Touchy Subjects

Admittedly, I often succumb to the desire to avoid one particular, emotive issue in history: the Holocaust. To justify my complex, I scapegoat my high school history teacher, who showed a class of petrified fourteen-year-olds the actual footage of Allied Forces searching concentration camps immediately after World War II. (In all honesty, a part of my adult self still yearns to make the case that I can remember those scenes, which I saw over a decade ago, as vividly as if I saw them yesterday and feel the same queasiness at merely the memory!) Alas, my nonsensical evasiveness has left evidence in its wake—such as, the deliberate neglect to read Elie Wiesel’s Night in undergrad, the decision to opt out of a visit to the concentration camp in Erfurt with other students in Germany, and the cognizant setting of my MA thesis in the nineteenth-century Kaiserreich. In a sense, my difficulty to engage with Holocaust history because of its distressing content mirrors the problems that artists as well as museums like the Holocaust Memorial Museum confront in their attempt to visually portray the tender subject.

In 2006, there was one Holocaust monument I managed to see: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas (“Monument for the Murdered Jews of Europe”). Crafted by US architect Peter Eisenman, the memorial opened only a year and a half earlier in central Berlin, and while the name of the monument is straightforward, the interpretation of its aesthetics proves a bit more complicated. The tribute features roughly five-acres of stone slabs, diversely sized and shaped, with enough space to allow passages but without the concern for a starting or stopping point. President of the German Parliament, Wolfgang Theirse, described the work as “a constructed symbol for the incomprehensibility of the crime.” On the other hand, opponents of the Denkmal, such as my good friend (a Jew whose relatives were displaced or killed during the Holocaust) with me at the time of my visit, flared up over the lack of religious symbology and the abstract representation of the event. I remember my friend exclaiming, “I at least expected a monument that made me think about the Holocaust!” But, is there a sufficient way to memorialize or represent a moment that surpasses intellectual capacity? In the last sixty years, printed scholarship has tried to grasp the topic; is it not time for visual scholarship to do the same? Further, why do visual images often incite the public on a grander scale than texts? My chief question regarding the monument is this: how was someone like me, quite the hypersensitive about the Holocaust yet learned in contemporary aesthetics, able to bear visiting this monument with curiously little poignant response? Does that make the work a failure in its resonance or success in its provocation, which unavoidably generates discussion about and engagement with the monument and thus the Holocaust? (As a matter of fact, we, along with one other American and four Europeans, heatedly discussed the Denkmal for the next couple of hours.)

Ironically, a German, James Ingo Freed, built the Holocaust Memorial Museum in the United States. In explanation of his design, he said, “The intent of the building is to be a resonator of your own imagery, of your own memory.” The architecture of the museum, like the Berlin monument, is the epitome of abstraction, meant to leave the visitor, who may come from any area of the world, space to pull from his or her own cultural encyclopedia for an individualized understanding. Freed, perhaps contrary to Eisenman, purposely fashioned the architecture to “take you in its grip.” And if the architectural interpretation of the Holocaust serves as such a great stimulus, then what types of problems do curators of the museum’s collections and exhibitions encounter? As the decision-makers about display, organization, and content (specifically the inclusion or exclusion of material), curators in memorial-style museums seem likely to find themselves caught in a Catch-22 due to the sheer volume of relics, the delicacy of the topic, and the incapacity to articulate or encapsulate the Holocaust to the satisfaction of survivors, visitors, or even their own aspirations. Then again, curators assert that exhibitions are not meant to draw a specific conclusion but rather guide audiences through aesthetic sources to let them extract their own, educated conclusions. Perhaps for an experience that defies reason and, therefore, inference, the museum setting becomes the perfect site.

Finding the Middle Ground

Last week in the New York Times, Michael

Kimmelman proffered “Scots Aim Lasers at Landmarks,” a timely article for the pending seminar on the significance of technological innovations for museum operations.  Kimmelman reports that researchers from the Glasgow School of Art intend to visit Mount Rushmore in April 2010 in order to create laser scans and computer models of the site.  The models will be far from ordinary, as they are meticulous, three-dimensional copies that come within a fraction of a millimeter of accurately depicting the original. Far surpassing the precision of photography and film, this technology plays up both nostalgias and forecasts; the design has the ability to recreate images of earlier environments or project developments in urban planning.  In essence, the Scots provide cultural keepers a staggeringly literal, nearly holistic version of entire cities—conserved and reinstated—in virtual realities.  What will technology, such as the kind proposed by the Glasgow team, mean to institutions like the National Building Museum or the Natural History Museum?

In the midst of the article, however, a warning flag appeared.  Kimmelman included a quote from one of the associated architects, Douglas Pritchard, which declared, “Technology doesn’t lie.” In a postmodern world where scholars mull over notions like the hyper-real, the validity of the photographic image, and the ability to capture anything “original,” how did technology manage to escape dissection and dissolution? 

On the opposite end of the discourse is the director of “La Caixa” Foundation Science Museum (Barcelona), Jorge Wagensberg.  Wagensberg champions the “real” objects and cautions against the overuse of technology, which he says potentially jeopardizes a visitor’s trust (a familiar phrase) and problematizes the research of an institution.  He further rationalizes that “there is also the matter of respect for the visitor, who should not have to be constantly asking whether what he is looking at is real or not.”  Essentially, Wagensberg redistributes the question “is it art,” pervasive in the studies of art in- and outside of museums or galleries, to “is that real” for the debates on technology.  Also notable, “La Caixa,” as punctiliously noted by Wagensberg, is a science museum, not a science centre.  He explains the difference between the two institutions: the museum is “a place with static objects,” while the centre is “a museum of phenomena.”  Pause.  Can objects—science or art or anything else creative—found in museums not also be considered phenomena?  Not to mention, his appalling label “static” essentially ousts a great deal of contemporary works like performance art, which seems far from “static.”

Nearly the entirety of the cultural network is responding to the ubiquity of technology: organizations like DREAM (Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials); artists, such as Tony Oursler (check out his really interesting, borderline disturbing work Moving Images); and scholars, for example Lisa Gjedde and Bruno Ingemann (Researching Experiences: Exploring Processual and Experimental Methods in Cultural Analysis) as well as Phyllis Hecht (The Digital Museum).  Undoubtedly, traditional museums will also take steps to remain relevant in today’s technological environment. What progressive moves will be made, however, remains to be seen, but hopefully these moves will lead the museum to a middle ground, one between the ideas of Pritchard and Wagensberg!

The Aesthetic Spread

On Sunday, New York City welcomed the third installment of the three-week long performance art spectacle Performa, a biennial event founded in 2005 by Roselee Goldberg.  Performa 2009 encompasses 130 projects by 170 artists and uses over 75 urban venues—including traditional spaces like galleries and museums as well as non-traditional spaces like offices and nightclubs. Performa, according to Goldberg, serves to decelerate the viewing pace to let audiences “spend more time with an artist’s work.”  By imbuing the art with temporality, Goldberg creates a sense of immediacy that stamps out the habitual—perhaps disadvantageous—idea of “coming back later” to re-review the art.  The acme of Performa is that the festival draws together a number of New York institutions, which transmits community involvement and concern as well as recharges city spaces with creativities.

In the same vein, the museum appears to have also felt the call of the city.  Taking a page from Adam Gopnick, Chus Martinez, chief curator for MACBA, identifies the current outward drive as “the museum as missionary.”  Museums mean to address the issues of society—thus becoming socially relevant—by employing objects alongside “ideas, questions, and activities.”  Correspondingly, Richard Koshalek, director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, maintains that art traverses institutional walls to become purposeful in the external milieu. The director argues that the Hirshhorn needs to “reflect the reality of contemporary art and culture” and hopes to shape a bipartite organization: one that speaks to both its urban and cosmopolitan scenes. Koshalek, like Goldberg, advocates the plugging of unoccupied city spaces with art and involving an assortment of local institutions to form a sort of creative alliance that draws audiences to the arts.   Furthermore, he preaches aesthetic independence, regardless of how provoking in nature, and aims to position his institution virtually in the shadow of the artist.  In effect, the artistry becomes the primary communal as well as the global outreach. I wonder: is it possible to muffle an institution that has survived the ebb and flow of two centuries? 

As another case in point, the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore launched in 1989 as a roving institution, depositing temporary exhibitions in various spaces and collaborating with local organizations.  As Koshalek hopes for the Hirshhorn, the Contemporary Museum successfully negotiated local and international matters, melding the two in the production of site-specific art.  However, ten years later, the Contemporary Museum set aside its peripatetic ways and put down roots in the Mount Vernon district.  Their choice was calculated to “consolidate a core audience for its programming….” While they offer exhibitions like FAX (September 12 – December 20, 2009) that simulate the instance of a museum without walls and a history of an art that passed through—or broke down—walls (mail art), the institution nevertheless has solid, planted walls. Again, I wonder: do people have an innate need to be stable and settled as well as to demarcate what is inside and what is outside?  Do we, in turn, instill the same drive in our institutions, our identity markers?

To Collect, Preserve, and Interpret

In anticipation of visiting the American Association of Museums (AAM) on Friday, a peek at the purpose of the institution seemed appropriate.  The AAM tenders a mission “to enhance the value of museums to their communities through leadership, advocacy, and service.” Since 1906, the association has marshaled American museums to set common benchmarks, to exchange scholarship or information, and to sponsor the entirety of the museum population.  The AAM embraces the gamut of museums—such as art and history museums, zoos, science and technology centers, botanical gardens, and several other types of museums and cultural centers.  Also, the organization proposes definitions of museums and explains the link between them being “a unique contribution to the public by collecting, preserving, and interpreting the things of the world.”  Museums professionals have promoted these three actions for decades (at least), so how are they put into practice today?

Collecting.  MoMA boasts one of the world’s most paramount, comprehensive collections of modern art.  The Barr galleries, for example, display at any given time 400 works from the collection predating 1975, and this number is chosen from a pool of approximately 2,800 pieces.  Regardless of the deep pockets of the collection, Ann Temkin, MoMA’s latest chief curator of painting and sculpture, efforts to continually add flavor and “surprises” in the permanent collection.  They now intermingle media as well as install works like a Louise Bourgeois in place of a tried and true Jackson Pollock as

opener and thus mise en scène for the 1940s to 1970s display.  Temkin explains, “The tradition here has been fluid special exhibitions and the permanent collection is relatively unchanging….  I want a fluidity and constant rhythm of change.”  Additionally, Temkin stripped many of the Abstract Expressionists’ canvases of their wood frames to release their strokes and bared them in a way appropriate to their radicalism.

Yesterday, AMUS students had the terrific opportunity to meet Lucille Spagnuola, the art collector associated with the galleries at Georgetown University.  Her collection is not an example of an AAM museum, of course, but still worth mentioning. The pictures that showed the art hung in her home were absolutely astounding, as her walls were reminiscent of a nineteenth-century museum with floor to ceiling paintings, prints, photographs, and sculptures.  Interestingly (and perhaps to some obviously), she, as a collector, exhibits a similar mindset to a museum professional.  She contemplates the best and most appealing pieces to collect for herself and others, debates the method and position for the display in her home, and questions whether or not to show all her works at once or store some to reduce wall clutter.  While she still abstains from storing in her home because of her inability to part with the works, Mrs. Spagnuola nevertheless feels compelled to share her and her husband’s collection with the public.  Exhibitions of her art in galleries, she explains, gives her an opportunity to see the art as an individual—piece by piece—to refresh her view of and love for the piece.

Preserving.  The labors of MoMA serve also as an exemplar for museum preservation.  In conjunction with the preservation efforts of other institutions like the Deutsches Filmmuseum, the Korean Film Archives, and the World Cinema Foundation, MoMA hosts an annual film festival called “To Save and Project.”  The purpose is to salvage various films—such as John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Lester James Peries’s film on Sri Lanka titled The Changing Village (1964).  Many restored films like Kim Ki-young’s “The Housemaid” inspire contemporary filmmakers and illustrate the significance of film preservation: “a major work reclaimed from the past that points to the future.”  On another note outside of the American museum circuit, the advocacy of preservation has also provided some museums with leverage over others—for example, in the case of the British Museum and the museums (and even the government) in Greece.  The British Museum, holding fast to several Parthenon marbles, previously claimed that the museums in Athens lacked the ability to properly preserve the pieces.  With the building of the new Acropolis Museum, no doubt the art world sits on the edge of its seat in anticipation of how the drama over preservation between the British and Greeks will now unfold.

Interpreting.  In order to enrich art historical studies, Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker designed Smarthistory.org, which launched with podcasts for the Met and MoMA (there seems to be recurring theme in art news, no?) in 2005.  The endeavor has since expanded into comprehensive, organized sets of audios, videos, and images that educate on and enliven art history.  The project has not only permeated museum education but also entered American school systems; for example, in August the Smithsonian American Art Museum hosted the Clarice Smith National Teacher Institute, where the dialogue inevitably shifted to correlative matters of interpretation, types of speech (informal, formal) in audios, and the concretion of knowledge through questions and exchange.  Today, the use of technology for aesthetic interpretation appears almost critical to dispersing knowledge for the coming generations, and applause should be given to museums for not only interpreting art for the public of their individual museums but also actively engaging schools across the nation to advance an understanding of art.  No doubt, methods such as these exhibit tangible evidence of the AAM's productivity and mission.

Should we be concerned?

This past week, Artforum news issued the article “Credit-Rating Agency Gives Arts Groups Strong Marks,” which declared museums, alongside other cultural institutions, as “stable and resilient.”  I found myself bewildered. 

Over the summer, reviews poured in from the Venice Biennale, one of the leading contemporary art fairs in the world, that remarked on the conspicuous infusion of the global economic crisis—such as in the visitor numbers, the level of festivity extravagances, and the tone of the art.  In September, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, as mentioned in a previous post, chose to dedicate the entire museum space to the collection to both hype its holdings and conserve funds.  Around the same time, author of artmarketblog.com Nicholas Forrest mourned the passing of the Art World Magazine.  October ushered in the Frieze Art Fair in London, which revealed a thirty-percent drop in art prices vis-à-vis prices during leveled economies, and this week we read Robin Pogrebin’s article provocatively titled “And Now, an Exhibition from our Sponsor.” Pogrebin reports on the rise of corporate art collections and their design of “ready-made” exhibitions, which appeal particularly to smaller institutions that seem—to speak frankly—desperate in their willingness to sacrifice autonomy to “opportunity.”  In “The Recession and US Museums,” Adrian Ellis states what Pogrebin only alludes: the “little guys” of cultural institutions confront the toughest roads ahead.  Also, Ellis warns of the retreat of wealthy patrons in failing economies and that the full effect of financial markets lag behind nearly five years in art markets (should we brace ourselves for 2013?).

Exactly what, “credit-rating agency,” seems so very “stable”? (I will give them “resilient,” as I must look optimistically in to my own professional crystal ball!)  Even further, who is “stable”?  They, in a magnanimously presumptuous manner, even offer museums a consolation to the constriction of funds:  “They will likely benefit from an increase in regional tourism, a gain in repeat visits, and government stimulus money for education and science programs.”  Government stimulus money! Ha ha, good one “credit-rating agency,” ha ha!  Both museum students and museum professionals devote countless discussion hours and written pages to the conundrum of achieving the recurrent audience.  Good, a bruised economy solves that quandary!  Of course, the source for this information must be taken into consideration: a “credit-agency” is not exactly a sexy establishment today.  However, I found the article to be not only shoddy but also misleading in its gloss over the museum’s current financial woes.

To end on a lighter note, Ellis proffered three bright, constructive ideas to help combat the depressed market: unorthodox lures for audiences rather than showstoppers, increased exploitation of collections, and a global solidarity (of sorts) among the institutions.  The latter materializes with “collection sharing, joint acquisitions, pooling conservation resources, and pooling curatorial appointments.” A global “museum economy” within a globalized, postmodern, hybrid-to-the-nth-degree, poststructuralist world—that idea, for one, appears reasonable. 

Constructive/Construction

Henri Loyrette, the director of the Louvre, has recently felt the heat of his French public, notorious for taking to the streets of Paris to demand changes—such as with political issues—but apparently will have nothing of the sort for their poster-child museum.  In spite of the Louvre’s dramatically increased attendance rate (67%) and boosted endowments since Loyrette’s arrival, the French berate the director for being a government crony as well as for “diluting the Louvre brand at best and cheapening it at worst” with his international wheeling and dealing, which many French feel rings of American behavior.  They are unhappy with his attempts to create a satellite in Lens (France) as well as deals he has struck with other institutions, such as in Abu Dhabi and Atlanta.  Even art historians feel scandalized by what they describe as Loyrette’s “commercial and promotional use of masterpieces of our national heritage.”

First, I was taken aback by the scarcity of American paintings (only three!) in the Louvre! Okay, I am fibbing: I found the paucity more revealing than shocking, since France and the US have plunged into a noticeably frosty relationship in the last few decades.  The Louvre’s collection, seemingly a reflection of the political (maybe even cultural) chasm between the two nations, demonstrates the museum’s knack for simultaneously revealing both contextual and historical conditions.  Further, I give kudos to Loyrette for challenging the nearly moribund state of the Louvre vis-à-vis contemporary artists and prodding the institution to be “more modern.” The notion of “selling-out” to institutions aside, exhibiting in the Louvre offers living artists unimaginable prospects and, let us be honest, swagger, and one cannot blame the director for hoping to lure visitors past showstoppers like Winged Victory (the included picture of the statue shows my personal encounter with this seemingly magnetic force that draws copious crowds).

Also, I am curious as to their distaste for the employment of art for “commercial” and “promotional” purposes. How exactly have the French used their art in the past, if not to advertise French nationality and refinement or to promote French culture and cultivation?  What is the relationship between nations and their art, and does art serve a utilitarian purpose?  If so, exactly how is this different from the late-twentieth, early twenty-first century trend of “branding” museums and employing business tactics?  Let me preface the following discourse with this: I straddle the fence on the issue of museums conducting themselves as businesses; therefore, I appreciate the logic in arguments from both camps. That being said, my challenge to Loyrette’s critics as well as those who wag their fingers at curators or directors is to develop other methods and practices, which they deem acceptable, that augment museums.  Continually hearing bombardments and chastisements becomes frustrating when alternatives are never (or from what I have read thus far) proffered.  Sensibly, if a better, less controversial idea was submitted to museum professionals, then they would undoubtedly employ the idea in a heartbeat to cease the recurring arguments against the operational judgments of their institutions.  This is not to say I support all of Loyrette’s decisions concerning the Louvre, since I quite frankly do not know them all; instead, I suppose this is my campaign for constructive criticism.

Decisions, decisions

Peanut butter and jelly, Simon and Garfunkel, Yin and Yang, Wine and Theory Reading (you know who you are!), Curators and Museum Educators—together they embody the legendary words of Jerry Maguire, “You…complete me.” Latching on to the latter coupling, last week’s seminar with Debora Gaston from NMWA prodded me to keenly consider the interrelationship of the curatorial and the educational affairs in a museum. Both grapple with appealing to wide varieties of audiences, both advocate “non-traditional learning” through material encounters, both vacillate with regard to constructed meanings and environments, and both dwell on the visitor experience. In particular, one question—one posed to curators and educators alike—jotted in my notes leaps out from the page, and with impending exhibition proposals, the question reverberates during turbulent stretch of research for the project. “What do you want people,” the note reads, “to take away from an exhibition?”

My first reaction: oh EVERYTHING! I want them to grasp the theoretical concepts, the aesthetic and didactic meanings, and the historical, contextual, and ongoing narratives while surveying and considering the objects, the design, and the artists! However, such goals in actual exhibition designs—accordingly, the meanings visitors acquire from the exhibition—are, I have found, a bit lofty. Through the investigation and measurement of the profusion of artworks from East Germany (GDR) prior to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, I found that making thematic and temporal fetters, narrowing down images and events, and just simply offering narratives through visual arts actually proves quite the task! The Obamas just showered the White House with works loaned from various Washington museums, one of which is an Ed Ruscha piece that brings to mind my current state: indecisiveness. I cannot help but wonder: what is the art in the White House meant to communicate, if anything at all?

Further, my heart goes out to Jeff Koons, who, in his upcoming stint as guest curator at the New Museum, faces the challenge of sifting through and coherently exhibiting thousands of artworks from the collection of industrialist Dakis Joannou. And how do exhibition giants like MoMA manage to fit and focus fourteen years of Bauhaus (exhibition: Nov. 8 to Jan. 25, 2010) works? The more I apprentice in and learn about the museum, the more I marvel the profession and its undertakings (not to toot our horns our anything!).

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/arts/design/07borrow.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/arts/design/25vogel.html?ref=design

http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2009/10/04/style/t/index.html?ref=magazine#pagewanted=0&pageName=04bauhaus&

Art in the City of Brotherly Love

Has anyone ever written a book about small talk between random people while traveling? If not:  between my encounters with a Dutch politician who lectured me on the need for Americans to depose the Bush administration and the sheer pandemonium I caused with three Scottish men when I innocently questioned, “But isn’t Scottish the same as English?”, I think there may be a fantastic book proposal in my future (Copyright © 20XX Meg!)!  Outwardly a lackluster example in comparison with the Dutch don and Scottish diehards though equally noteworthy for me, I met a businesswoman from Philadelphia in August on a flight back from Mississippi.  We exchanged standard pleasantries, which included her asking if I had visited the art venues in Philadelphia. “Unfortunately, no” was my reply.  Then she proceeded to tell me about the city’s museums, centers, and galleries.  Of course, this meant she sufficiently peaked my curiosity about this “Philadelphia” place.

Fast-forward a month and half: Speaking of quotes in seminar this past week, I love this statement from William Pickens: “Living together is an art.” Indeed it is, and, concurrently, art is capable of fostering collectivity, open-mindedness, and awareness—all valuable qualities for peaceful cohabitation.  With aesthetics and society being so mutually dependent, no wonder museum studies frequently concentrate on the relationship between museums and the community.  In “Mastering Civic Engagement,” Ellen Hirzy writes,

Civic engagement occurs when museum and community intersect…. The museum becomes a center where people gather to meet and converse, a place that celebrates the richness of individual and collective experience, and a participant in collaborative problem solving. It is an active, visible player in civic life, a safe haven, and a trusted incubation of change…. (9)

Wanting to conduct my own case study on civic engagement, I thought back on my informant from the airplane and chose Philadelphia.

Handily, Randy Kennedy wrote the article “Art to Make You Laugh (and Cry)” about Philadelphia last month in the New York Times.  He described the Philadelphian artistic ethos as a “hardy, low-budget, do-it-yourself, do-it-for-love creativeness,” and he showcased several art institutions throughout the city, a great starting point.  First, the Museum of Mourning Art resides in a cemetery and contains a local collection of art as quirky as the name implies: relics from over the last century that together create narratives about death, grief, and remembrance.  The Fabric Workshop and Museum serves to expose locals to both the importance of and trends in contemporary art, and they enjoy a distinctive collection of 25 years of accumulated works from artists who have benefited from the organization’s residency program.  Another venue—Fluxspace—also offers local artists and curators lodging facilities along with exhibition room for “unrestricted and uncensored experimentation,” which they may not find in other areas of Philadelphia.  Then there is the Mural Arts Program, which boasts the designation of “the nation’s largest public arts initiatives of its kind.”  The epitome of an institution implanted in civic engagement, the Program provides work for hundreds of artists, fashions murals to exhibit the varying strains of culture in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods, and binds its aesthetic tasks with tasks of other local institutions striving to thrust community development. Kennedy goes even further with details about the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery and  Pifas (Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study), but his journey through Philadelphia’s art scene only skims the surface!  The city also harbors local artist spaces like Supermarket, Space 1026, Philadelphia Open Studio Tours, and the Artists’ House Gallery.  This list could go on and on, especially if including traditional museums like the acclaimed Philadelphia Museum of Art.

What binds all these institutions together is one pervasive force, and that force is the community.  In 2002, Christine Pfister, the Pentimenti Galleries director, said "I have seen major growth of Philadelphia's art scene during the past 10 years, both in terms of the number of artists and in the number of sales." Subsequently, she notes, "The 

community here is very vibrant." In a New York Times article from 2006, journalist Steven Stern identifies Philadelphia as a relief from “overheated scenes, unwelcoming galleries and the economy of the latest thing” by instead offering a “community of generosity.” Likewise, the aforementioned Kennedy weaves in and out of the Philadelphian art scene, noting the peculiarities of the city scene along the way.  Conclusion? The art scene can denote the joie de vivre in the community, display the character of a community, and organically intertwine with other facets of community life.  Perhaps it is also profitable to view the relationship between communities and their museums in the same way John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking propose to study ‘learning’ in museums: “holistically” (9)

Call me naïve in terms of American art scenes, call me romantic in my reverence for institutions that heavily emphasize community, but I am impressed with Philadelphia.  Now I feel that old familiar itch—the travel bug.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/arts/design/28philly.html?scp=19&sq=museums%20and%20local%20community&st=cse

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HMU/is_7_29/ai_88577422/

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/travel/tmagazine/19liberal.html

Identity Crisis!

Lately I have come under the impression that perhaps museums (by “museums” I mean the professionals) are having an identity crisis. They seem to be in constant defense of their roles in the community and art circles, the message they send to the public, and the manner in which they operate. Not to mention, today’s museums appear plagued by whether they perform in the entertainment industry, function as members of the business sector, or run in the circles of university academia. My question is, if Glenn D. Lowry notes the “mingled character” of the museum and James Cuno illustrates museums as “juxtapositions,” then what, exactly, is so terrible for a museum to juggle them all? (137, 54). Why do museums, as Michael Kimmelman states, have to be at a “crossroad”? (130).

Another German example: With the establishment of the Landesmuseum for Kunst und Kulturgeschicte in Muenster at the turn of the twentieth century, founders hoped to create a place for the gathering and cultivation of local citizens. The Landesmuseum used everything at its disposal to attract visitors and promote the museum and the museum’s collection. Of course, in 1908 this meant books, lectures, leaflets, exhibitions, and member meetings. In the New York Times article “In Lean Times, New Ways to Reach Out” from March 2009, director of Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum Ann Philbin reasons, “We can’t just be about art anymore. Museums are the new community centers.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/arts/artsspecial/19strategies.html?pagewanted=1&ref=artsspecial) With the Landesmuseum in mind, have museums ever been “just about art”? Granted, yoga at MoMA and biking at the Hammer Museum seem a little “out there” in terms of bringing in larger, broader audiences, but at the same time, are they not simply using considerations of their social and cultural contexts and the tools provided by technological advances to promote themselves and, in turn, their collections?

Also, I hate to state the obvious: money makes the doors of a museum stay open. Yes, they are, on the whole, non-profit organizations, but someone still must provide financial backing for the institution to stay afloat, which means drawing in more supporters and sometimes hiring business savvy professionals (Are these typically curators?! I lament the fact that I took no business classes in undergrad!). Did I not just read over the summer how the Guggenheim, one of the giants of the museum world, laid-off nearly twenty percent of its staff? And the Seattle Times just released an article about the new director of the Seattle Art Museum and his pending financial battles. (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2009271160_museum28m.html). Even the Museum of Contemporary Arts sways to the tune of the economy and hopes to find monetary relief by displaying, for the first time, a full house of their own collections rather than bringing in big-budget temporary exhibitions.( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/arts/design/13finkel.html?ref=design) Does the catchphrase “business is business” ever become appropriate for museum operations? (I do not know the answer.) What’s more, why NOT use everything possible—yoga, bicycling, anything!—to make sure that people come to the museum? I think (perhaps naively, perhaps not) that when a person visits, regardless of whether or not their initial motivation is true to the art, that the art they encounter will inexorably draw their attention and ideally their repeated attendance. Ideally.

Side note: I love this trend of museums promoting and exhibiting a greater portion of their own collections! I will never forget the tinge of sadness I felt, about five years ago, at the sight of all the fantastic artworks in the storage spaces of the Birmingham Museum of Art. I kept thinking, “I would take them home to display!”

Trendsetting...

Just last week I read an article in Elle Magazine (guilty pleasure) that highlighted renowned high fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg’s new jewelry collection, inspired by a Latin dance troupe. I found this concept interesting: dance inspiring jewelry: gold, woven, elaborately diamonded. Seemingly, the path of fashion trickles down from the “highs” to the “lows,” from those who can afford Rodeo Drive and Diane von Furstenberg to those who are lucky to afford to purchase fashion knockoffs (me). But aren’t their other times when the low culture, or popular culture, climbs the ladder on to the high? What about trends like grunge wear appearing back on the catwalks in the last season?
Following our reading from Art and its Public, I seem to be on a long, thoughtful quest to discover my position on the topic of “high” and “low” culture and the semantics question as to whether it is even possible to distinguish between the two. While trying to discover the trend among curators and how museums handle the purported divide, I came across several reviews for a 1990 exhibit at MoMA titled “High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture”? (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,971450-1,00.html) According to the reviews, the critics completely balked at the display for two reasons: one, placing “low” art alongside “high” art (perhaps because this blurred distinctions?) and two, exhibiting “low” art in an “elitist” institution like MoMA. Now my question is why have we, as students of and professionals in museums, returned to this question of categorizing high and low culture, and their differences and similarities, almost twenty years later? Even each of the authors of the first three chapters of Art and its Public brought up the topic. As I mentioned in my previous post, the Tate Modern will be exhibiting a show that seems so similar to the 1990 MoMA show, but do I think the Tate Modern will be forced to stare down the same type of criticism? Certainly not if I take our readings in AMUS in to account…

Black and White and Gray Oh My!

I spent the better part of the last two years researching and writing about modernism, particularly as it unfolded in the provinces of late nineteenth-, early twentieth-century Germany (I will, in advance, apologize if Germany becomes my go-to example!). In particular, the observation of late-nineteenth-century Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal concerning the dual quality of modernism has reverberated with me: “Today,” he explained, “two things seem to be modern: the analysis of life and the flight from life.” As von Hofmannsthal suggests, the very nature of artistic modernism was a contradiction: it condemned modernity even as it furthered modernity. Artistic modernism, of course, abhorred the upheaval characteristic of modern life and aimed to remedy the social and political ailments of modernity via reflective, novel artistic productions. This advancing, sanguine quality of modernism, however, fastened the art movement to modernity itself, and rather than negate modern progress, artistic modernism sought to first dissect, then enlighten, and finally reconstitute modernity in artworks. Furthermore, modernists reorganized tradition for modern use, thereby rending tradition as not merely evocative but actually existing.
In the chapter “Museums: Theory, Practice, and Illusion” in Art and its Publics, author Danielle Rice appears to put a similar spin on contemporary issues, especially in relation to museums, by negating the primacy of any one “Zeitgeist” and questioning the creation of an one-size fits-all category for popular culture (90). She explains that to paint a museum black or white (elitist or conformist, high culture or popular culture) is to deny the institution’s propensity to exhibit shades of gray. Instead, Rice optimistically suggests that museums have the ability to appropriate elements of popular culture and to aptly integrate them into the more “traditional” museum culture. In October, the Tate Modern in London will open the “Pop Life: Art in a Material World.” The curators (Jack Bankowsky, Alison M. Gingeras, and Catherine Wood), in recent art forum article (http://artforum.com/inprint/issue=200907&id=23504), explained the exhibits intent to “make the case that to cross the line between commerce and culture is nothing less than to ‘engage with modern life on its own terms.’” For example, by commercializing themselves or their art, artists were not necessarily “selling-out” but rather exploiting and rearranging the structure to suit their own agendas and feed their works, just as the early modernist artists used aspects of modernity as material for reflection, progression, and illumination. Today’s curators are obviously grappling with how to keep their museums popular without being considered “popular.” A really interesting website I came across while searching for ideas for this blog’s content was from the NY ART Beat: Info and Opinion on NY Art and Design called “Young Curators on the Art of New Ideas” (http://www.nyartbeat.com/nyablog/2009/08/young-curators-on-the-art-of-new-ideas/). Karen Archey, one such youngling, shared her idée fixe of “Low Museum.” Her aim is to unravel the curatorial profession by examining the production and function of a curator, especially in terms of contemporary art and in light of popular culture. What seems a superfluous mission becomes (at least to a hopeful curator-in-training) highly necessary in light of such people as Mordy the Blogger (http://popculturecurator.blogspot.com/). Mordy, among weekly listings of music he deems noteworthy, has decided to label himself “Pop Culture Curator,” because he hopes to “forward a vision of Pop Culture, a way for thinking about pieces of music/art/etc.” This statement, of course, precedes the über-pedantic word “list'ize” in the following sentence. “Curator”?!