Frantically trying to finish things up here so I can skip out on a plane to Dallas tomorrow—and I know you're all hitting up the dedicated poliblogs, anyhow. I think it should be said that if all the Republicans go to jail, the Democrats have a much better shot in 2006/8. Prediction: By the time I'm in the air, everyone in America will know who Ronnie Earle is, as Republicans will have declared him Public Enemy #1.
I missed the NYT piece about vlogger Zadi's video for Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends" (reconceptualized as a commentary on Hurricane Katrina and its fallout), discovering it instead by way of Timothy Quigley. Because the NYT hates the exhange of ideas that the Internet celebrates, I guess I'll never know what Sarah Boxer had to say about it. I do like Quigs's thoughts here, so click on over.
HEY, I'M STUPID: Turns out that Boxer's article is available—you just need a cookie from NYT.com, which I didn't have. Forget what I said earlier. Now tell me: Why is Boxer's beat endlessly goofy?
Another never-aired satellite feed for Harry Shearer. That's a clip of the leader of the free world, a man with access to the world's largest nuclear cache, flicking off the camera like a 6th grader. I'm looking for your one-word response.
Today's bombshell LAT article on the Getty reveals not only that half the antique masterpieces in the Getty collection were purchased illegally, but also that Getty buyers (including antiquities curator Marion True) were aware that they were buying looted artifacts from dealers who were operating a fencing circuit from Italy. A sense of fairness compels me to say that provenance cases are perhaps never so clear cut as this one appears, but then you click on those documents linked in the article and see "we knowingly buy stolen goods" and "we knowingly deal with liars" spelled out in a Getty official's handwriting, and you're led to wonder whether the antiquities group is sufficiently competent to be crooked.
When you google "provenance," the first relevant hit you find is the Getty Provenance Index. Not concerned with antiquity, so it's unfair of me to pair this resource to today's revelations, but nevertheless it's an unfortunate irony.
Her museum listings include must-see shows, too. I'm particularly glad to see "Monumental Sculpture in Florence: Ghiberti, Nanni di Banco and Verrocchio at Orsanmichele" recognized. I haven't seen that exhibit yet, but the Orsanmichele was one of the primary sites I studied while I was in Tuscany, and I can even almost recall details from that class.
Tom mentions this Washington City Paper piece about the blight on 9th Street NW and its gardener, Shiloh Baptist Church. Shiloh has blocked efforts by developers and entrepreneurs hoping to use the liquor license to transform the area—a strategy they've had a hell of a lot of success with in, for example, all the areas south and west of 9th St.
From the quotations in the article one gets the impression that the Shiloh antagonists are mobilizing for the usual reasons: concerns regarding the pernicious influence of nightclubs, alcohol, and rock and roll. I have my doubts. The fact that the church officials cite concerns about nightclubs but are, in fact, activizing against Ethiopian restauranteurs and the people behind a vegetarian cafe suggests that they have their eyes on the larger wave of gentrification. Nightclubs would likely follow development that linked the growing Convention Center area to U Street.
Perhaps more importantly, development begets development. I can think of a compelling reason or two for Shiloh Baptist Church to work to maintain derelict, low-cost properties in its immediate vicinity. The church recently completed a $5.5 million expansion, an option that might not have been available to them (and would not be in the future) were the surrounding properties undergoing a commercial revival. Tellingly, the article hints at further expansion efforts.
Possibly the church's leaders recognize that gentrification might change the racial make-up of the neighborhood and thereby its flock.* And, hey, it may be the case that the church's leaders are just that ignorant. Maybe they're willing to cultivate a nasty 9th Street in order to ensure local prohibition (despite the fact that the run-down liquor store near the church will probably only close once newer establishments squeeze it out). But maybe they're just business savvy developers themselves.
* Tommy says that the church's parishioners are largely suburban, so maybe this explanation doesn't apply. Since the church is organizing against the interests of the neighborhood, the flock's actions are all the more deplorable if they aren't local. Regardless, I've read conflicting accounts about the demographic groups in the District that gentrification actually forces out of neighborhoods, so it's hard to say whether this fear is founded under any circumstances. But it certainly seems as if the criminal element are among those dislocated.
Having let my subscription lapse months and months ago, I'd forgotten about that New Yorker issue last month that featured ads by Target exclusively. Found it in a stack of recent issues and, really, I wasn't moved one way or the other. I mean, the issue that appeared in my mailbox last week (for reasons passing understanding—are companies picking up that tab, too?) was stuffed with a Starbucks coffee filter. Could a thousand Halliburton print ads be more annoying? I doubt it.
Michael Bierut at Design Observer mentions this issue and says the s-word: subliminal. Remind me, what's the HTML for rolling one's eyes? Sure, I don't doubt that images change our perception of the world even as we perceive them—certain kinds of images, anyway. The fact that the standard for brainwashing keeps changing without our evidently being brainwashed ought to tell us something. But television commercials, marching our minds toward an event horizon beyond which independent thought is, uh, unthinkable? Visual pollution, a public warp zone of negative visual input that sucks away at our capacity for information that doesn't come in megawatts? The Internet—with all those blinking parts? This brave new world, into which we have been having entered for so many decades now, is very ugly in spots but has never struck me as, or proven to be, particularly poisonous. Insofar as advertising images do affect our perception of life, I'm not sure it's obviously negative.
Observer notes that all the Target ads do amount to a context that doesn't complement the traditional New Yorker illustrations—that's a sharp concern, and good reason to tut-tut editor David Remnick and co. for the issue. But taken generally I think Remnick is making the right calls, however whorish it seems when you hold in your hands a magazine that won't close flat for all the bizarrely shaped junk inserts crammed inside. Blogs and online content have to be chipping away at his erstwhile subscriber base (maybe I'm a case in point), the strong brand name notwithstanding, and a print magazine has to make up the difference somewhere.
Notes
1. OK, now tell me about how I'm wrong about thinking that I'm not brainwashed. I'll welcome my new/longstanding marketing overlords!
2. Tried hard to work Expect More, Pay Less into the above, but it wasn't going to happen.
3. Read Everything Bad Is Good for You. Stephen Johnson's right—mostly. He never quite gets around to addressing the not-so-extreme behaviors associated with entertainment media. I would've liked to hear him address whether an active addictive entertainment (like MMORPGs) is preferable to a passive addictive entertainment (like TV). Stimulants or depressants, SJ?
I haven't talked to any friends or family from Texas who haven't had a crazy story for me about Hurricane Rita—20 hours to go 150 miles, says a buddy of mine from the Burnt Orange Report about his girlfriend's trip from Sugarland to Austin. I think that all my people are safe now—hope y'all have it the same.
That's the preface, written by one "Consituent from New Mexico," to the Republican Study Committee's report (PDF) for "Operation Offset," the program through which the GOP is slashing spending in order to facilitate the reconstruction costs in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (and likely, as becomes more menacingly clear by the minute, Hurricane Rita). The list of targets for trimming include all the traditional GOP bêtes noires, including the arts, which are afforded special hostility:
Eliminate Funding for the National Endowment of the ArtsApproval or disapproval of government spending on art should be immaterial here: Gulf Coast arts institutions have been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. A major cultural capital was virtually destroyed—its restoration will require real spending on art sites, art institutions, and artists, no?
The NEA funds art programs and initiatives through grants to various entities. In 2001, America spent $27 billion on non-profit arts funding: $11.5 billion from the private sector; $14 billion in earned income (ticket sales, etc.); and $1.3 billion in combined federal, state, and local public support (of which $105 million was from the NEA (0.39% of total non-profit arts funding)). The funding could easily be funded by private donations. Savings: $1.8 billion over ten years ($678 million over five years)Eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities [sic]
The NEH funds humanities programs and initiatives through grants to various entities. As with the NEA, the general public benefits very little from NEA [sic], and it could easily be funded by private donations. Savings: $2 billion over ten years ($769 million over five years) [bold emphasis mine]
Why not mandate that federal dollars dog-eared for NEA and NEH be redirected toward Gulf Coast arts restoration projects for the next few years? If the idea is to rebuild New Orleans, this work must be done anyway, insofar as you want a N'awleans and not a Shreveport. If the idea is to rebuild New Orleans as a much better city, greater effort should be made to bring some equity to the quality of life of the artists who add so much value to the city. A federal priority to restore New Oreans must include spending on culture.
Does anyone doubt that by "the general public benefits very little" the RSC means "Piss Christ, Piss Christ, Piss Christ"? You can review recent NEA grants by three categories (excellence fellowships [1], infrastructure partnerships [2], and Challenge America grants [3]) by state, and I think you'd be hard pressed to say that Texans and Louisianans aren't benefitting from NEA projects in their respective states. Take a look: Texas (1, 2, 3); Louisiana (1, 2, 3). The irritating myth that the NEA funds decadence and deviance really must be stopped before conservatives muck up the very programs that their own constituents highly value but cannot realistically subsidize.
We can go line by line through those items: It won't be the NYC gallery crowd who suffers when Brownfield, TX, loses the Rialto Brownfield Bluegrass Festival. At the same time, the whole nation benefits from San Antonio's ArtPace artist residency program. I don't see so much fat to trim here, and I'm sure I'll be far less convinced once the damage from Katrina and Rita has been tallied.
MORE: I don't think that the art funding cuts represent the most egregious elements of the RSC's plan. The fact that these cuts 1) affect local institutions that will need more money, not no money, from government cultural funding organizations, 2) seemingly aim to eliminate the cultural arm of the federal government, and 3) were written with real venom strike me as deserving attention. The Medicare/Medicaid cuts—amounting to half a trillion dollars—is more or less an act of class warfare, and probably ought to come first on the list of things that make you go hmmm.
A happy blogging anniversary to Tyler Green, who's been rustling the art world's feathers since 2001. Congrats!
Stupid Redskins. I woke up having forgotten about the game, and it hit me like a dead weight on the Metro. I can't believe I watched one of the worst televized athletic competitions in history to that conclusion.
Tom, before you even say anything, you're banned. And you're frankly looking a little squirrelly, Nabob.
The man who captured Adolph Eichmann has died. His memoirs, The Murderers Among Us, make for incredible reading. Weisenthal is well known for I Hunted Eichmann, a book in which (it is said) he leveraged the romance of some of his more notrious chases in order to promote and fund his operation. His superhero work was naturally arresting, but the other aspects of his work were also compelling: the meticulous research he never finished, the ethical boundaries he perpetually skirted in plumbing the underworld for leads, the rehabilitated Nazi politicians he tried to topple during the Cold War. Fascinating man.
One "Rrose Sélavy" suggests in comments at J.T. Kirkland's site that the $10,000 Trawick Prize was unethically awarded to Jiha Moon, as the artist is currently exhibiting at Andrea Pollan's Curator's Office. Pollan served as one of three jurors for the Trawick.
First off—if you're going to allege that highly respected members of the local arts community have acted with impropriety, put a name to your accusation. Don't be a coward. Second, it usually takes no more than one phone call to verify the facts in a situation like this. Case in point, I just got off the phone with Stephanie Coppula of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District, a PR staff member from the group that facilitates the Trawick Prize, and she gave me the significant details: namely, that Andrea Pollan recused herself from the jury once Jiha Moon became a semifinalist. Pollan only juried the initial round of nearly 400 entries. It's completely unexceptional that a local arts professional would have a relationship with some number of artists from a pool of 400; indeed, it's hard to conceive of the qualified juror who wasn't a part of the arts community. When that group was narrowed to 32, and Jiha Moon emerged among that number, Pollan stepped down. From there the other jurors selected the 10 finalists. Pollan never casted a dubious vote for Moon—no question, she acted ethically.
Pollan has proved her commitment to the District art scene over many years; "Sélavy"—I'm confident that I know his identity (and it ain't Marcel)—has not. It would be one thing had Sélavy simply asked about a potential ethics infringement; Kirkland's site attracts many local artists and art fans, and his comments section could serve as a good place to ask about a hunch like that. But writing from the safety of a psuedonym, Sélavy ditches common courtesy (and anything resembling journalistic inquiry), opting instead for inflammatory denunciations. Without making so much as a single phone call.
The comments are open as always, but I'm not tolerating any anonymous feedback in this post. (If you use a handle here regularly, you're OK.) Anonymous grenade tossing has become something of a regular feature in the District, but when it comes to a person's career, close isn't good enough.
UPDATE: It should be clear from comments, but in case you're not usually inclined to read them, Catriona Fraser (chair of the Trawick Prize) and Andrea Pollan each left notes to clarify the timeline. I misunderstood how early into the first round Pollan bowed out. Mea culpa.
Hey, the ol' G.p just turned the corner with 200,000 hits. Cool, thanks!
RELATED: I sent an e-mail to my Web hosting company nearly 2 months ago. Today I got a response that began, "Dear 6878265." Seriously! That's not dehumanizing—that's enrobotinating.
Frequent poli-blog commenter and Lindsay Beyerstein-affiliate Thad is doing a great job holding down the fort at Majikthise while Beyerstein's trooping through New Orleans. (This post is a good example.) Thad really ought to consider starting his own blog (or ask for his very own set of keys to Beyerstein's place?). Anyway, catch him while you can.
In comments to this post, someone says that famous Yglesias was nominated Best Lefty Blogger by Playboy magazine. So I ask you, friends, Romans, countrymen—can anyone out there confirm? I won't tell anybody what a perv you are.
If he's been mentioned now in both the Suicide Girls forum and Playboy, I think it's safe to say that my roommate's a porn star.
The crowd at Mary Coble's performance, "Note to Self," was like an evangelical youth group gathering. Along the wall opposite Coble sat a chatty group—not the typical opening-night gallery-goers, but rather younger people. More vibrant and distracted, vibrating really, probably drawn to the space by community forum buzz and word of mouth.
For her performance, Coble collated 100 victims of GLBT hate-crime murders and had their names inscribed on her body: first names (including stage names) scratched into her skin with an inkless tattoo gun. Pieces of paper were applied to each name as it was completed, creating permanent, mirror-image, blood-stain prints of the performance. Two hours of the process (11 hours, all told) were open to the public. The performance saw the gallery filled with onlookers, gawking in horror and inspiration, many of whom surely felt their hair stand on end even before they entered the space when the sound of the tattoo gun greeted them on the stairs. (I found the sound unnerving, and I have my share of tattoos.)
To talk about "Note to Self," I think it's important to dissolve the political punch of the performance from Coble's aesthetic decisions. The piece works in a political realm: Coble calls attention to the meager statistical data on hate crimes. (The FBI only tracks data on hate crimes back to 1996; hate crimes are specified as such by local authorities.) She spent 1 year doing primary research to compile the names, a process that also uncovered two facts that informed her work: Gruesomely, many of these victims were scrawled on by their assailants, with words like "faggot" and "dyke." The second fact: Information gathered by our government reflects none of this. A hate crime murder is never "just" a murder—it is always a warning—yet no authority is granted by the federal government to investigate crimes motivated by prejudice against the GLBT community.* Our government records these crimes in the ledger without footnotes, meaning that they overlook a substantial element of the crime. There is immediacy and need in Coble's project.
I think that that urgency does not preclude discussing aesthetic aspects of the work. Her imagery is unrelentingly Christian. The blood transverses her back, arms, and legs; the performance centered on her back, as she sat, nearly laying prostrate, so as to recall a lashing by a cat o' nine tails. "Note to Self" is rife with sacrifice: sacrifices forced upon the victims of these murders, who probably never realized that they would be martyred for their nature, and Coble's physical sacrifice as tribute.
Everyone here is familiar with the third rail in American culture that is the rift between "family" conservatism and the GLBT community. Coble taps that debate with her symbolism, putting the question to the viewer: Does Christianity reinforce discrimination against GLBT individuals? The American Psychological Association notes research about the perception among hate-crime offenders "that they have societal permission to engage in violence against homosexuals." To whom should we be looking for the source of that intolerance?
Søren Kierkegaard said, "And now, with God's help, I shall become myself." We are all ultimately selves, not instruments; but neither are we immune from the forces of the world. Coble's performance pays tribute to those people killed because of their selfhood, and asks: What are we doing about those people who, with God's help, have become monsters?
* Per the FBI Web site on hate crimes investigations, the "top priority" of the FBI Civil Rights program: "Although the Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990 (amended in 1994 and 1996) defines a hate crime as a crime against a person or property motivated by bias toward race, religion, ethnicity/national origin, disability, or sexual orientation, the FBI does not have any federal jurisdiction to investigate hate crimes motivated by a sexual orientation bias."
Many thanks to Seth Poulos for his editing assistance.
I drunk-dial internationally.
All of a sudden, this place is pretty spare. Let's see what we can do about that.
Truth be told I've been doing a lot of writing about the latest political currents over at Begging To Differ, concerning disasters natural and man-made. I'll touch on that here too; at the moment, like everyone else, I'm feeling taxed by the supercharged debate following the national trauma. But I'm also thrilled about the start of the gallery season. That's what I'll be focusing on throughout the weekend (that and Longhorn football).
A quick note and suggestion: I'm impressed by all the hardcore efforts by so many art bloggers to galvanize and direct support to buttress artists and museums hit by hurricane Katrina. If you are giving through these channels or others, remember to ask your employer to what extent they're willing to match your dollar. You're working for some real jerk-offs if the answer's less than 1:1!
Briefly:
