17.4.04

Definer or Defender

This is late but the Minneapolis Institute of Art would like to sell a painting in order to purchase another painting. An arts organization is upset. I tried to find a more neutral link about this, but nothing really popped up. So read it, enjoy the amateurish rhetoric about modernist ideologues and try to piece together what is going on while you skip from loaded word to loaded word and evaluate attempts to discredit the MIA in order to show the world that they are fools with poor judgment. When are people going to learn that poor writing and cheap shots, i.e. "$hamefully," are a sure way to undermine the point being made? Frankly, I was willing to give article's author the benefit of the doubt until she claimed that William Bouguereau is one of the best artists of the nineteenth century. Uh, sure.

Before I actually looked at the link and was horrified by the writing, I thought that this raised some issues worth considering, such as the role of arts institutions in society, especially as definers/defenders of cultural heritage. Who's cultural heritage do they define/defend? What role does public opinion play in the administration of the an arts organization outside of the if-you-exhibit-Monets-or-perform-The-Nutcracker-they-will-come mentality. Ponder. This is going to play a large role in my dissertation, which is making me wish that I had gone to the conference on redefining museums in the twenty-first century. The Arts Journal (see sidebar for link) blogs include a couple on art, but none on museum management. Too bad.

The link that started all this blathering was discovered at MeFi. -Zh.

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