UC Irvine Selects North Campus Site for Museum
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| James Swinnerton, Sunset in Monument Valley, about 1988. The Irvine Museum Collection at the University of California, Irvine |
UC Irvine will build its Jack and Shanaz Langston Institute and Museum of California Art on Campus Drive near Jamboree Road. This will not be the center-of-campus museum envisioned in architect William Pereira's 1962 master plan. The chosen site is about 2 miles—a brisk 40 minute hike—from the main part of campus. The so-called North Campus location on Jamboree Road will be adjacent to a new medical complex and may give the museum greater visibility to those outside the UCI community.
The Langston IMCA is to hold the collections of 20th-century landscapes and California modernism and contemporary art assembled by Joan Irvine Smith and Gerald Buck, respectively.
An architect is expected to be named in mid 2023, and construction may begin in late 2024 to early 2025—all subject to the elastic timelines of museum projects.
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| Lorser Feitelson, Magical Space Forms, 1952. Buck Collection at University of California, Irvine |
Comments
The site is a problem because it's too far from the main campus to encourage casual and frequent interaction (by students) with the collection. (If the students feel they "own" the collection, they might become collectors themselves.)
I also wonder if the scope and quality of the collection merits a more publicly-accessible location.
Then, I searched the collections of MOMA (New York) and the Whitney (New York) for works by the same "highlighted" artists.
The overwhelming majority of the artists which constitute the highlights of the Buck Collection do not have works in the MOMA or Whitney collection. Of the two to three artists with works in the MOMA/Whitney collection, none of the works are on view. Typically, that means the work is not seminal, but secondary.
While at the UCI museum website, I also took note of the recent acquisitions, more of the same schlock donated by OC rich people who want a tax break.
... UCI should have known better than to start a tax shelter and call it a museum.
The 2018 show "First Glimpse" gave a better view of the Buck Collection that the website does. See my write-up here:
https://lacmaonfire.blogspot.com/2018/10/irvines-buck-collection-hits-target.html
Maybe it doesn't get shown consistently because it is NOT that significant.
Maybe there is NO East Coast bias, just a lot of mediocre, regional art.
Understandably, UCI is very late to the game. And, this may be the best they can do. Clearly, Gerald Buck was not Orange County's answer to Katherine Dreier (Societe Anonyme). Let's not pretend it's anything more than what it is.
1. From the specs & repros I can get on the web, the work in the collect is *not* "isn't very good."
2. "...doesn't get shown consistently": Every museum anywhere has perfectly reputable works of art in its collection that don't get shown consistently.
"
3. There's long been an East Coast bias against West Coast art. It's lessened greatly over the years since the publication(s) of my book, "Sunshine Muse: Contemporary Art on the West Coast" (1972, 2000).
4. Judging negatively the legitimacy of the Buck Collection in the negative by citing the lack of its artists being included in MoMA's collection, while at the same dismissing the idea that there's been an East Coast bias against California art is, well, strange.
5. Weird pick--Katherine Dreier--to diss the Buck Collection. Hardly parallel, and then there's, like, Philadelphia in the equation.
But perhaps that's the point: choosing the Newport Beach-adjacent edge of campus, on an increasingly activated stretch of Jamboree Boulevard (including the $1.3 billion medical complex), will bring the museum more visibility and ease of access. Especially if it's an architectural significant building. And recall IMCA will be in compeition for donor dollars with OCMA, and the new Thom Mayne-designed museum opening this October (scroll up for more).
As for the Buck Collection, I'm not an expert so I asked several people who are (curators, collectors, academics, etc.) what they would choose from the collection, if given the chance to take one work home. Here's the 2019 magazine article that resulted, with images and insights of/about the work.
https://issuu.com/bluedoormagazine/docs/bluedoor_decjan18_19/104
See the glories at ...
https://imca.uci.edu/collection/featured-works/