Catching the end of the Armory and the Whitney Biennial in New York and a wedding in Connecticut.
Next week: I'll be guest-editing DCist for a day.
We are still several weeks out from a decision on the exploratory oil drill applications in the Great Salt Lake near Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, according to Utah Public Lands Policy Coordinator John Harja.
What's that, you say? You're not familiar with the issue? Pick up a copy of The American Prospect and you can read my lead culture piece about the situation—why it matters and how the state will weight the factors that will influence its eventual decision. You can read a few grafs online, but the rest's behind a firewall. (Plus in print you can read my witty photo hed contribution: "Downward Spiral".)
What's that, you say again? You would like to read about Spiral Jetty and oil but you need to familiarize yourself with the tenets of Barack Obama's foreign policy platform? In the very same issue you can read a comprehensive survey of the Obama Doctrine by Washington Independent bomb-thrower, Surge drummer, and roommate/Jezebeau/Top Chef/Re-Upper Spencer Ackerman.
Are you kidding? A Flophouse two-for-one? The news called it crack/ I called it Diet Coke.
Why did I call former Phillips Collection director Jay Gates "a hero" in 2008 when I wrote just last summer that "it's a somewhat mixed legacy that Gates leaves as he resigns from his position with the institution"?
That's not exactly how one reader put the question to me. A reader raised some skeptical points in response to my high praise for Gates in this City Paper review on "Degas to Deibenkorn: The Phillips Collects", when I know full well that Gates made decisions that threatened the integrity of the institution? Here's what I wrote:
"Degas to Diebenkorn" is of a piece with other changes over the last few years at the red brick house on 21st Street. The Phillips celebrated a dramatic expansion in 2005 that added five stories and 3,000 square feet of gallery and studio space. That same year, it closed a $29 million capital campaign—its first ever—some $2 million over its target and two years ahead of schedule. Last year's announcement that director Jay Gates would retire sees the Phillips Collection's fifth director departing as a hero.But here's what I had to say for the Washington Post Express at the time, back when the director resigned:
JAY GATES RAISED THE ROOF of the Phillips Collection, in a literal sense: The director oversaw the museum's 30,000–square–foot expansion, completed last year. But Gates also threw open the doors of the venerable collection by lending works to casinos on the Vegas strip.It's not that I changed my mind or forgot that Gates made some poor decisions as director. For certain, the buoyant state that the Phillips enjoys today does not excuse Gates's decision to strike an arrangement with the Bellagio at the risk of injuring Duncan Phillips's original vision or sacrificing the integrity of the institution by renting out curatorial decisions about the works.What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas. The decision to lend principal works from the collection to the Bellagio in 2000 stunned observers, who thought that Gates' decision indicated that the museum was straying too far into the commercial realm. It's hardly that casinos are seedy and historic Dupont Circle townhouses aren't; it's that casinos don't offer the license to hang whatever piece of art that belongs, whereas museums do (or ought to).
[ . . . ]
So it's a somewhat mixed legacy that Gates leaves as he resigns from his position with the institution.
Nevertheless, his legacy is a positive one. Dorothy Kosinski begins her tenure as director with a vastly larger museum, strong budgetary footing, and most importantly, an institution whose reputation has withstood some rocky moments.
I might have curbed my enthusiasm. But, between between villain and hero, Gates belongs in the latter camp. There are other institutions that have underwent expansions, capital campaigns, and renovations and come out less secure and self-sure for it.
Tim Conlon @ Arlington Arts Center.
There's conversations here and here about a City Paper review I wrote on "Collectors Select" at Arlington Arts Center. Specifically, the chatter's about the parts that deal with Philippa Hughes and Tim Conlon (and counting). Here's what I wrote:
[Daniel] Lavinas shows [the work of León Ferrari] without pretension: His biggest intervention is to have the gallery painted a deep shade of cherry-lambic red to match the heliographs. Philippa Hughes went further. The least experienced collector in the group, Hughes invited some graffiti artists—Tim Conlon, Bryan Conner, RAMS, and the Soviet—to tag her room. The intervention is the work here. But Hughes is bursting through a door that's been open for nearly three decades. There's still room for innovation in graffiti, but graffiti in a room isn't innovative alone (even if it shares the room with floor-to-ceiling Tiffany windows, as it does here). Context notwithstanding, the work by Conlon (which takes up most of the room) is dull in any formal sense. As tags, they're not particularly intricate or witty; as abstraction, they don't offer much.I encourage you to "read the whole thing" because that's what we writers always say, but also because my estimation of Hughes's show fits in against my estimation of the other exhibits. There are several curating strategies on display, some more successful than others, and that's not something to ignore when the shows are set in contradistinction to one another.
The entire show consists of six smaller shows—it's a federal showcase of smaller independent showcases. Hughes's room might be more independent than the rest, though. For example, she's hosting "Wreckfast @ Tiffany's", a closing party for her room. In a sense, that adds as much context to consider as the Tiffany glass does. If her argument is that the show succeeds because the audience it's designed to attract will benefit from it, then you get into questions about whether and to what extent young, hip, gallery-party attendees will be exposed already to the notion of graffiti in a gallery—or, on the other hand, whether they'll be prepared to accept that.
Hughes is staking a Roberta Smith claim, that there is a responsibility to increase visual literacy. (I put Roberta Smith on a continuum with Peter Schjeldahl, who says if people don't like art, bully for them. And those two are talking about art criticism and its purpose, of course, but let's project laterally to curating.) I don't believe that a work's instrumental value to the audience merits its inclusion in a show.
One way or the other it's a context-driven piece. I think, though, that the intended context isn't the only context that the critic needs to consider. On the other hand, Cudlin says, "Complaining that it isn't succeeding at something it doesn't set out to do just isn't productive."
But I'm on the verge of writing ex ante about the show and I don't want to do that. It's odd to have this public conversation with the show's curator and administrator—well, I'll back up and say it's novel, not odd. Transparency is for the best in criticism, particularly in new media, and I do as much (I hope) to put the negative feedback I receive out there as I do to put my work out there.
I was totally won over by one of the bands who played the show with us last night: Make a Rising, which sounded live like a clarinet-driven Usaisamonster, though the recordings sound a lot less math-y. Plus, they all were wearing sparkly shirts and furry costumes.
Is that The Roches I detect sampled at the beginning of "Sneffels Yokul"? The band doesn't include any women members (sexists) and the women voices on that chorus certainly sounds like The Roches do on Phillip Glass's Songs From Liquid Days.
It turns out that Pulse London and Photo-London have canceled their upcoming fairs. This bit from Art Info gave me a chill: "Organizers [of Photo-London] say they are restructuring and hope to bring back a more competitive offering in 2009 but a representative for the fair also told the British Journal of Photography that due to economic troubles in the United States only one U.S. gallery had signed up for 2008 and it was 'a bit ridiculous to have an international fair without the Americans.'"
Improvised and scripted jazz-funeral sounds at the Velvet Lounge on U Street, tonight. We're playing with one other band, but I don't know whom or when. Ten's a safe bet. The photo's by Drew McDermott.
UPDATE: I remembered! We're playing with Philadelphia's Make a Rising.
No one watches them to the end, of course, so you would hardly know the answer, but revealed deep in the credits to the Atlantic's "Table" segments is the name of the band responsible for the theme: My Morning Jacket. Sure enough, there on the band's MySpace page is a live version of "Gideon" that brings to mind images of Yglesias, McArdle, Douthat, and Ambinder and their brain trust on the windswept plains.
I tease; it is in fact a great feature, and my world will be much improved when the Atlantic finds a way for the show to be loaded to my iPod, so I can watch when I'm on the train, at the gym, and so on.
Homeward bound today. Catch up on some Southby blogging if you miss me.
I'd hazard that all the comments left on Chipotle Mexican Grill's Facebook page (what a ridiculous world) are the product of astroturfing, were it not for a note left by friend and fellow SXSW attendee Reihan Salam. He is quite real and, apparently, quite fond of Chipotle. That's okay, but for Facebook's sake it's probably bad that companies are joining Facebook to advertise direct-virally to consumers rather than advertising on Facebook, a viral network program.
Now to Dallas, then to the District. I have eaten well more than a dozen enchiladas at this point.
Southby blogging can be found here. In the first edition, I run into folks from the District as well as Dan Grant, a candidate for Congress who found some favor among some friends of mine whose word you can trust.
Tomorrow you should be reading about my exciting adventures seeing Pterodactyl, Parts & Labor, the Russian Futurists, Paper Rad, Yeasayer, and other sundry groups but alas, instead, I'm on my friend's couch watching Species because my stomach is killing me. You could read my thoughts about Species or you could check out rock photography by my pal Eric Uhlir, whose stomach would seem to be in better shape.
Species: Not That Great a Movie. —End—
On travel to Texas, where I'll be writing a SXSW blog for Campus Progress. More details (and a URL) soon; the festival begins Wednesday. Lykke Li, I'm looking for you.
You may have seen that my housemates, friends, and I graced page 1 of the Sunday Styles in today's NYT. Woo! Naturally no editor could resist running Wreck in the paper of record.
Now, go buy a copy of Yglesias's forthcoming book, Heads in the Sand, a physical copy of which is now floating around our house.
I'm perplexed by this line by Dana Goldstein: "Power's comments promoted an awful stereotype of a female leader as someone who is inhumanly calculating, with no core beliefs."
Whatever you think about Power or the brouhaha over her comments, "monster" isn't a gendered criticism, is it? I suppose that Power was trying to impress (albeit off the record) that Clinton is inhumanly calculating, with no core beliefs. But I don't think that has anything to do with Clinton being a woman.
In a series of posts (here, here, and here) Tyler Green examines the trial balloon floated by the Albright-Knox in February—that is, the museum's aspirational pledge to build a 50,000–square-foot expansion. I'm not quite sure that I fully understand what he means by one comment:
[M]useum directors should stop pointing to tourism as a rationale for whatever they do. A museum's most important audience is is its hometown crowd.but I think I disagree in this case. If the Albright-Knox is only able to commit to this expansion by attracting public support, as seems both perfectly plausible given the circumstances and straightforwardly implied by A-K director Louis Grachos, then increasing the Albright-Knox's profile as a destination is exactly what the museum will need to do to attract that support.
Rather, I don't disagree with Green. I think there isn't necessarily a conflict here. Is the Albright-Knox's most important audience its hometown crowd? Sure. Does the museum do a disservice to the hometown crowd by expanding in a way that's sure to draw eyes from outside Buffalo? No, not necessarily. Whatever decision it comes to in re: campus expansion, architect or starchitect, etc., the A-K will need to brand that decision as one that's going to bring jobs and eyeballs and expand tax revenue, in order to receive the sort of support (e.g., tax-increment financing) that has proved a boon to institutions whose trustees can't go it alone.
I would think that the satellite option might have been more appealing to state and local government, actually: The A-K brand name grows in two areas of Buffalo. But the powers that be say no. I expect, like Green, then, that the museum will hang its case on the strength of its expansion design. Hey, it's not necessarily a bad thing.
The Re-Up Gang on The Wire season 5, through the penultimate episode. We'll have one more dialog after the final ep, though I'll be in Texas at that time and I'm not sure what my Wire-watching status will be.
UPDATE: One aspect of the show that should be dealt with in greater detail than an email forum encourages is the question it has raised about realism and verisimilitude in literature and where The Wire falls on both accounts. It seems to me (based in part on comments to previous episodes of our WireTAP dialog) is that complaints that this season has not been realistic have been taken to mean that the show is not Realist in a formalist sense. It isn't and clearly never was.
Snoop's death is a good example of the fantasy that informs the show. "Deserve ain't got nothing to do with it" is borrowed from the final showdown scene in Unforgiven between Gene Hackman and Clint Eastwood. Hackman protests that he doesn't deserve to die, that he was building a house—an appeal to humanity and the potential within even monsters. The final confrontation between Michael and Snoop is an inversion of those values: Michael was never one of them, humanity has nothing to do with the work that they do.
Certainly, it was one of the finest interactions in the season if not the whole show. It wasn't Realist by any stretch but it was realistic based on what we know about the characters. Too much of this season, though, has traded faithfulness to the characters for the fantastical and (as Kay protests in the latest WireTAP) the transactional. It's when basic verisimilitude breaks down that the fantasy stuff, like Omar's suspenseful, death-defying cliffhanger, takes on a special and unfortunate significance. Whereas in the context of a show whose characters' motives are grounded and readable, the departures and genre play that characters like Omar represents are satisfying, they seem gratuitous and overblown when the rest of the show isn't working.
Yes, $2,500 is quite a lot to pay for a private tour of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum with Michael Govan. But it's an entire order of magnitude lowerr than what trustees paid for tickets to the BCAM opening ($25,000).
Thinking more on Cudlin's post: At Art Basel Miami in December, I found a great deal of figurative and representative painting, as well as some painting in installation and other noncanvas formats. There was less abstract work to be found. What I did see tended to be ordered and mannered, featuring some of the same compositional strategies Cudlin highlights but with markmaking imported from a few external realms—comic illustration, architecture, psychedelia. There is almost no unanticipated gesture in these abstractions: They are meticulously planned and executed.
Some of the works that I snapped (forgive the poor image quality):
Mark Chariker @ Rhys
Aaron Noble @ Pavel Zoubok
William Swanson @ DCKT
Jacob Magraw-Mickelson @ Richard Heller
Jeffry Cudlin skewers the dominant mode with a name-that-painter quiz, featuring only paintings done in the familiar, "globalized" abstract style. I can name with confidence 9 of his 14 examples.
Courtesy Ross Douthat, Noah Millman offers a fictional debate between the candidates characterizing their respective "moral claims" to the convention for those who haven't been playing extremely close attention to the contest between Clinton and Obama. Those who have, however, may find the let-the-best-candidate-win spirit ultimately lacking in verisimilitude. Clinton threatened to sue the Texas Democratic Party when it seemed that Obama would overtake her. The Clinton campaign even went so far as to float a trial balloon about appealing to pledged delegates.
Millman's exercise is more useful in explaining the cases put forward by the candidates' respective supporters. The candidates themselves have not made their cases so straightforwardly—actually, one of the candidates has not. Which is fine; in fact, one almost hears chagrin in Obama's voice when he says that he won't go negative, and while it isn't negative campaigning per se to call for Clinton to release her tax records it is certainly harder ball than he's played so far.
With luck the rest of the primary won't see the candidates straying much further from Millman playing-nice into accusations (and soundbytes) that will prove to haunt the candidate in the general. But that's just wishful thinking—of course Clinton will go harder and nastier, party be damned.
Rem Koolhauas intends to build the Death Star in Abu Dhabi Dubai.
Elsewhere Kyle MacMillan in the Denver Post has the design for the new Clyfford Still Museum, a brick of a building by Brad Cloepfil.
Barack Obama is the sole candidate to provide a white paper on the arts. His position proves lacking in specifics and overly focused on education. To this end, the paper recommends that once elected President, Obama will:
Obama's further positions more directly address the role of arts in his vision for the nation. Specifically, as President, Obama will:
The last item in the paper, however, gets specific:
Free of charge I'll list two more concrete goals that come to mind—one that might be achieved simply with the President's support and one that represents a more ambitious charge:
These changes have essentially put an end to partial giving over the last two years. As President, Obama should re-incentivize this important mechanism for placing private art in the public trust.
A Department of Culture would likely aggregate responsibilities now held by the Department of State and the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. It would be much more than the sum of its parts, a signal to the nation's citizens and peers. With the creation of a Department of Culture, the President could announce an ambitious plan to correct a serious oversight: the lack of Arabic speakers ready, able, or willing to work in government. A Department of Culture, created and endowed by a President with a serious approach to global conversation, could start to do the job that Karen Hughes by her lonesome couldn't do.
Ombudsman Deborah Howell tells me that she agrees with a disapproving note I sounded about Charlotte Allen's Washington Post article and that her own item on the subject will appear on Sunday. It sounds like she will also ask John Pomfret et al. to take responsibility for the piece.
In re: Allen's article, Kieran Healy offers that playing against type is a market niche:
When associations with some classification are strongly polarized, there'll be more anger and fighting, but also more incentive to play against type. And of course these processes take place within nested contexts, which complicates the dynamic. But the bottom line is that cross-cutting social categories will be filled with people happy to bear the intersection as an identity, and probably also to spend most of their time talking about it: hence black conservatives, marxist economists, Log-Cabin Republicans, ex-gay fundamentalists, pacifist Marines, libertarian environmentalists, pro-life Democrats, or what have you.Playing-against-type articles are great for newspapers: they draw eyeballs. PATs allow editors to telegraph to one set of readers that they run a truly liberal paper, one that encompasses many viewpoints and isn't afraid to interrogate uncomfortable truths. At the same time PATs allow editors to telegraph to another set of readers that they are on their side.
This does no one any service. Liberal readers don't like to read extremely wrong, offensive articles, whereas people who hold extremely wrong, offensive beliefs (such as the notion that women are stupid—not, by the by, poorly equipped relatively to perform spatial reasoning tasks but just plain pluck-dumb stupid) do not represent a sizable segment of the reading population. In order to preserve their liberal readership, the paper's editors must walk back on the article in clever ways, which, I guess, the troglodyte readership isn't supposed to notice. Which the troglodyte readership is happy to do, since the troglodyte readership is totally imaginary in the first place.
If the Washington Post would like to find more writers who, like Charlotte Allen, believe that women are stupid but better off for it because they are pretty, there are some weather-beaten branches of my family tree that are abloom with opinion journalists. What a spring the Washington Post will know!
However, if the Washington Post intends to appeal to these flowers by publishing Allen's piece as a "balance" to stories in which women are competent and successful, the plan won't bear fruit. The buds to whom I refer don't read.
Fall in love with Ann Althouse all over again. Sheesh.
