Guggenheim, Workers, Protest

Here is a report on a protest yesterday at Guggenheim NYC about the labor standards in the construction of the new Abu Dhabi branch of the museum. Background on the matter are here and here in a recent argument at The New York Times. I must say, if the strongest defense the museum director can muster is that the living and working condition for construction laborers on the project "are the best in the region," the Guggenheim occupies extremely dubious ground.

Come to Rochester - Learn to Approach Photography in Thoroughly Conventionalized Ways

The University of Rochester and George Eastman House Announce Joint Master's Degree Program in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management

This is one of the headlines from the UR daily e-noticeboard this morning. The story is here. Despite the fact that I have been teaching a course on and writing about the politics of photography for half a dozen years, I have not been involved in any way. So much for interdisciplinary initiatives, I suppose. The real irony, however, is that while the  program (as described) may be in keeping with fundamental views in the humanities about photographs as objects which have meaning, it really is contributing to shaping the world in ways that conform to just that theoretical approach. My own views are that that is precisely the wrong way to think about photography. Rather than worrying incessantly about semantics of photographs, it would be more fruitful to focus on pragmatics, on the ways we (a deliberately ambiguous term) use photography and the purposes for which we do so. Recently, I invoked Rancière's essay "The Intolerable Image" which I think underscores pretty much just that point. And today in my class we read and discussed John Berger's 1978 essay "The Uses of Photography" which (I think) anticipates Rancière's argument in central ways.  Berger's essay is dedicated to Susan Sontag who, as much as anyone I suppose, is responsible for the view that thinking about photography (a technology for doing things) reduces to talking about photographs (objects and their characteristics). The new UR program is another step in making the world conform to Sontag's vision.

Digest ~ Political Economy

The Guardian has run a couple of pieces on discontent with shortcomings of standard economics and movements for 'alternative' approaches lately - see here and here. I can understand some of the frustration, but think the conclusion of rejecting standard technologies is misplaced. Exhibit #1 - The Guardian also just ran this piece by Saez and Piketty arguing for very progressive policies but relying for its analysis on very standard mathematical techniques.

According to this story in The New York Times, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has signed a new lease giving the museum the prerogative to set admissions fees. Admission currently is governed by 'recommended' fees that leave actual amounts paid by visitors up to the visitors themselves. While the institution claims it has no plans to alter the admissions policy, any move to increased fees would fall hardest on those least able to pay.

And here at Creative Time you can find this brief interview with Rebecca Solnit focusing on art and the political economy of American cities.

Finally, this pointed essay from Jacobin on the ironic amnesia that afflicted Barack Obama when he asked whether people who wanted a raise could simply shut down the company if the boss refused.

Very, Very Depressing News - MOMA Acquires Occupy Wall Street Art

"Art patronage has always been a kind of money-laundering, a pretty public face for fortunes made in uglier ways." ~ Rebecca Solnit 

General Strike Match (2012). Molly Crabapple/John Leavitt/Melissa Dowell.

In a truly depressing development, The Guardian reports that the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) has acquired a collection of posters and prints from the Occupy movement. The works had been part of a collection at Occuprint.

Several things make this depressing. Most obviously, the posters not only have now been converted into private property but that this has happened in an 'of course,' 'isn't that great' sort of way.  But I think this acquisition is symptomatic of the absence of just the sort of public space and just the sort of alternative institutional frameworks that - in large measure - the occupiers hoped to establish. It underscores both the continuing importance of the themes OWS articulated and it's lack of immediate impact.

Moreover, it is especially ironic - given some initiatives among the Occupiers themselves - that MOMA is absorbing the collection. This is as staid an institution as there is in NYC. It is the epitome of the "money laundering" function that cultural institutions of play for the wealthy. Posters and prints generated out of a movement of, for and by the 99% are being squirreled away by an institution whose history is, I suspect, intimately entangled with the 1%.

Finally, there are alternatives. Those alternatives are not perfect. Nor are they entirely inspiring in political terms. But they do not - as artist Molly Crabapple disingenuously suggested to The Guardian reporter - come down to selling off the collection to Morgan Stanley or some other corporate entity for display "in their lobby." I am hardly an expert on such matters. But it took me nearly no time to think of a counterexample to that rationalization. Consider ACT UP - a more or less direct political predecessor of the Occupiers. The ACT UP - NY archives went to the New York Public Library. The NYPL is a large cultural institution. But it is public, not private. And it is, I suspect, considerably less entangled with the monied elites than is MOMA. And it surely would look waaay(!)  less impressive to all those denizens of the art world who care about such things, for Ms. Crabapple to list on her c.v. that her work is in the collection of the NYPL than to note that it is in the collection at MOMA!

Marina Abramović ~ Latter Day P.T. Barnum

I have posted here numerous times on the fatuous Marina Abramović. NPR recently ran this too credulous interview with her in which she simply reinforced my view that she is full of it. That is not really the point here. Instead, I recommend this essay on the exploitative approach she takes to those who participate in her projects. I wonder how many of the repeat customers at her much heralded MOMA sit-in a couple of years back were paid paltry sums to fabricate "authentic" emotional responses to her gaze?

DIA Statement on Proposed Sale of Its Collection

"The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) has learned that Christie’s, at the request of the Emergency Manager, plans to proceed with a valuation of the DIA collection, and we will be cooperating completely in that process. However, we continue to believe there is no reason to value the collection as the Attorney General has made clear that the art is held in charitable trust and cannot be sold as part of a bankruptcy proceeding. We applaud the EM's focus on rebuilding the City, but would point out that he undercuts that core goal by jeopardizing Detroit's most important cultural institution.

In addition, recent moves in Oakland and Macomb counties to invalidate the tri-county millage if art is sold virtually ensure that any forced sale of art would precipitate the rapid demise of the DIA. Removing $23 million in annual operating funds – nearly 75% of the museum’s operating budget – and violating the trust of donors and supporters would cripple the museum, putting an additional financial burden on our already struggling city. The DIA has long been doing business without City of Detroit operating support; any move that compromises its financial stability will endanger the museum and further challenge the City’s future."

That is the statement issued today by DIA in response to the ongoing and extremely wrongheaded effort to sell off its collection to satisfy bond holders and avoid placing financial responsibility where it squarely resides - on political and economic elits and their destructive, self-defeating decisions over several decades. There is nothing much to add.

Democracy & the Arts in Detroit

 Twin Tornadoes (1990) © Gilda Snowden and DIA.

For many years I've pretty regularly made special trips to the Detroit Institute of the Arts from my teaching gig in Ann Arbor. Not only is it egregiously anti-democratic to have Detroit under the thumb of an appointed emergency manager, but this dispute over whether the City can sell the collection at the DIA to pay off debt suggests just why anyone in that position is bound to have a myopic view of what is "good" for the City. Selling off art is an inestimably bad idea.

Broad Interference

Philanthropy is a dangerous thing. Donors often hope to control their "gifts" with what turn out to be dire consequences for recipients. It is the cost of grovelling for dollars. Here  is a report from The Guardian on the ongoing conflict at the MOCA in Los Angeles, where the inimitable Eli Broad apparently has managed to make a matching gift - along with his dough he has given a large dollop of interference with the way the museum operates. Can cultural institutions (including Universities) ever manage to tell the rich guys to back off? In this case, Broad is no doubt enjoying massive tax benefits as he drives the museum into the ditch.

Censorship and Self-Censorship at the National Portrait Gallery

"For better or worse, the government has made the
decision to fund art. That decision has been vigorously
debated over the past 30 years, and the argument
continues today. But once the decision is taken, does
anyone believe our politicians should be curating the
museums, dictating what is and isn't art?"

The folks over at The Economist pose the question very well in this story. They are addressing the latest (successful) effort by American Christian fundamentalists (in this case Catholics) to dictate cultural standards that comport with their own parochial sensibilities. It is difficult to know who to dislike more in this episode, the offended Christians and the censorious politicos or the craven curator seeking to rationalize his cowardly behavior.

Museums as Money Laundering Institutions

"Art patronage has always been a kind of money-laundering,

a pretty public face for fortunes made in uglier ways."

~ Rebecca Solnit

There seems to be a dust up in London over the fact that the Tate Museum receives - and has for decades - large sums of money from British Petroleum. A longish list of art world denizens published this letter in The Guardian yesterday protesting the arrangement. The missive, and accompanying stories about protests at BP funding at Tate Britain and National Portrait Gallery, has promoted this robust retort supporting BP.

I am not sure how such things work in the UK, but here in the US companies get tax write-offs for charitable contributions. There may be PR benefits as well. (My view is that you ought to be able to either take the tax credit or have your name publicized, but not both.) And I have little doubt that 'not offending the sponsors' works its way, insidiously and unself-consciously into the minds of curators and artists.

The questions I have for the letter writers (whose complaints about corporate funding I largely endorse) is this: How do you differentiate clean from dirty when it comes to vast sums of wealth? Sure oil companies are an easy target. But where do you think all those wealthy patrons who buy your product (whether that be art, writing, labor, expertise, creativity, vision, or whatever) for galleries, magazines, catalogs, museums, concert halls, and so forth got their money? Do you think the funding that pays your rent is sanitized in some way?

On this matter I live in a glass house. I work at a University that gets funding and does business with all sorts of disreputable entities. All the Colleges and Universities where I studied keep similarly sketchy company. So, I am in the same boat. I think we need to dispense with the moralism. What precisely is the alternative you propose? Government funding for the arts? Some sort of list of 'socially responsible' patrons? (How, in constructing such a list, do we decide which sins are the most egregious?) The art world (and the intellectual world more generally) is, let's face it thoroughly infused with commercial and political pressures. What is the alternative you are proposing?
__________
P.S.: I know that Solnit is among the signatories to the letter.

Looting, Politics and 'Art'

"Most European museums are, among other things, memorials to the rise of nationalism and imperialism. Every capital must have its own museum of painting, sculpture, etc., devoted in part to exhibiting the greatness of its artistic past, and, in other part, to exhibiting loot gathered by its monarchs in conquest of other nations. . . . They testify to the connection between the modern segregation of art and nationalism and militarism." ~ John Dewey (1934)

In The New York Times today is this story confirming both Dewey's observation and the general failure of art critics to get it. The critic - in this instance Michael Kimmelman - sides with the imperialists in the case of the Elgin marbles, possessed by the British but claimed by the Greeks. In part, he adopts a post-modern view of "culture" as freely circulating and so devoid of any "authentic" locus. But, ultimately, that is simply scaffolding for his claim that the British were able to take the marbles and so should keep them. The Greeks, he thinks are simply playing symbolic politics: "The Greeks argue for proximity, not authenticity. Their case has always been more abstract, not strictly about restoration but about historical reparations, pride and justice. It is more nationalistic and symbolic."

I think that claims of authenticity are moot - not for post-modern reasons, but because there never was any authentic possession to which one or another group might lay claim. In other words it is not that authenticity has been superseded but that it has always been specious, a rationalization for power and deception (including self-deception). Yet there is a good amount of rationalizing self-deception going on in Kimmelman's essay. I leave to one side his presumption that culture generally and art specifically constitute clearly bounded, discrete domains and, therefore, afford a terrain on which disengaged critics can ply their trade. I am more concerned here with the broader political implications of Kimmelman's position. Here is another juicy bit:

"Over the centuries, meanwhile, bits and pieces of the Parthenon have ended up in six different countries, in the way that countless altars and other works of art have been split up and dispersed among private collectors and museums here and there. To the Greeks the Parthenon marbles may be a singular cause, but they’re like plenty of other works that have been broken up and disseminated. The effect of this vandalism on the education and enlightenment of people in all the various places where the dismembered works have landed has been in many ways democratizing.

That’s not an excuse for looting. It’s simply to recognize that art, differently presented, abridged, whatever, can speak in myriad contexts. It’s resilient and spreads knowledge and sympathy across borders. Ripped from its origins, it loses one set of meanings, to gain others.

Laws today fortunately prevent pillaging sites like the Acropolis. But they stop short of demanding that every chopped-up altar by Rubens, Fra Angelico or whomever now be pieced together and returned to the churches and families and institutions for which they were first intended. For better and worse, history moves on"

Here the incoherence of Kimmelman's position is clear. He rightly speaks of the sorts of "vandalism" and "looting" that have been central to colonial enterprises, excusing them even as he protests that he does not. And he celebrates the fact that such actions now are legally proscribed. In the end he adopts a sort of let by-gones be by-gones stance. History after all does move on!

Yet, Kimmelman also hints at a sort of consequentialist approach to the whole matter when he suggests that the display of pillaged art works has been "democratizing" and that it has "spreads knowledge and sympathy across borders." If we want to consider consequences - and I think that is precisely what we ought to consider - then we ought to ask what precisely is the message being sent if the British are allowed to retain the marbles (or if other countries in possession of looted works are allowed to retain them in the face of legitimate claims). The answer, it seems to me, is this: the powerful and the rich can do what they please; the claims of justice are irrelevant or, at best, such claims trade upon the good graces of the rich and powerful. I presume, of course, that it is possible to sort out how to do justice in various cases and that it is possible to differentiate legitimate claims from those that are not. Those are difficult matters. But the underlying claim remains sound - we should look at consequences and when we do we should look at how the consequences impact common understandings of justice. The latter surely do not sanction simply allowing the rich and powerful to get way with whatever they have managed to get way with thus far.

Local ~ Eastman Online

I noticed this brief story in the City Newspaper this week about how the George Eastman House has joined a consortium of other photo institutions in sharing digitized images on Flickr in the guise of a project called The Commons. I am sure this is a big step and given the privatization of massive numbers of images, a salutary one. But according to the report, GEH has uploaded 219 images out of their collection of 140K digitized images. The total GEH collection includes 400K images.

Art of Jazz 2007-2008

Unlike Rochester, where exhibitions and programming at the Memorial Art Gallery rarely rise above the insipid, Buffalo has the terrific Albright-Knox Gallery. Among the things that AK does every year is host the Art of Jazz series. While the program is not uniformly interesting, it tends to book interesting performers and sometimes, brings truly wonderful folks to the area.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation ...

Photo © Ed Alcock/ New York Times

I went with several friends to see the masterpieces at the Louvre. And when I couldn't actually see the paintings, I took photos so I could look at them on my lap top during the long flight home.

On Not Memorializing the Holocaust

Oskar Schindler (centre) with some of his Jewish
workers at the Krakow enamel factory, c1943

"Art galleries have been created in abattoirs and Las Vegas hotels; why not in a Krakow factory that played a part in one man's attempt to resist the worst crime in history? The factory once owned by Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who used Jews as slave labourers in order to save them from death in the Holocaust, is today an empty shell. It hasn't escaped the city's notice that exactly this kind of industrial space has proved a highly effective and popular setting for contemporary art.

Why not create Krakow's Tate Modern here? Some are shocked at the very thought. But it is only offensive if you want to embalm the past in glowing sepia tones. Modern art is unsettling, as seems right in such a place. From Anselm Kiefer's history-laden painted fields to Damien Hirst's mortal thoughts, the best art of today resonates with the terrors of modern times.Krakow should create a modern gallery - rather than a Holocaust museum - in Schindler's factory because this would end today's kitsch memory cult where it began. The film Schindler's List, with its incredibly disrespectful scene of people being led into the showers and surviving, inaugurated a strange cultural period in which memory "inspires" and "moves" popular culture while high art luxuriates in memorials. Bland and ineffective, tearful and self-congratulatory, the culture of memory is epitomised by the story of Schindler, which manages to give the Holocaust an upbeat ending. In reality an occasional good person like Schindler created no more than a hair's width of light at the top of an unfathomable well of suffering. A contemporary art gallery will preserve Schindler's factory - the stuff of history - without turning it into a trite monument. It will provoke thought, instead of mere sentiment. Thought is what we need now.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

This is a blog post by Jonathan Jones over at The Guardian this past week that I think is quite to the point - at least about memorials. I come from Western Massachusetts and have been several times to the newish MassMOCA in North Adams. The museum actually occupies an old factory/warehouse complex and could serve as a fine example both in terms of architecture and content/programming. Other obvious examples for the Krakow site are Dia: Beacon or the PS1 complex in Long Island City.

All that said, I am not a great fan of museums - even good ones such as MassMOCA & PS1 - insofar as they typically absorb and then display "art world" priorities that set art apart from life and experience too starkly.