Author: deirdrereid

Deirdre is a content marketing partner for companies serving the association market. After more than 20 years managing associations and restaurants, she's enjoying the good life now by helping companies inform, educate, and deepen relationships with the association community. Away from her laptop, you can find her walking in the woods, enjoying live music, reading hundreds of newsletters, watching hockey, cooking, hanging at the local brewery or tap room, or relaxing in a comfy chair with a good Kindle book and a glass of something tasty in hand.

Can There Be Such a Thing as Truly Black Art?

“We’re always at the mercy of people’s desires to place us in certain identities.”

The words of Glenn Ligon are stenciled across the wall, one of the first things you see upon entering the 30 Americans exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art, if you can avoid being distracted by Nick Cave’s wild and fabulous Soundsuit in the next gallery. Ligon, who coined the term “post-black,” is one of the better known artists in 30 Americans which “highlights the work of 31 contemporary African American artists in an exhibition organized by and drawn from the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, Florida.”

My visit to the museum began with a debate in the morning by the UNC-Chapel Hill debate team. Two students argued in favor and two against the resolution: Can there be such a thing as truly black art? I wish Ligon was there. I would have loved his perspective.

I was expecting a bigger crowd for such a promising topic, but there were only 30 or so people attending, less than half of whom were black. The debate team raised a lot of interesting issues and struggled with some of the questions posed by the audience. It’s a bit uncomfortable to label art by the color of someone’s skin. I wouldn’t want to make that type of categorization in real life, why would it be different with art? But what about art that comes out of a shared experience of life, perspective or history? Isn’t that what black art is all about? It’s art first, that’s the key thing. Then any art work can be described using a variety of attributes – acrylic painting, expressionist, American, late 20th century, street, Buddhist, protest, women and black.

I can’t help but think I’m not in the best position to answer the question because I’m not black. But then I think, I’m a woman and I’m okay with the label “women’s art.” I’m looking forward to seeing an exhibition of women’s art, The Deconstructive Impulse: Reconfiguring the Signs of Power, 1973-1991, at the Nasher in September.

One of the debaters discussed whether labeling art as black would lead to discrimination? I thought about “separate but equal.” Does the label “black art” make it small somehow? Qualify it? Language has power. Labels can be tricky and perilous. What’s the motivation behind the label? If it’s in the spirit of celebration or recognition of deserved attention, then it’s fine. It’s art first. Then you can find more meaning through the lens of race, era, nationality, gender or a host of other descriptors.

If a group of people have a certain sensibility because they’ve experienced the same things, due to their skin color, nationality, gender or any other trait, then a categorization or label is valid. A black woman in the audience said, “black art is the perspective of blackness.” I’m happy to have the opportunity to immerse myself in that perspective. It makes my world bigger and richer.

Someone in the audience asked, is there white art? Is there a shared experience or history expressed in art that would lead to it being categorized as white art? The art world has traditionally been a white man’s world, so white art was always the default. Most of the western art displayed in museums is made by men with white skin that was later bought and collected by rich men with white skin. Thankfully, that’s slowly changing, although I’m grateful to the white-skinned Rubells who collected the magnificent art on display in 30 Americans.

In my next post, I’ll share some of my favorites from the 30 Americans exhibition. But don’t wait for me, go spend an hour or so in this great exhibition.

Art Stories: March 16, 2011

A moment of unexpected bliss came to me this week while watching the trailer for the documentary, Desert of Forbidden Art. If only this film were coming to the NC Museum of Art (hint hint). In the 1950’s and ’60’s, Igor Savitsky traveled throughout the Soviet Union to collect (and save) 40,000 works of avant-garde art. The Stalin regime tortured, imprisoned and killed the artists responsible for what it called “decadent bourgeois art.” Savitsky stored his collection far from Moscow in the deserts of Uzbekistan. Today the Uzbek Ministry of Culture refuses to allow any of the collection to leave the country for exhibition elsewhere, so this movie is the closest we’ll get to these beautiful treasures.

The collection is still not safe according to Stephen Kinzer, former New York Times Bureau Chief for Central Asia:

“Central Asia is really not a stable region, and Uzbekistan is in a very turbulent area, of course it borders on Afghanistan. And some of the same trends that you see in Afghanistan have also emerged in Uzbekistan. The influence of Islamic fundamentalism could grow substantially. How that would affect a collection of art that is abstract, modernistic, and that is run by a woman, could be a little bit disturbing.”

A new exhibit opens later this week at the North Carolina Museum of Art, 30 Americans. It’s a survey of work from the Rubell Family Collection by 30 African-American artists of the last thirty years.

“30 Americans focuses on issues of racial, sexual, and historical identity in contemporary culture. It explores how each artist reckons with the notion of black identity in America, navigating such concerns as the struggle for civil rights, popular culture, and media imagery. At the same time, it highlights artistic legacy and influence, tracing subject matter and formal strategies across generations.”

I’m going Saturday to see the show and to watch the UNC debate team wrestle with this question: can there be such a thing as truly black art? Already there’s a bit of good discussion on NCMA’s Facebook page about that topic.

Do you remember the Hide/Seek show at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery? Caving into ridiculous pressure from ultra-conservative blow-hards, the Smithsonian removed a video from the exhibition after it opened, causing a well-deserved uproar. It turns out the Brooklyn Museum and the Tacoma Art Museum are making room in their calendar for the exhibition. “We are very keen on making sure that we represent the National Portrait Gallery’s presentation as fully as possible.”

The New York Times ran an interesting story this week about the White House curator, William G. Allman. Once when I was volunteering at the National Gallery of Art, I did a database search for a visitor to find out if any paintings by a particular artist were on view. That’s when I discovered that one was on loan to the White House. On further search, I found a few other NGA pieces that were temporarily sprucing up 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The Times article gives us an inside peek at the man who keeps the most prestigious house museum ticking.

Like you, I still can’t wrap my mind around the devastation in Japan. I can’t imagine the pain they’ve suffered and the anxiety they’re living with still. I imagine that James Whitehouse of Signalnoise worked through his emotions by making this beautiful Help Japan poster. The poster sold out quickly with all proceeds going to disaster relief.

Art Stories: March 10, 2011

Here are some interesting stories about art that I’ve come across recently– an endlessly fascinating topic for me.

When does a work of art stop being itself? When does it stop being by the artist who originally created it? These are questions I would expect to ponder in a conceptual art exhibition, not while reading the news. I’ve seen work appropriated by other artists to create a new piece, but here’s a case of an artist, Anthony Caro, who says his piece Lagoon, a steel sculpture, is no longer the one he made and therefore no longer by him. Why? A gallery added metal feet to its base during an installation. As a result, Caro has disowned it.

This is a very cool idea that can be used in many places where art is endangered. The Modern Art Iraq Archive (MAIA) collects and stores images of works of art, along with publications, catalogues and other commentary. “MAIA’s goals are to raise awareness of the diverse body of modern works of Iraqi art, to help locate their current whereabouts, and to assist agencies working to prevent their illegal movement and sale. MAIA aims to reach a wide and participatory audience across the globe, and offers users the ability to document, discuss, explore, and enrich Iraqi artistic expressions and experiences.” Anyone can upload an image or add a comment or story about the works in the archive.

I love this column from New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz about his marathon viewing sessions with some of his favorite art. Lordy, the man has staying power. I’m suffering from major art envy. A few of his selections have long been on my art pilgrimage destination list, like the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua and the Basilica di San Vitale in Ravenna, but all of them are places I’d love to linger in.

This is kind of funny. A Danish artist posted an image of Gustave Courbet’s The Origin of the World, which is quite graphic but also beautiful, only to have his account disabled because the image violated Facebook’s decency standards. Yes, yes, slippery slope and all that, I suppose you could say. Are all nipples and bums prohibited? What if they belong to a 500 year old painting or 2100 year old sculpture? Can galleries display work from exhibitions? Apparently some art depicting the naked figure is okay, but some, like Courbet’s portrait of nether regions, is not.

Last year Jamie Oliver received the TED prize ($100,000 and “one wish to change the world”) for his campaign to make school meals more nutritious. This year the prize went to JR, a Parisian photographer, for the Inside Out Project – “a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Upload a portrait. Receive a poster. Paste it for the world to see.” JR is known for posting large black and white photographs in public settings, often illegally, all over the world. I’m probably too much of a law-abiding weenie to do this myself but I’d love to see the work of others, especially here in North Carolina. Let me know if you’re participating.

The Magical Experience of Flash Mobs

If Mitchell of Modern Family dances in a flash mob, they must already be passé, right?

Hells no! I’m still a sucker for a really good flash mob, especially the artsy ones, and I know I’m not alone. This food court performance of the Hallelujah Chorus still makes my eyes water. You want more?

Why are flash mobs so powerful? My latest theory is they bring us into the right now — this present moment. The present, strangely enough, isn’t a place we always hang out, unless we’re advanced yogis. We’re more likely reworking the past or speculating about the future. We live in the present when we’re in the ‘zone’ or caught up in the ‘flow’, for example, while writing a blog post, chopping vegetables, painting, climbing a rock wall or experiencing a great work of art.

Flash mobs take us by surprise and let us share exuberance together. Is it some communal Dionysian urge? Who knows, but it’s joyful. We’re knocked out of our routine, thrown a bit off balance. “Wait, what the heck is going on here? Who are these people? Why are they doing that?” And then, “Wow, this is pretty awesome.” You’d have to be a lost soul or curmudgeon to not smile a bit inside when you see a flash mob happening around you.

Even the Knight Foundation, usually focused on promoting journalism, can’t resist the allure of the flash mob. They’re sponsoring Random Acts of Culture in the communities where the Knight Brothers owned newspapers. They “strongly believe in the potential of the arts to engage residents, and bring a community together. Hearing Handel, or seeing the tango in an unexpected place provides a deeply felt reminder of how the classics can enrich our lives.” It’s part of their effort to encourage folks to regularly enjoy a concert, visit a gallery or see a dance performance by giving them a taste of that goodness.

If you read my blog regularly, you know that I’m going to somehow bring this discussion back around to associations. What possibly could be the connection? Well, there is the fun flash mob we did last year (some of us without any rehearsing, ahem) on the trade show floor at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Association Executives. But that’s not where I’m going.

Here’s my question. Maybe the Knight Foundation is on the right track, and flash mobs expose folks to great art and get them thinking that they might actually like the symphony, ballet or opera. They give them a taste of what that experience is like. It’s all about the experience!!

Compare an arts experience to a typical association membership experience:

  • a one-way mailbox relationship
  • a semi-productive committee meeting
  • an educational session or conference that provided a few handouts but nothing permanently imprinted in the attendee’s brain
  • an endless trade show floor of needy vendors

Count me out; I’ll be at the opera.

Can a mix of face-to-face and online community participation make the association experience better by offering more opportunities for sharing and learning, conversations and relationship building? Can a more innovative approach to education make that experience better? Do your members depart from an association experience, whether it’s online or in real life, with a glow on their faces and, even better, in their brains?

Yes, we need to focus on the value or ROI that members get with their association membership. But perhaps we should also focus on their experience – that’s an intangible benefit that we shouldn’t overlook.

Get Your Intellectual Exercise

You know those news stories that cause your mouth to fall open? Here’s one about the findings of a study that followed 2000+ students through four years of college.

“. . . large numbers (of students) didn’t learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education. Many of the students graduated without knowing how to sift fact from opinion, make a clear written argument or objectively review conflicting reports of a situation or event . . . for example, . . . how best to respond without being swayed by emotional testimony and political spin.”

This explains so much that’s frightening and frustrating about our society, particularly the voices we hear on TV discussing political, social and cultural issues, but also the ones we hear about in everyday life.

  • Accepting a politician’s or pundit’s opinion as fact without thinking it through or looking at both sides of an argument.
  • Seeing the world as black and white — no shades of gray accepted.
  • Describing all opposing views as evil or stupid.
  • Equating a thoughtful change in view with weakness.
  • Choosing not to understand, and instead resorting to dismissal, scorn or hatred.
  • Rubberstamping decisions to avoid difficult deliberation.
  • Focusing only on short-term decisions and ignoring long-term challenges.

A lack of education explains both the sheep herd mentality as well as the irrational fear and hatred we see in many places, including here in the U.S. It also explains many leaders’ preference for the Easy button.

The author “hopes his data will encourage colleges and universities to look within for ways to improve teaching and learning.” How many of your college professors were graduate student teaching assistants or professionals moonlighting as educators? Most school systems require their K-12 teachers to have Master degrees and continue taking graduate courses. What are the standards for teaching college students? I’m not positive but I believe they must have advanced degrees along with research and publications to their name, but only in their area of expertise, not in adult education. Do they really know how to teach?

“Students who majored in the traditional liberal arts — including the social sciences, humanities, natural sciences and mathematics — showed significantly greater gains over time than other students in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills.”

Liberal arts programs give you the opportunity to develop a good mind, but they don’t always track you into a profession or trade, as many restaurant managers who were once enthusiastic history majors can tell you. Even when I was in college, many students weren’t there for the learning experience; they were there primarily to get the degree and the connections. The ends mattered, not the means. With the exploding cost of a college education today, it’s no surprise that kids have to think about the ROI of their major.

Critical thinking and complex reasoning are not skills we want to lose to devolution. The problem is our popular culture sometimes paints education and intellectuals as elitist. It shouldn’t be that way. There have always been and will always be cultural elites who think their taste, in politics, art, literature, food and so on, is the best and only taste, but frankly, they’re as close-minded as those on the other end of the spectrum, and shouldn’t define what it means to be educated or intellectual.

We need to promote and celebrate intellectual exercise, and creativity while we’re at it, like we do physical exercise. It’s not only a gift we can enjoy throughout our lives, but it’s a gift to our society and country too. Let’s make critical thinking sexy and patriotic.

Walking Through History with Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell took me on a trip through American political and cultural history earlier this week. The North Carolina Museum of Art exhibit, American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell, includes 47 years of his covers for The Saturday Evening Post plus dozens of other paintings.

I first got a deep look at Rockwell almost ten years ago when the Corcoran Gallery of Art presented Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People. Until then I thought Rockwell was an early version of Thomas Kinkade, not deserving of art world respect, but since I happened to be at the Corcoran I thought I’d take a quick spin through the exhibition. Cue the comeuppance. I was introduced to a man with great talent and insight who in one painting portrayed the private moments of the girl next door and in the next the televised moments of one thrust onto the world stage.

As I browsed through his Evening Post covers I wondered, who is his counterpart today? Whose work attracts a comparable audience? Whose work touches on politics, current events, pop culture and common experiences? We have personalities like Andy Rooney, Jon Stewart and Jay Leno. Are they modern day Rockwells? I don’t think so. Who would you nominate?

I laughed when I saw Deadline (Artist Facing Blank Canvas) . Here’s a guy who had a creative block and used that as a subject for his next cover. Brilliant! What writer or blogger can’t relate to a looming deadline and blank document?

Rockwell’s art has always been pooh-poohed as lightweight. While he was selling his illustrations to magazines and advertisers, the art world was fawning over Pollock, de Kooning and Warhol. Some of Rockwell’s work was sentimental and sicky sweet, but it captured a common vision of America, a Jimmy Stewart version, an idyllic childhood that everyone remembered, imagined or wished they had. Rockwell had his own fun with the sneering art critics and connoisseurs of his day. Look how the lady in the painting flirts with the critic and how the three Dutch merchants in the adjacent painting react.

Say what you will, the man had skills and depth. He butted up against the prevailing standards for portraying a white bread world. He didn’t just paint happy scenes of Americana but also grappled with the dark side of our country’s past: a young rich white boy in a dining car trying to figure out how to tip the grandfatherly black waiter; a black girl walking into her newly desegregated school surrounded by the legs of her accompanying federal marshals; and the red blood stains on a bleached white shirt of a murdered civil rights worker in Mississippi.

Art provides many types of experiences to viewers. Sometimes the sensory experience is enough. But usually art stirs up other emotions and thoughts and that’s when the experience gets interesting. Like my last visit to a Rockwell exhibition, this one was an unexpected delight. I got more of a sense for the man and he surprised me. I also got a stroll through 20th century America. The exhibit whetted my appetite to learn more. I guess once a history major, always a history geek. I have a new imaginary book for my fantasy library: a catalog of all of Rockwell’s Evening Post and Look magazine covers, one piece per page and each accompanied by an essay that puts it in historical and cultural context. That would be the ultimate American chronicle for a rainy day like today.

Hanging Out with the Other Side

Think about the people you sit with at lunch, meet for a beer, or see at smaller meet-ups. Are they like you? Do you feel more comfortable around people who think like you? Or do you welcome the opportunity to be around those who think differently?

I’ve been thinking about this ever since I read a Newsweek article about Washington wives of yore. It’s both interesting and sad.

Do you remember the video of Sen. Orrin Hatch (Rep.) speaking at the funeral of his “Irish friend” Ted Kennedy (Dem.)? After you dry your eyes, think about those on the Hill today. What are the chances now that a Republican and a Democrat will have a friendship like this?

Back when their relationship started, Senators and Representatives lived in DC with their families. They spent time hanging out with guys from both sides of the aisle.

“If you live across the street from your political opponent, if you know his kids, if you’ve been to dinner at his house, it’s impossible to go up on the floor of the Senate or in the media and blast him the next day.”

I’m not calling for a return to the “good old days” because they weren’t all good. Permanent residence in DC can lead to a syndrome I detest — the Beltway bubble that insulates some of our politicians from what it’s like to sign or earn a paycheck. I do think it’s important for them to come home and get a sense for what their constituents need, but something was lost along the way.

“Real legislating—the compromises and dealmaking that distinguish politics from posturing—happens only among people who know and respect each other.”

That’s what we lost. Camaraderie and collaboration were lost. People become symbols of their party platform. Static ideology takes precedence over reason and relationships.

Nowadays as soon as they’re elected, the fundraising cycle begins again for the next campaign. Wouldn’t it be better if our policy-makers focused on leading, thinking, collaborating, innovating and legislating while in office, not raising funds and running for the next election? Ah, what a dreamer I am.

It’s easy to demonize the other when you don’t choose to know or understand them. This is the root of racism, religious hatred, homophobia and a host of other evils. That’s the extreme version.

What’s the light version? Think about yourself, or think about the leadership of your company or organization. Do you (or your leadership) surround yourself with those who think like you? Who have the same beliefs or philosophies? Who are the same age, gender, religion, ethnicity or race? Who have the same economic, educational or professional background? Who do or see things the way you do?

What’s missing? Exposure to other perspectives and stories. Serendipity. Don’t knock serendipity. It’s the root of much creativity and innovation in the world.

It’s easy for any of us to get trapped in a bubble. Fortunately, because of social media, it’s also easier now to tap into voices and perspectives outside our bubble. I’m not sure how we’ll change Washington but we can pop our own bubbles.

Romantic and Generous Blogging

“Technology killed criticism,” says Morgan Meis in On the State of Criticism 2011. Everyone’s a critic now, writing reviews on Amazon and blogs, and ranting or raving on Twitter. Netflix, Pandora and Amazon make personalized recommendations based on algorithms, decreasing our reliance on professional critics.

Meis sees this loss of authority for critics as an opportunity for them to share their experience and love of art, rather than merely judge it.

“The death of the critic-as-authority is the birth of another kind of criticism . . . the kind that doesn’t rely on authority and judgment, Romantic criticism.”

Romantic criticism “does not stand outside the work of art, but stands alongside, maybe even inside, the work of art, participating in the work in order to further express and tease out what the artist already put there.” The critic’s role is to help us experience art. Meis calls this generous criticism. “It wants to make experience bigger, it wants to make each work of art as rich as it can possibly be.”

Imagine the critic’s relief. Instead of reading a book or viewing an artwork and knowing your opinion is one that could make or break its success in the marketplace, you’re now free to share your experience, put the work in context and enlighten your readers.

Meis’ romantic generous critic reminded me of Arthur Danto, longtime art critic for The Nation and philosophy professor at Columbia University. When I was a volunteer at the National Gallery one of our educators suggested I read Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present; later I read Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective – books I foolishly purged when I moved across country.

Danto’s writing and NGA lectures were enthralling and thought-provoking. He showed me new ways to see, think about and experience art. While drafting this post I wondered if I remembered him correctly, but was reassured after reading this from Denis Dutton, founder of Arts & Letters Daily — a site I can lose hours in:

“That Danto is a critic who knows art and its history, and that he is a skilled philosopher go almost without saying, but this alone cannot account for the attractiveness of these essays. There is an element here which, curious to remark, many contemporary critics either lack or won’t betray: Danto adores art. This means that when he likes something, he can carry his reader away with the enthusiasm, as he does with Warhol or with something so simple as a Raphael drawing of a head and hand. Moreover, his tastes are broad, and celebrate as much the present instant in art as its historical past.”

Danto is a romantic and generous critic. What about bloggers? Are we romantic and generous bloggers? Do we pass judgment on our subjects or do we share our experience and love of them, and try to make them richer? The latter doesn’t mean we’re Polyannas oozing positivity; we mete out tough love too.

Many of us in the association blogosphere might be accused of being too critical or judgmental about associations. Yes, we criticize, but it’s to try to push the conversation further, to make associations a richer experience. We’re thinking out loud together. We wouldn’t blog about associations, leadership and community if we weren’t fascinated by those subjects. As a writer I may be on the outside, no longer working in an association, but I still consider myself part of the community because, well, I love it.

I can only dream of being a thinker and writer like Danto, a wannabe art historian’s dream. But I can continue to share my love and knowledge with others. I admit, I’d love to spark “hmm, fascinating” in a reader’s brain every now and then. But I’m not here to be an authority or pass judgment. I’m here for the love of it all — conversation, wild ideas, community, expression, writing. I’m sharing my experience, love and passions in my own way.

Adam Kirsch, senior editor at The New Republic, defines a critic as “one who says something true about life and the world. The critic’s will is not to power, but to self-understanding, self-expression, truth.” A critic’s writing shows “a mind working out its own questions.” That sounds like many bloggers I know and the blogger I aspire to be.