Scheduling two years out.

Apparently pictures of AARP Rock and Rollers isn't populist enough in Brooklyn? Who knew?

Even if No sleep till... used a guitar hook, maybe 50's rock photos should be considered outside the normal populist crap for NY. I know that the white hipsters listen to... whatever the hell that is, but if you had put together an early hip hop photography show, I think it would have done better and fewer competing institutions could say that they got there first.

Essentializing the Brooklyn audience aside, museums are always brooding about what to put up 2 years before we get to make fun of them. Look to the successful shows from this article and you'd probably not want to drop your money and schedule a show about religion in contemporary art or the Indian highway system if you are hemorrhaging viewers. You might alienate someone.

But the thing is, that if the NYT numbers are correct, you are reaching 2.4 times the number of viewers over all and 2.3 times the numbers daily with Leibovitz and Mueck (love to see the numbers separately for each artist, but oh well) than you are with RnR photography exhibit. Also, as Robert Storr says, the audience of the unholy combination of Leivovitz and Mueck is more likely to return to see art, than some rock bros or mid-life crisis boomers are to return to see Kiki Smith or the upcoming Warhol.

You have to keep your museum focused on something but there is space for being open to wide programing. I love old fashioned encyclopedic institutions like the MFA Boston or Philadelphia Museum of Art. The MFA can afford to have a popular show of Egyptian artifacts as it doesn't get in the way of them having a Dürer, Harry Callahan, Toulouse-Lautrec, and a show about the women in Firdawsi's Shahnama simultaneously. Philly had up mediocre Picasso show, but was balanced with a Bruce Nauman installation and Jennifer Levonian, Martha Colburn, Joshua Mosley's work.

You have to keep your popular but questionable shows balanced with your quietly worthy shows.

I'd ask Brooklyn to consider their mission statement:

The mission of the Brooklyn Museum is to act as a bridge between the rich artistic heritage of world cultures, as embodied in its collections, and the unique experience of each visitor. Dedicated to the primacy of the visitor experience, committed to excellence in every aspect of its collections and programs, and drawing on both new and traditional tools of communication, interpretation, and presentation, the Museum aims to serve its diverse public as a dynamic, innovative, and welcoming center for learning through the visual arts.

Can you make it less generic? You might do better then.

Curator's bibliography

No joke, there has been a lot of books published on the subject of curators in the last decade. I've been reading a fair number of them and for a while, have been making a list of ones I need to get. Today I'm going to share them with you.

I don't doubt curators as much as others do. If it weren't for curators, there would only be two type of shows: solo shows in galleries and museum based historical retrospectives of dead artists. I do think that the word is being used way too much and we need to expand our vocab. Personally, I wrestle with how and what I do when I plan a show-- is it merely an illustration of an idea or is there something bigger going on, does the work or theme of the show lead, am I telling artists what to do, is it understandable to a wide audience, could I have found better artists or written about them differently, etc.

And yes, I don't shy away from books about museums.

Here we go:
Brief History of Curating
On Curating: Interviews with Ten International Curators
A Brief History of Curating New Media Art: Interviews with Curators
Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance
Rethinking Curating
What Makes a Great Exhibition
Cautionary Tales
Thinking About Exhibitions
Inside the White Cube
One Place After Another
Collecting the New
Salon to Biennial
Studio and Cube
Exhibiting Cultures
Art and Its Publics
Exhibiting Contradiction
Academies, Museums, and Cannons of Art
The Arts of Democracy
Contemporary Art and the Museum
Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects
Good and Plenty
Curating Consciousness
International Dialogues about Visual Culture, Education and Art
The Modern Eye
Money for Art
Museum Basics
Museums and their Communities
Museum Exhibition
Museum Legs
Museum Prejudice
New Media in the White Cube
The Place of Artists' Cinema
Spaces of Experience
Sponsorship
Museum Frictions
This is the Flow
Harald Szeemann: Exhibition Maker
Harald Szeemann--with by through because towards despite
Under Construction
Whose Muse?
Women Gallerists
Curating Now(PDF Yup, it's a free book! Goes for over 100 on amazon.)
Curating Subjects



If you know of a book that isn't on this list, let me know!

The museum is supporting

Marina Abramović. Up till this year, I knew of her, but after the MoMA started hosting her show The Artist is Present, I think I know her. No, I haven't been taking part in the performance, crying in front of the artist. I've been getting to know her work and her career in a way that I think many people have and I hold the MoMA responsible for it.

It's a good thing. So much of her work and the work that the MoMA did not choose to support at this time has been in discussion, that I think that a dent is being made in the historicization of her era has begun in earnest. From today's opinion piece by Danto, to Laurie Anderson sitting down to interview Ambamović we have been treated to numerous resources that we should not take for granted.

But, as I've not experienced the work, I'd like to explore what it means that this is going on inside one of the NY'iest of NY institutions. Instead of being merely a review of other work, allowing a window into an era this is a show of surviving documents and new experiences for both the artist and the museum. The revival of Imponderabilia is not just a redo, a rehash, but brings up new problems that are unavoidable in a 3 month show that wasn't an issue in a one evening performance. This work has no heuristic issues when simulated on the interweb, but when actually planned for by an institution there are numerous legal, ethical, and ridiculous issues that will "arise."

Dick jokes aside, the twitterverse was a tweeting about a catheter, astronaut's diapers, and holding it. However this is dealt with, it's just the tip of the iceberg. She needed an army of performers to be able to pull of a fresh large scale attempt at these works. They cost money, and the MoMA supported her and her process. There is a bevy of naked people in the galleries that the audience is asked to touch in a polite manner. Imagine the lawyers at the MoMA when they were told about this performance?

By lending their venue to this type of work, the MoMA is saying that this work is equal to their physically present works like sculptures and paintings. This allows for their curators and historians to explore an area that they are often not, expanding the institutional knowledge and allowing for people like Danto to engage with the work on a historical level. The hybridity inherent in these performances (other people standing in for Abramović, the non-physical location of the work, the shift changes for the performers) increases the chances that newer artists will be allowed a space in the MoMA in the future, and the institution will be a comfortable with these questions.

It also cements her career in a way that probably everyone from her generation is jealous of. From the photographs, to her and Ulay breaking up during the Great Wall Walk I've seen people talking about her work like no other performance artist. For now, this show is the biggest thing going on. Explore her work. Find out what you do and don't like. There is more here than an empty chair.

May has been friggin busy...

Some good news. As soon as B/R/S #131 is published, you'll see a review I wrote for Carlin Wing at Anthony Greaney. It's effectively what I wanted to say. It took less than a week to write, so it could be better, and will be when I send it Frieze for their young critics contest.

I also expect a review of Dürer at the MFA Boston to be published by the SGC newsletter. I'll put that review up after it's finalized.

September at the Nave is Open Air. The show brings the work of Matthew Best, Nathalie Miebach, Carolyn Muskat, Ted Ollier, and Jason Shoemaker together for the first time. Each are exploring the outdoors in different ways. I'm a fan of each, but together I think they augment each other's work.

Last, and certainly not least, The Mills at Boston Center for the Arts has accepted my proposal for Contact with Density. This show will be scheduled soon, and currently has 12 artists in it. Each of the artists are dealing with part of the urban landscape or just the experience of living in the city.

So I'm tired. Oh, and I'm hoping to get mean angry comments in the comments section of B/R/S... It's just what happens.