Modern Art Notes

(Click to enlarge.)

Related: Don't miss William Powhida's site, which includes more of his work. Follow him on Twitter. You can also follow the, er, real me on Twitter and on Facebook.

A UPS truck crashed into the lobby of the Hirshhorn at about 8:30 Monday night. The museum was closed and empty. The driver of the truck was injured, but DCist (lots of pictures!) and the Washington Post have different details on the extent of his injuries. Remarkably, the driver missed Claes Oldenburg's Geometric Mouse: Variation I, Scale A (1971), which is installed between the Hirshhorn's Gordon Bunshaft building and Independence Ave. (and behind security planters). MAN can confirm that Maurizio Cattelan was not involved. [Image: Cattelan, Untitled, 2002. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.]

The first time I drove across Kansas, I thought I might die of boredom. Aside from occasional billboards advertising adult video stores, there didn't seem to be anything to look at except for 424 miles of flat, empty flatness. During the course of my collegiate career in Missouri, I drove thousands of miles through Kansas: back across all 424 miles on my way to California, to sporting events in Manhattan, Wichita, Lawrence, Salina and Topeka. I also spent a lot of time driving through Nebraska and eastern Colorado. Not thrilling stuff, that.

Turns out I missed a lot. In a series of work recently shown at New York's Robert Mann Gallery and in a new book from The Center for American Places, photographer Joe Deal studies the Great Plains. The work is quietly -- whisperingly -- thrilling. Each picture features minute exception in fields of seeming mundanity. A cottonwood tree tries to grow in a crevasse. A cloud passes over prairie grasses (Cloud, Missouri Plateau, 2005, above). Here is a butte. Rocks in wind. Rain tries. Fire. Rocks. Deal doesn't dramatize the landscape. He simply presents subtlety simply. Here is land, here are elements acting on it.

The book -- printed in an edition of 1,750 and a must-own for anyone who loves photography or the West -- includes not just Deal's pictures, but also an essay in which Deal defines the Great Plains, discusses their historical import, their geological creation and tells us why he was interested in the region. There's no direct connection between Deal and William Least Heat-Moon's exploration of this landscape, but as I read Deal and essayist Britt Salvesen and looked at the pictures, I kept coming back to Least Heat-Moon. It's easy to love the drama of the American Southwest. I'm grateful that more tender landscapes receive affection. (At right: Moon and Butte, High Plains, 2005.)

Deal is a photographer who makes you feel like you should have seen what he saw. Throughout his career he has taken pictures of things we don't think to look at -- and then makes us wonder how we missed them. His photographs -- old-school carbon pigment prints 24-inches square that make detail both clear and impressionistic -- seem to be empty. Then you see things and then you wonder: Is that a really big lava tube and how are those trees so small? Is Deal consciously referring to Roger Fenton? Why did Deal put all those horizon lines in almost the exact same place in nearly every photograph? How did that butte get there? And then you begin to understand: Nature moved slowly to make this place. The photographs force us to move slowly through them. Sometimes understanding -- and appreciation -- comes slowly. It is worth it.

Related: The Center for Creative Photography recently acquired Deal's archive. Brian Sholis on same.

• @KnightLAT nails it: This Carol Vogel story is the kind of alleged journalism that would be an embarrassment to a college newspaper, let alone the NYT. Everyone quoted in the story is selling the painting: The only two people in the piece are a representative of the seller and the rep from the auction house selling the painting. Vogel is either flacking or shilling -- or both.
• Washington Post art critic Blake Gopnik reviews a car show in Atlanta because, uh, well... I haven't the foggiest. The part at the end, about a car being like a Raphael, is a classic. It reminds me of how a fir tree is like a hockey puck.
  
• The SF Chron's Kenneth Baker takes a quick look at a masterpiece by the most underrated painter of the 1950s.
• In the Boston Globe, Sebastian Smee looks at the MFA Boston's temporarily twin Sowers. One is the MFAB's and one is from the Van Gogh Museum.
  
• Oops, backing up a bit, actually, the car::Raphael thing is more like a hearthstone being similar to sunglasses.
  
• What's going on at the Philadelphia Museum of Art?! It has two flagrantly improper mistakes on view right now: An exhibition 'co-organized' with private collectors/a dealer's family (hello, inventory) and then this silliness exposed by Alexandra Lange in The Architect's Newspaper.
• I read stories like this -- the LAT's Christopher Hawthorne about a major moment for architecture in Medellin, Colombia, complete with slideshow -- and I am sad that the capital of the free world is such an architectural backwater.
• No, no, wait, now I've got it. The car::Raphael thing reminds me of how a petunia is like a microwave.
  
• On the occasion of a traveling Mark Bradford retrospective opening at the Wexner, the Columbus Dispatch's Amy Davis skips through Bradford's career.
  

The coolest link I've posted in years: The Norton Simon makes way for goslings. [via]

• Artist Steve Roden visits a Fra Angelico at the Prado and spends an hour with it. And thinks about mp3s.
• The LAT's Jori Finkel says that the Huntington could score more than $21 million from the sale of that Picasso.
• I'd link to the first 15 posts on Eyeteeth... or I could just say go there now.
• Jonathan Jones grapples with Dutch landscape painting.
• LACMA is ready to "set the mood for some serious melon romance."
• I'm with the Walker Art Center: Bring back plants in the galleries!
• I dig small shows at big museums. This one at the Met was particularly good.
  
• Art museums and social justice, in collection images.
  

In the jump, the emailed press release that I just received from Christie's, complete with actual colors. Click on it to unfurl it even larger, or something.

Because who doesn't wonder what Donald Judd read (or didn't read), the Judd Foundation has launched a cool online toy: An accounting of the 13,004 books in Donald Judd's Marfa library (10,718 of them unique with the rest being duplicates). A Judd Foundation press release says that the project took 3,500 hours to complete. (The library is part of 'The Block' in downtown Marfa.)

The site is fun to click around -- at least if you use Google Chrome (I couldn't get it to work in Firefox 3.6). A map provides the visitor with a way to click on individual shelving units (at right, with a Judd in the background). You can then zoom in on single shelves, each of which features a little red tab that tells you what the books are about. For example: The top shelf on the right features books about Asia. When I clicked on it I discovered that one of the books is titled "Erotic Arts of Asia" and that its shelved (or is it "installed?") next to "Oriental Architecture."

Because who doesn't wonder what Donald Judd read (or didn't read), the Judd Foundation has launched a cool online toy: An accounting of the 13,004 books in Donald Judd's Marfa library (10,718 of them unique with the rest being duplicates). A Judd Foundation press release says that the project took 3,500 hours to complete. (The library is part of 'The Block' in downtown Marfa.)

The site is fun to click around -- at least if you use Google Chrome (I couldn't get it to work in Firefox 3.6, but others report they were). A map provides the visitor with a way to click on individual shelving units (at right, with a Judd in the background). You can then zoom in on single shelves, each of which features a little red tab that tells you what the books are about. For example: The top shelf on the right features books about Asia. When I clicked on it I discovered that one of the books is titled "Erotic Arts of Asia" and that its shelved (or is it "installed?") next to "Oriental Architecture."

This morning Holland Cotter took to the NYT's arts blog to consider whether the Picasso that sold for $95 million (plus premium) last night was really a Grade-A Picasso.  (Amusing : Cotter rolls his eyes at John Richardson's turn as Picasso's so, you gonna take this bad boy home today? salesman-in-chief. I love it.)

I've been interested in those early 1930s Picasso for a couple of years, in part because of how Matisse helped launched them and because Richard Diebenkorn used them to help find his way as an abstract painter. See how here and here.

At the end of April, Shirin Neshat's film installation The Last Word (2003, above) premiered in Washington at Irvine Contemporary. It's one of the most important works of art made in the last decade. Seeing it for the first time in several years -- and for the first time since Iranians protested the country's last election -- reminded me why.

The Last Word is about the power of a security state and the courage and voice of the artist who creates under the promise of institutional terror. During the 17-minute film -- Neshat's first film installation with narrative dialogue -- a team of men threaten a woman, urging her to talk about nebulous, perceived misdeeds. (The film is based on the life of Shahrnoush Parsipour, an Iranian novelist who Neshat says was imprisoned four times -- once for five years -- by the Iranian government. She was never charged with a crime and finally fled Iran for the United States.)

The design of the film is spare: The authoritarian men wear simple white, button-up shirts, the woman wears black. The male protagonist sits at a long table. The woman sits across from him. At the beginning of the film there is one large ledger-book in front of him. During the course of the film, other men pile up other books in front of him. The film begins with the woman walking toward this man. When she arrives, he says, "You've been keeping your distance, but of course we've been kept an eye on you, following your every move," says a middle-age man who serves as some kind of state interrogator.

The woman says nothing.

"Why don't you say something? Are you afraid? What are you afraid of?"he says in a taunting voice.

The woman says nothing.

"I'm not here to harm you, we just have to clear up a few issues," he says, raising a menacing eyebrow at the word 'issues.' "You're the only one who could do that."

She still says nothing.

"Others have given up and confessed," he says. "You can't pretend any more. Not only did you take a wrong turn, you led others too. Don't you feel guilty?"

Nothing from the woman. The man becomes angrier. "I can make you regret being born. But you must know... your situation is very grave... Do you know how much evidence we have against you?"

Not a word.

Finally, partly prompted by her defiance and, apparently, partly by the mere fact that someone of her gender would dare be defiant, he erupts.

"Woman! You've crossed the line. You have written subversive words. Woman! You are guilty of corrupting human minds. Guilty of poisoning human souls." He stands, hovering over her, trying to physically intimidate her. "Your imagination is that of darkness and darkness is the place of the devil and you woman with words full of sin, words full of darkness, words, full of words, full of lust,  words full of rage..." And he continues yelling but we can't understand what he's saying.

Finally, the woman responds with poetry. "I come from the land of dolls, from under the shade of paper trees, in a garden of a picture book, from the droughts of barren trials of friendship and love in the dusty streets of innocence from the years when pallid letters of alphabet grew...." She continues, reciting in a chanting melody, as the man and his cohorts stare in stunned silence. At first her voice is first shaky, then it is stronger. Her interrogator falls silent, transfixed, his mouth slightly open. Having staggered the regime with the beauty of her words, the woman walks away. Neshat's point is clear: Self-expression provides an avenue of freedom, individuality and liberation from whatever confines us. It wins. Insist upon it.

Just a few years after Neshat made The Last Word, Iran's creative classes proved her right. In the wake of Iran's disputed 2009 election, artists, graphic designers and others found ways to subvert the dominant regime's stranglehold on Iran's communications infrastructure. Mostly young people used art, design (and Twitter) to circumvent media traditionally used for organizing protests.

Neshat's film is about the power of the creative class to speak truth to power. A few years later, in her home country, the country from which she's been effectively exiled because of the range of her voice and the regime's fear of it, Iranians proved her right.

I can't think of a time-based artwork more worthy of being shown in the East Room of the White House during one of the Obama administration's now-familiar evening arts events. Imagine what it would say to the world if the White House invited an Iranian exile -- an artist effectively kicked out of her country because she's an artist with an international audience -- to show a work of art about the power individuals (and artists in particular) have to challenge dictatorial regimes. It would highlight that art and artists are engaged in the sociopolitical discourses of our time. It would remind the world that the United States offers freedom to creative peoples who are deemed threats to their home governments.

Related: Unfortunately it's not clear who would initiate such a presentation. The White House has no art adviser. The National Gallery of Art doesn't advise the White House on incorporating art into White House programs and I don't believe that the National Endowment for the Arts does either.

Yesterday the Supreme Court announced that it was closing the front doors of its magnificent, underrated Cass Gilbert-designed building. In today's Washington Post, Philip Kennicott excoriates the Court for the move. It's a must-read.

In the wake of a decision by Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli to cover up the bare-breasted woman on the Virginia state seal, officials at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond are concerned that Cuccinelli will next turn his attention to the museum and its collection. Cuccinelli's interest in the state's seal was first reported by Norfolk's Virginian-Pilot newspaper. Cuccinelli is a right-wing Republican best known for questioning President Obama's citizenship and for ending protections for gays and lesbians at Virginia universities.

The Virginian-Pilot reported on May 1 that Cuccinelli had modified the state's seal -- which was designed in 1776 by a four-man committee consisting of Richard Henry Lee, George Mason, George Wythe and Robert Carter Nicholas. The seal features a classical-inspired image intended as a clear departure from a British-style coat of arms. In a reference to the colonies' separation from Great Britain, the seal shows a bare-breasted female figure, intended to signify virtue, standing victorious over a male figure meant to personify tyranny. According to the Virginian-Pilot, Cuccinelli recently distributed lapel pins to his staff that feature Virtus with her torso covered by a breastplate.

The timing is especially difficult for the VMFA, which re-opened last weekend after a $150 million expansion that makes it America's 14th-largest art museum. The new VMFA has more gallery space than the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Seattle Art Museum or the J. Paul Getty Museum. Its collections of French art deco, south Asian and African art are among the nation's best. The VMFA also has particular strength in European painting, modern art, American art and in Faberge objects. The VMFA is effectively the state of Virginia's art museum and describes itself as state-supported but privately endowed, a phrase that is believed to concern Cuccinelli.

Museum officials think that Cuccinelli may be outraged by numerous works in the museum's  collection. "Certainly our first worry is how the attorney general will react to our Artemisia Gentileschi, Venus and Cupid (ca. 1625-30, above)," VMFA director Alex Nyerges said. "We held a meeting and decided our best bet was to call Hirshhorn director Richard Koshalek and to ask him to send some of his staff to Richmond. We understand they're experienced at walking around a museum on request, so we'll send them to to walk around the Gentileschi in the hopes of obscuring it from Cuccinelli's view. We're also having our staff study this turn-of-the-17th-century Italian suit of armor. As soon as possible, we'll send our staff into our gift shop to draw breastplates onto posters of the Gentileschi. Same low price."

Last month potential donors to Hirshhorn director Richard Koshalek's plan to build a bulbous membrane at the museum were scheduled to visit. MAN has an acquired an email that was sent from Koshalek's office to Hirshhorn staff on April 12. Consider it an amusing look at the 'Enron-esque reality' a museum director asks his staff to create when he really, really wants to build something.

Dear Hirshhorn Staff,

Today around 3:00 we are expecting two very high level guests who are coming to meet with Richard about possible funding for the Seasonal Inflatable Pavilion (Bubble).  Richard is asking that any staff who can spare the time between 2:45 and 3:30 to please help make the lobby look busy by sitting at the tables, going up and down the escalators, enter and exit the Museum, visiting the bookstore, etc.

We appreciate all the help!

Related: I poked fun at Koshalek's plan to accession a bookstore.

As my Twitter followers know, over the weekend I popped up to Philadelphia to peruse the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Picasso and the Avant -Garde in Paris exhibition. The show was nothing special: It was badly installed, it was chock-full of second-rate work, and somehow it managed to boot Henri Matisse out of the Parisian avant-garde. (True: Philly's most -- and maybe only -- suitably Parisian Matisse is in Chicago at the moment.)

I was particularly frustrated by how difficult it was to see two best-of Juan Grises. Between reflective glass and these two works being installed in a corner, at the intersection of a large wall-text and an audio guide stop, I couldn't get a good look at them.

The two Juan Grises were Violin (1913, at right) and Still Life Before an Open Window, Place Ravignan (1915, below). They're two remarkable paintings and they scream for better treatment than Philadelphia has given them over the last few months.

Over the last few years 'influence' shows have been plenty en vogue: We've seen two 'Matisse-and-Picasso' shows, two Cezanne-and-friends shows, and so on. Yes, sure, Matisse, Picasso and Cezanne are big names. But Juan Gris isn't exactly unknown, and these two Philadelphia paintings argue for how exciting an exhibition looking at how Gris influenced Matisse, Picasso and others would be.

First, consider Violin, painted in 1913, just before Gris and Matisse took refuge  in Collioure together as World War I advanced on Paris. Sure there's a violin there and a bottle and some other stuff, but the patterned wallpaper that makes up the background dominates the painting. It's not that Matisse had never used textiles or wallpaper to flatten images before this -- see 1908's Harmony in Red -- but Gris' use of the wallpaper here seems to presage Matisse's use of patterned wall-coverings and textiles from about 1920 on. (See this 1924 Matisse, for example. Also, this 1921 Matisse in Philly's collection, but not on its website.)

And what about this 1915 Gris still life (at left)? It's a painting that both borrows from Matisse and provides something for Picasso. By 1915 arabesques were a Matisse signature. Gris borrows them and uses them in a cubist still-life composition that is informed by Matisse, Picasso and Braque, but that is somehow all Gris, too. Fast forward to Picasso's next major engagement with cubism 10-15 years later. Two paintings now in the Guggenheim's collection feature Picasso using lots of elements in this Gris.

Related: The National Gallery's Harry Cooper has been working on a Juan Gris show for years. It's not yet on the NGA's exhibition calendar, but expect it to be the first major American Gris show since Mark Rosenthal's ~1980 Metropolitan-Berkeley Art Museum show.

• In the LAT, Sharon Mizota (I think -- there's no byline) looks at what goes into a museum's (mostly LACMA's) permanent collection reinstallation. 
• Also in the LAT, David Pagel says the best paintings of Carroll Dunham's career are on view now at Blum & Poe.
• The Oakland Museum of California re-opened this past weekend and both Christopher Knight and Kenneth Baker took a look. (Factoid: The Oakland Museum was designed by the Met's longtime architect, Kevin Roche.)
• The Walker Art Center is turning the Guthrie's old space into a welcoming, engaging place. At least for now. Mary Abbe's the things-a-museum-director-understands quote from Walker director Olga Viso is priceless.
• Holland Cotter looks at all the Met's Picassos... and finds the collection lacking.
• Nota bene: ArtsJournal's hacking-related issues are fixed. Publishing on MAN returns to normal this week.
  

• The strange, fabulous story of LACMA and Chinese art. It includes Americans in the Chinese army, a curatorial suicide and pictures so good you won't stop staring at them.
• Given in Eyjafjallajokul in Iceland, the Amon Carter's photo of the week is timely.
• I wasn't the only one linking to art historical #Boobquake images yesterday -- Jen Graves was too (you may have to scroll a bit).
• Jonathan Jones also likes making memes art historical.
  
• Cubism. Yes. Agreed. (In a related story, Picasso at the Guggenheim.)
  

The Columbus Museum of Art has acquired a John Marin watercolor: New York Series (1927, at left). The acquisition makes Columbus' already-strong collection of early American modernism -- and Marin in particular -- even stronger. Once Columbus finishes an ongoing renovation it will again be one of the best places to see early 20thC American painting.

The Columbus painting is a superb cubist rendering of one of Marin's favorite subjects: New York City's skyline. It recalls how an unnamed Time magazine critic described Marin's watercolors in 1962: "[They] crumple into fragments, as if each scene he painted had jumped inside a prism. Everything was recognizable, but everything was also slightly out of place, tipped or distorted to give a sense of motion."

The painting seems to revolve around a succession of not-quite-right-angles, both at the perimeter of the composition and within the buildingscape itself. The deep blue of the sky and the building at the center-foreground gives the illusion that the buildings are pushing up into the sky. At the lower left, a gray tree provides an almost-respite from the surging urbanity.

Check out more of the Columbus Museum's early American moderns collection here. In 2011 or 2012 Columbus will publish a catalogue of its entire American collection, followed a year later by a catalogue devoted to the core its American moderns collection, the Howald Collection. (The last Howald publication was authored by Marcia Tucker, in 1969.)

• Christopher Knight says it's time to re-organize the Getty Trust. 
• Expect to see a lot of Latin American light-and-space art in the next couple years. First up is the Miami Art Museum, where Carlos Cruz-Diez is on view. The Miami Herald's Fabiola Santiago takes a look.
• Knight remembers collector Giuseppe Panza di Biumo. Great Warhol anecdotes.
  
• Artnet's Charlie Finch makes the unusual argument that talking about the art market is the most important thing. Finch seems to think that's more important than talking about, you know, actual art. (And he errs.)
• The Stranger's Jen Graves on artist Chauney Peck's solo show at Seattle's SOIL gallery -- and why Peck is giving the art away.
• Washington Postie Philip Kennicott looks at a show of contemporary Lebanese art at American University's Katzen Arts Center and considers what art reveals about national identity.
  
• In the Kansas City Star, Alice Thorson looks at Marc Wilson's impact on the Nelson-Atkins.
  

• Delighted to see the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona score Joe Deal's archive. Deal's work is on view at Robert Mann Gallery. The University of Chicago Press published his new book West and West late last year. More on MAN on both, soon.
• Regarding Christopher Knight's reminder of Hirshhorn director Richard Koshalek's apparent predilection for creative pay-for-it schemes, Red Grooms' bookstore is still at the Hudson River Museum, in this modified version.
• Jumping with Ron Mueck?
• It's lovely that the Obama administration is doing this for conservation and for a key Democratic constituency: Enviros. How come art/creative types don't assert themselves thus? Why isn't the Obama administration rallying people around art/museums, especially given that at least one major American institution is facing a squeeze?
  

Jonesborough, Tennessee is a cute little town of about 4,000. It is the oldest town in the state. It has an funky history: It was originally in North Carolina, was part of a region that tried to separate itself from North Carolina and Tennessee to create a new state called Franklin and was later re-assumed by North Carolina. Before the Civil War, it was the home of the most vibrant abolitionist movement in the South and had staunch Unionist leanings. Andrew Jackson once spent several months in Jonesborough and his ghost is said to inhabit the town.

Jonesborough takes pride in its varied history and since the 1930s it has proudly preserved many of its historic buildings and spaces. As such the town is a bit of a tourist magnet. The International Storytelling Center is headquartered here and holds an annual National Storytelling Festival which keeps alive an old Appalachian tradition. And Bristol, Tenn., home to two of NASCAR's biggest races, is only half an hour away. 

For all these reasons, In the mid-2000s, the hotel chain AmericInn decided that Jonesborough, Tennessee was ripe for a new budget hotel. Ironically, it partly dismantled and demolished a 19th-century home, the Wells-Smith House, in order to build it. The Wells-Smith House had been built before the Civil War by an anti-slavery Presbyterian minister named Rufus Porter Wells, a figure of some national renown. When the Confederate Army controlled Eastern Tennessee at the beginning of the Civil War, Wells, who had welcomed slaves as members of his church and who had taught blacks to read, refused to support the rebels. He fled.

Intrigued by the convergence of present and past histories, photographer Paul Kennedy took 300 pictures documenting the destruction of the Wells-Smith House and the construction of the new AmericInn. I first saw some of them at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2005 and was struck by how much respect and care he showed for the old house. While Kennedy's work was clearly influenced by a certain Gordon Matta-Clark-ish interest in assisted degeneration, Kennedy is more interested in history and community than Matta-Clark. [Image: South from the Kitchen Attic, 2005.]

Many of Kennedy's pictures show both the remnants of the old and the construction materials for the new. They ask whether preservation alone is enough to maintain a thriving community and they ask how much (and what kind of) development is necessary to keep a small town alive. Kennedy's pictures document both destruction, conversion and construction. They're never mawkish or celebratory. They're carefully composed, full of detail and raise more questions than they answer.

Thirty-one of Kennedy's pictures have been collected in a new book called The end of the day. They're paired with an essay by curator and writer Rafael von Uslar, a Q&A with the artist by photography editor William Nabers and an architectural history of the Wells-Smith House by architectural historian Robbie D. Jones. The book also features a range of documents relating to Wells and the history of the site.

The book is a delightful reminder that photography published this way can still be vibrant, energetic, and special,  that artists can be as important contributors to our understanding of place and the question of progress (or not) as other forms of inquiry.

The book has been published in an edition of 500. You can order it through Amazon.com, where Kennedy is self-distributing it. (Because of the vagaries of technology, he's had to list it as a 'used book,' but it's not. Amazon also says that there's one copy available; there are more.) The end of the day is also available through New York's Dashwood Books.

• Christopher Knight says that Hirshhorn director Richard Koshalek has tried this before, 30 years ago at the Hudson River Museum. Number of museum directors to try in between 1979 and now? None.
• Emergent trend?: While in the planning phase, the Hirshhorn's Bulbous Membrane was leaked to the press. While in the planning phase, the idea of using acquisitions funds to pay for a bookstore remodel was leaked to the press. Has the Hirshhorn become a conceptual, planned, waiting-for-approval, funds may be available, maybe not, do little, leaky museum?
• Also, because this wasn't addressed in this morning's Post article, I have asked the Hirshhorn if its trustees have approved or otherwise weighed in on the Aitken bookstore 'acquisition.' I'll update this post when the museum responds.
  

• Christopher Knight says that Hirshhorn director Richard Koshalek has tried this before, 30 years ago at the Hudson River Museum. Number of museum directors to try in between 1979 and now? None.
• Emergent trend?: While in the planning phase, the Hirshhorn's Bulbous Membrane was leaked to the press. While in the planning phase, the idea of using acquisitions funds to pay for a bookstore remodel was leaked to the press. Has the Hirshhorn become a conceptual, planned, waiting-for-approval, funds may be available, maybe not, do little, leaky museum?
• Also, because this wasn't addressed in this morning's Post article, I have asked the Hirshhorn if its trustees have approved or otherwise weighed in on the Aitken bookstore 'acquisition.' I'll update this post when the museum responds. (UPDATE, Friday morning: The museum has failed to respond to my inquiry.)
  

This morning the Washington Post published this Hirshhorn press release announcing the museum's plans to relocate its bookstore. Because the new bookstore will be designed by Los Angeles-based artist Doug Aitken, the Hirshhorn plans to pay for it with funds set aside for acquisitions.

This morning I acquired got my hands on a top-secret list of the Hirshhorn's next planned collection additions. [Image: The Emperor. Also, his empress, who would seem to have the emperor's...]

As it turns out, a museum spokesperson was eager to explain its new acquisition plans: "When the trustees refused to donate money for some of our director's plans, we decided that one way to make things happen was to involve an artist in anything and everything we do," the spokesman said. "That way we can tap the Hirshhorn's abundant acquisitions funds to pay for whatever. We also thought the trustees would be less likely to object so long as it wasn't their money. Heck, they might even be out shopping when this comes up at a board meeting. Wouldn't that be ironic! Actually, now that I think about it, here's another idea: We'll have Richard Prince in the room when they're out shopping. That way the whole trustee meeting can be paid for via the acquisitions budget!"

Here's the list of forthcoming Hirshhorn acquisitions:

1.) New sinks in the Hirshhorn bathrooms: Robert Gober. The sinks may still come from Kohler, but they won't have faucets. "We thought about having running water in the sinks," said Hirshhorn director Ken Lay. "But Olafur Eliasson was too expensive. Also, that'll make Gober's drains a nice conceptual touch."

2.) Conservation of the Doug Aitken bookstore: Tino Sehgal. Conservators will walk in circles around the museum's Bunshaft-designed building, talking about both the bookstore and the "progress" the museum's director is making in transforming the Hirshhorn.

3.) New light bulbs for Hirshhorn galleries: Dan Flavin. Upon being informed Flavin was no longer alive, Lay seemed confused. Then a, er, light bulb went off over his head: "Spencer Finch!"

4.) Stocking the Hirshhorn bookstore: Josephine Meckseper. "We realized that acquiring stock for the bookstore would be expensive," Lay said. "So we're going to acquire books, t-shirts, whatevs, and then have Meckseper sign the purchase invoice. That way it'll be fund-able through the acquisitions budget, convenient, and a wry commentary on consumerism!"

(In a related story, the Hirshhorn said that it plans to announce that from now on its library will be a Rachel Whiteread that the museum already owns. "That way we won't need any more expensive books," Lay said.)

5.) Auditing of the Hirshhorn's acquisition expenditures: Josiah McElheny. Asked to explain the sudden switch away from Smithsonian accountants, Lay said: "From now on we're pretty much going to do this kind of thing with mirrors."

This morning the Washington Post published this Hirshhorn press release announcing the museum's plans to relocate its bookstore. Because the new bookstore will be designed by Los Angeles-based artist Doug Aitken, the Hirshhorn plans to pay for it with funds set aside for acquisitions.

This morning I acquired got my hands on a top-secret list of the Hirshhorn's next planned collection additions. [Image: The Emperor. Also, his empress, who would seem to have the emperor's...]

As it turns out, a museum spokesperson was eager to explain its new acquisition plans: "When the trustees refused to donate money for some of our director's plans, we decided that one way to make things happen was to involve an artist in anything and everything we do," the spokesman said. "That way we can tap the Hirshhorn's abundant acquisitions funds to pay for whatever. We also thought the trustees would be less likely to object so long as it wasn't their money. Heck, they might even be out shopping when this comes up at a board meeting. Wouldn't that be ironic! Actually, now that I think about it, here's another idea: We'll have Richard Prince in the room when they're out shopping. That way the whole trustee meeting can be paid for via the acquisitions budget!"

Here's the list of upcoming Hirshhorn acquisitions:

1.) New sinks in the Hirshhorn bathrooms: Robert Gober. The sinks may still come from Kohler, but they won't have faucets. "We thought about having running water in the sinks," said Hirshhorn director Ken Lay. "But Olafur Eliasson was too expensive. Also, that'll make Gober's drains a nice conceptual touch."

2.) Conservation of the Doug Aitken bookstore: Tino Sehgal. Conservators will walk in circles around the museum's Bunshaft-designed building, talking about both the bookstore and the "progress" the museum's director is making in transforming the Hirshhorn.

3.) New light bulbs for Hirshhorn galleries: Dan Flavin. Upon being informed Flavin was no longer alive, Lay seemed confused. Then a, er, light bulb went off over his head: "Spencer Finch!"

4.) Stocking the Hirshhorn bookstore: Josephine Meckseper. "We realized that acquiring stock for the bookstore would be expensive," Lay said. "So we're going to acquire books, t-shirts, whatevs, and then have Meckseper sign the purchase invoice. That way it'll be fund-able through the acquisitions budget, convenient, and a wry commentary on consumerism!"

(In a related story, the Hirshhorn said that it plans to announce that from now on its library will be a Rachel Whiteread that the museum already owns. "That way we won't need any more expensive books," Lay said.)

5.) Auditing of the Hirshhorn's acquisition expenditures: Josiah McElheny. Asked to explain the sudden switch away from Smithsonian accountants, Lay said: "From now on we're pretty much going to do this kind of thing with mirrors."