Reading list, 24 February 2018

A thorough review by Roberta Smith for the NYT of “Outliers and American Vanguard Art” at Washington's National Gallery of Art. Five years in development, curator Lynne Cook has chosen to focus on three periods of the 100 years when 'taught' and 'self-taught' artists and practices overlapped. I wish I could see this show, it sounds like a great model for a exhibition that is overdue in Aotearoa.

Steve Braunias rounds up pay rates for book reviews across New Zealand publications.

The second part of that Charles Venables interview (part 1 here). His observations about smaller galleries, smaller exhibitions and smaller collections are very interesting in terms of contemporary museums' bigger-bigger-best focus.

Interjection: I think one thing to remember when reading about this refashioning of the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is that (a) it does have these beautiful adjoining gardens to make the most of but also that (b) it's on a (from the perspective of a public-transport-inclined New Zealander) godforsaken highway on the outskirts of Indianapolis, sandwiched between a cemetery and a country club, and more like the Gibbs farm than MOMA in terms of its accessibility and the likelihood you'd just drop in for a half-hour browse. It makes sense to think of it as an entertainment campus. It doesn't necessarily make sense to think of it as a model for the future of museums (unless you happen to own a 550-seat theatre and some spacious gardens as well as a museum with an outstanding collection and acres of exhibition space ....).

And a fascinating response to the Venables interview from Tim Schneider, looking at the longer 9but actually reasonably short) history of our current Western museum model: Why Newfields, the Museum the Art World Loves to Hate, Was Inevitable (and Other Insights).

Musing on the dearth of leadership development programmes for arts leaders in Canada.

Following the Pantograph Punch's announcement that is is going to reduce the amount published, pay contributors better and stop running reviews, the site's editor Lana Lopesi writes persuasively on the necessity of reviews for an informed culture. I'm of course chair of the PP board, and my decision to stand (and to originate The Dowse's partnership with the site) was strongly influenced by my belief that we need to find new ways of funding criticism.

Reading list, 17 February 2018

Turns out if I don't write these posts regularly I just end up with dozens of open tabs waiting for my attention ...

Michael Parry of MAAS has written a thorough and really fascinating review of Melbourne Museum's flagship summer exhibition Inside Out. It's especially interesting because he's woven together his experience visiting the show with his experience in a senior leadership role developing such shows. It's a terrific model of a professional, constructively critical response to an important exhibition.

The Wireless gets into sexism and Wikipedia. I respond with a Twitter thread so long and dull that I'd probably recommend it only if you're looking to nod off. But speaking from my own experience - the sexism that exists within parts of the community is not nearly as off putting to new editors as the utterly arcane structure of Wikipedia and the difficulty of mastering the wiki software if you're not a person who finds computers intuitive.

On my lengthy to-read list -Making the Case for Philanthropic Support for Advocacy from Philanthropy Australia.

Take this MediaWatch segment on dwindling mainstream media sports coverage, replace every use of the word 'sports' with 'arts, transport the piece back to 2008, and you can see how we wound up today with barely any intelligent coverage of any arts form (except book reviews, which makes them - rugby?) featured in our daily papers.

A new review of UK museums by historian David Cannadine finds that 'except in the case of the national museums, collecting for most museums and galleries is no more than a marginal activity.'

This is going to get a lot of play in the profession: Charles Venables, director since 2012 of Newfields (the new umbrella brand for the Indianapolis Museum of Art & its attached gardens and hospitality experiences) on the dramatic changes he has made since coming in after previous director Maxwell Anderson (who went to the Dallas Museum of Art, to continue his own data-led experiments, and left there in like 2016? 2017?):

You asked earlier what were some of the “aha” moments when we were talking to consultants? Well, we found out that 52 percent of people in our metropolitan area who demographically look like they should be art museum visitors never came to the art museum, ever. Ninety-four percent of them knew about it, and where it was located, but they never chose to go there! So, we went and asked some of these people why they didn’t visit, and they basically said it was because they wanted to be social and they didn’t want their friends to say, “You wasted my precious Friday night with a boring, static art-museum experience.”

The IMA and the Anderson / Venables eras are going to make fantastic research areas in a few years.