Friday links
Comments Off- Time’s Richard Lacayo Q&As with MoMA chief curator Ann Temkin;
- Glasstire’s Titus O’Brien makes an art trek to the Texas panhandle. The best stuff — on Cadillac Ranch/Amarillo Ramp enabler Stanley Marsh, his un-Gorky and such — is about halfway down.
- The Washington Post’s Blake Gopnik sees a real estate ad and Barbara Kruger.
- A Yale MFA student was kicked out of school because she “listened too much to her instructors’ advice?”
- If you
have or read a particularly smashing post that you want to make sure I
consider for linkage, email it to LinksforMAN-blog (at) yahoo(dot)com. Don’t just email the address of your blog. Call my attention to something specific.
The NYT and the peril of manufactured news
Comments Off
Three months ago, when I was working on a major story about the future of the National Gallery of Art, the NGA’s cursory attention to contemporary art was a major point of discussion between the NGA’s curators and me. In both on-the-record conversations I had with an NGA spokesperson present and in on background chats I had with a range of sources, curators and staff pointed to an upcoming Leo Villareal project as proof of the NGA’s commitment to contemporary art. Except no one was allowed to point to it publicly — the NGA’s spokesperson forbade it. Rarely has a more open secret been treated as something to cover up.
What was happening was clear: Regardless of how it impacted the museum and the presentation of the museum’s interest in contemporary art (in the first major magazine story on the NGA in years), regardless of the damage to her own credibility, the NGA’s chief spokesperson wanted the Villareal item to debut in the NYT. This week, as NYT reporter Carol Vogel returned from her annual August sabbatical, all kinds of news suddenly, magically appeared in the Times: Ann Temkin’s promotion and a Braque acquisition at MoMA, the NGA Villareal.
It was a week in which the implicit bargain between the NYT and arts institutions was made clear: In return for receiving stories first, the NYT provides coverage. The obverse of the rule is also abundantly clear: If the NYT doesn’t discover major arts news stories first, it doesn’t report on them. (The subtext to this unofficial deal is even more unfortunate: Cooperate with us, the NYT tells the institutions it’s supposed to cover, and we may take it easy on you if anything untoward happens…)
Accordingly, the NYT has completely failed to report on the two major visual arts news stories of the summer: The University of Iowa regents’ interest in assessing the University of Iowa Museum of Art’s great Jackson Pollock Mural for possible flood recovery-related sale, and the Denver Art Museum’s deaccessioning scandal, the most questionable art museum sale in half a decade (and the first time in the same period that the museum industry association has investigated same). Both stories have been extensively covered by major national news outlets such as Time and the Wall Street Journal, by regional media, and by industry press.
(The NYT ran an unreported ’roundup’ item on the DAM affair, and later a correction on the faulty roundup item. The end result was the NYT crediting the proper outlet with breaking the story, while getting the rest of it precisely wrong.)
I can’t imagine a week in which the NYT’s approach to cultural coverage could be clearer: Either they get the press release first, or they don’t cover the story at all, no matter the import or newsworthiness. That’s beyond shameful and that’s beyond un-journalistic. It’s negligence with a side of cronyism.
More screaming for ice cream
Comments OffThis morning I posted about Spencer Finch going all 31 flavors on St. Louis. He’s not the only ice cream-artist out there: Check out The Center for Tactical Magic’s Tactical Ice Cream Unit (and here).
You know what I did last summer
Comments OffAs ye return from summer, here’s a glimpse of what you may have missed on MAN while you were recreating…
- A Q&A with artist Robyn O’Neil about her work and the American Folk Art Museum’s Dargerism show: Part one, two, three, four.
- Rethinking Sam Francis’ spectacular Basel Mural I at the Norton Simon.
- The Chinati Foundation is building a major Robert Irwin.
- The best contemporary show of the summer may have been the Baltimore Contemporary’s Cottage Industry: Intro and parts one, two, three, four.
- Andrea Zittel created a swap meet of sorts, complete with a surprise.
- MAN broke the news of an AAMD investigation into a questionable Denver Art Museum deaccessioning. Last I checked, the situation was still unresolved.
- Despite not having expanded in 30 years, the National Gallery is having a hard time finding a place to grow.
- The Cleveland Museum of Art’s re-opening of its 1916 building is a hit.
- What Richard Diebenkorn was doing in New Mexico: Part one, two.
Ben & Jerry’s vs. Spencer Finch
Comments Off
I love Spencer Finch. I love ice cream. So how cool does this sound: As part of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts’ ‘Light Project,’ Spencer Finch is making ice cream.
Sweet. Because if I were to eat a typical Spencer Finch I’m pretty sure it would taste like fluorescent lights, which are not as tasty as ice cream. Even cooler: Finch and the Pulitzer, in partnership with the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, are giving away the ice cream every day but Monday. (That’s either the cows’ day off, or Ted Drewes threatened to sue.)
This being a Finch, there’s an atmospherics related tie-in: The ice cream is made with solar panels and some ice-cream making equipment, and it involves something Finch calls an “edible monochrome,” a color that has something to do with the St. Louis sunset. (If your dog ate your McCracken that would make it an edible monochrome too. And just wondering: Does the sun shine on Finch wherever he goes? That would be awesome.)
The picture at left is an Arthur Dove-recalling Finch watercolor that references a St. Louis sunset. The image above is of the first test of ice cream making and shows two guys eating the finished product. (And, as the The Light Project’s Spencer Finch page says, they are “saving some for later.”)
Check out more at this fantastically complicated and absorbing Light Project website. (Other Light Project artists include Ann Lislegaard and Jason Peters.) And if you can’t head down Grand Ave. for some ice cream of your own, subscribe to the ice cream’s RSS feed. There’s also more at this Pulitzer blog post and at this Contemporary blog post.
Loading ...