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John Haber on New Museum controversy.
"The museum is doing a fascinating project" argues Jeffrey Deitch. Deitch is also curator of the Joannu collection.
Deitch employee (and artist) Kathy Grayson requests "a little respect for the inderdisciplinarity we all celebrate", lauding Jannou's brilliance and the "obvious coolness of the most important artist of the last few decades doing a curatorial project".
"If Louis XIV was alive today he'd own a Jeff Koons balloon dog" - Hrag Vartanian.
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Jerry Saltz vs. People Who Know What They Are Talking About:
"It is a joke, by the way, to think that Joannou’s collection will increase in value after being shown here. If anything, using three floors of the New Museum will overexpose the art and decrease its value" – Jerry Saltz, NYMag, 11/11
"It is also extremely questionable to say that showing art in a museum increases its value" - Jerry Saltz, NYMag, 11/16
“Showing at a museum gives credence to the works a collector has assembled and does add value to the asset” - John Arena, senior vice president in custom credit at U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, NYTimes, 11/10
“(A museum) is not supposed to surrender itself to a trustee and donor whose collection stands to be enhanced in value by a major museum show.” – Noah Kupferman, Private Client Manager at US Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, former specialist at Sotheby’s, currently teaches a course called Fine Art as a Financial Asset at New York University, NYTimes, 11/10.
It is preposterous to think that a major museum show would cause anyone but the uneducated voyeur to take an artist more seriously, think of their work as having more value, or even make people talk about the artist and the work more.
ReplyDeleteAny controversy will only serve to harm the artist and their reputation, providing no appreciable contribution to the art dialogue and driving away collectors who are easily offended and fearful of ridicule, being vulnerable, sensitive - their refined tastes making their high strung strings hum on frequencies too hard for many to handle.
When work accrues a certain investiture, it is immune to market forces and is so full of value that any more would pop it like an Andes dinner mint.
When a collector buys work, they are only buying the best from the best galleries - so how can they fail? Even if a few bad works get curated into a big show, we should withhold judgement until we have paid to see it and then tastefully remark that our expectations were not quite met, but that on the whole we were ravished by the experience of value, taste and wisdom that one person's refined educated visionary opinion can produce.
It is amazing that we are allowed to see these collections, and even more amazing that anyone would question the beautiful narrative that surrounds them. I think many bloggers would rather live in filth than to be allowed to see the vision of the more knowledgeable, creative, refined and ambitious, who have devoted all their spare time and money into producing valuable contributions the the train of art history.
Do not dynamite the tracks out of sour grapes - do not wash it's fabrics in the mud of true abjection. Celebrate he magesty of it's conception, the light of it's largesse!
WWRSD