A mindset fundamentally at odds with intellectual rigor and complexity
April 8, 2024 1:35 AM Subscribe
Three years in the making, the exhibition was scheduled to open in early July 2024. Kahng and her team had secured a total of sixty-two loans. A catalogue containing an introduction and four essays was about to go into print, distributed by Yale University Press. As Kahng was putting the final touches on the show, however, the sbma brought in a new director: Amada Cruz, who had previously served as the director of the Seattle Art Museum (2019–23) and the director of the Phoenix Art Museum (2015–19). Within a month of her assuming the position in Santa Barbara, Cruz instructed Kahng to halt work on the show because, according to the Hyperallergic article, “it was under consideration for its lack of diversity.” In mid-January, Cruz fired Kahng, terminating her for “redundancy,” before promptly stepping into the role herself. from Cruz control [The New Criterion]
New Santa Barbara Museum of Art Director Cancels Show, Citing Lack of Diversity, and Terminates Curator [The Santa Barbara Independent]
Artists Protest Museum’s Cancellation of Michael Fried-Inspired Show [Hyperallergic]
The Santa Barbara Museum's Hypocritical Attack on Art [Chronicle of Higher Education; ungated]
New Santa Barbara Museum of Art Director Cancels Show, Citing Lack of Diversity, and Terminates Curator [The Santa Barbara Independent]
Artists Protest Museum’s Cancellation of Michael Fried-Inspired Show [Hyperallergic]
The Santa Barbara Museum's Hypocritical Attack on Art [Chronicle of Higher Education; ungated]
this last sentence seems so unnecessary and comes across like a dog whistle (as if one excludes the other)...
"What else is to be expected in a world in which inclusion trumps scholarship?"
posted by kokaku at 2:41 AM on April 8 [19 favorites]
"What else is to be expected in a world in which inclusion trumps scholarship?"
posted by kokaku at 2:41 AM on April 8 [19 favorites]
What else is to be expected in a world in which inclusion trumps scholarship?
Seriously? I was already annoyed with the article deciding that where you went to undergrad mattered (oh no, Cruz went to NYU and not Princeton), but then we end with a right wing talking point? Somehow, the author of the article made me hate both them and Cruz.
posted by hoyland at 2:48 AM on April 8 [19 favorites]
Seriously? I was already annoyed with the article deciding that where you went to undergrad mattered (oh no, Cruz went to NYU and not Princeton), but then we end with a right wing talking point? Somehow, the author of the article made me hate both them and Cruz.
posted by hoyland at 2:48 AM on April 8 [19 favorites]
It sounds like canceling this show was a bad decision, but the stuff at the end is pretty ridiculous. Also, if you’re going to ask the question, then what really is a bigger issue in fine art today, not enough scholarship or not enough inclusion?
posted by snofoam at 3:34 AM on April 8 [3 favorites]
posted by snofoam at 3:34 AM on April 8 [3 favorites]
The first article falls flat at the end because it doesn’t substantively address Cruz’s inclusion point, probably because everyone understands that it was an excuse, not a reason, or we wouldn’t be seeing a white director firing an Asian-American curator and taking over her role. Inclusion is not something, I would wager, that Cruz cares much about besides optics, because she’s an administrator.
What’s going on here, I think, is that the academics in art museums, including Kahng, are struggling against people like Cruz, who has a much weaker grasp of Art History and theory than she does of operations and building an audience. Cruz likely doesn’t care much if audiences learn anything about art during their visits, much less deep understanding of art theory; she wants them to pay their admission, enjoy looking at pictures, and go away eager to come back for another round. She’ll display Van Gogh because people will come see Van Gogh, not for academic reasons of the painter’s technique or place in history. And that is very counter to Kahng’s reasons.
So the sniffiness about Cruz in that first article is less about the school where she earned her BA, but her lack of other credentials and her path to authority. People with PhDs and scholarly records don’t want to be pushed around by someone who can’t say something interesting about Dürer. That’s the heart of this. Well, and maybe the “Shock and Awe” power move of cancelling an exhibit at the last moment; it feels like a shot across the bow to the staff and academics.
However, I also bet Cruz isn’t wrong. The cancelled show sounds very white and mostly male. It also sounds like it wouldn’t be a popular draw, and Cruz seems to have a history of courting the general public rather than traditional art museum goers.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:16 AM on April 8 [19 favorites]
What’s going on here, I think, is that the academics in art museums, including Kahng, are struggling against people like Cruz, who has a much weaker grasp of Art History and theory than she does of operations and building an audience. Cruz likely doesn’t care much if audiences learn anything about art during their visits, much less deep understanding of art theory; she wants them to pay their admission, enjoy looking at pictures, and go away eager to come back for another round. She’ll display Van Gogh because people will come see Van Gogh, not for academic reasons of the painter’s technique or place in history. And that is very counter to Kahng’s reasons.
So the sniffiness about Cruz in that first article is less about the school where she earned her BA, but her lack of other credentials and her path to authority. People with PhDs and scholarly records don’t want to be pushed around by someone who can’t say something interesting about Dürer. That’s the heart of this. Well, and maybe the “Shock and Awe” power move of cancelling an exhibit at the last moment; it feels like a shot across the bow to the staff and academics.
However, I also bet Cruz isn’t wrong. The cancelled show sounds very white and mostly male. It also sounds like it wouldn’t be a popular draw, and Cruz seems to have a history of courting the general public rather than traditional art museum goers.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:16 AM on April 8 [19 favorites]
I’ve only worked in/with European museums and galleries, but I’ve noticed that managerial standards and bottom-of-the-barrel low. Part of this is due to who hires the chief - for instance, in the uk right now, the boards of many museums are filled with culture warriors like this dingus (link to guardian news story from last year), but I’ve worked in institutions where the person in charge has been expressly chosen to increase visitors (and hence get more money).
If the hiring committee is smart, they’ll understand that leading a museum/gallery isn’t like running a car showroom. They’ll choose somebody who understands the institution, and the area. If they’re dumb, they’ll hire whoever they think looks good, for whatever their version of “good” is.
posted by The River Ivel at 4:16 AM on April 8 [8 favorites]
If the hiring committee is smart, they’ll understand that leading a museum/gallery isn’t like running a car showroom. They’ll choose somebody who understands the institution, and the area. If they’re dumb, they’ll hire whoever they think looks good, for whatever their version of “good” is.
posted by The River Ivel at 4:16 AM on April 8 [8 favorites]
As someone who enjoys art museums but does not have a degree in art history from any school, let alone the right school, I think that art museums aimed at the general public should be programming a diversity of works by a diversity of artists curated in a way to make them accessible to the public. It looks like the Santa Barbara Museum of art is doing so. The Fried exhibit really does sound like something more appropriate to an academic museum than a general public one.
I have a PhD in Ecology, but I don't expect science museums and aquariums aimed at the general public to be targeting my niche research interests in their displays. I would much rather they teach the general public about science.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:32 AM on April 8 [7 favorites]
I have a PhD in Ecology, but I don't expect science museums and aquariums aimed at the general public to be targeting my niche research interests in their displays. I would much rather they teach the general public about science.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:32 AM on April 8 [7 favorites]
I suspect this sea of bad PR means Ms.Cruz’s position is now in jeopardy. Boards are quick to find sacrificial lambs in situations like this.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:59 AM on April 8 [4 favorites]
posted by leotrotsky at 4:59 AM on April 8 [4 favorites]
Nobody in the general public knows who these painters are and Cruz doesn't think it's worth the money to have them find out. The museum is currently running an exhibit including Picasso and Matisse and the upcoming show appears to be heavy on 19th century impressionists/Pre-Raphaelites, so it certainly isn't about eliminating the dead white male from the gallery wall, just the dead white males that don't sell.
posted by kingdead at 5:13 AM on April 8 [11 favorites]
posted by kingdead at 5:13 AM on April 8 [11 favorites]
Yeah, she was hired to bring in the bucks, and I think her strategy is simplification, modernization (without neglecting the bucket-list golden oldies), and shitcanning everyone who gets in her way. Less education, less head scratching, fewer debates about whether that's art, and more "Now that's art! I guess I do like art! I can't wait to go back [and buy tickets] again!" If she does that, they'll keep her and give her a raise.
posted by pracowity at 5:23 AM on April 8 [7 favorites]
posted by pracowity at 5:23 AM on April 8 [7 favorites]
"Additionally, several anonymous sources referenced 'concerns' regarding the optics of Fried’s use of the phrase 'faggot sensibility' in a private 1967 letter to the editor of Artforum."
I mean, I would be kind of interested to see how a response to Fried's show would deal with that?
posted by mittens at 5:30 AM on April 8 [3 favorites]
I mean, I would be kind of interested to see how a response to Fried's show would deal with that?
posted by mittens at 5:30 AM on April 8 [3 favorites]
also it's unclear, was that said admiringly or as a pejorative?
posted by kokaku at 7:01 AM on April 8 [5 favorites]
posted by kokaku at 7:01 AM on April 8 [5 favorites]
I personally think "anything obscure or scholarly is BAD because it doesn't speak to a mass audience" is a really crummy way to run a museum or a library or any public institution and I think it will impoverish us down the road. It reminds me of ten or fifteen years ago, when NIH decided that "translational" research (where you create useful/saleable treatments and products from scientific discovery) was the most important kind and made big cuts to basic science funding, and then had to backtrack a few years later because it turns out that when you cut the basic science enough you run out of things to translate.
Key here is that the very curator who wanted to bring these white male maybe-jerk painters' work to the public is herself Asian-American. That's because scholars are people who are interested in the field, and a deep interest in a field will inevitably take you to work that doesn't fit neatly into a political agenda. Anyone who even systematically watches movies understands this to be true.
You need people with a deep and complex understanding of your field in order to create great popular exhibits - otherwise your popular exhibits end up just shallow reiterations of common knowledge. It's the deep background that allows them to make the connections and bring up the obscure stuff.
Also the commonality isn't dumb - they may not be at the museum for someone's doctoral dissertation on minimalism, but if you just keep feeding them a few cliches, they realize that. People like to feel informed. There is a popular appetite for knowledge and scholarship, even things that are somewhat difficult, as long as they are scaffolded effectively.
Scholarly exhibits do several things - they start to popularize the work in question because people who are scholar-adjacent see the exhibit and they draw in and educate people who will become scholars. You have to do the deep stuff or you don't get new scholars in the field, even though scholars will always be a minority.
A museum needs to balance its scholarly role with its popular one, just like a library should. Scholars aren't just weirdos who like boring dumb bullshit; they are the bedrock who support all the popular stuff that regular-degular people like. We in this country have such contempt for knowledge, for seriousness, for anything that can't be conveyed in gifs and memes, instead of understanding that the scholarly feeds the popular.
All you need to do is spend a little time reading about what, eg, acclaimed popular musicians or acclaimed popular writers actually listen to or read - they always talk about being interested in something obscure, difficult or politically unsuitable, because that's the stuff that feeds the popular. When popular artists and writers pay attention to nothing but other popular artists and writers, their work becomes pro forma and cliche.
posted by Frowner at 7:04 AM on April 8 [41 favorites]
Key here is that the very curator who wanted to bring these white male maybe-jerk painters' work to the public is herself Asian-American. That's because scholars are people who are interested in the field, and a deep interest in a field will inevitably take you to work that doesn't fit neatly into a political agenda. Anyone who even systematically watches movies understands this to be true.
You need people with a deep and complex understanding of your field in order to create great popular exhibits - otherwise your popular exhibits end up just shallow reiterations of common knowledge. It's the deep background that allows them to make the connections and bring up the obscure stuff.
Also the commonality isn't dumb - they may not be at the museum for someone's doctoral dissertation on minimalism, but if you just keep feeding them a few cliches, they realize that. People like to feel informed. There is a popular appetite for knowledge and scholarship, even things that are somewhat difficult, as long as they are scaffolded effectively.
Scholarly exhibits do several things - they start to popularize the work in question because people who are scholar-adjacent see the exhibit and they draw in and educate people who will become scholars. You have to do the deep stuff or you don't get new scholars in the field, even though scholars will always be a minority.
A museum needs to balance its scholarly role with its popular one, just like a library should. Scholars aren't just weirdos who like boring dumb bullshit; they are the bedrock who support all the popular stuff that regular-degular people like. We in this country have such contempt for knowledge, for seriousness, for anything that can't be conveyed in gifs and memes, instead of understanding that the scholarly feeds the popular.
All you need to do is spend a little time reading about what, eg, acclaimed popular musicians or acclaimed popular writers actually listen to or read - they always talk about being interested in something obscure, difficult or politically unsuitable, because that's the stuff that feeds the popular. When popular artists and writers pay attention to nothing but other popular artists and writers, their work becomes pro forma and cliche.
posted by Frowner at 7:04 AM on April 8 [41 favorites]
in a private 1967 letter
I mean, it's unfortunate, and certainly inappropriate today (though context does matter) but this was *fifty years ago*. In the absence of more recent evidence of bigotry or other poor judgment, I'm not sure we should be actively holding things people said or did in private life or private correspondence fifty years ago against them, especially in the absence of context. Even if it was perjorative, I'd like to think people can meaningfully grow and change in fifty years. (God do I ever hope that people can meaningfully grow and change in fifty years, for my own sake at least. The shit I was saying even thirty years ago 😳)
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 7:05 AM on April 8 [13 favorites]
I mean, it's unfortunate, and certainly inappropriate today (though context does matter) but this was *fifty years ago*. In the absence of more recent evidence of bigotry or other poor judgment, I'm not sure we should be actively holding things people said or did in private life or private correspondence fifty years ago against them, especially in the absence of context. Even if it was perjorative, I'd like to think people can meaningfully grow and change in fifty years. (God do I ever hope that people can meaningfully grow and change in fifty years, for my own sake at least. The shit I was saying even thirty years ago 😳)
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 7:05 AM on April 8 [13 favorites]
Well that was certainly a shitty final sentence in top TFA. On the other hand, anyone who would characterize Dürer the way Cruz is quoted leaves me with no respect or sympathy for her. I'm reminded of the Meredith character from Michael Crichton's novel Disclosure: the middle-management type who doesn't know anything about anything but who can string the buzzwords together in sentences that dazzle other know-nothings.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:16 AM on April 8 [6 favorites]
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:16 AM on April 8 [6 favorites]
The potshot at Cruz including an internship at the Guggenheim on her cv, in an article that went out of its way to identify who graduated college summa cum laude, and who didn't, really rubbed me the wrong way.
posted by rishabguha at 7:35 AM on April 8 [4 favorites]
posted by rishabguha at 7:35 AM on April 8 [4 favorites]
I definitely think museums should be trying to get regular people through the door; the question is: what do you do with them when they are there? Having them shuffle in reverent silence past paintings with no context except what they bring with them is more of a chore than a pleasure, but shoving them into a gallery just to glance at a famous image or two for the thrill isn’t satisfactory either. The best shows (in my opinion) are those that help every viewer make a little extra connection.
I saw a large show of Classical Chinese calligraphy at the Asian Art museum in San Francisco years ago, and it arranged the scrolls in threes, with each group illustrating an artistic period. Each triad would contain two “typical” samples and one “dissenting” style, often a precursor to the next orthodoxy. Each set had a text panel explaining the major features and how they related to the development of the art. I know a bit about calligraphy, but not much, and this show laid out, to my untutored eyes, the historical sweep of the art. I learned a ton from that couple of rooms without ever feeling like I was being lectured to or expected to swallow a dissertation. That’s been my benchmark for a well-designed art exhibit ever since.
So scholarship and getting people in the door don’t have to be at odds.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:36 AM on April 8 [19 favorites]
I saw a large show of Classical Chinese calligraphy at the Asian Art museum in San Francisco years ago, and it arranged the scrolls in threes, with each group illustrating an artistic period. Each triad would contain two “typical” samples and one “dissenting” style, often a precursor to the next orthodoxy. Each set had a text panel explaining the major features and how they related to the development of the art. I know a bit about calligraphy, but not much, and this show laid out, to my untutored eyes, the historical sweep of the art. I learned a ton from that couple of rooms without ever feeling like I was being lectured to or expected to swallow a dissertation. That’s been my benchmark for a well-designed art exhibit ever since.
So scholarship and getting people in the door don’t have to be at odds.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:36 AM on April 8 [19 favorites]
Unless of course you assume that Chinese calligraphy itself, as a subject, is too boring and abstruse for the average museum-goer no matter how well laid out, which seems to be the approach that resulted in the cancelation of the exhibit - the public is too dumb, abstract art is too boring, etc.
I was looking at some of the art in question and thinking about pixel art, which has been all the go with the youths these past few years. I myself, a child of the eighties/nineties, would never ever have thought that there was any interest there at all. And yet! It's obvious that if you tell people they really, really need to see a famous artist's work then they'll feel that they do, but once you get outside that "everyone knows who Van Gogh is" circle, it can be quite difficult to tell what other demographics, especially other generations, will find interesting.
posted by Frowner at 7:51 AM on April 8 [6 favorites]
I was looking at some of the art in question and thinking about pixel art, which has been all the go with the youths these past few years. I myself, a child of the eighties/nineties, would never ever have thought that there was any interest there at all. And yet! It's obvious that if you tell people they really, really need to see a famous artist's work then they'll feel that they do, but once you get outside that "everyone knows who Van Gogh is" circle, it can be quite difficult to tell what other demographics, especially other generations, will find interesting.
posted by Frowner at 7:51 AM on April 8 [6 favorites]
Even if it was perjorative, I'd like to think people can meaningfully grow and change in fifty years.
Oh, but that's not the interesting part! The scholarship around the comment is interesting, at least, to me. I'm very unfamiliar with art criticism, as I always stuck more with literary criticism, so maybe this is old hat for everybody, but there's this interesting essay by Christa Noel Robbins, who uncovered the letter, and she's using it as a lens to look at Fried's Art and Objecthood, and I'm only a few pages in but it's really meaty! The idea--well, I won't say her idea--but his phrase from the private letter suggests not merely the same old tedious bigotry we'd expect, but a genuine concern over how sex and sexuality can create works that "we" (as a community, as possibly a modernist straight community) are excluded from?
Like, it would be one thing to grudgingly hover an index finger over the Cancel button when you see the phrase, but far more useful to question the sort of latent and spoken/unspoken anxieties of the homophobic worldview and how it tries to protect a certain reading of art? (and here I'm reminded oddly of Allan Bloom's sort of cryptofash insistence that America return to the great classics of Greece and Rome, while his own homosexuality remained secret from his readers? and like, there's got to be something you can do with that, some way it can affect your reading?)
posted by mittens at 7:59 AM on April 8 [10 favorites]
Oh, but that's not the interesting part! The scholarship around the comment is interesting, at least, to me. I'm very unfamiliar with art criticism, as I always stuck more with literary criticism, so maybe this is old hat for everybody, but there's this interesting essay by Christa Noel Robbins, who uncovered the letter, and she's using it as a lens to look at Fried's Art and Objecthood, and I'm only a few pages in but it's really meaty! The idea--well, I won't say her idea--but his phrase from the private letter suggests not merely the same old tedious bigotry we'd expect, but a genuine concern over how sex and sexuality can create works that "we" (as a community, as possibly a modernist straight community) are excluded from?
Like, it would be one thing to grudgingly hover an index finger over the Cancel button when you see the phrase, but far more useful to question the sort of latent and spoken/unspoken anxieties of the homophobic worldview and how it tries to protect a certain reading of art? (and here I'm reminded oddly of Allan Bloom's sort of cryptofash insistence that America return to the great classics of Greece and Rome, while his own homosexuality remained secret from his readers? and like, there's got to be something you can do with that, some way it can affect your reading?)
posted by mittens at 7:59 AM on April 8 [10 favorites]
I personally think "anything obscure or scholarly is BAD because it doesn't speak to a mass audience" is a really crummy way to run a museum
Also this is art. Things that are less well known aren't necessarily less fun or beautiful or interesting or breathtaking when you actually get to see them, especially if they're displayed with skill. The SB Museum of Art is apparently large enough to have multiple concurrent exhibitions, which means not all of them have to be the kind to get people in the door; some of them can be the kind to pull people in once they're there. And an exhibition can be set up to engage people at multiple levels.
If "too academic" or "lack of diversity" were really the concern, then that could also have translated to tweaking the exhibition or re-examining the story it was telling, rather than cancelling it outright. Especially given how bright and eye-catching these paintings are; drawing people in to see this seems like a relatively easy challenge.
posted by trig at 8:13 AM on April 8 [3 favorites]
Also this is art. Things that are less well known aren't necessarily less fun or beautiful or interesting or breathtaking when you actually get to see them, especially if they're displayed with skill. The SB Museum of Art is apparently large enough to have multiple concurrent exhibitions, which means not all of them have to be the kind to get people in the door; some of them can be the kind to pull people in once they're there. And an exhibition can be set up to engage people at multiple levels.
If "too academic" or "lack of diversity" were really the concern, then that could also have translated to tweaking the exhibition or re-examining the story it was telling, rather than cancelling it outright. Especially given how bright and eye-catching these paintings are; drawing people in to see this seems like a relatively easy challenge.
posted by trig at 8:13 AM on April 8 [3 favorites]
The cancellation (and related departure) seems questionable to say the least, but the tone of the NC article is unbearable. No, Cruz is not an art history specialist (and doesn't have deep insight into Dürer, though God forbid anyone issue some platitudinous throw-away lines in a popular presentation). Running an institution largely requires a different set of skills. Not every institution has the prestige and resources to hire the ideal museum head with a Ph.D. in art history and deep experience in management and fundraising. Frankly, the field doesn't pay well enough overall to support the development of many such people!
posted by praemunire at 10:11 AM on April 8 [4 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 10:11 AM on April 8 [4 favorites]
Crux was right to do this. She was also right to unload the insane docents in Phoenix. The age of curatocracy is over, and museums are places for a broad and interesting public experience, not for spending tons of resources making art-theoretical statements that matter to so few.
posted by Miko at 10:32 AM on April 8 [3 favorites]
posted by Miko at 10:32 AM on April 8 [3 favorites]
Unless of course you assume that Chinese calligraphy itself, as a subject, is too boring and abstruse for the average museum-goer no matter how well laid out, which seems to be the approach that resulted in the cancelation of the exhibit - the public is too dumb, abstract art is too boring, etc.
There’s no way to know that was the approach. This show was supposed to open pretty soon. The objects were chosen, the framework of section themes has to have been laid out, the floor plans were done, the labels had to exist in draft by now. The catalogue was done. Anyone with museum experience can look at the assembled production toward this show and evaluate its quality and potential to be interesting to an intellectually curious but non-expert public. Given what we know about the show and its pretty thin and arcane premise (a guy did a show 50 years ago, wrote a book about it that influenced a bunch of other artists and here they are) , I can guess that the work is probably pretty cool to look at, but that it needs something way deeper to hang on than a bunch of art-world begats and the theoretical discussions that connect
It’s the kind of show that’s maybe a fit for a university gallery in a school of fine arts, or a niche museum that centers art hobbyists. Not a great topic or structure for a large city museum with a mission about serving the public.
I’m not going to go to bat for Cruz herself as a person or a director, but these decisions were justified. If anything, more directors should have these balls.
posted by Miko at 10:45 AM on April 8 [4 favorites]
There’s no way to know that was the approach. This show was supposed to open pretty soon. The objects were chosen, the framework of section themes has to have been laid out, the floor plans were done, the labels had to exist in draft by now. The catalogue was done. Anyone with museum experience can look at the assembled production toward this show and evaluate its quality and potential to be interesting to an intellectually curious but non-expert public. Given what we know about the show and its pretty thin and arcane premise (a guy did a show 50 years ago, wrote a book about it that influenced a bunch of other artists and here they are) , I can guess that the work is probably pretty cool to look at, but that it needs something way deeper to hang on than a bunch of art-world begats and the theoretical discussions that connect
It’s the kind of show that’s maybe a fit for a university gallery in a school of fine arts, or a niche museum that centers art hobbyists. Not a great topic or structure for a large city museum with a mission about serving the public.
I’m not going to go to bat for Cruz herself as a person or a director, but these decisions were justified. If anything, more directors should have these balls.
posted by Miko at 10:45 AM on April 8 [4 favorites]
sounds like an argument that art that isn't broadly appealing isn't worthwhile.
Finally the age of the directoracracy is over! movies are places for broad appealing superhero cgi sludge, not spending tons of resources on unique personal visions that matter to so few!
posted by Ferreous at 10:46 AM on April 8 [7 favorites]
Finally the age of the directoracracy is over! movies are places for broad appealing superhero cgi sludge, not spending tons of resources on unique personal visions that matter to so few!
posted by Ferreous at 10:46 AM on April 8 [7 favorites]
but on a more serious note: the public features people who are actually excited about things like a theoretical show that is fairly arcane. You are serving a segment of the public when you do something like this, and even the part of the public who isn't already interested in the topic to begin with might actually engage with the work and come out having learned or experienced something.
Maybe give people more credit than only being able to appreciate pretty shiny objects they don't have to think deeply about.
posted by Ferreous at 10:52 AM on April 8 [5 favorites]
Maybe give people more credit than only being able to appreciate pretty shiny objects they don't have to think deeply about.
posted by Ferreous at 10:52 AM on April 8 [5 favorites]
art that isn't broadly appealing isn't worthwhile appropriate for every venue.
posted by Miko at 11:00 AM on April 8 [1 favorite]
posted by Miko at 11:00 AM on April 8 [1 favorite]
Well then, which venues would it be appropriate for? They’d have to have specialist staff that knew the field, inside and out. A deep bed of knowledge to draw out some overlooked heavy hitters, preferably with some kind of hook that made them relevant to today. And institutional support that allowed them to do a deep dive. This exhibition had all three, but it sounds like it didn’t fit with the new management’s approach, so it got canned. Really, it’s not a story about a “curatoracy” (what a concept!) but just more crap managers, wasting everyone’s time and money. The project might not have been a big hit, but the book would have sold to a significant number of libraries across the world. I doubt that whatever comes instead of this show will recoup the budget.
Personally I wish more museums had weird ornate curators showing me special things. The convergence of museums on the Nordic “Tate style” or the classic “big couches and religious paintings” is rather stifling. A good place to looks at the current state of museum design is often architectural museums, which are more concerned with the ideas behind the buildings - after all, the building wouldn’t fit in the museum. Plus, architects often have money, so they’re not forced to kowtow to some local bigwig’s idea of what a museum should be.
posted by The River Ivel at 11:44 AM on April 8 [7 favorites]
Personally I wish more museums had weird ornate curators showing me special things. The convergence of museums on the Nordic “Tate style” or the classic “big couches and religious paintings” is rather stifling. A good place to looks at the current state of museum design is often architectural museums, which are more concerned with the ideas behind the buildings - after all, the building wouldn’t fit in the museum. Plus, architects often have money, so they’re not forced to kowtow to some local bigwig’s idea of what a museum should be.
posted by The River Ivel at 11:44 AM on April 8 [7 favorites]
She was also right to unload the insane docents in Phoenix.
I mean… maybe? I have no idea what the docents were being taught as far as presenting it to an audience, but it seems to me that giving your docents a thorough grounding in Art History and theory so they can answer questions outside of their scripts might be good.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:46 AM on April 8 [3 favorites]
I mean… maybe? I have no idea what the docents were being taught as far as presenting it to an audience, but it seems to me that giving your docents a thorough grounding in Art History and theory so they can answer questions outside of their scripts might be good.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:46 AM on April 8 [3 favorites]
This isn't about me thinking people are too dumb to enjoy sophisticated art. I'm right there advocating for the ability of every human to be touched and excited by just about anything, when it's organized and interpreted with deep thought for how people will experience it. Few curators can do this on their own, and this sure wasn't shaping up to be an exception. Between the lines, I'd guess this was Khang's baby, shepherded during her time as interim/deputy chief and perhaps even sort of a reward for doing the blockbuster painting shows. But whe na new director arrives and is tasked with re-orienting the museum, a pet show with little potential draw lacking a strong rationale is exactly the kind of thing that goes onto the chopping block. The resultant firing likely indicates an internal showdown that was likely about a lot of stuff other than any of these stories would suggest.
The decision is never "show hard art/hard ideas or not show hard art/hard ideas," but which art, which ideas? Every decision to devote the limited resources of a museum to the development of a show must be a well-calculated one that advances institutional goals - centers the audiences the museum has committed to centering, expands participation in ways that help the institution sustain itself, aligns with its strategic goals, and considers the potential impact on individuals and communities. You're right that the public includes some people who are so up for an art-historical argument on the wall about a a show 50 years ago that featured 3 painters that grew into an an essay in an out-of-print book that only even a some subset of graduate art history students have read, but they are a small minority. To center them is often to lose everyone else. And that's about selecting a show with not just great objects, but with a premise that can make sense to anyone if clearly explained, and more importantly, be meaningful to anyone if clearly explained. As described here, the premise of this show is meaningful to very few people. This is a curator who thought her audiences wanted three-hour art history seminars. The Hyperallergic piece makes a comparison to the Jewish Museum's New York, 1962-64: look how much more ably conceptualized and presented that show is.
It's possible this show could be reformulated around another premise in a cool way, but what's described here was not heading in that direction. It's not just "is this show a terrible idea," but "what's the opportunity cost of using this space and time at this moment for this particular show, and taking out sixty-two loans (with all their individual insurance and art handling costs) to do it." This show could have more success as a book all on its own, a lecture series or short course, a short documentary, or a show in a museum with a niche audience that groks 20th century art movements.
More often than not, this stuff happens in museums and no one ever hears about it. Shows and show ideas get killed all the time, or postponed so long they die of neglect. In this case, the (living) artists who were going to be in the show and stood to benefit by that, and the donors who love the curator, are making some noise in the press about it and that's why we're reading about it. There is a set of interested parties who have long expected their preferences to be privileged in and by art museums, but unfortunately, it's at the expense of those that could be better served by tax-exemption-having, tax-dollar-consuming public institutions. If you're okay with those specific people not being the ones making choices for what folks will eventually see in this specific museum, there's nothing necessarily upsetting about this. Things change when directors change.
posted by Miko at 11:51 AM on April 8 [8 favorites]
The decision is never "show hard art/hard ideas or not show hard art/hard ideas," but which art, which ideas? Every decision to devote the limited resources of a museum to the development of a show must be a well-calculated one that advances institutional goals - centers the audiences the museum has committed to centering, expands participation in ways that help the institution sustain itself, aligns with its strategic goals, and considers the potential impact on individuals and communities. You're right that the public includes some people who are so up for an art-historical argument on the wall about a a show 50 years ago that featured 3 painters that grew into an an essay in an out-of-print book that only even a some subset of graduate art history students have read, but they are a small minority. To center them is often to lose everyone else. And that's about selecting a show with not just great objects, but with a premise that can make sense to anyone if clearly explained, and more importantly, be meaningful to anyone if clearly explained. As described here, the premise of this show is meaningful to very few people. This is a curator who thought her audiences wanted three-hour art history seminars. The Hyperallergic piece makes a comparison to the Jewish Museum's New York, 1962-64: look how much more ably conceptualized and presented that show is.
It's possible this show could be reformulated around another premise in a cool way, but what's described here was not heading in that direction. It's not just "is this show a terrible idea," but "what's the opportunity cost of using this space and time at this moment for this particular show, and taking out sixty-two loans (with all their individual insurance and art handling costs) to do it." This show could have more success as a book all on its own, a lecture series or short course, a short documentary, or a show in a museum with a niche audience that groks 20th century art movements.
More often than not, this stuff happens in museums and no one ever hears about it. Shows and show ideas get killed all the time, or postponed so long they die of neglect. In this case, the (living) artists who were going to be in the show and stood to benefit by that, and the donors who love the curator, are making some noise in the press about it and that's why we're reading about it. There is a set of interested parties who have long expected their preferences to be privileged in and by art museums, but unfortunately, it's at the expense of those that could be better served by tax-exemption-having, tax-dollar-consuming public institutions. If you're okay with those specific people not being the ones making choices for what folks will eventually see in this specific museum, there's nothing necessarily upsetting about this. Things change when directors change.
posted by Miko at 11:51 AM on April 8 [8 favorites]
As a point of reference, Julia Friedman, the author of the New Criterion article, writes for Quillette, a right-wing rag obsessed with antifa, "postmodernism", and "free speech on campus". She's also appeared on RT (on a show hosted by William Shatner, for some ungodly reason).
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:03 PM on April 8 [12 favorites]
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:03 PM on April 8 [12 favorites]
The docents in Phoenix thing sounds so innocent - "we just wanted training!" That's an intentional misrepresentation. In reality, they formed a bloc to oppose much-needed change in the way they worked with K-12 students, rejected the training they were getting, then harassed and verbally abused the staff (“I have been giving museum tours longer than that little bitch has been alive")and weaponized their donor connections, which had harmful mental health and career impacts on the staff. Docents are a fucking third rail, a toxic legacy structure in a great many museums. See also: Hirshhorn, Art Institute of Chicago.
posted by Miko at 12:05 PM on April 8 [11 favorites]
posted by Miko at 12:05 PM on April 8 [11 favorites]
I make museum exhibits for a living, and this article is so bad. I was going to write out a reply, but Miko basically said everything I want to say, but better.
posted by heurtebise at 12:13 PM on April 8 [4 favorites]
posted by heurtebise at 12:13 PM on April 8 [4 favorites]
There is a set of interested parties who have long expected their preferences to be privileged in and by art museums, but unfortunately, it's at the expense of those that could be better served by tax-exemption-having, tax-dollar-consuming public institutions.
Boy... the Phoenix New Times article Miko linked is just absolutely overflowing with docents expressing this attitude (that the museum is fundamentally there to serve their preferences, and any deviation from that course is an insult to them) - enough so that it instantly put me on the side of Cruz in Phoenix and made me reread all the linked articles of the post. And, as Miko says, most of the FPP articles are either by culture warriors (Friedman) or by interested parties (The Chronicle article is by two contributors to the catalog of the Santa Barbara show.)
Having come across this attitude in my life it's hard for me not to start rooting for Cruz in the Phoenix New Times article & in her subsequent gigs.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 1:15 PM on April 8 [3 favorites]
Boy... the Phoenix New Times article Miko linked is just absolutely overflowing with docents expressing this attitude (that the museum is fundamentally there to serve their preferences, and any deviation from that course is an insult to them) - enough so that it instantly put me on the side of Cruz in Phoenix and made me reread all the linked articles of the post. And, as Miko says, most of the FPP articles are either by culture warriors (Friedman) or by interested parties (The Chronicle article is by two contributors to the catalog of the Santa Barbara show.)
Having come across this attitude in my life it's hard for me not to start rooting for Cruz in the Phoenix New Times article & in her subsequent gigs.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 1:15 PM on April 8 [3 favorites]
The part about “engaging visitors, not educating them” — what in the actual fuck? Maybe this is simply a dig at grooming patrons to be new donors, but why WOULDN’T you want to engage visitors? Why is educating supposedly better than engaging? Indeed, how do you engage WITHOUT educating, at least in part?
I would much rather be engaged - interested enough in something to look for my own context and next steps - than educated - told what is important to remember.
posted by St. Hubbins at 1:17 PM on April 8 [1 favorite]
I would much rather be engaged - interested enough in something to look for my own context and next steps - than educated - told what is important to remember.
posted by St. Hubbins at 1:17 PM on April 8 [1 favorite]
Huh, I didn't get that impression from the Phoenix New Times article. The docents didn't come off in a great light to me (not least because the ones quoted kept calling everyone a "bitch"), and Cruz did a great thing finally adding tours in Spanish. But the excerpts from the emails she supposedly sent were pretty fucked up, various quotes from museum people on the Cruz side were some kind of bullshit, her lack of interest in preserving any good relationships was clear, and (according to the description in the article, which may not be accurate for all I know) the part about “engaging visitors, not educating them” meant, in practice, having docents focus on asking things like "what does this piece make you feel" rather than answering visitors' questions. (Why not both? Maybe it was both? Maybe it wasn't. It's not a great article imo. Regardless, I've been on the student side of pure "what does this make you feel?" and "what do you think about this?"-focused courses in educational contexts that I think 20 years ago would have bothered actually introducing new ideas and unknown-to-us information into the mix, and I felt patronized and frustrated, not engaged; it's not enough on its own.)
Anyway, it's impossible to know from the outside what the actual situation is, but my current guess is that this is a situation where all sides involved are likely to be Not Great.
posted by trig at 1:40 PM on April 8 [5 favorites]
Anyway, it's impossible to know from the outside what the actual situation is, but my current guess is that this is a situation where all sides involved are likely to be Not Great.
posted by trig at 1:40 PM on April 8 [5 favorites]
Crux was right to do this. She was also right to unload the insane docents in Phoenix. The age of curatocracy is over, and museums are places for a broad and interesting public experience, not for spending tons of resources making art-theoretical statements that matter to so few.
I read this as implicit acknowledgment that Cruz is someone boards hire to bring runaway museums back under control, kind of like that classic scene in old Westerns where the stagecoach is heading toward the cliff because the driver has been shot and fallen off and the hero has to ride alongside, jump aboard and rein in the team of horses to keep the helpless passengers from plunging into an abyss.
Which probably means she was hired explicitly (in the interview process, at least) to stop the show because major, powerful, donor board members did not want it to take place and were determined to kill it.
I wonder why — and also why Seattle hired her.
posted by jamjam at 1:45 PM on April 8 [4 favorites]
I read this as implicit acknowledgment that Cruz is someone boards hire to bring runaway museums back under control, kind of like that classic scene in old Westerns where the stagecoach is heading toward the cliff because the driver has been shot and fallen off and the hero has to ride alongside, jump aboard and rein in the team of horses to keep the helpless passengers from plunging into an abyss.
Which probably means she was hired explicitly (in the interview process, at least) to stop the show because major, powerful, donor board members did not want it to take place and were determined to kill it.
I wonder why — and also why Seattle hired her.
posted by jamjam at 1:45 PM on April 8 [4 favorites]
Anyway, it's impossible to know from the outside what the actual situation is
though, I'd hang my hat on Miko's observations
posted by elkevelvet at 2:33 PM on April 8 [4 favorites]
though, I'd hang my hat on Miko's observations
posted by elkevelvet at 2:33 PM on April 8 [4 favorites]
harassed and verbally abused the staff (“I have been giving museum tours longer than that little bitch has been alive")
At least from the way it was described in that article, the more obnoxious docent comments, besides this one, were not made to the person directly nor with the intent of that person hearing it. In other words, people blowing off steam, which happens in every job, not harassment and verbal abuse (though, yeah, I do wonder about the "little bitch" woman's general attitude, since that was something she was willing to say to the press--but she's still working there! and one of her friends told her to hush!). Maybe there are other examples that weren't surfaced in the article.
weaponized their donor connections
When men do this, it's generally known as persuading their social networks to support their policy preferences. This is how institutional politics is done. "Weaponizing" is a strange verb to use here.
which had harmful mental health and career impacts on the staff.
These are professionals, right? People deciding on and implementing policy changes? I am really not comfortable holding people responsible for the mental health consequences of their lobbying for restoring a prior approach to the docent program (as opposed to calling people bitches to their faces).
Basically, to me it sounds like some of the docents were long-term entitled types who didn't like some changes and were very unpleasant about it amongst themselves. (To be honest, I'm not sure I'd hang out with many of the women described in this article, but I'm trying not to react to the archetype.) This is a well-known issue for any organization that relies heavily on volunteers, but it's also par for the course. It seems to me that Cruz jumped too quickly to "firing" individuals. In the end, management in these kinds of situations needs a thick skin with respect to volunteers' treatment of you, but a much thinner skin that was traditional for any volunteer mistreatment or exclusion of patrons. (And I don't think not striking the correct balance between "engagement" and "education" counts as the latter.) This is where you do some of that leadership stuff and conciliate wounded pride and forge new relationships, or find reasonably high-ranking subordinates to do it for you. As I've said, fundraising is extremely important to the health of modern art institutions, but so is keeping internal stakeholders (bleah) reasonably content.
posted by praemunire at 3:47 PM on April 8 [2 favorites]
At least from the way it was described in that article, the more obnoxious docent comments, besides this one, were not made to the person directly nor with the intent of that person hearing it. In other words, people blowing off steam, which happens in every job, not harassment and verbal abuse (though, yeah, I do wonder about the "little bitch" woman's general attitude, since that was something she was willing to say to the press--but she's still working there! and one of her friends told her to hush!). Maybe there are other examples that weren't surfaced in the article.
weaponized their donor connections
When men do this, it's generally known as persuading their social networks to support their policy preferences. This is how institutional politics is done. "Weaponizing" is a strange verb to use here.
which had harmful mental health and career impacts on the staff.
These are professionals, right? People deciding on and implementing policy changes? I am really not comfortable holding people responsible for the mental health consequences of their lobbying for restoring a prior approach to the docent program (as opposed to calling people bitches to their faces).
Basically, to me it sounds like some of the docents were long-term entitled types who didn't like some changes and were very unpleasant about it amongst themselves. (To be honest, I'm not sure I'd hang out with many of the women described in this article, but I'm trying not to react to the archetype.) This is a well-known issue for any organization that relies heavily on volunteers, but it's also par for the course. It seems to me that Cruz jumped too quickly to "firing" individuals. In the end, management in these kinds of situations needs a thick skin with respect to volunteers' treatment of you, but a much thinner skin that was traditional for any volunteer mistreatment or exclusion of patrons. (And I don't think not striking the correct balance between "engagement" and "education" counts as the latter.) This is where you do some of that leadership stuff and conciliate wounded pride and forge new relationships, or find reasonably high-ranking subordinates to do it for you. As I've said, fundraising is extremely important to the health of modern art institutions, but so is keeping internal stakeholders (bleah) reasonably content.
posted by praemunire at 3:47 PM on April 8 [2 favorites]
Eh, like trig, my takeaway from the Phoenix New Times article was that everyone seemed awful. The docents interviewed come off poorly, but Cruz and her hires seemed pretty ham-handed in their approach to change as well. I suppose it’s possible that Cruz decided that the only way to bring the volunteer situation under control was to burn the whole thing down without worrying about the effects, which… maybe? I was a little surprised by the comments in the Friends groups that were, apparently, raising money but resented that Cruz wanted the money? Anyway, Cruz seems terrible to work for, but the volunteers seem terrible to work with. Even the visitors Jen and David come off as awful people. It’s a weird article.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:58 PM on April 8 [3 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:58 PM on April 8 [3 favorites]
I am entirely in favor, though, of paid educators in museums rather than relying on volunteers, for all the reasons Miko’s article round up listed — it allows for a younger and more diverse group of people to be the “tour face” of the museum.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:03 PM on April 8 [5 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:03 PM on April 8 [5 favorites]
I am entirely in favor, though, of paid educators in museums rather than relying on volunteers
Oh, totally.
posted by praemunire at 5:04 PM on April 8 [2 favorites]
Oh, totally.
posted by praemunire at 5:04 PM on April 8 [2 favorites]
Both the docents in Phoenix and the artists in the open letter from Santa Barbara say that Cruz's actions are an insult, not just to them, but to big-A Art. I could reasonably see coming into a new gig as a director and adopting a my-way-or-the-highway approach to the people who tell you they are insulted by the changes you'd like to make.
I will cop to "reacting to the archetype" here, though, as praemunire puts it.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 5:14 PM on April 8 [1 favorite]
I will cop to "reacting to the archetype" here, though, as praemunire puts it.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 5:14 PM on April 8 [1 favorite]
I could reasonably see coming into a new gig as a director and adopting a my-way-or-the-highway approach to the people who tell you they are insulted by the changes you'd like to make.
This works better in the corporate world than in a nonprofit dependent on donations and with a significant volunteer staff. Again, this is assuming they are not being abusive to paid staff (as distinct from bitching amongst one another or asking probing questions at trainings) or to patrons. It certainly may just be that those stories haven't come out, but then you'd expect either some process which didn't happen to get rid of the problem docents or some serious incidents to justify the abrupt dismissals.
posted by praemunire at 7:41 PM on April 8 [2 favorites]
This works better in the corporate world than in a nonprofit dependent on donations and with a significant volunteer staff. Again, this is assuming they are not being abusive to paid staff (as distinct from bitching amongst one another or asking probing questions at trainings) or to patrons. It certainly may just be that those stories haven't come out, but then you'd expect either some process which didn't happen to get rid of the problem docents or some serious incidents to justify the abrupt dismissals.
posted by praemunire at 7:41 PM on April 8 [2 favorites]
Miko is just wrong. Where is work that is small, smart, difficult, challenging, that looks back, t hat considers form and history--Fried's essays hugely shifted and chanted how we saw the world, reworking that shift is deeply important. How many fucking Degas exhibitions do we need? What is left to be said about Picasso?
posted by PinkMoose at 8:14 PM on April 8 [5 favorites]
posted by PinkMoose at 8:14 PM on April 8 [5 favorites]
also, being in educaitonal spaces with docents who kept their little fiefdoms, but knew absoutley fucking nothing, i welcome hiring people who can do their jobs, and not having a little hobby on a saturday afternoon.
posted by PinkMoose at 8:15 PM on April 8 [4 favorites]
posted by PinkMoose at 8:15 PM on April 8 [4 favorites]
How many fucking Degas exhibitions do we need? What is left to be said about Picasso?
I was staying out of this discussion although interested until this, but fucking wow, man.
I'm a decidedly middlebrow art lover. We're supporting members of the AGO which means we pay a bit extra on our membership as a donation. We aren't really of means to take the kids to Europe (we could but we paid for tutoring and martial arts and saved more for university instead.) Since my kids were in strollers, I've taken them to exhibits. And yes - Matisse, Degas, Picasso, Picasso's blue period, Frieda and Diego, Basquiet, Spielgelman, Haring, Guillermo del Toro, KAWS, as well as Mickalene Thomas, Käthe Kollwitz along with this show curated by Clement Greenberg.
When my son was 7, we went to this show featuring, yes, Picasso. I was fussing with my younger, who was a baby, and my 7 year old got ahead of me. I found him standing staring at a work, with tears in his eyes. (I think it was The Minotauromachy but honestly, I was sleep deprived.) I thought he was scared of having 'lost' me but he refused to stop looking at the work and I realized it was the work.
That kid was accepted into every art program he applied to last year after going to a visual arts high school, although he's on a gap year now. He's working on his forge skills because he wants to become a sculptor.
It's great that the art world is tired of Picasso and honestly, we too have made efforts to go see racialized artists and female artists and because the AGO is big, when we go to a big exhibit we also try to poke around to see what we haven't heard of, or we go down and 'pick a room.' But *I* did not grow up with a whole lot of art, nor do I have anything like an art history degree. My kids, being kids, also the same. I really fucking appreciate the shows you consider boring and like there's nothing new to say about them.
Also, to be absolutely brutally honest, it is the big names that get my attention in a busy quarter, and especially when my kids were young, I was to some extent wanting to expose them to The Canon, so that by the time they were the lovely ages they are now, we could explore other things together.
I just did quick math and we've had a continuous $250 membership for 16 years. That's not anything like a rich donor, but it's not nothing.
I have nothing against the more highbrow exhibits. I would say my elder son in particular is like 'ugh not Picasso again." But come on. Not everyone is tired of the same stuff academics are.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:17 AM on April 9 [8 favorites]
I was staying out of this discussion although interested until this, but fucking wow, man.
I'm a decidedly middlebrow art lover. We're supporting members of the AGO which means we pay a bit extra on our membership as a donation. We aren't really of means to take the kids to Europe (we could but we paid for tutoring and martial arts and saved more for university instead.) Since my kids were in strollers, I've taken them to exhibits. And yes - Matisse, Degas, Picasso, Picasso's blue period, Frieda and Diego, Basquiet, Spielgelman, Haring, Guillermo del Toro, KAWS, as well as Mickalene Thomas, Käthe Kollwitz along with this show curated by Clement Greenberg.
When my son was 7, we went to this show featuring, yes, Picasso. I was fussing with my younger, who was a baby, and my 7 year old got ahead of me. I found him standing staring at a work, with tears in his eyes. (I think it was The Minotauromachy but honestly, I was sleep deprived.) I thought he was scared of having 'lost' me but he refused to stop looking at the work and I realized it was the work.
That kid was accepted into every art program he applied to last year after going to a visual arts high school, although he's on a gap year now. He's working on his forge skills because he wants to become a sculptor.
It's great that the art world is tired of Picasso and honestly, we too have made efforts to go see racialized artists and female artists and because the AGO is big, when we go to a big exhibit we also try to poke around to see what we haven't heard of, or we go down and 'pick a room.' But *I* did not grow up with a whole lot of art, nor do I have anything like an art history degree. My kids, being kids, also the same. I really fucking appreciate the shows you consider boring and like there's nothing new to say about them.
Also, to be absolutely brutally honest, it is the big names that get my attention in a busy quarter, and especially when my kids were young, I was to some extent wanting to expose them to The Canon, so that by the time they were the lovely ages they are now, we could explore other things together.
I just did quick math and we've had a continuous $250 membership for 16 years. That's not anything like a rich donor, but it's not nothing.
I have nothing against the more highbrow exhibits. I would say my elder son in particular is like 'ugh not Picasso again." But come on. Not everyone is tired of the same stuff academics are.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:17 AM on April 9 [8 favorites]
I mean, I think there’s room for both? I hope that the big familiar names will bring people in, and they might also take a look at lesser known works and, maybe, be captured a bit. This takes me back to my point of that, if you just want the treadmill of the public coming to big name shows, paying the fee, rinse, and repeat, why art museums at all? An art museum should encourage people to engage and learn about art in and outside their “comfort zones,” and it should always try to lure them a bit deeper. At the start of this, I was thinking that Kahng’s did not sound interesting, but, looking at some of the pictures, seeing them on the walls of a gallery with room to be might be something special.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:39 AM on April 9 [5 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:39 AM on April 9 [5 favorites]
I think there’s room for both for sure. I was responding to the idea that we’re all just so tired of Degas.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:46 AM on April 9 [2 favorites]
posted by warriorqueen at 4:46 AM on April 9 [2 favorites]
This all makes me realize how inscrutable the internal politics and dynamics of museums are to those who don't live and work inside of them. When I say the staff at PAM was verbally abused (not just "blowing off steam") I mean it, though you won't find any journalist writing about it because every museum professional who works with these docents knows not to talk to anyone outside about it for fear of their career. I stand by "weaponizing" their relationships, because these people are volunteers supposedly in relationship to the museum to give their time to fulfill needs defined by the institutional leadership; they are not formally institutionally or positionally empowered, and the relationships they are exerting pressure on to resist change fall outside of healthy and transparent organizational structures.
Museums tend to have a halo effect that makes observers want to lean toward whoever seems to be talking about the importance of Art and positions curators (often the only staff positions non-museum folk know about) as demigods and volunteer docents as purely-intended, gracious benefactors. Sometimes, those people are terrible people (often directors and board members are, too) and sometimes the cultural politics within museums really don't map along easy and externally obvious lines. Whether or not I'm "just wrong," I've got twenty-five years in this field navigating the politics, sharing information with colleagues, and reading the literature, and there's always a lot between the lines of any story, because this stuff is super hard to report on and get anyone fully on record about, and there are no obligations to reveal internal communication or FOIA requests for museums that aren't public agencies, and these things rarely go to courts of law where there'd be discovery. So what comes out in the press is always pretty hazy, and the art-world press in specific usually lines up with curators, donors, and the art-collector audience. The Journal of Museum Education is bringing out an issue later this year on docents, which is going to include some critical work on the problematic nature and origins of docent programs and how deeply they intersect with wealth privilege, white supremacy and gender ideology.
posted by Miko at 9:14 AM on April 9 [7 favorites]
Museums tend to have a halo effect that makes observers want to lean toward whoever seems to be talking about the importance of Art and positions curators (often the only staff positions non-museum folk know about) as demigods and volunteer docents as purely-intended, gracious benefactors. Sometimes, those people are terrible people (often directors and board members are, too) and sometimes the cultural politics within museums really don't map along easy and externally obvious lines. Whether or not I'm "just wrong," I've got twenty-five years in this field navigating the politics, sharing information with colleagues, and reading the literature, and there's always a lot between the lines of any story, because this stuff is super hard to report on and get anyone fully on record about, and there are no obligations to reveal internal communication or FOIA requests for museums that aren't public agencies, and these things rarely go to courts of law where there'd be discovery. So what comes out in the press is always pretty hazy, and the art-world press in specific usually lines up with curators, donors, and the art-collector audience. The Journal of Museum Education is bringing out an issue later this year on docents, which is going to include some critical work on the problematic nature and origins of docent programs and how deeply they intersect with wealth privilege, white supremacy and gender ideology.
posted by Miko at 9:14 AM on April 9 [7 favorites]
though, I'd hang my hat on Miko's observations
Nah. I just find it kinda odd that they would side with the Move-Fast-and-Fuck-Things-Up-Disruptor/Director against the hapless Curator in this drama? Maybe they had a 20th Century Modernism teacher in art-school who mean to them? (Some of those old cats were real dicks).
posted by ovvl at 10:52 AM on April 9
Nah. I just find it kinda odd that they would side with the Move-Fast-and-Fuck-Things-Up-Disruptor/Director against the hapless Curator in this drama? Maybe they had a 20th Century Modernism teacher in art-school who mean to them? (Some of those old cats were real dicks).
posted by ovvl at 10:52 AM on April 9
warriorqueen---yr the kind of person that makes it easier to fire people like Wanda Nanibush, also really hope that we aren't curating art for 7 year olds.
posted by PinkMoose at 11:05 AM on April 9
posted by PinkMoose at 11:05 AM on April 9
7 year olds are a wonderful audience for art. And no, it's more the kind of abstruse curation that Cruz is calling halt to that takes space and pushes out the likes of Wanda Nanibush.
posted by Miko at 11:21 AM on April 9 [3 favorites]
posted by Miko at 11:21 AM on April 9 [3 favorites]
Pinkmoose - you’re the kind of person ignoring that arts funding is being cut, and also applications to art schools and the humanities are way down with entire departments at risk of being cut. I’m the kind of person who will be cutting the tuition cheque for the art history department.
Your reference to Wanda Nanibush is just incredibly off, sorry. Saying we enjoyed the classics at the AGO doesn’t mean we missed the Houle exhibit. We actually went up to see Bangishimo over March break - did you? Given that it looks like Nanibush may have been pushed out over comments on I/P (not that we know), that was an incredibly disingenuous statement, implying that it’s over curatorial choices.
As I clarified, I have no issue with curating lesser known or harder art. But you also need places for people to start, and a chunk will just stay there. It’s fine to defend this show but just because you don’t have anything to say about Degas or Picasso, doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of art viewers entering that conversation.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:50 PM on April 9 [1 favorite]
Your reference to Wanda Nanibush is just incredibly off, sorry. Saying we enjoyed the classics at the AGO doesn’t mean we missed the Houle exhibit. We actually went up to see Bangishimo over March break - did you? Given that it looks like Nanibush may have been pushed out over comments on I/P (not that we know), that was an incredibly disingenuous statement, implying that it’s over curatorial choices.
As I clarified, I have no issue with curating lesser known or harder art. But you also need places for people to start, and a chunk will just stay there. It’s fine to defend this show but just because you don’t have anything to say about Degas or Picasso, doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of art viewers entering that conversation.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:50 PM on April 9 [1 favorite]
Amusingly, I grew up to loathe the Impressionists because my great aunt had a lifetime Art Institute of Chicago membership so our whole family visited frequently and wow, I can tell you that being exposed to those fucking haystacks over and over and over as a child did nothing for me. I loved the museum, though, so on balance it was good.
I think the great advantage there was seeing the museum as a place to visit frequently for no very good reason, just to wander around and hang out. Even as a kid I had a lot of favorites (Cranach, German Renaissance paintings with angels and devils, Chagall windows, hall with armor and swords). Now that I live in Minneapolis, the MIA is free - or really, you should donate something, but it's not $25 per person per visit like the Art Institute now - and that's a great, great gift. You can get to know the collection and the museum in a way that you can't if you can only afford to visit once every year or two.
There is so much to be said for seeing the same painting over and over - I'm not knocking seeing paintings whenever you can, but being able to have a favorite and look at it every few months is really helpful.
When I was growing up, there were definitely kid-friendly exhibits and areas - there was a wonderful kids' space with modern furniture (Panton-ish stuff, slidey plastic chairs) that I didn't understand was actual furniture rather than playground stuff and some modern art that you could touch and play with. But the museum as a whole wasn't really organized around children. I am willing to accept that my family was just weird, but the lack of child-friendly exhibits didn't really stop me from loving the museum, because there was just so much cool stuff.
Musing thus, I find myself wondering if a bigger problem isn't simply that museums are so expensive now. The Art Institute costs $32 per adult now and I can tell you that if the MIA was, say, $25/person per visit I would go every couple of years instead of multiple times a year.
We really ought to expropriate the billionaires and fund the museums, make them all free. Then this would all be so much lower-stakes.
posted by Frowner at 1:22 PM on April 9 [7 favorites]
I think the great advantage there was seeing the museum as a place to visit frequently for no very good reason, just to wander around and hang out. Even as a kid I had a lot of favorites (Cranach, German Renaissance paintings with angels and devils, Chagall windows, hall with armor and swords). Now that I live in Minneapolis, the MIA is free - or really, you should donate something, but it's not $25 per person per visit like the Art Institute now - and that's a great, great gift. You can get to know the collection and the museum in a way that you can't if you can only afford to visit once every year or two.
There is so much to be said for seeing the same painting over and over - I'm not knocking seeing paintings whenever you can, but being able to have a favorite and look at it every few months is really helpful.
When I was growing up, there were definitely kid-friendly exhibits and areas - there was a wonderful kids' space with modern furniture (Panton-ish stuff, slidey plastic chairs) that I didn't understand was actual furniture rather than playground stuff and some modern art that you could touch and play with. But the museum as a whole wasn't really organized around children. I am willing to accept that my family was just weird, but the lack of child-friendly exhibits didn't really stop me from loving the museum, because there was just so much cool stuff.
Musing thus, I find myself wondering if a bigger problem isn't simply that museums are so expensive now. The Art Institute costs $32 per adult now and I can tell you that if the MIA was, say, $25/person per visit I would go every couple of years instead of multiple times a year.
We really ought to expropriate the billionaires and fund the museums, make them all free. Then this would all be so much lower-stakes.
posted by Frowner at 1:22 PM on April 9 [7 favorites]
Museums would behave really differently, in a really really good way, if we were able to do that.
posted by Miko at 1:31 PM on April 9 [3 favorites]
posted by Miko at 1:31 PM on April 9 [3 favorites]
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