The New Museum under construction at 235 Bowery in Manhattan
via Artnet News, Dec. 27, 2006:
THE 2006 REVUE
{excerpt; links provided by ng}
Jerry Saltz: Criminal Behavior on the Part of Two Important New York Art Institutions: Dia and the Drawing Center. Plus, a Question about the Market.
Instead of renovating its tremendous 22nd Street Chelsea headquarters, or establishing another building, or even opening a temporary New York space, the Dia Art Foundation abandoned New York by shutting down all of its rotating Manhattan exhibition spaces. To ANYONE having ANYTHING to do with this reprehensible behavior, from the ex-director who in a very Bush-like move abandoned the institution after he shut it down, to all of the trustees, it is mind-boggling and heartbreaking that NOT ONE OF YOU openly protested or resigned over this negligent, irresponsible action.
The venerable Drawing Center, meanwhile, is this close to lost, having wasted years considering a misguided move to Ground Zero and supposedly continuing to mull a relocation to the South Street Seaport, where it would be little more than a tourist attraction. We all need to conduct a group intervention and tell the Drawing Center, "Snap out of it! Join the fray! Either move to Chelsea or near the New Museum on the Lower East Side, or even go to Brooklyn. Whatever you do, get your act together and start being important to New York again. As it is, you're almost irrelevant!"
It's doubtful that it's bold enough for this, but maybe the Drawing Center should take over Dia's old building. If not the Drawing Center, maybe a few nonprofits could share the building. White Columns and Artist's Space on 22nd Street would change the gravity of Chelsea overnight. Whatever, it's time for all of us (me included) to stop rolling over when our institutions behave in such reprehensible, irresponsible ways. We all love the Drawing Center and Dia. But we need to let them know that we won't stick with them if they continue not sticking with us. The clock is ticking for both of these institutions to get their act together.
Postscript: This postscript is a question about the art market -- it has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with Artforum, its advertising, editorial policies or content. But consider this statistic, a telling one about the U.S. art world, taken from the pages of that magazine. Ten years ago today Artforum had a total of 112 pages. This month there are almost twice that many pages of ads, alone. There's nothing wrong with advertising. I like ads. Ads are the porn of art magazines. They are the reason art magazines can afford to exist. This is NOT a call for fewer ads.
< Artforum ad chief Knight Landesman
But you tell me what this much advertising means and how it may be affecting everything we do. Are we liking certain things because we know that other people are liking them? How is the market affecting the ways we see art? How does it affect the way curators and editors see art? Does the market create a competitive atmosphere that drives artists to produce better work or does it foster empty product? Do art fairs make artists make better, worse, or only more art? No one knows. We don't have a way to talk about the market. There is no effective "Theory of the Market" that isn't just a rehash of Marxist ideology. There's no new philosophy to help us address the problem of the way the market is affecting the production and presentation of art, although people are trying. The good, maybe great news is that the market is unpredictable. Therefore it is a force of chaos, and chaos is always good for art. It's just not clear yet how or even if this chaos is being used.
