of arts education today. A manifesto has been issued (in the market-ready format of a press release as is the fashion nowadays), enemies have been identified (the system of arts education), and goals have been articulated (we’re not sure what we’ll do but we’ll figure it out together). I’ve posted the release below.
I’m all for the project and for its open-ended investigative nature and will be interested to see what is generated but the fatal flaw in the endeavor is that “Students may not apply to BHQFU—they are admitted on a rolling schedule based on a system of peer-recommendation.” Which means that this university will serve an elite, insider-art-world, “cool kid” crowd speaking, thinking, doing, and presenting to a concerned group of elite, insider-art-world, cool kids.
Unless I’m wrong and they solicit grandmas who want to paint still lives, kids dropping cars and applying under-carriage neon, kindergartners interested in painting abstractly, hipsters working with semen: a broad range of artists and art traditions and ages and races and classes and orientations…an expansive definition of “artist” and “art”… Instead of the “Younger Than Jesus” crowd of peer-validated artistes… then, and only then – if they really got an unruly group by reaching deep within and far outside of our art world bubble – I’ll consider this university something of interest. But I have a sneaking suspicion this won’t happen because it’s not cool. And this is – ultimately – something that should be cool. I suspect BHQFU will be an irrelevant breeding ground of “alternatives” we already know about. But here’s to me being wrong! It often happens. So let’s stay tuned!
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BHQFU 9/11
Don’t say can’t. Say canarchy.
Creative Time presents:
THE BRUCE HIGH QUALITY FOUNDATION UNIVERSITY
Opening September 11, 2009 225 West Broadway, 3rd floor
6 – 10pm
(September 10, 2009 New York, NY) Creative Time is pleased to announce the opening of the BHQFU, a free, collaborative school opening September 11. Located at 225 West Broadway, the university will host several courses at its outset and will grow in the coming months. Admission is based on a peer-recommendation system, and select programs will be open to the public.
A message from The Bruce High Quality Foundation:
PROLEGMENA TO ANY FUTURE ART SCHOOL
Something’s got to give. The $200,000-debt-model of art education is simply untenable. Further, the education artists are getting for their money is mired in irrelevance, pushing them into critical redundancy on the one hand and professional mediocrity on the other. Blind romanticism and blind professionalism are in a false war alienating artists from their better histories.
At root, it’s a form/content problem. Arts education is divided between the practical problems of form (e.g., money: how to get it, raise it, administer it, and please the powers that control it) and the slippery problems of metaphor (e.g., education: how to learn, what to learn, why to learn).
Artists are the people who spend their time figuring out how best to resolve form and content problems. That’s what we do when we stretch a canvas, edit a video, implement a social space, and develop a history. It is both reasonable and generatively ridiculous to believe that artists ought to be figuring out how arts education should work. This is the premise of BHQFU: that artists can figure this thing out.
BHQFU IS:
A university, a space for higher education and research, a community of scholars; an expansion of the BHQF practice to include more participants (that’s where U come in);
and a “fuck you” to the hegemony of critical solemnity and market-mediocre despair. The BHQFU will be located at 225 West Broadway, 3rd floor. Students may not apply to BHQFU—they are admitted on a rolling schedule based on a system of peer-recommendation. Public programs will be presented alongside the private classes: please see www.bhqfu.org (live after the university’s opening) for a full schedule of programs open to the public.
PRINCIPLES
We believe in the artistically educational possibilities of collaboration. Collaboration, as we mean it, means a group of concerned people come together to hash out ideas, try to figure out the world around them, and try to take some agency within its future. That’s the why and how of The Bruce High Quality Foundation. BHQFU is an attempt to extend the benefits of this collaborative model to a wider number of people.
We believe that income shouldn’t be a barrier to metaphor. We aren’t interested in providing an economic justification for arts education (which we’ll generally define as an education in metaphor manipulation). There is something far more important at stake: our ability to reason, to resist hegemony and oppression, to participate adeptly, skeptically, humorously in the political minefield of society. So if we aren’t going to justify BHQFU economically, we can’t expect participants to do so either. Let’s not parse the margins; BHQFU will be free to attend.
BHQFU is unaccredited. Let’s just drop the bullshit altogether. Even when they deal with markets, even when they wear suits and go to meetings, even when they act professionally, artists are not professionals. So we aren’t granting degrees or certificates, we aren’t claiming to prepare anyone to become another piece of human capital. It’s simply not a lens on life that needs anymore looking through.
Students are teachers are administrators are staff. We believe in the value of shared creative experience and responsibility. That is why the first class we are implementing is B.Y.O.U. (Build Your Own University), a weekly class to discuss and develop admission procedures, rubrics of success, governance, etc.
CURRICULUM
At the outset BHQFU will offer two kinds of classes, histories and critiques.
HISTORIES are collaborative research projects intended to create new histories of art. The class will be expected to make “an original contribution to knowledge,” to speak in the old style, whether that means a set of texts, a book, a video, performance, or otherwise.
CRITIQUES are an opportunity for participants to present work made outside of class and get feedback.
UNIVERSITY RESOURCES
Housed at 225 West Broadway, BHQFU participants will build a publicly accessible library from works created in the history classes. Additionally, the school will host events, exhibitions, and presentations, many of which will be open to the general public.
Jerry Saltz Discusses Lack of Female Artist Representation in MoMA’s Collection with Ann Temkin
For those unaware, Jerry Saltz – New York Magazine art critic – has been playing host to one of the most vital and candid discussions on modern and contemporary art in an unlikely place: Facebook. Saltz’s profile updates and posts get hundreds of comments and he actively responds, debates, and engages with commenters.
For some time now Jerry has been hammering on MoMA for underrepresenting women in its permanent collection and, by proxy, the history of modern art. He recently wrote a letter to MoMA articulating his grievances, suggesting remedies, and indicating that hundreds of his “fans” on Facebook found the discrepency alarming. MoMA offered up Ann Temkin – Chief Curator of Prints and Drawings – to meet with him to discuss the situation. Jerry wrote about their meeting on his Facebook page but since it’s cloistered behind the Facebook wall, those without access won’t be able to read this document. So here it is:
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“Jerry Saltz meeting with MoMA’s Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Ann Temkin”
Jerry Saltz
June 29, 2009
Last week I met with MoMA’s Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Ann Temkin. We talked about the two week discussion (that took place on my Facebook Page) about the lack of representation of women artists on the fourth and fifth floors of the museum’s permanent collection (of work completed before 1970). Of the 135 artists installed on these floors only 19 are women, 6%. Temkin asked that this meeting be “off the record” but agreed that I would report on its perimeters and my impressions.
The meeting was cordial, relaxed, open, and serious. It began at 5:00PM and lasted a little under 90 minutes. It took place midweek at a bar in a midtown restaurant. I didn’t take notes on, or record the conversation. The restaurant was almost empty when we started; it was almost full when we left.
At no time was Temkin defensive, dismissive, or in the least hostile. She agreed with some points and was not shy about disagreeing with others. As I wrote many times in my FB posts, Temkin confirmed that she and every person at MoMA, from the Director on down, are well aware of the problem of the lack of representation by women artists on these floors. She stated at the outset that the museum is committed and determined to rectify this.
Temkin then took major issue with the focus and reasoning of my main argument about female representation at MoMA. She stated that concentrating only on the fourth and fifth floors of Painting & Sculpture, perpetuated and reinforced a flawed stereotype and prejudice about the history of modern art. Excluding drawing, design, printmaking, photography, etc. (areas where women are represented and made great contributions) reinforces an outmoded and strictly “masculinist” approach to art by privileging painting and sculpture.
At first as she said this my heart sank. Of course she’s right. I answered that it is MoMA above all art institutions that reinforces and maintains this separation between the disciplines. Although it is growing more common to see mediums being mixed at MoMA (August Sander now hangs in the gallery in P & S devoted to the German Neue Sachlichkeit), MoMA established and still exhibits the disciplines more-or-less separately and not equally. There is far more square footage situated far more centrally and prominently for P & S than any of the other disciplines. I said it would be fantastic to see the collapse of MoMA’s artificial barriers between the disciplines (“MoMA tear down this wall!”), but suspected that this wouldn’t be in the cards any time soon. In addition, MoMA’s collection of painting and sculpture is preeminent; it is unsurpassed anywhere in the world. Therefore it is on these two crucial floors that the so-called “official story” of Modernism is represented. This is MoMA’s boon and its bane.
This brought us back to the main issue. Temkin stated that work by women artists has been rotated into the collection over the course of the last two years, and that the FB protestors and I were not taking this into account. I acknowledged this but said that even with these substitutions and changes the percentage of women artists on these floors did not rise, and that these adjustments weren’t enough. (If you count the works of art, rather than artists, the figure drops to four percent women.) Temkin then said that talking about the collection primarily in terms of numbers obscures larger important changes. She cited the current installation of a Louise Bourgeois sculpture at the entrance of the fourth floor. The Bourgeois sculpture is being given pride-of-place, the space on this floor that Cezanne has long enjoyed on the fifth floor. Bourgeois is being presented as a touchstone figure. I conceded that it was true that by only counting the number of women artists does not reflect structural changes. Still, this didn’t seem like a solution.
I stated that the problem behind the problem of the lack of women on these floors is the 875 million dollar (almost criminal) failure on the part of those who built the new museum to provide enough space for this crucial portion of the institution (let alone other departments). Until the space can be substantially increased the museum is in a terrible double bind: It has to display its extraordinary collection and at the same time allow modernism to live, and not calcify in a masterpiece-by-masterpiece
installation of 94% male artists. With the economy the way it is, moreover, it’s unlikely we’ll see new space built within the next decade (the same day we met a community board reinforced its objections to MoMA’s future building plans). This puts even more pressure on the museum, now.
What to do? Temkin talked convincingly about how important it was to change the perception of these two floors, away from being seen as permanent to fluid installations of reappraisal and experimentation. She said that unlike all the previous decades the museum intends to alter these two floors on a more regular basis. Even “important work” might temporarily be de-installed. This would open up the story, expand it, and allow the focus of the collection to continually shift. Temkin suggested that whole rooms could be dismantled and all new work put on view. When I asked for an example she talked about de-installing the monographic gallery of Joseph Beuys and replacing it with a gallery devoted to late-1960s artists Beuys, Bruce Nauman, and Eva Hesse.
MoMA desperately needs this to play with its collection. However, Temkin’s example perpetuates yet another problem plaguing MoMA. Beuys, Nauman, and Hesse are all bona fide top-dogs; the A-list as art history. I love them all but curators have to take more chances and not just default to the same artists. Other artists were working at extremely high levels in the late 1960s. It would be amazing to see that MoMA gallery with any combination of H.C. Westermann, Jay De Feo, Jess, Yvonne Rainer, Benny Andrews, Dorothy Iannone, Jim Nutt, Bruce Conner, Vija Celmins, Barclay Hendricks, Adrian Piper, Ken Price, or Martin Ramirez. And let’s not forget that Picasso was one of the best artists of the 1960s (or that Henry Darger was in the process of working on his epic masterpiece). MoMA could hang an entire floor with only the late work of artists. This would show that art is about 30-year careers not just 30-month careers.
This brought us to what for me was an emotional turning point in the conversation. We began talking about so-called “institutional time.” I said that institutional time, as she described it, was “glacial” and “too slow” to address the serious problems plaguing MoMA. Temkin talked about how every change at MoMA has implications and repercussions and that over time even small changes and minor adjustments make significant differences. “Art is long” she seemed to say. My reaction was that, time is short. I said that I believed that if enough isn’t done soon, the changes MoMA is talking about will come about when MoMA and Modernism have come to be seen as retrograde and the museum is seen as stuck in the mud.
I then brought up the possibility of a much larger change, the re-installation of the entire fourth floor. Temkin said that she has been seriously studying this for some time. She is considering having the entire floor devoted to one stylistic post-war period. This seemed hopeful. Then she added that this sort of plan could be implemented in three or four years. I complained, “Why not sooner?” After hearing her thoughts about considerations having to do with loans, schedules, restorations, etc., I said again that while I thought that revamping whole floors was a fantastic idea, the time was now.
We looked at each for a while, then at our watches. We left the bar and shared a cab uptown. We talked about summer plans and recent travels. We got out and said a friendly goodbye.
As I opened my umbrella and walked away I thought about how extraordinary this meeting was. Past MoMA curators of Painting and Sculpture would never have met with a critic who started a kerfuffle on Facebook (or anywhere else). I thought about how absolutely open and aware Temkin was of the situation. Then I thought about how she sees her responsibility as opposed to the way I see it. She is trying to do the best for MoMA, its history, audiences, and art. She is taking a long view. I value these things. I love MoMA. But I also see the situation as dire and deteriorating. And we had barely even discussed the thing that got all of this started; how to dramatically raise the percentage of women artists exhibited on these tow floors and not have it be about tokenism or quotas. To me, MoMA is becoming like a madman who thinks he is King; it is telling a story that by now only it believes.
As I walked through the rain I thought about how much I admired Temkin but that the problems at MoMA are so vast and inter-connected that if any change is to come it will likely come slowly, by piecemeal, and incrementally. The irreparable space limitation, a mindset still guided my mediums, the problem of exhibiting mainly well-know names, the issue of having so few women; each of these is gigantic in itself. Each will take time and effort to correct. When I think about how this museum built too small during the richest period in the history of the world I grow furious and morose.
As the rain started coming down harder I realized that despite Temkin’s valiant efforts, and the museum’s dedication to alter its course, that we can no longer look to institutions like this for change. Institutions have different responsibilities, mindsets, priorities, pocketbooks, histories, and internal clocks. They’re big, slow, and institutional. Change is going to have to come from all over and be done by everyone.
This is already beginning to happen. Locally, so many New York galleries have been doing such a tremendous job over the last decade (ditto out of town museums). The same day I met with Temkin I saw a wonderful show at Casey Kaplan Gallery in Chelsea about Russian-Georgian Modernism. A young Swiss curator, unable to get this work out of Georgia, mounted a show of catalogs, reproductions, Xeroxes, texts, and films. There was fantastic art by artists I’d never heard of, artists who it would be spectacular to see integrated into MoMA’s installation. At Kaplan (more than at MoMA) modernism breathed anew. The same thing happened this season when mega-mogul/puppet-master Larry Gagosian mounted two tremendous historical shows; one of late Picasso (that attracted over 100,000 people!), the other, a sprawling survey of Piero Manzoni. Carol Greene, Gavin Brown, Guild & Greyshkul, Matthew Marks, Barbara Gladstone, 303, Paula Cooper, and many other gallerists have done the same. The depth of the pockets is all very different between these galleries but the results have been thrilling.
In the meantime a new generation of a museum-going public and artists may be about to not see art they might otherwise benefit from. As MoMA tries to adjust all of its other problems it’s unclear how the woman issue will play out. As long as this is the case, as long as half the story is not told, more people will turn away from MoMA or see it merely as suffocating. I believe this is already beginning to happen. Artist Cheryl Donegan recently remarked, “Modernism should not be seen as Biblical; it should be seen as Talmudic.” Meaning the bible is static. Talmudic tradition (which is more Wikipedia than Encyclopedia) involves thousands of people making comments in the margins, debating issues and ideas, shaping tradition, changing it, and keeping it alive.
Daniel Lefcourt at Sutton Lane
New show up by Daniel Lefcourt. One sentence in the press release is a glory of artspeak: “Meaning is simultaneously constructed and evaded, deflected and defined.“ HA! Anyway – good stuff in that mid-60s Minimal vein. More at his website: http://www.certainlynot.com/daniel/main.php
Younger Than Jesus – The Blog
I’m pleased to announce the launch of the “Younger Than Jesus” blog which I designed.
The New Museum’s first triennial exhibition, The Generational: Younger Than Jesus, presents work by fifty artists under the age of thirty-three. On view April 8 – July 5, 2009.
This blog features related articles, multimedia, and interviews about this Millennial generation.
Enjoy.
Five Questions
Thanks to Andy Horwitz for interviewing me on his terrific blog Culturebot.