Teh internets: teh problem AND teh solution

In a post today Jonathan Jones comments on Tyler Green's experiment to see which artworks come up first when you type famous artists' names into Google. Jones writes:

Google, then, is populist about art, and tends to point users towards iconic masterpieces. Is there any downside to that? Actually, no. People (critics, curators, "experts") make too much of obscure knowledge and over-refined erudition. Art's greatest hits are often the greatest works, full stop; if you want the basics about Picasso, a glance at Les Demoiselles d'Avignon will tell you a lot of what you need to know.

What's more worrying is the lack of correlation between the immense online archive of art and the even more immense reality. Because so many works can be found online, there's a danger of forgetting how many cannot (not to mention the inadequacy of a picture on your screen compared with the real thing). A student can't really research a dissertation on art from digital sources alone, however tempting the illusion. And there lies the real vice of Google.

Arguably, it's the art world's job to get more (and better) information about art online. For a terrific example of how this can be done, see the IMA's blog post on their project to encourage documentation of Indianapolis's public artworks, Wikipedia Saves Public Art.

Succession planning

Today Over the net notes that Paula Savage has been the director of City Gallery Wellington for the past sixteen and a half years.

The post dovetails nicely with two articles I've read this week, which have got me thinking about the way we approach succession planning in New Zealand's art galleries.

In the New York Times this week, Charles McGrath looks at Philippe de Montebello's 30-year tenure as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at possible successors to the 71 year old. McGrath quotes de Montebello:

“The job doesn’t even resemble what is once was,” he said, listing all his increased bureaucratic responsibilities: dealing with the legal and human resource departments, overseeing publications and, more recently, negotiating with foreign governments that demand the return of artworks they argue were acquired illegally. ...

“If we were to project forward the person I was 30 years ago, that person wouldn’t remotely be qualified for this job,” he said. “I wouldn’t want the job either, because frankly I wouldn’t want to spend so much of my time on nonartistic matters.”

Meanwhile, on the Guardian art blog, Charlotte Higgins speculates on who will replace Charles Saumarez Smith, who resigned as director of the National Gallery after 'only' five years.

In her post, Higgins notes how nice it would be if the people looking to appoint Saumarez Smith's sucessor looked beyond "the legions of more-or-less interchangeable white Caucasian men in nice suits in their 40s" and took a risk - as with the appointment of Neil McGregor (a magazine editor) to the role in 1987.

Higgins also observes that the "vast amount of money" invested in leadership development schemes for arts professionals in England (such as the Clore Leadership Programme) does not seem to have resulted in a phalanx of new contenders for leadership roles.

So - bringing this all back to New Zealand. How do we talk about Paula Savage's successor? Over one-too-many drinks after an opening? Or publicly, through an engaged media, who understands that the people who run our arts institutions imbue them with their own personalities?

And just as importantly - who's out there to replace Priscilla Pitts in Dunedin, or Savage, or Chris Saines, who would be likely to leave Auckland when (if?) the gallery's redevelopment is completed. How are we preparing for the future? And who are we preparing for it?

Bunny hop

At overthenet, Jim Barr and Mary Barr have posted one of Patrick Reynold's shots of Mike Parekowhai's Cosmo, taken to accompany William McAloon's article on the Barr's art collection for Art & Australia.

overthenet
William McAloon's article - Art & Australia website

Dunedin Public Art Gallery has recently closed Reboot, the second exhibition showcasing the Barr's loan collection at the DPAG, curated by Justin Paton. It's a real shame that the exhibition isn't touring. The first exhibition, Good Work, was one of the best survey exhibitions I've seen in New Zealand. And the catalogue - full colour, decent length texts and only ten or twelve dollars- was one of the best bang-for-bucks NZ art publications I've seen.

Image: Michael Parekowhai's Cosmo, at the Melbourne Art Fair, 2006.

The big easy

I've always liked the simplicity of this idea. The Dunedin Public Art Gallery has a big wall - 161 metres of it. So it has the Big Wall series - every few months a new artist is let loose on the wall. Above is the current work - Pae White's Going Up. Black cherry juice is apparently a home-made treatment for depression.

Past Big Wall artists include Kay Rosen, Douglas Kelaher, Judy Darragh, Pip Culbert and Richard Killeen. For me, the Big Wall exemplifies the DPAG's low-fuss approach to curating: a simple idea, well executed.

Dunedin Public Art Gallery website