Wednesday, April 08, 2015

The Tyranny of Art-Architecture

Dear Museums: Stop Making Nonsense
When museums chase blockbusters, viewers lose out, because the artists who can deliver at the scale of architecture are few in number, especially as the scale grows.

Following the links in the article to a feedback loop of various outraged art critics (about the Björk exhibition for example) is a good time. It would appear that Mr. Biesenbach chasing celebrities is not approved of, although I suspect his success in this area is a big part of why he got his posts at the MOMA & PS1 in the first place.

1 comment:

Pete said...

I caught the last weekend of the Matisse Cut-Outs show at the end of January. There were a couple of places where the exhibit design was shockingly bad. One of the choke-point doors had a ten minute film playing on the wall directly beside it, so that whole gallery looked like the subway escalator at rush hour.

They should just let Paula Antonelli do everything over there, because "Design and the Elastic Mind" is the best show I've ever seen.

I see the museum building boom and large-scale installation art as a bleeder valve for all of the funny money being generated by our top-heavy global society. I'd never conflate scale, expense, popularity or novelty with importance. Sometimes they intersect.