When New Beginnings Come to the End

Not everyone gets to say that they had the perfect last day at a job, but I think that Rody and I have the privilege of being able to truly say that today was perfect.

One of the reasons that this internship was such an incredible experience is that Mary takes us out on field trips and has us go and meet many important people who work in the visual arts and arts administration. In fact, I'd say that the highlight of this internship was going on these field trips. So it was only fitting, I think, for us to go on a field trip on our last day. And Mary took us to MoLAA (the Museum of Latin American Art) today, which was perfect because both Rody and I really, really wanted to go there.

I loved the work that I saw there, and honestly, I loved the museum. I can see that the museum has some issues (their storage space is TINY), but I really liked the art that I saw there, and I think that the art itself was so different from a lot of the contemporary art that we've seen this summer. I think it's safe to say that Rody and I both loved it a lot.

When we came back to the gallery, both Kirk and Mary came to the Print and Study room to give us some goodbye presents, and honestly, I think that the presents were amazing. Kirk gave us some knee bowls (which I love the concept of), and made me earrings from some slides that I worked with and gave us each a book with a hole in the middle (it will remind me of drill presses, earthquakes, ash and really lame jokes about interns and drilling). Mary gave me a beautiful bracelet made of coconut shell and a notebook (which, again, is really handy).

I've always had a problem with saying goodbye, and having homes in two different parts of the world has not made saying goodbye seem easier or more routine. It's going to be weird to wake up to RA training tomorrow; to not come in to say hi to Rody or Kristin or Kirk or Zoe or John early in the morning; to not take ridiculously long tea breaks routinely; and to not work with slides and really expensive art everyday. I'm still going to have to wake up before 8 this next semester (8 o'clock class is the bane of my existence), but I know that I probably won't look forward to it the way that I did these past 10 weeks. I know the gallery is next door, because it's on campus, but I'm still really going to miss this place.

So before I officially sign out as the Visual Resources Intern at the Williamson Gallery for Summer 2008, I'd really like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who works here. Rody, Patricia and Zoe- I've found a friend in each one of you and I hope that we frequently meet this next year. Mary, Kirk, Kristin and John- thank you so much for everything. This summer was so much fun, and a tremendous learning experience. You guys are incredible bosses, and I can only hope that I will have bosses as fun and nice as all of you when I graduate and go into the really world.

Fare thee well ogre(s)...

It's never easy to say good-bye...So I won't.

I just want to let you guys know that I'll miss you. It has been a real pleasure working with all of you this summer and I hope to see you again during the year. Thank you guys for being so wacky, sweet, and honest for the past ten weeks; I really appreciate it. 

If it had not been for the crazy conversations we had over tea breaks, or on our way to lunch, or on trips with Mary, I probably would not have enjoyed myself as much as I did. Thank you for that. I know this is somewhat corny, but I think I'll let Mr. Rogers take it from here...

It's such a good feeling to know you're alive. 

It's such a happy feeling: You're growing inside.

And when you wake up ready to say, 

'I think I'll make a snappy new day.'

It's such a good feeling, a very good feeling, 

the feeling you know that we're friends.

Sorry, I just had to. Good luck with everything, enjoy what's left of summer, and I'll definitely see you guys again. 

The Writing Blues

Writing has always been something that I've done, ever since I was little.

I remember writing stuff in elementary school. It was mostly fanciful, childish nonsense, but I remember writing it anyway. I grew up keeping an array of different journals and diaries and notebooks full with short stories, but I don't really think that I've ever written anything that has been especially memorable or especially commendable. So I don't pretend to be a good writer, just OK enough to scrape by in school with a B on most of my papers. I do, however, think I have had enough practice with writing to know that I can crank stuff out if I need or want to.

This internship, however, has proved me wrong in that capacity. As one of my final assignments for Mary, I'm supposed to turn in a few essays on some powerful and iconic women photographers and their work. I'm supposed to be writing about fairly well-known photographers (Julia Margaret Cameron, Anne Brigman and Diane Arbus) and I've done a lot of research on all of them. But for some reason, the words just aren't flowing and the essays I have written so far are crap to say the least.

It's not writer's block. I've had writer's block before. This is more than that. Every time I sit down to write, all the information I have just swirls in my head and I don't know where to begin, where to take the essay and how to end. Most of what I've written is all over the place (it's pretty sub-par in my opinion) and it's nothing worth writing home about. I know this shouldn't be hard for me, but somehow, it is. And it's so frustrating. I've never felt like this about any of my writing before, because I positively HATE everything I've written for Mary so far. And I don't think there's anything worth keeping here. And that sucks.

So I don't know what to do. I know I have to turn this in by tomorrow, but I don't want to. I definitely think that it's better to keep the crap stuff hidden or torn up than to have it put on the website for everyone to read.

It's been a while

Wow. It's been a long time since any one of us actually looked at this and considered writing something.

I only have 2 days left at this internship, and when I think about it, it makes me pretty sad. In many ways, I'm ready to stop working, start RA training and get ready for the semester to start, but I think I will also look back on these last 10 weeks as an amazing learning experience. It's hard to think that these 10 weeks have just whizzed by, but time does fly when you're busy and having fun.

When I look back on this entire thing, I can't help but be incredibly grateful for everything that Mary and Kirk did for us. They were incredibly supportive, and we got to meet some really cool and really interesting people from different walks of life. I've written a lot of thank you notes in my life, but this summer I basically wrote thank you notes to people who simply sat and talked with me about their lives over lunch. It's like Rody said, we met a lot of powerful and successful women this past summer, and being in their presence has inspired me.

I do have to address something I have realized though, something that I think the Getty is making an effort to address:

As lovely and wonderful as all the people we met on our various field trips and excursions with Mary were, they were all white. Meeting all these people this summer has really driven home the point that the Getty was trying to make at the trip to the villa (not that I disagreed with it there)- that there simply aren't enough people of colour in the visual arts and arts administration. To some people, lack of diversity is not a big deal, and I don't want to say that the art world (at least in LA) is this way because it's racist or anything like that. But the truth is that I've seen that people of colour don't really enter this field (or if they do, they're mostly working at ethnicity based museums). I'm sure it's much better now than it was, say, 20 years ago, but if the disparity is still so glaring, there is definitely still a problem.

I'm really glad that the Getty has this summer program and gives students of colour the opportunity to gain work experience in a field that seems unfriendly and pretentious to the average person. Art is universal in that most people appreciate it in some form or another, and I'm really glad that this program helps those of us who want to make a living out of appreciating it.

An Earthquake and 108 Books with Holes in Their Centers

What does it take to drill a hole in the center of a book?
Kirk, a drill press, 4 interns and an earthquake, apparently.

Today was possibly the most memorable day of my entire time working at the gallery (well, it's right up there with the day that I held the gallery's Diane Arbus for the first time). Not just because we spent most of the day drilling holes into a bunch of books for the gallery's next show (called Performing the Book), but also because we were hit with That Earthquake That Everyone's Talking About.

I'm still a little bit shocked, a little bit amused and a little bit relieved about it (more shocked, less amused and a lot relieved). I'm shocked that it happened in the first place (even though I do realize that this is California), and was definitely shocked by all the shaking and jangling in Kirk's wood shop (too much for comfort: it would not have been fun to have stuff falling all over the place). But really, when I think about the actually earthquake itself, all I can remember is the expression that Kirk got on his face when he realized that the shaking was not a truck passing by, but an actual earthquake. I'm also really relieved that we weren't actually drilling when It happened, because I don't know how all of us would have reacted if the drill press was turned on and it's motor was running.

Anyhow. After the excitement died down, we went back to work and drilled a lot of holes in a lot of books. And although we are no where near the 108 drilled books that we need, we're more than half way done at this point. Right now the books don't look like a lot because, apart from the holes, a lot of them are covered in ash (the drill got so hot that the paper began to burn). I'm pretty curious to see how the final piece will look (the books are going to be stacked), and I can only hope that we will start assembling the thing before Rody and I are done with the internship (only 2 weeks to go).

I also took pictures of the entire process of drilling on my phone, but my I guess there's something wrong with the phone's bluetooth, so I can't actually get them onto my computer. But if I figure out a way, I will put them onto this website for sure. But until then, we will all just have to make do with text, right?

Digitize This

What's with all the digitization?

Everything from newspapers to slides in the slide library to magazines to museums collections are being digitized, and it's pretty unsettling- specially for all of us old fogeys who love everything in print and on paper. We were talking with Kirk the other day and he definitely wishes that everything wasn't going digital (because, as he puts it, "there's nothing better than grabbing a cup of coffee and sitting down with the morning paper"), but he wasn't sure if it was an age thing.

So basically I started to think about it too, and I decided that I'm very picky with what I like digitized. What I mean is that I'm happy that some stuff is digitized and accessible on the internet-it's really nice to have museum collections available online, for example- but the morning paper? I know, I know. It's more accessible, it's free, it wastes fewer trees and all that good stuff. But I can't really help but agree with Kirk on the subject of newspapers.

I really do like flipping through a newspaper. Maybe it's because that's what I did after school everyday (I needed to be at school by 7:25, and so I didn't have time to do it in the morning). I very clearly remember sneaking into my grandmom's room every afternoon while she was sleeping so that I could sit and flip through all the newspapers to see what was happening in the world. I also very clearly remember the sections that I would look at and what order I would look at them in (headlines, world news on page 4 and 5, the arts section and the sports section in that order). Somehow, clicking through all those sections on my screen just doesn't feel the same as flipping through a newspaper, and it definitely doesn't give me the same kind of satisfaction.

Like I've said here before, if I end up becoming an art writer, I can't say that I will end up being severely disappointed. But I do know that if I do write and get published, I would really like to see my work in print, and on paper, in front of me. Seeing my writing-the final published version of it- on a screen just wouldn't work, and it just wouldn't satisfy me at all. So if newspapers do become physically obsolete, I know I will most definitely become very disappointed.

On Growing Old

I think it’s time I post something. Sim thought it was time a month ago. I haven’t written in large part because I haven’t known what to write about, haven’t felt inspired. But I think I’m ready. Sim, this one’s for you:

This summer, and especially during the past couple of days, I’ve been thinking a lot about age, aging, the passage of time. I think it's all because I will be launching my final year as an undergraduate on September 2. So much of what I’ve been pondering has been inspired and influenced by the gallery staff, too.

There’s Kirk, the collections manager here, who makes working and parenting – being an Adult – seem like some kind of awesome continuation of whatever utopian existence I’m living now. The man practically plays with pieces from the permanent collection for most of the day, handling priceless works with truly unbelievable comfort. He runs endless errands in the gallery’s sweet beater of a van, answers our questions and Mary’s, and whenever he can he checks in on his adorably teenaged daughter. Somehow he still finds time to work in his studio, on personal projects and others for Scripps. And he does it all in Crocs, with a cup of coffee in one hand. He makes it look like fun, and I’ve heard him say many times that he’s happiest at work.

Kristin, our data specialist, is a parent, too, and of littler ones, but like Kirk, she has not let parenthood sap her of her youth. She more enthusiastic – brighter eyed and bushier tailed – than any of us. She’s more technologically savvy, too.

And Mary is the ageless paragon. There are moments she’s more of a peer than a boss; it’s hard to believe that she’s an alumna, not a member of my graduating class. She’s as hip we are; she’s current on more than just the news that makes the front page of the New York Times Arts section. I pray that I am as vivacious, passionate about my work, self-assured, and seemingly fulfilled as she is when I am her age.

This is all in contrast to what I’ve been reading about Andy Warhol. I’m doing research on the 20th century American deity in preparation for a proposed exhibition of 155 photographs he took in the 1970s and 80s, which the gallery received from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts this May. I’m reading his Diaries, transcribed and edited by Pat Hackett, who I would, at this point, kill to meet. You know that game you play in which you have to name the person you’d have dinner with or take with you to a desert island? For me, for the past several weeks, that person has been Pat.

Anyway, I’m reading about Andy – his words, and others’. It’s fascinating. He is fascinating. As are his attitude about age, the world, and what he did to our understandings of those constructs. He stayed so young. Everything I read – every interview with him or people who knew him – alludes to his youth, or obsession with it. He was young for so long, and then when he got old, he had his skin “fixed,” and he just kept on playing with the Kids. Everyone was a kid to Andy. I’ve been wondering: who’s a kid, and who’s not? Andy didn’t think of himself as a kid, but who else wasn’t? And what was he, if not a kid?

What’s intriguing about Andy, too, is his paranoid (or is it just realistic?) understanding of mortality. After being shot and then stabbed, he was quite understandably afraid of death. Fearing another attack, he did little alone. Except sleep. So he says. But he was also aware of the inevitability, the approach of a more banal death: he took vitamins and drank carrot juice religiously. He’s actually famous for drinking orange juice.

Kirk, Kristin, and Mary probably drink orange juice too. And it’s likely they take vitamins, or that they have in the past. But they don’t live with the self-conscious deliberation that Andy did. Their existence is not performance. They simply live. In living, they are less obviously fantastic than Andy. Kirk is not internationally recognized for creating transgressive or phenomenally popular art. Kristin doesn’t have a devoted cult following. And Mary’s gallery operation is far from being considered the fourth Factory. All three are real, though, in a way that Andy maybe never was. Instead of orchestrating and documenting, they seem to me to be in each moment, and to enjoy most of them.

As much as I want my 15 minutes of fame, I know that I will be lucky if I can have 15 minutes of adult life as Kirk, Kristin, and Mary live it. Now it’s time I signed off and did some living of my own.

The Widening Gap

A couple of months ago, I made the decision to declare two separate majors. It wasn't really a hard decision to make; in fact, it seemed perfectly logical because I have loved both Art and History since sixth grade. To date, I'm really glad that I picked these majors, so let me just preface this entire post by saying that I don't regretting choosing my majors, and I doubt that I'm ever going to.

Deciding to study the two subjects I love most seemed like a great idea-specially because I was way ahead of most of my friends with my major(s) declaration-but I never really considered what I would do with the two majors once I graduated from college. At the time, any thought about grad school was just a speck on the distant horizon, and I mostly just concentrated on patting my back for actually figuring out what I wanted to do for the remainder of my undergraduate career. At the back of my mind, however, I always just sort of thought that museums would be a good career direction to explore because both my majors seem to apply very well in that general direction.

At the start of this summer, I went into my internship thinking that I would possibly like to be a conservator, but I quickly decided that I didn't have the personality type to actually become one, so that whole idea went right out the window. When we met Suzanne Isken and Suzanne Muchnic, I started to seriously consider going in to either Arts Education or Art writing. Until we met Charlotte Cotton, that is; after we met her, curation got a whole lot more appealing. But then we met Ed Sanchez-an antiquities conservator at the Getty-a week ago, and *poof*. Suddenly, I got right back to square one.

This summer, I've met a whole array of interesting people with incredible jobs. And more importantly, I've met a whole array of interesting people who love their jobs. Ordinarily, all of this should be encouraging, but in truth, all of it is just unsettling. Because most of these people seem to have stumbled into their jobs by accident.

Now before people start rolling their eyes and thinking that I'm just a paranoid girl whose hyperventilating about my future (I mean, dozens of people, both in museums and not in museums, fall into their current jobs by accident, right?), hear me out. Almost all the people I've spoken with this summer prefaced their little "my career path" schpiel by saying, "I'm not the best person to talk to about my career path because I fell into this job and nowadays you need to have a specialized degree to get the job I currently do and love" or something to that effect. Each and every one of them said that, so I'm guessing that this is a trend. I'm beginning to seriously think that there's a huge generation gap between current museum professionals and us, because most of them learned a lot on the job. But "falling" into jobs like these seems to be no longer possible, or extremely rare at best. Museums are getting highly specialized, and they are now beginning to look for people who are not going to have to learn things from scratch, and this worries me.

What happens to all of us who don't know what specific field we want to go into? How will "following my passion"-which is what I'm doing with my two undergraduate degrees-help me pick the appropriate graduate school course that I might need to take to actually get hired at a museum?

In many ways, I'm glad I have two more years before I graduate, but all of this is confusing. I really wish that things could just work out the old way and that I could just fall into my dream museum job- whatever that might be. But I guess the times are changing. And I'm going to have to keep up with them. *Sigh*

Antiquities

A few days ago, we were discussing the current controversies regarding antiquities and their repatriation, such as the case between the Getty and Italy regarding items in the Getty’s collection that apparently did not rightfully belong to them. We also discussed an article about Thai antiquities from the ancient Ban Chiang culture that were discovered in 1966 and have found their way into private and museum collections, even though they were never officially released onto the market. Archaeologists have decried the practice of moving artifacts out of their country of origin, arguing that “it removes objects from their original information-rich context,” and that it “destroys the archaeological record.”

The dilemma of antiquities collecting, especially that of museums owning items that were looted or stolen from other countries, is not an easy one to solve, and not a problem I want to answer here. I do, however, want to address the flaws in the archaeologists’ argument regarding keeping objects in their historical context.

1. Now no doubt viewing Egyptian artifacts in Egypt with the entire Nile River Delta as a backdrop would be an unparalleled experience. But how many people can afford to fly all the way to Egypt to view Egyptian artifacts? For most of us, encyclopedic museums near our homes are the most accessible way to experience and appreciate other cultures.

2. Mary made another good point. If we extend the archaeologists’ argument to its logical conclusion about keeping artifacts in their historical and archaeological context, then wouldn’t that mean leaving the artifacts in the ground? After all, that is now an integral part of their history—that they were buried beneath the earth by time.

3. Now what about looted objects? Let’s take the Elgin marbles for example. Yes, they were looted? No, Lord Elgin probably shouldn’t have done that. Yes, they are now in the British Museum. Should the British Museum return the marbles to Athens? Ah, that’s the question. On the one hand, one could argue that the marbles belong back in the Parthenon because that is its proper historical context. But what does “proper historical context” even mean? True, the marbles used to be on the Parthenon. But an integral part of their history now includes being an object of plunder and a symbol of British power and influence in the 19th century. Its place in the British Museum is in keeping with its historical context.

Of course I’ve only touched upon one facet of the antiquities debate. What are your thoughts regarding the legal and ethical aspects of antiquities collections? Should institutions like the British Museum return all previously looted objects?

(On a slightly different note, it seems to me that the demand by certain countries for their objects back and the refusal of other countries to return them, is oftentimes motivated not by a genuine concern for the objects themselves, but is in fact a clandestine pissing contest between nation-states. No?)

Free Throwing

At about 3 o'clock today, all of us stopped working-for me, this meant putting down my research on Anne Brigman, the Pictorialist photographer- and we went over to the Ceramics studio.

Since Patricia, Zoe and Mary had already thrown in the studio when Rody and I were on our field trips, they went in to trim their pieces, but I sat on the wheel for the first time in a long time. The last time I sat down at a wheel was in fifth grade, and back then my legs weren't long enough to properly use a kick wheel, so I just presumed that I would be better at throwing than I remember being (although to be frank, I'd like to think that I would be better at everything I do now). Unfortunately, however, I think that I might have actually gotten much worse at throwing.

I do have to give Rody props though. He tried really hard to show me what to do, but it seems as if there was no stopping me: clay water flew everywhere, and clumps of clay fell all over the place, not least because I'm pedal happy and because my brain could not process that stopping the wheel meant not pressing down on the pedal (can't all of you just see how good I'll be at driving?).

I started with a lot of clay and I tried to make something with a shape, but (of course) I thinned out the top too much (because the wheel was spinning too fast) and eventually my lopsided mess of a bowl exploded in my face. After that Rody trimmed the clay down and I started making a smaller bowl (with careful guidance from him), which actually looked like it was going look pretty good for my second atempt, until (of course) I pressed the pedal down too hard, and my beautiful bowl kind of exploded again. Eventually, I tried once more to made a small candy container thing, but the clay (it remembers everything, you know) gave out and I had to get rid of the sodden, lifeless lump.

Meh. I've never actually made a serious attempt at anything clay based. Ever. And now I'm beginning to see that it was with good reason: if my first attempt at throwing is any indication, I'm going to be really pathetic at ceramics.

Man. Who knew that a wheel, some clay and some really terrible pedal work was all it was going to take to give my ego a huge beating.

Getty Field Trips

Yesterday Rody and I went on our field trips with our discussion groups.
I'm in Amada Cruz's discussion group, so I went to the Japanese American National Museum to see the Ikebana and Contemporary Art show and then went over to the Pasadena Museum of California Art in (you guessed it!) Pasadena to see Kori Newkirk's survey show and also to meet with the artist, himself.

Since the Metrolink was so unkind as to only have one train passing through Claremont between 8:30 and 11, I had to get onto the 8:48 train with Rody in order to get to downtown in time to meet with the group at 10:45. So one Metrolink trip, one toasted bagel and one coffee later, I set off from Union Station to JANM on foot. I thought it would take me 20 minutes to get there, but apparently it only takes 7 minutes, so I reached JANM at 10:15, only to find that the museum opens at 11. But the wait wasn't that bad, because Amada came at 10:30, and everyone else in the group arrived soon after her.

After hanging out in the lobby (and staring awkwardly at other people) for about 20-25 minutes, the curator of the Ikebana show, Karin Higa, came down and talked to us about JANM, it's mission, and what it's trying to accomplish. She then proceeded to take us through the show and she told us about the different schools of Ikebana, their characteristic styles, and why she chose the contemporary works that she did. In total, I really liked the show- the flower arrangements were beautiful and the art was great- but I'm not sure how I felt about the paper "design and architectural" element. I'm sure that all that paper is significant, but I didn't really see how, and I felt it a little aesthetically out of place with the show- but hey, can't like everything, now can I?

I also noticed that JANM had also provided for a cellphone tour, and I asked Karin Higa about it. I'm not happy with the fact that there was very little in terms of a gallery guide, that there were minimal wall labels, no tour guides for the show, and that there is no catalog yet (they're documenting the weekly flower arrangements before they make a catalog)- but I'm more satisfied with Karin's answer than Suzanne Isken's answer about the cell-phone thing. It turns out that Karin is very well aware of the fact that there is practically nothing on the wall-labels and nothing for the uneducated viewer to go by, and she said that she's rethinking the wall labels for the show because she realizes that people might not be taking away a lot from what they see (other than the seriously beautiful flower arrangements). But she also conceded that a cell phone tour is significantly cheaper for a museum, and since budgeting is tight, that's the option they have to go for.

After JANM, the group made a stop at Senor Fish's (tacos! burritos! quesdillas!) and then went to Pasadena to meet with Kori Newkirk at PMCA. To be honest, I'd never heard of Kori Newkirk, and I completely forgot to google him before the field trip, so I had no idea of what to expect. But it turns out that I like Newkirk's work (I love the pony bead curtains and I love the basketball sculptures). In a way, I'm really happy that I got to hear him talk about his work, because he seemed to approach his work in a way that I like to approach my own- since so much of it is personal, he's kind of cagey when it comes to talking about it. I'm sure it frustrates some people when contemporary artists don't really like to talk about their works in terms of what the work tries to say, but I have to admit that I'm fine when artists are reluctant to talk about their work because I'm kind of like that when it comes to my own art.

But yeah. In total, I'm satisfied with my sojourn into LA. The shows we saw were well-explained by people who were highly involved with creating them, and the shows themselves were really good- I just wish that the commute to LA wasn't so long and complicated.

Picture!

Hi everyone! Mary thought it would be nice if we had a photo of all of us up here, so here it is:



From left to right: Rody Lopez (Getty intern, Pomona '09), Zoe Larkins (Wilson intern, Scripps '09), Simrat Dugal (Getty intern, Scripps '10), Patricia Yu (Getty intern, Pomona '09)

Who Says That Art Critics Are Intimidating?

On Thursday, July 3rd, Mary had two really well known art writers come into the office to meet with the 4 of us- Peter Plagens, an artist and the former art writer for Newsweek, and Laurie Fendrich, also an artist and a professor at Hofstra university.

We talked with them for about 2 hours (our meeting ran way into our lunch break, but I don't think anyone really cared- they were really awesome), and heard tons and tons of life stories and got a hefty bunch of advice from them about the art world. And through the entire 2 hours, I don't think any of us got the sense that we were talking to two self-involved, highly-strung art world people. If anything, I think all of us felt that we were talking to two of the most down-to-earth people that we've ever met (despite the fact that they are very important in the art world- I mean, Peter wrote for Newsweek!).

I don't want to pass their stories second hand through the blog- I'm sure they would lose their magic if passed on in writing- but Laurie told us stories about Clement Greenberg's visit to her studio, a dinner party where she and Peter got to roam free in the Met alone at night (with the museum guard in tow) and their time at this year's Idyllwild summer program as visiting artists. And among other things, Peter told us all about his days at Newsweek, and what it was like working under deadline and under editors (both competent and incompetent). Oh, and they also gave us links to some really helpful websites that we've put in the sidebar.

All in all, I think that meeting them was incredibly refereshing (I now have hope for the art world). And after speaking with them and Suzanne Muchnic, I'm pretty intrigued about the world of art writing- I think I might seriously start looking into it as a possible career option.

Contemporary Art

So, on Monday, June 30, our supervisor took the four of us on a little field trip to the LA Times to meet an art writer, Suzanne Muchnic, and then we walked over to MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) to meet with the director of their education department, Suzanne Isken.

I am not particularly fond of contemporary art. Most of it elicits a noncommittal shrug, and an “Eh, I don’t get it.” Some I find visually unappealing and aesthetically displeasing. For some reason, contemporary art never “hooked” me, and my viewing of contemporary art has often left me feeling baffled, an outsider looking into an exclusive club whose members speak a dialect that sounds familiar at first, but is ultimately incomprehensible.

While touring the new Marlene Dumas exhibit at MOCA, I came to a conclusion about why the general public shies away from contemporary art:

Contemporary art museums are elitist. I’m sorry, but they really can be pretentious.

The Dumas exhibit came with absolutely no explanatory text; the wall labels contained the bare minimum of title, date, and credit line. This is an exhibit that features grotesque and disturbing imagery; expect to see malformed babies, dead bodies, and sexually explicit paintings. It would have been nice to have some frame of reference as to what the artist was trying to accomplish. A few labels contained a phone number that guests could call on their cell phones and hear a recorded message of Marlene speaking about her work or reciting a poem she wrote in conjunction with the painting. That’s it. Oh yeah, and there’s also a catalogue.

I asked Suzanne Isken why MOCA chose not to print out and put up Dumas’ poems, so that people who were visual learners, like me, could read them instead. Also, Dumas is known for basing her paintings off of other works and photographs, so why didn’t MOCA put up small images of the original photograph that inspired a particular Dumas painting? Isken responded by saying that MOCA is known for having very little on the walls and that visitors could always consult the catalogue or call the recorded cell phone message. After all, she says, This is L.A. Everyone has a cell phone.

And so we begin the elitism. So what if MOCA is known for its minimalist white walls? A small panel of black text on white walls would hardly distract from Dumas’ works. To even assume that everyone has a cell phone is elitist. I know plenty of people who do not have cell phones, and even if people did have one, why should they waste their minutes calling for information that should already be provided in the entrance fee they already paid? Or what if they had no reception? In any case, we tried dialing the number. It didn’t connect. After getting back to Scripps, we tried again. The call went through, but big surprise, the sound quality was wretched, and Dumas’ accent difficult to understand. While listening intently in a vain effort to decipher what she was saying, I thought, “There’s nothing wrong with my ears, and I’m having trouble understanding. What if a museum guest was hearing impaired?” In a day and age where institutions can be sued for not being handicapped accessible, MOCA chooses to put their information in a format that excludes the deaf? Whose brilliant idea was this? And now we come to the catalogue. Yes, it’s full of all the information one could possibly want about Dumas and her paintings. It is also a behemoth of a book, and not very many people are going to want to fork over $45 and then lug a 288 pg book with them as they go around the gallery.

Let me direct you to Dead Marilyn. It’s an oil painting of a woman’s face in repose, a woman who is presumably, according to the title, dead. The woman is also, apparently, Marilyn Monroe. Huh. Who’d have guessed that? Very few people, that’s who. The painting bears very little resemblance to sex icon Marilyn Monroe…which is exactly the point. The painting is based off a morgue photograph of Monroe, but I only know this because I read a gallery guide that our supervisor handed out the day before. The gallery itself tells the viewer nothing about the painting’s origins, so all it seems to be is an oil painting of a not-very-attractive woman. And how are viewers supposed to suddenly connect that to Marilyn Monroe?

I understand that MOCA wants the viewers to come to their own conclusions about artwork and to engage themselves with the paintings and not allow wall text to dictate their interpretations. But if the museum does not give guests some starting point, some frame of reference, most viewers will leave frustrated and vow to never waste another $10 on “ugly” art ever again. I’m trying to find the “meaning” in a work, but all I have are bare, blank walls that stare silently back at me. It’s as if the museum is saying, “You will never understand these works of art; you’re lucky we let you in to see them in the first place. That’s right silly mortal, behold the work of genius!”

Oh MOCA...

I've spent the better part of the week obsessing about how I've felt about the Marlene Dumas show currently on at the MOCA Grand Ave and what I think it might say about the MOCA. All 4 of us saw it along with Mary, Suzanne Isken- the director of education at the MOCA- and Suzanne Muchnic- the art writer at the LA Times, when we went on our downtown intern field trip with Mary on Monday.

Let me just preface this entire next chunk by saying that I really, really liked the work on display. I know that it's depressing, disgusting, perverse and all that blah-blah-blah stuff, but I liked it- not just because I thought that the paintings themselves were excellent technically but also because reading the gallery guide before I saw the work forced me to think about how I was reacting to the paintings. Oh and I also want to preface by saying that a lot of what I'm saying was originally brought up by Patricia, and I fully agree.

But. I was incredibly disappointed by some of the presumptions that MOCA made when it put up the show. Suzanne Isken told us that many of the paintings had supplementary information that went with them (such as poems that Dumas has written for each painting), and that all the supplementary information could be accessed by dialing a phone number on a cellphone and punching in a code. So of course, when she said this, Rody promptly pulled out his phone and dialed the number, and Patricia asked her why the MOCA chose not to print the poems in wall labels.

So while Rody waited on the number to connect (which it didn't), Suzanne told Patricia that there were a number of reasons why the poems weren't printed, two of which were that the poems would've taken up a lot of wall space (because, of course, the MOCA is known for its big white walls and minimal wall labels) and that the supplementary stuff was available in the show's catalog (which costs $45). This sort of put us off because first of all, not everyone has a cellphone, and even if someone did, precious minutes would have to be used (and quite frankly, why should they?). And on top of that, when Rody did finally get through to the number, the audio quality was shitty, and you couldn't understand anything that Dumas was saying.

So, I don't know. I'm not happy about the choice that they've made in terms of how the MOCA chose to include supplementary information about the works on display. Patricia really wished that there were wall-labels with the poems printed and with the source photographs for the paintings (because Dumas works off of photographs that she clips from newspapers, magazines and all sorts of other places), while I really wish they had a small pamphlet or hand out for that kind of thing. I'm pretty sure that some kind of handout with source information for a few choice works could have helped someone who is unfamiliar with Dumas to understand her working process and her thought process. But either way, the fact remains that there is no easily accessible way for anyone to get information about the works.

I've too often heard people complain that contemporary art is confusing (and have too often heard people moan about how terrible it is) to know that many people will take an instant disliking to Dumas work. And while I know that contemporary art is not really everyone's cup of tea, I wish that the MOCA would have made more of an effort to help people without an art theory or art background at least get a better understanding of Dumas' process by providing easier access to her poetry and source photographs.

Hey girls!