tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post7342507863611393132..comments2024-02-28T06:32:17.919-08:00Comments on Star Wars Modern: A Modest Proposal: Title IX MoMA's 501(c)3starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-69107875562793132312011-03-31T07:11:07.435-07:002011-03-31T07:11:07.435-07:00I want to point out one bright spot in the art wor...I want to point out one bright spot in the art world with regard to gender equality and that is in percent for the arts funded programs. While I don't have hard data to back this up, my experience has been that these organizations are staffed more often than not by a majority of women. Furthermore their gender neutrality in regards to awarding commissions has not led to a decline in the quality of art works. I hold up Anne Pasternak at Creative Time and Amy Hausman at MTA for the Arts as organizations who have demonstrated that equanimity in regards to commissions does not lead to a decline in quality. In fact, it is the opposite. Ellen Harvey's two works for the MTA are among the most poetic and masterfully executed public commissions I've ever encountered.<br /><br />Which leads me to my second point.<br /><br />I am a life long sports enthusiast having played hockey, raced bicycles and did my tour of duty in every little league sport available to my road weary parents. College athletics is not diminished in any meaningful way by title IX and in fact is so vastly improved by it to be willfully obtuse to take the opposite opinion. Has it led to some men's programs being eliminated in order to shift funding to women's programs? Yes. Are there men who have not been afforded scholarships as a result. Absolutely! However, we aren't talking about the Michael Jordan's of the world, we are talking about the bench warmers. These men are either playing for a smaller school or are the studs in the intramural league at their university. The Kimba Walkers of the world are still doing fine and men's college athletics has been perhaps been made marginally more competitive and therefore more compelling to watch and participate in. That a couple of guys on the end of the bench or a couple of marginal schools don't have a men's golf team is a minuscule price to pay for the pleasure of watching women's soccer and basketball grow out of the collegiate ranks and onto the international stage of Olympic and professional glory. Additionally, given that women graduates number three for every two men, it seems like good business.<br /><br />Having said all that, I am not confident that Title IX is an applicable or viable tool to transform the structure of the art world. Title IX, as it applies to teaching institutions uses the leverage of withdrawing federal funding to get Universities to comply. I don't agree with the idea that museums are educational facilities. Indeed they do have that component but they are more akin to churches; cathedrals of enlightenment. I acknowledge the not for profit status is a federal subsidy for which museums could not exist, but so are churches. If we are going to use Title IX to leverage gender equality in the art world, let's go after a bigger fish first; the Catholic Church.Kurokowahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00588079991509501390noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-26433099460847945192011-03-30T17:07:07.686-07:002011-03-30T17:07:07.686-07:00I agree that the residue of white, male "geni...I agree that the residue of white, male "genius" continues to shape collections (both public and private) and museum shows detrimentally, but I don't think a Title IX style, legally-enforced parity would be the answer. Parity certainly makes sense in contemporary art settings no question, but it would folly to apply that concept to an encyclopedic museum, which is what your idea would effectively prescribe. As for MoMA, the narrative of white, male-centered modern art is a touchstone that is tremendously important for all types of art that continue or reject its message. Absolute parity would efface that history, leaving only a lot of sound and fury with no context. <br /> I don't mean to nitpick, as I realize you're simply making an analogy, but TIX addresses not non-profit organizations with an educational mission as a category, but educational institutions that accept federal funding. Outside of Washington D.C., federal funding for musuems is a pittance. Whatever sums that a museum might receive would pale in comparison to the costs of overhauling collections to achieve actual parity. The revenues from the Donald Judd show are probably what make shows by lesser known female artists possible to begin with, lamentable as that is. I think using a dead white male as an entry point to a complex, multi-artist show would be preferable to simply enforcing a 1:1 ratio of male/female shows. Finally, TIX addresses the rights of individuals who are students in a particular community, not unaffiliated artists and objects in a museum. <br />If the terms were broadened to meet your needs, where would parity end? You effectively call for government regulation in a diverse art world with lots of different players and stakes. Do you really think that making the terms of how and what is shown concretely, legally defined will lead to anything but a quota system? Who are the gate keepers that will suddenly have immense power? Art isn't college basketball.<br /> What I really don't understand is how auction houses play into this. The role of auction houses is to facilitate sales between buyers and sellers. Everyone involved has a stake in making a profit and buying something they want, and there is nothing wrong with that at all. If there were profit in offering women artists at an equal rate to male artists, auction houses would do it without question. Enforcing gender parity at an auction would most likely damage prices realized by women artists' work, not elevate them. In reality, something is only worth what someone has JUST paid for it. What is wrong with getting a good value? In all likelihood, outstanding, important collections of female-made art are being put together by people who otherwise couldn't afford the insane prices realized by male artists<br /> The act of buying and selling accounts for monetary value; everything else (rep, gender, major museum holdings) is only a secondary consideration that informs, not dictates, a transaction. You seem to suggest that female artists prices should simply become equal to male artists within a "regulated market." This means someone would be literally forced to pay more than what the market would bear otherwise. Unless you mean to shame them into paying more. This other dude may be a barbarian, but your ideas come closer to totalitarianism.Biobebophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18417428226046322880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-54511157311131385802011-03-28T03:58:46.818-07:002011-03-28T03:58:46.818-07:00OK then. I took that word out.:
My intention was ...OK then. I took that word out.:<br /><br />My intention was not to be verbally rough toward anyone. I was just trying to have about 10 conversations at once on Twitter, on Facebook and in email, which I thought was being accessible and responsive. I'm sorry if anyone felt that my attempts to reply to as many people as I could as fast as I could were brusque. I'll concede that when presented out of context and out of real-time rat-a-tat, they read as flip.<br /><br />Part of the idea behind this tournament was to *not* do a list of artists, which we did last year. It was to enable a discussion of art objects, not art-ists. My distinction and references to such were not intended to seem semantic, but to point out the importance and delight afforded by individual works.<br /><br />Finally, I'll point out here what I pointed out elsewhere: When someone asks selectors for the 32 greatest works from 1945-2011, selectors are going to make heavy use of the most settled part of the canon, which is, naturally, the oldest part, 1945-65. Thirty-nine of the 64 works came from that period, which surprised me because I picked selectors whose interests included both a focus on the very recent and curators/critics with a broader interest.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14235054856583026039noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-24927005210811247012011-03-27T20:42:57.944-07:002011-03-27T20:42:57.944-07:00Dude, no one called you rude.Dude, no one called you rude.starwarsmodernhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-4839367753050745032011-03-27T19:41:58.378-07:002011-03-27T19:41:58.378-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14235054856583026039noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-54061045358091131002011-03-27T19:30:22.629-07:002011-03-27T19:30:22.629-07:00High-fives are my favorite Carolina. Thanks Brian....High-fives are my favorite Carolina. Thanks Brian. I had the benefit of reading what you and others had already written. I had intended to stay silent, but I ws really pissed off by what I read and the more I thought about it the more interesting the sports analogy became. <br /><br />I was discussing Title IX with a sports writer last night who immediately brought up how it had weakened men's athletic programs. When I pointed out that before TIX, small, or even non existant woman's programs could be justified by claiming that there was no demand. Title IX made it clear that was never true. My friend not only ceded the point, he did an about-face on the issue. (although he was unmoved when it came to women's pro-basketball, which he said was an all around inferior game to men's, but what ever)starwarsmodernhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-77738023170276218072011-03-27T18:22:25.079-07:002011-03-27T18:22:25.079-07:00The Jackie Robinson analogy is great (and one I wi...The Jackie Robinson analogy is great (and one I wish I'd thought of myself). Not having access to the best work (or baseball talent) just makes it easier for people to be lazy or sloppy in their thinking when the question of "greatness" gets bandied about and resort to the white male default. It doesn't mean that those guys are not deserving (sometimes they are and sometimes they're not), but it also doesn't mean their preeminence shouldn't be reconsidered from time to time. After all Babe Ruth faced weaker competition for not having to hit against African-American pitchers, and Josh Gibson has seen his reputation fade away for lack of a wider audience for his talents...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-35474743301192341922011-03-27T17:44:45.929-07:002011-03-27T17:44:45.929-07:00high. five.high. five.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com