Saturday, November 29, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
Asheville, NC
We always stop and shop a little. My sister S. loves her new boots, black suede with a lovely little button on the side.
Wow. Internet.
I'm not even poaching off my mother's iphone. Nice to see that Arkansas has beat LSU. Ahh, two years in a row of undeserved, unmerited success. Clearly the Rock City tshirts people are right:
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Happy Thanksgiving to All
Off to North Carolina. I don't much care for the drive back, but I love the drive up: I-40 all the way up through Memphis, and Nashville, and Knoxville, and over the mountains to Asheville, then down to Greensboro where you finally turn off I-40. You take state highway 421 through a string of small towns and a torturous number of stop lights all the way to Fayetteville. And you're there.
Friday, November 21, 2008
The National Ornamental Metal Museum
The Jamie Bennett crates arrived today, enamels and metalwork for a show next month. Before coming to us the exhibition was at a little museum in Memphis, the National Ornamental Metal Museum. We went up this last summer to preview the show. The museum is housed in an old brick building on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi river.
It is a beautiful spot, but a little ghostly in just the sort of way that Memphis is inclined toward, living in the shadow of a former prosperity. The larger complex used to be a naval hospital. Now the main building is abandoned and the museum takes up a few adjacent buildings. The main building is impressive but crumbling, with windows out and the roof beginning to cave in places. Across the street are a couple of ancient Indian mounds (called the Desoto mounds for Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto), one of which was dug out and put to use as a munitions dump during the Civil War. By now the roof has collapsed on that too, creating a large bowl.
Leila the registrar pointed everything out and told me the names of birds and how the museum hopes not to lose the old trees. One bird had a name like the title of a poem, but I can't remember it now. I think I might email for an answer because I really would like to know but who wants to slog through a google search of Mississippi waterfowl? Not me. The bird whose name I can't remember reminds me of a poem by Jacques Prévert with a line that goes "the example of the feathers the wings the flight of birds" where a man marvels at birds that he has come late to love. I associate this line with the idea of continually coming upon fresh things to love, even into old age, although I am young. This is one of the nice things about being in the arts as well. There is the continual possibility of finding something new that you "appris très tard à aimer" (learned late to love) as the poem says. The Metal Museum might just be an example of this. I know little of metalwork, and forging interests me not at all, despite the lovely forge across the lawn, but ever since the summer visit I've been wanting to go back.
It is a beautiful spot, but a little ghostly in just the sort of way that Memphis is inclined toward, living in the shadow of a former prosperity. The larger complex used to be a naval hospital. Now the main building is abandoned and the museum takes up a few adjacent buildings. The main building is impressive but crumbling, with windows out and the roof beginning to cave in places. Across the street are a couple of ancient Indian mounds (called the Desoto mounds for Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto), one of which was dug out and put to use as a munitions dump during the Civil War. By now the roof has collapsed on that too, creating a large bowl.
Leila the registrar pointed everything out and told me the names of birds and how the museum hopes not to lose the old trees. One bird had a name like the title of a poem, but I can't remember it now. I think I might email for an answer because I really would like to know but who wants to slog through a google search of Mississippi waterfowl? Not me. The bird whose name I can't remember reminds me of a poem by Jacques Prévert with a line that goes "the example of the feathers the wings the flight of birds" where a man marvels at birds that he has come late to love. I associate this line with the idea of continually coming upon fresh things to love, even into old age, although I am young. This is one of the nice things about being in the arts as well. There is the continual possibility of finding something new that you "appris très tard à aimer" (learned late to love) as the poem says. The Metal Museum might just be an example of this. I know little of metalwork, and forging interests me not at all, despite the lovely forge across the lawn, but ever since the summer visit I've been wanting to go back.
Heard In Conversation
That French programs are struggling. That local parochial schools find it difficult to maintain enrollment for French courses. That Hendrix college only has one French teacher in a language department that runs the gamut of modern and ancient languages, and finds it hard to sustain even that one teacher.
French needs to re-position itself. Sure it is still an official language of diplomacy at the EU and UN, but that is more a nod to an old mode of operation than descriptive of current reality. And as the universal usefulness of French fades, it is falling between categories. It is not relevant enough to hold its own against Spanish in the modern languages category, and it is not dead enough to end up in the curiosity box of the ancient languages category.
Beware the loss of the hoi polloi! Actually that is probably a done deal. Internationally the hoi polloi want to learn English, and here in the US they want to learn Spanish. Take Arkansas: Spanish is king and Latin is on the inside track to become the niche language of choice. French needs to do better in the English-speaking market if it is going to stay relevant. Time to rebrand agressively for a downmarket product.
French needs to re-position itself. Sure it is still an official language of diplomacy at the EU and UN, but that is more a nod to an old mode of operation than descriptive of current reality. And as the universal usefulness of French fades, it is falling between categories. It is not relevant enough to hold its own against Spanish in the modern languages category, and it is not dead enough to end up in the curiosity box of the ancient languages category.
Beware the loss of the hoi polloi! Actually that is probably a done deal. Internationally the hoi polloi want to learn English, and here in the US they want to learn Spanish. Take Arkansas: Spanish is king and Latin is on the inside track to become the niche language of choice. French needs to do better in the English-speaking market if it is going to stay relevant. Time to rebrand agressively for a downmarket product.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
De-Installation Week
For the last week I have been de-installing shows at the museum. First a private collection of drawing, then an annual juried competition of local artists. It is always a little disappointing to take down special exhibitions. The work is typically from outside sources and once the show is over it goes back to wherever it comes from. To the extent that a show speaks to you or seems especially successful, it is never only a question of broader themes but also of particulars, this or that painting, such and such pairing of work, a certain layout, the unique look of something under just that light in just that corner of the room etc. All of that comes down with a de-installation. So of course this is sad and invariably I find I've spent too little time with the exhibition. The paradox of museum work is that with all the handling and installing it is easy to neglect spending time looking at the work. The whole point is to provide people the space for reflection, but I seldom take advantage of it myself.
Shows like the Delta (the juried exhibition) or Visions (the private collection) are precisely what a museum like ours does well. The center of our own collection is in drawing, as is our expertise, and a feel for the development of that core tensile strength which underlies so much sound work regardless of the encrustations of style or the happenstance of position in an art historical dialectical schema is the bedrock of what we offer a viewing public. You could see the whole gamut in Visions, all that American twentieth century back and forth, the loose abstraction, the tight realism, the absolute empiricism of recording something fact for fact till like an object under a microscope raised to the highest power it itself begins to look like another kind of abstraction. And all that work and all those names paired and hung like a giant rendezvous of conversationalists on art, a Lee Walton (2002) hung with a Dorothy Dreher (1950) or Elaine de Kooning's portrait of Fairfield Porter, friends among friends. If Visions was a crash course in connections and names, Delta was a curb-side saunter, a Main Street eclecticism from back when Main Street was more than city firms and fast food spots. There was a Mom 'n Pop -ness to the show, a concern for the familiar, the intimate, the every day. This is often true of the Delta in some part, but rarely has it been so focused, brought in on a firm line and restrained. The quirky detailed obsessiveness of David Rose's miniature diner had everyone I ever saw pass it stop and exclaim. The oil paintings and photographs did the most of the heavy lifting for awards. But then there were also the textiles, an entire village crocheted in bright colors and set up in blocks like a candy colored Le Corbusier campus, or the delicate embroidered patterns in faint fabric that made a flimsy silhouette against the framing glass. Next year we have a big Egyptian exhibition coming to town. There is a lot of anticipation for this in the public and we have already had people coming to the museum looking for the show. It should be a great exhibition and we will undoubtedly see (for us) great numbers. I'm looking forward to working on it. But as I take down these smaller exhibitions this week, I doubt that the big ticketed show will surpass the pleasure of what we have offered for free these last few months. It has been the museum at its best.
Shows like the Delta (the juried exhibition) or Visions (the private collection) are precisely what a museum like ours does well. The center of our own collection is in drawing, as is our expertise, and a feel for the development of that core tensile strength which underlies so much sound work regardless of the encrustations of style or the happenstance of position in an art historical dialectical schema is the bedrock of what we offer a viewing public. You could see the whole gamut in Visions, all that American twentieth century back and forth, the loose abstraction, the tight realism, the absolute empiricism of recording something fact for fact till like an object under a microscope raised to the highest power it itself begins to look like another kind of abstraction. And all that work and all those names paired and hung like a giant rendezvous of conversationalists on art, a Lee Walton (2002) hung with a Dorothy Dreher (1950) or Elaine de Kooning's portrait of Fairfield Porter, friends among friends. If Visions was a crash course in connections and names, Delta was a curb-side saunter, a Main Street eclecticism from back when Main Street was more than city firms and fast food spots. There was a Mom 'n Pop -ness to the show, a concern for the familiar, the intimate, the every day. This is often true of the Delta in some part, but rarely has it been so focused, brought in on a firm line and restrained. The quirky detailed obsessiveness of David Rose's miniature diner had everyone I ever saw pass it stop and exclaim. The oil paintings and photographs did the most of the heavy lifting for awards. But then there were also the textiles, an entire village crocheted in bright colors and set up in blocks like a candy colored Le Corbusier campus, or the delicate embroidered patterns in faint fabric that made a flimsy silhouette against the framing glass. Next year we have a big Egyptian exhibition coming to town. There is a lot of anticipation for this in the public and we have already had people coming to the museum looking for the show. It should be a great exhibition and we will undoubtedly see (for us) great numbers. I'm looking forward to working on it. But as I take down these smaller exhibitions this week, I doubt that the big ticketed show will surpass the pleasure of what we have offered for free these last few months. It has been the museum at its best.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Armchair Voyaging
Adam Gopnick, in his book Paris to the Moon, likes to contrast the monumental with the quirky particular. Deyrolle is one of his prime examples. The New York Times has an update on the strangest shop in Paris, which burned last February.
Deyrolle is a shop, but small museums are often the best for the bizarre and off beat. I've always wanted to visit the Musee de la Chasse, for example. And now there is a Soviet bunker theme park complete with gas masks and what looks like interrogations for masochistic Latvians.
Some people fantasize about life in a Soviet bunker. I fantasize about life in Argentina. Despite the grime economic news and dodgy politics, I bought a Rough Guide a few months back. El Ateneo bookstore in Buenos Aires looks amazing, however after finding this blog, with its beautiful photographs, I would consider skipping the big city for life in Patagonia.
Deyrolle is a shop, but small museums are often the best for the bizarre and off beat. I've always wanted to visit the Musee de la Chasse, for example. And now there is a Soviet bunker theme park complete with gas masks and what looks like interrogations for masochistic Latvians.
Some people fantasize about life in a Soviet bunker. I fantasize about life in Argentina. Despite the grime economic news and dodgy politics, I bought a Rough Guide a few months back. El Ateneo bookstore in Buenos Aires looks amazing, however after finding this blog, with its beautiful photographs, I would consider skipping the big city for life in Patagonia.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Silver Clouds
The Warhol exhibition has an installation of Andy's Silver Clouds. These must be tended first thing in the morning by adding/releasing air and helium until they neither rise nor fall but float in midair. During the week I enjoy it. It is rather meditative. But the weekend is getting to be another matter.
Thanksgiving Dinner
Thanksgiving is an excuse to spend time in the kitchen. It is just a meal. That's it. Not anything else. Christmas has food, but it has lots of other stuff as well. Meanwhile, the canon of "Christmas Dinner Menu" is not nearly as strict as Thanksgiving. If you don't serve certain essentials at Thanksgiving, you might as well not even call it Thanksgiving. It won't be accredited. Because there is a Thanksgiving accreditation board. Not everyone applies to have their Thanksgiving accredited, but you could if you wanted to. But only if you serve the essentials. The accreditation board is like the Santa myth (sorry P) for Thanksgiving, with puritans instead of fat jolly men. That's why the standards are so pure. Anything goes at Christmas, but you also get hustled. Not only that, you get hustled earlier and earlier every year. Thanksgiving is nice and basic. It is an ode to fundamental moral arithmetic: Labor = Fruit. You throw in a prayer to thank God that the premise still holds and that's it.
You have to spend time in the kitchen and you have to cover the basics. So what is the point of the Dean and Deluca catalog? The whole holiday is the tradition of the home cooked meal. So if you care enough about the tradition you cook a meal. And if you don't care that much for the tradition then why would you spend $520 (or $280 if you require only a "small feast"- terrible oxymoron) to celebrate it? Even with dinner prices rising an Arkansas Thanksgiving is still only an average $40.97. On the other hand, maybe the fact that someone has found a way to sell Thanksgiving for $520 is a sign of hope. Thanksgiving's slice of the holiday calendar has been withering for lack of commercial hustle.
You have to spend time in the kitchen and you have to cover the basics. So what is the point of the Dean and Deluca catalog? The whole holiday is the tradition of the home cooked meal. So if you care enough about the tradition you cook a meal. And if you don't care that much for the tradition then why would you spend $520 (or $280 if you require only a "small feast"- terrible oxymoron) to celebrate it? Even with dinner prices rising an Arkansas Thanksgiving is still only an average $40.97. On the other hand, maybe the fact that someone has found a way to sell Thanksgiving for $520 is a sign of hope. Thanksgiving's slice of the holiday calendar has been withering for lack of commercial hustle.
A Week from Today
I drive to North Carolina for Thanksgiving. I am really looking forward to this trip.
Sigh
Christmas ads on TV. Radio advertisements for Santa at McCain Mall. ARTament Bash at the Arkansas Arts Center. Holidays in Hillcrest open house shopathon. Thanksgiving doesn't feel impinged on. It feels skipped. Maybe retailers are nervous about sales this year and are trying to get a jump on the season. This definitely feels early to me for all the ho ho ho.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Public Art
We've had a couple of new installations go up around town this fall: some temporary bronze firefighters outside the Convention Center, some sculptural stars over the new sign at War Memorial stadium, and one new controversy. It would have been nice if it had been a full blown controversy, with fiery editorials and letters to editor pro and con and a bitter public debate. But no. Mostly people just groaned and then the administrative powers that be noncommittally hemmed and hawed and and the objectors nodded in a crestfallen way and that was it. What is sad is that the weakness of the whole watery little discussion. To summarize, we have a new federal courthouse downtown which came with its own brand new art installation out front. Objectors: we thought that was just left over building materials but you are telling us it is a permanent piece of art? Administrative defender: not everyone's idea of beauty in art is the same. Objectors: oh. And that was it. Clearly the objectors felt so off their turf that they didn't even try to argue it was bad art but simply that you couldn't tell it was art. Likewise the Administrative Defender didn't even try to explain or defend the installation but simply reminded everyone that their taste is no basis for absolute aesthetic judgments. So at no point was anyone talking about the the particular thing on the lawn but rather about generalities (shouldn't we be able to tell it's art vs. eh, it's subjective). This suggests that no one was comfortable even for a minute addressing the aesthetics of the thing itself. When it comes to talking about public art, the public is clearly at loose ends.
What is interesting about this too is that the objections were not moral. Just about the only time a public discussion of art seems to gather any steam is when a moral outrage is at issue. Then people feel like they have some ground to stand on, like they know their moral stuff well enough to call a spade a spade. But take away the moral angle and discussions of art with a general public descend to the anemic territory of generalities. Because people are prepared to be told (as they were here) that their aesthetic judgments are relative and incapable of interfering with whatever is before them and they are more than willing to believe it. So in a way maybe I'm lucky this little whisper of kerfuffle crossed the radar, because it just goes to show that people do have opinions even without the moral angle. It's just that 1. they aren't comfortable arguing aesthetics and 2. it is not important enough to take time to get comfortable.
Here is the offending art/fountain.
Someone commented it looked like the AC guys had left a stack of ducts on the site. To me it just looks like the sort of sleek anonymous pieces that hundreds of new governmental or corporate offices require every year, like impressionist washes in noon to three lunch spots. Still, it is poorly made, which ought to have counted for something. It is leaking, held together with metallic tinted silicone, and sprouting algae in the warm sun.
What is interesting about this too is that the objections were not moral. Just about the only time a public discussion of art seems to gather any steam is when a moral outrage is at issue. Then people feel like they have some ground to stand on, like they know their moral stuff well enough to call a spade a spade. But take away the moral angle and discussions of art with a general public descend to the anemic territory of generalities. Because people are prepared to be told (as they were here) that their aesthetic judgments are relative and incapable of interfering with whatever is before them and they are more than willing to believe it. So in a way maybe I'm lucky this little whisper of kerfuffle crossed the radar, because it just goes to show that people do have opinions even without the moral angle. It's just that 1. they aren't comfortable arguing aesthetics and 2. it is not important enough to take time to get comfortable.
Here is the offending art/fountain.
Someone commented it looked like the AC guys had left a stack of ducts on the site. To me it just looks like the sort of sleek anonymous pieces that hundreds of new governmental or corporate offices require every year, like impressionist washes in noon to three lunch spots. Still, it is poorly made, which ought to have counted for something. It is leaking, held together with metallic tinted silicone, and sprouting algae in the warm sun.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Teaser Anguish
It's going to be a continuing series...
Making up for computer-denied linkage earlier in the day:
Jogger runs mile with rabid fox locked on her arm
Making up for computer-denied linkage earlier in the day:
Jogger runs mile with rabid fox locked on her arm
Morning After Linkage
I haven't read much that seems definitive of the moment this morning, but maybe that sort of analysis will come later in the day when reporters get a chance to recover from sleep deprivation. In the meantime, here is a smattering of some of what I've liked. Most of it is international, but then the time difference should have put them ahead in the sleep cycle.
Daniel Hannan gives our election process some love.
The Guardian reflects on the race angle here and here.
Europeans submit their wish lists.
This reaction (Fr) strikes me as typically French in good and bad ways.
Rod Dreher takes one for the team.
EJ Dionne takes a victory lap.
Finally, I knew I could count on The Huffington Post.
Daniel Hannan gives our election process some love.
The Guardian reflects on the race angle here and here.
Europeans submit their wish lists.
This reaction (Fr) strikes me as typically French in good and bad ways.
Rod Dreher takes one for the team.
EJ Dionne takes a victory lap.
Finally, I knew I could count on The Huffington Post.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Caveat
Goodbye divided government. Tempering congressional democratic ideologues will have to come from Obama himself. Crossing fingers.
Out of the Park
Obama gives his victory speech. He seems somber. I wonder if he feels the prospect of the presidency - not weighing on him necessarily - but it must be a sobering thing to find the presidency no longer a prospect but a real and concrete future.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Election Eve
Worked late tonight. The museum is a polling place. As I left long empty tables sat in the lower lobby and unopened boxes and "vote here" signs and election whatnot waiting for tomorrow.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Fat vs. Thin: A Visual History
John Tierney has a report on advances in weight loss pills and wonders, "if anyone could take a pill to be thin, how many people would want to? Would being 'overweight' lose its stigma?" By which I suppose he means people care about being skinny because not everyone can be, but take away the uniqueness angle and skinny is as skinny does. But how does that cause being overweight to "lose stigma?" It's not as if being hefty is going to take on the old positive qualities of skinny. It won't look like it takes hard work, or lots of money, or tons of free time. It will just look like someone isn't following the fashion for the pill. The pill might make it easy to be skinny, but it won’t change our food supply. Our society will still be awash in cheap calories. It won’t make it hard to put on weight. Unless of course you live in a totalitarian evil brave new world where all are forced to take the pill, in which case I could envision a certain revolutionary chic to fat.
And all that is if you agree with the underlying premise that skinny is a status marker because it looks like it takes hard work and money (gyms, trainers, organic food, weight loss books by the dozen), the antithesis of an easy pill. But I'm not sure I agree even with this. Who cares if skinny looks easy? My suspicion is people are reactive in terms of what they think looks nice. Fashion set by money is reactive to old negative stereotypes of old fashions set by money. In other words, you could chart it through visual history. I don’t know what the market for art history books is, but surely it doesn’t hold a candle to the market for weight loss books. This leads me to this week’s get-rich-quick scheme: an art history book of fat vs. thin!
And all that is if you agree with the underlying premise that skinny is a status marker because it looks like it takes hard work and money (gyms, trainers, organic food, weight loss books by the dozen), the antithesis of an easy pill. But I'm not sure I agree even with this. Who cares if skinny looks easy? My suspicion is people are reactive in terms of what they think looks nice. Fashion set by money is reactive to old negative stereotypes of old fashions set by money. In other words, you could chart it through visual history. I don’t know what the market for art history books is, but surely it doesn’t hold a candle to the market for weight loss books. This leads me to this week’s get-rich-quick scheme: an art history book of fat vs. thin!
Sunday Morning Links
The earliest recordings of classical music ever made, believed to have been destroyed during WWII, have surfaced. They are going to be released on CD for collectors. I had a music history professor in Paris who collected rare recordings of classical music. He also introduced me to Guillaume de Machaut, the 14th century poet/composer whose Notre Dame Mass is the first cyclic mass conceived and executed by a single composer. Today Diabolus in Musica makes their American debut with Guillaume de Machaut's Notre Dame Mass. The term "diabolus in musica" (literally "the devil in music") is a medieval expression for a tritone interval. For medieval music only a pure fourth or fifth interval is harmonious and consonant. The tritone is especially bad, because it looks like the trinity (three whole tones), but sounds dissonant. Sound confusing? The Knights of the Round Table explain:
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