Van Gogh Added to Hammer's Fall Schedule
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| Vincent van Gogh, Langlois Bridge, 1888. LACMA |
Van Gogh immortalized Arles postman Joseph Roulin in half a dozen paintings. He did only three portrait drawings of Roulin, and by coincidence two are in Los Angeles, at LACMA and the Getty. As far as I know, the two drawings have never been shown together.
"Van Gogh in L.A." runs less than a month, from Oct. 8 to Nov 3, 2019. Walsh lectures on Oct. 20, Oct. 27, and Nov. 3. Lecture tickets are free but must be reserved; see Hammer site for details.
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| Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Joseph Roulin, 1888. Getty Museum |
Comments
So you don't want any comments involving LA's main visual-arts museum since 1965. Okay. So where is your feedback about the Hammer?
I'm sure the blog owner won't mind your observations about that museum. Or maybe the Broad. How about the relocated art museum planned for Irvine. Even the Peterson. Maybe the Bunny museum in Pasadena?
How about feedback of when you've driven under the gloomy overhang above Olive St north of 5th that gives a preview of what the dark, gloomy overhang above Wilshire Blvd will be like?
And it's not just the design of the museum that's up for debate. It's the willful dismantling of other aspects of the museum too. That includes the marginalizing of its conservation lab, the downsizing of the display of its collections, the reduction in their comprehensiveness in one location (or a goal of scattering them throughout LA County), the physical separation of the curators from their galleries, and the idea that an encyclopedic collection is passe.
If those things aren't bad enough, the genius in charge of the place is stretching the museum's budget to the breaking point. LACMA is now considered one of the most indebted ones in the nation.
Weird is good. Damn good.
Apathy? Indifference? Lack of appropriate feedback?
That deserves criticism as much as, if not more than, replies that are judged as irrelevant to his updates.
From the NY Times article on the New MOMA:
The new MoMA has binned the Whiggish movement-by-movement logic that William S. Rubin and Kirk Varnedoe, Ms. Temkin’s predecessors, relied on to classify the art of the last century. Now, some 60 galleries will be reconceptualized on a regular basis, with a third rehung every six months.
“It’s moving away from ideas like ‘masterpieces’ and ‘breakthroughs,’ to a kind of art history of dispersion,” observed Michael Lobel, a professor of art history at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center.
LACMA's detractors have tried to portray LAMCA's choices as "provincial" and worthy of derision by those in New York and elsewhere. But as it turns out, MOMA is not laughing at the new LACMA; they are copying its curatorial practices.
MOMA can be drunk on occasion and survive. If LACMA tries the same thing, it's going to end up in a head-on fatal collision.