Wonkette hit Eye Level with the burning question: "How does a museum that’s been closed for six years have so many hotties on staff?" It must be said, approximately 4 men work in this museum. The staff indeed registers highly on the Scoville scale. For the record, I totally wasn't invited to that party.
On a related note: on yesterday's NYT opinions page, David Brooks took a shot at Blake Gopnik for questioning the feel-goodness of the newly reopened American Art and National Portrait museums. I put it below the cut so you can have a look (it's behind the Times Select firewall). Geez, who do you root for?
One Nation, Under One RoofBy DAVID BROOKS
Published: June 29, 2006The American Revolution was fought in a climate of anticipation. Enlightened thinkers around the world hoped that America's new spirit of freedom would unleash a political, economic and cultural renaissance.
"A new Greece will perhaps give birth on the continent ... to new Homers," predicted the Abbé Raynal, the French philosophe. Horace Walpole speculated: "The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico."
It didn't end up quite that gloriously. Many of the 18th-century figures assumed that economic growth and cultural genius were part of one thing - progress - and that in an atmosphere of freedom they would rise together. But in America it became clear that commerce and culture were different things, and that while commerce surged, culture lagged.
Before long, people noticed that the United States had become divided into, as Van Wyck Brooks put it, "two publics, the cultivated public and the business public, the public of theory and the public of activity, the public that reads Maeterlinck and the public that accumulates money."
Still, throughout the 19th century these two publics did at least talk to each other. Both were obsessed with one subject: the meaning of America. Whether they were tycoons, politicians, theologians or artists, Americans of the 19th century tended to assume that history had a storyline, and that the United States had a distinct and climactic role in its unfolding.
Much of the conversation was about America's meaning and providential role. And this conversation is the subject of two fantastic museums that are reopening Saturday, after six years of renovation, in Washington.
The National Portrait Gallery tells the story of American history through its great personalities. The Smithsonian American Art Museum tells the story of its art. Through an accident of history, the two museums share a single building, the old Patent Office Building, which Walt Whitman called the noblest building in the city.
The museums have always existed uneasily together. Six years ago, the curators of the Portrait Gallery were furious because the Art Museum was taking advantage of the renovation to seize most of their building's best spaces. And even Tuesday, as the directors of the two museums led me around, there were moments of awkwardness, as they vied over tour routes, interpretations and which museum's tote bag I would use to hold the press materials.
But for the regular visitor, the end product is exhilarating. What you see within these two museums' interlocking spaces is the great conversation about the American identity. Here in the Art Museum are George Catlin's dignified portraits of Indians; there in the Portrait Gallery is a defiant bust of the Indian-fighter, Andrew Jackson. Here's an elegant painting by John Singer Sargent; there's a portrait of a slovenly P. T. Barnum. Here's a W.P.A. mural celebrating harmony and plenty; there's a portrait of the Scottsboro Boys.
There are jarring transitions between the two museums. And it's weird to be in a building with dueling narratives. But this is the cacophonous reality of America.
The building's finest spaces are on the third floor, where the two museums hold their material from the past 50 years. A lot of great stuff is there - including a mesmerizing David Hockney installation - but the conversation stops. The two museums no longer reverberate against each other.
That's because around 1960 the art world and much of the intellectual world lost faith in the idea that history has a storyline and that America has a distinct role in it. This week, Blake Gopnik spoke for the art establishment in his review of the museums in The Washington Post, arguing that there is no essentially American culture - no transcendent thing we Americans share simply because we happen to inhabit the same nation-state.
So the artists have gone off to have a conversation about themselves. But most people who tour these museums will feel a transcendent thing called Americanness deep in their bones. They will understand what George Orwell meant when he said your country "is your civilization, it is you." And today, when America is unpopular and the whole concept of Americanness is encrusted with clichés and conspiracy theories, they'll feel thrilled to get back and touch the real America, the real conversation, which has been so triumphantly presented in the old Patent Office Building in downtown D.C.
Items in the City Paper this week: Bill Christenberry and Don Donaghy at Hemphill. It appears online under the title "Benjamin Abramowitz," who's showing in the gallery's project space, but I didn't write about his stuff. I also have a shorter item on Space-Domestic, the show curated by Jiha Moon for the McLean Project for the Arts.
Last week Jessica Dawson raised eyebrows by writing, "When it comes to nepotism, the best strategy is to avoid it," in reference to the fact that Moon included her husband's work in the show. Now, I already wrote my say; there's no way I could have tackled the question given the space limitations. I assume Dawson was working with a similar length restriction, but it seems like a weighty line to drop without an explanation or judgment.
That said, Dawson's basically right—Moon erred, or she deliberately chose to be incautious. Including her husband's work is is clearly the kind of decision that sets tongues wagging. Given that these things are simply going to happen in the District—this is a town in which a show will be called "Barlow Curates" and most everyone who sees the show will know what that means (and not just whom that means but why it's significant)—maybe a strategy like Moon's should be evaluated based on whether it's merited. Seems to me that if Dawson will call nepotism on a show, she ought to give a little more about what it means and why and to what extent it matters.
Me, I'll do the opposite—framework but no judgment. I need to meet the afore-mentioned Barlow, like, five minutes ago, and in any event the place for expounding on these things is probably the article and not the blog.
Meet the nation's other male Kristons: one Kriston Rehberg is a software engineer who lives with his wife and two children just west of Washington, DC. On his site he's posted some Castlevania ringtones, but the link is broken, so we each have an affinity for vampires and can't make Web sites work. Long has this Kriston battled me for the top of the Google rankings.
A friend alerted me to the presence of the other American Kriston, a Utah-born fellow living in Washington (state). My height, almost my age, nearly my Zodiac sign, and more disturbingly still, apparently a current or former employee of Kinko's, my place of employment during high school.
I'll be a juror for this year's Crafty Bastards exhibition. Saturday's the deadline for vendor applications, so hop to, and make cool stuff. The guidelines suggest that "[y]ou won't find knitted teapot cozies, floral wreaths, carved wood ducks or batik jackets here." Don't be discouraged, coziers! I'm sure there's another fair for you out there.
Washington, it's time I let you know—I actually quit my job to build an Ark. I'm a little late getting started, what with the not having any sons to lend a hand, and the instruction manuals only come in cuneiform, and you try measuring out a cubit with the tape they sell at Logan Hardware. The deluge is coming down now—but it's okay, it's cool, I like to work against a deadline.
For the second straight day there have been intermittent power outages at my house, and I keep thinking I'm going to have to toss the food from my refrigerator, but that's a silly concern if you know the grand plan that's been revealed to me: I am to finish this Ark, sail it down Florida Ave. to Connecticut, where I'll bear north toward the National Zoo. We'll make one last stop at Whole Foods and, I guess, the pet food store, and everyone better use the restroom then because I'm not tolerating any nonsense on my boat.
I'm now taking applications for spots on the Ark. Preference will be given to those who can sail, tie knots, clean fish, and tend to exotic animals. Application instructions may be found by clicking here. Many will enter; few will be selected, so be sure to emphasize why your antediluvian qualities ought to persist into the new world.
Here are the finalists for the Trawick Prize:
Time permitting, I'll get hyperlinky with that list so that you can browse at your leisure.
The Weekly Standard reviews the new literature:
Ponnuru refrains from engaging in the kind of bitter vituperation and personal invective against those with whom he disagrees that fouls so much of contemporary political discourse.That's Wesley J. Smith writing about Ramesh Ponnuru's The Party of Death, whose "provocative title" does not constitute a slur against the Democratic Party ("the primary engine driving our country toward accepting killing as an answer to life's difficulties," according to Smith.)
Totally civil and appropriate, and furthermore a much-needed antidote for the truly toxic harangues polluting the media—an unusually hostile example being my forthcoming book, Prat or Prick? Wesley J. Smith, Considered. In this text I argue that only a douchebag with a limited imagination and meager grasp of reality characterizes the Democratic platform as endorsing the following agenda items:
. . . euthanasia, treating nascent and cognitively disabled humans as mere natural resources (embryonic stem cell research, cloned fetal farming, organ harvesting from patients in a persistent vegetative state, etc.), and resurrecting eugenics policies that would not only wipe out people with Down Syndrome, which is already happening, but also potentially lead to genetic engineering aimed at creating a "post-human" race of superbeings.Admittedly, as an aside, I argue that the Democratic efforts to promote a regulated, progressive metahuman class are in fact a just development for society—"safe, legal, and rare" being the liberal motto. But without mincing words I riposte that Smith is, in fact, an invertebrate who has not yet exhibited secondary sexual characteristics (a subtle rejoinder, my reviewers say).
To be sure, in my book I take care to disambiguate Ponnuru and Smith, noting, in fairness, that there's little Smith could do to advance on the prattishness of Ponnuru's assessment of the Dems as "the party of the little guy" that "turned its back on the littlest guy of all." I respond to such simpering rhetoric by asserting that Ponnuru and Smith are "the party of two serious wimpsters."
But for the most part, my book is a thorough exploration of ways to mock Smith without addressing and thereby validating the distressing dishonesty at the root of his essay (and, apparently, in Ponnuru's book), a review the Weekly Standard should be above publishing. "Wesley Smith? More like Wesley Crusher," I write in the second chapter. And though my publisher won't be happy with me for revealing the exciting conclusion, in the final analysis, it in fact takes a total prat to write with the voice of measured conservatism and yet fail to even describe one legitimate aspect of liberal opinion on the subject. But reasonable minds will differ on the subject, and I grant that those who find Smith prickish have some solid ground on which to stand.
I'm sure I'd never seen the word "surd" before I read it today in a quote attributed to Robert Smithson (concerning his Alogon sculptures).
surd: 1. a sum containing one or more irrational numbers. 2. A voiceless sound in speech. Latin surdus, deaf, mute; used in mathematics to translate Arabic jadhr asamm [deaf root], itself a translation of the Greek alogos, speechless, irrational.It's also the name for the k, p, s, and t consonants (the ones that don't involve the vocal chords). Hell of a word.
Even though the blog was down, life went on for your writer, sometimes even culminating in the rare productive exercise. Here are a few recent shorts for the City Paper: "Remastered" at Studio One Eight, the 48 Hour Film Project, and "Mine" by Jeff Spaulding at G Fine Art. The latter two shows have already come and gone. There's another piece (lost to the archives, it seems) about Miguel Covarrubias, whose prints and sketches are showing at the Cultural Institute of Mexico until July 7—scroll down on this page to read about it.
On the music tip, I wrote some stuff about Zodiac Mountain (Wooden Wand + Davenport Family) and Queering Sound 06.
I also appear from time to time in the WaPo Express blog under the guise of Sight Scene. It's mostly newsy stuff, but I'll point you to an item on recent noteworthy achievements by people in the vizh scene (including Jeffry Cuddlin, Gabriel Martinez, Ian Jehle, Jiha Moon, Molly Springfield, Jason Zimmerman, and others).
Oh, and I wrote a review of "Animalia" at Irvine Contemporary, an excerpt of which is in the paper edition (I think). Here's a teaser:
After a selection process that ran longer than a year, Irvine Contemporary's associate director, Heather Russell, has assembled "Animalia"—a show featuring artists who use animals as principal elements in their work. The show, which opened last Friday, brings to mind the parting lines of Puck in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Excusing the bad behavior of he and his cohorts, Puck begs pardon for "this weak and idle theme/no more yielding but a dream." The concept behind "Animalia" is at least as simple—animals in contemporary art—and it stumbles upon similar moments of comedy, mischief and dark portent.Click click.
"Grammer.police" is listed as the Eponym blog of the day! I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I'll note that the fine admins at Eponym correctly keyed this blog's punctuated title. My favorite eponym construction: the Waldorf salad. Although the source of the name is apocryphal, the leading theories each point to Waldorfs—albeit different ones:
It was first created in 1896 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York by Oscar Tschirky who was the maitre d'hotel. (An alternative theory is that it was created by the Waldorf Lunch System, an early 20th C. lunchroom chain- starting in the 1920's the company logo was an apple.)It's also great for being the tastiest salad. I sometimes make one using baby spinach but typically stick to a lettuce and arugula mix. Some might say it's too liberal a stretch for a salad bearing the Waldorf brand, but I favor a lemon vinaigrette over the traditional mayo-based dressing. (It's the apples and walnuts that distinguish a salad as a Waldorf.)
Curated by Jiha Moon and featuring works by Gianna Commito, Lily Cox-Richard, Warren Craghead, Amze Emmons, Thomas Henriksson, Isabel Manalo, Andy Moon Wilson, and Hildegard Skowasch, Space Domestic sounds like a look-worthy show. The opening is tonight at the McLean Project for the Arts, which sounds horribly far from the District for this pedestrian. Plus, if I go it will be my second trip into the wilds of Virginia in as many days (the CS spirited me out last night for fun alt-klezmerish music by Devotchka). Despite strong hesitations, I want to make it out for the opening. If you're going and wouldn't mind giving me a ride, will you drop me a line? Thx.
So much for United States soccer. Incidentally, it's strange that there's still a city called Nuremberg where things like soccer games take place. In any event I don't really care all that much either way about today's outcome and only hope to beat Yglesias to the tackiest sports-pun post title in recent memory. (Though Yglesias points out that had we come back from our 2-1 deficit, we'd've had ourselves a Nuremberg rally. Pass me a beer, MY! Did I mention that I don't have a job?)
Huh, this going places and writing things beat hasn't left me much time for blogging today. Fortunately, nothing I have to write just now competes with Alligators on MySpace. Those guys eat SoaMFP for their in-flight snacks.
I'm hoping that my first day as a full-time freelancer doesn't set the tone for the foreseeable future, since it seems to involve a lot of walking around the neighborhood looking for the dog, who escaped from the backyard at some point this morning. I figured on sweating a lot over, say, paying double FICA on the quarterly tax schedule that is mandatory for freelancers, not because the sun is crowding my 'do. So the jury's still out on my change in careers. And anyway, what does the dog do while Yglesias and I are at the office?
In any case, the blog is back. The database needed a month off, but all systems are go now. Tell your friends! Test the comments! Enjoy a Krackel! I'll get back to you after I find the Wreckage.
