Not for the geezers, nor the squeamish, and nobody short on time.
Friday, July 25th, 2008
OOOOOWEEE! Yesterday afternoon, despite my proximity to Uptown (i.e. so right in the middle of it I might as well have been temporarily employed as some sort of stray french fry picker-upper at Café Barbette), while receiving -more like enduring- an annual 75-minute massage, complete with Chinese Cupping, from the hands, elbows and, I think for a couple instances, knees of an absolute muscle-kneading genius, I couldn’t help but happily compare my own ‘hurts so good’ experience to the ‘frustrated as hell’ predicament of the ‘Minnesota artists’ who were supposedly infiltrating the members’ meeting at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, occurring at precisely the same moment as I was being mushed, mashed, stretched and torqued about. The smirk on my face couldn’t have been much smirkier.
Oh, you need some background info? This goes back to last Saturday morning, when I should have been attending to my usual domestic duties of dishes and diapers when my curiosity got the better of me in regards to a certain ‘community meeting’ poised to discuss the future of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program, that small piece of the museum where your buddy somehow got to show her or his work a little while back. Back in the day it was in that shitty, hall-like space at the top of the stairs above the lobby. And before that I think it was probably somewhere worse. But now they have these totally posh digs over in the new Target® annex adjacent to the contemporary galleries which makes the work in the MAEP spaces actually feel like it means something, despite an odd urge to go down to Nicollet Mall for some laundry detergent and toothpaste. Which just wasn’t the case in the old days, like 3 years ago. So I ride bike down to MIA and somehow luck out and get to sit next to - no lying - artist-turned-begrudging writer Andy S. (he wears it well) who hopefully doesn’t think all the mumbling and grumbling seated beside him is the onset of Tourette’s Syndrome. I just can’t keep certain things under my breath.
Let’s recap this recap ASAP: @ MIA, new admin. chief streamlines the admin. structure in the curatorial depts. Said streamlining redirects curatorial heads of depts. away from Exec. Dir. to a curator who now oversees several of the curatorial depts. ‘Not cool,’ say the MAEP folks. Insult to injury, the MAEP must also report to the new head of the new Contemporary Art Dept., who then reports to the head of all the other curatorial depts. before word can get to the Exec. Dir. So loud are the MAEP’s saying ‘Not cool’ now, that 30-year serving head coordinator of MAEP, Stewart Turnquist, who has since gone MIA, as in AWOL, resigns.
Jump ahead to the meeting, and the chorus of complaints directed towards Exec. Dir. whose attempts at reassuring the MAEP’s that ‘nothing is going to change’ are falling on deaf ears. Literally, I think. So Exec. Dir. finally leaves, realizing she ain’t getting paid to repeat herself over and over on a Saturday morning. Subsequently, reports from anon. sources, have her spotted at the BLB for ‘more than several’ Bloody Mary’s. Long story trying to wrap itself up, the MAEP’s are fearful that their magic carpet ride of autonomy in the MIA may be coming to an un-Democratic and un-Minnesotan end, the possibility of such a result so horrifying there are calls for MAEP to implode upon its own ideology rather than except some (long-time coming?) restructuring, the result being that they continue to exist in a very prestigious, public space where they receive oodles of publicity and support beyond your average Non-Profit Art Space’s DREAMS. But the MAEP’s felt entitled, or something, to having it their way. This sentiment continued upon conclusion of the event when they began discussing the next scheduled meeting, which initially was to be Aug. something, except most of the crowd began vehemently questioning an Aug. mtg. of any kind because ‘everybody would be outta town.’ Huh? Where are we going? Do I get to come along? Who can I catch a ride with? I like going places!
Oh, where to begin. First of all, have you ever heard of a ‘Contingency Plan?’ Thirty years, 30 freaking yrs, and you couldn’t come up with any sort of back-up, For Emergencies Only, PLAN B? Seriously, you were all there when the NEA was eviscerated right before your eyes. Cut after cut after cut, so many sociopathic hacks of the anti-art machete you would have thought Art wouldn’t survive such a bludgeoning. But it did, because artists, as the MAEP’s purported to be, are creative and don’t stick to a singular and rigid path. They fight back, whether it means bob and weave or go to the Rope-a-Dope until it can land a 1-2 combo and then BLAMMO, another KO for Art. For real, 30 excruciatingly long and formative years of our contemporary society and you got nothing but a ‘community meeting?’ C’mon!
Secondly, and I truly hate to devote any time to this matter whatsoever, to those out there who wouldn’t cease with the old-geezer-griping and basket-weaving-bitching of being in any way shape or form related to, god-forbid, Contemporary Art, and even worse, ‘New York or LA,’ do we have news for you. The word ‘Contemporary,’ despite the night-terrors it gives you, means ‘of the present time.’ We are all, by the default that is our current existence, contemporaries living in what we might call ‘contemporary society.’ Which means that a basket-weaving artist is a contemporary basket-weaving artist just like a conceptual artist is a contemporary conceptual artist. Unless they are dead. It is not a Genre folks, just a modifier, a qualifier, a word to describe whatever Genre it is as belonging to the Now. And when referring to Now, we must remember that everyone from NY to LA to MN, whether in MPLS or Ely, and everyone else around the globe is connected. We globalized like at least 20 yrs ago. I can’t believe how hard that is to understand. Sheesh.
Lastly, for now anyway, it was pretty obvious that no younger artists gave a crap one way or another, as no one younger than say 45 had any statement, opinion, question, idea, etc. re. the situation facing MAEP. Except maybe Sean Smuda, how old is Smuda? Which is rather odd considering that the artists who are predominately exhibiting in the Target® annex gallery (shit, am I outta dishsoap?), recently anyway, have been younger than 45. By far. Ferchrissakes, Hardland/Heartland have a show coming up in there and they aren’t even drinking age. But there are two sides to that coin, one being that the young artists are willing to just go with the flow and accept the powers-that-be above them and any subsequent streamlining within a major institution, which may be due to a certain generational gap that disconnects them from their elders’ ideas and experiences or a different generational attitude of ‘who gives a shit, my videos are on YouTube.’ The other side may be that they, the young artists, have been much better and far more savvy and creative at realizing, reacting and adjusting to inexorable changes around them, deftly utilizing those things we were talking about earlier, Plan B’s.
Back in Uptown, now lying on my cup-spotted back with eyes closed and slowly slipping into sleep, the smirk beginning to subside more from fatigue than diminishing satisfaction, I couldn’t help but think about where I fit into this whole fiasco. Somewheres in the middle I guess. Not exactly being what you might call an ‘emerging’ artist (I almost emerged back in the early Aughts, so close) and certainly not in the geriatric set that kept hollering in my ear when they just couldn’t wait their turn to talk, I do however sit in a unique position, however ambivalent that may be. On the one hand, I do admire the vim and vigor the old folks still have for this sacred cow. It is indeed unique and has granted a lot of Minnesotan artists tremendous opportunities, especially young artists, with some Big-Time exhibition experience. But then again, with all the provincial disparagement of the ‘contemporary’ it made me wonder if any of these people, the MAEP’s, had visited the shows that the MAEP curatorial panel has programmed over the past few years. Seriously, what must they thought, if they bothered to swing by, when JJ Peet buried himself within one of the walls of the gallery, behind bags of money, to secretly paint still-lives? Did that really have nothing do with anything but Minnesotan things? That couldn’t have been about the art of elsewhere, could it? Doubt it could, I guess, now pass the corn Ma. So I am confused, is what I am saying. Why all the big fuss over a program that is and has been exhibiting some fine, contemporary art that usually fits nicely within the much greater context of the art world, which yes does include quite a bit of NY and LA, when you are not interested in seeing any exhibitions that have anything to do with the contemporary art world that, oooh gross, is heavily influence by NY and LA?
This morning in the newspaper, the art lady had a brief, very journalistic report (right down to the post meeting refreshments and hors d’oeurves, sans description of tastiness) of the goings-on at the big members’ meeting à la musée grande. Turns out a dozen or so of the frustrated artists did in fact crash the party in an attempt to curry the favor of the Board of Trustees only to be stopped in their tracks by good old, tried and true, parliamentary procedure. Uff-da, that’s gotta hurt. So now we must wait for them to return from where ever it is they, the MAEP’s, are off to for the month of Aug. For the next meeting. At their leisure, of course. Of course.
