With new leadership, El Museo del Barrio moves forward

At Museum Born of Politics, New Chief Faces Economics
El Museo del Barrio, Stabilized, Expands Its Mission
by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, June 5, 2014

Carrie Mae Weems retrospective at Guggenheim Museum

Carrie Mae Weems: 
Three Decades of Photography and Video

Guggenheim Museum

January 24-May 14

Carrie Mae Weems
A Broad and Expansive Sky—Ancient Rome (from Roaming), 2006
Chromogenic print, 73 x 61 inches (185.4 x 154.9 cm)
Private collection, Portland, Oregon
© Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems
Untitled (Man and mirror) (from Kitchen Table Series), 1990
Gelatin silver print, 27 1/4 x 27 1/4 inches (69.2 x 69.2 cm)
Collection of Eric and Liz Lefkofsky, promised gift to The Art Institute of Chicago
© Carrie Mae Weems
Photo: © The Art Institute of Chicago

New York Times critic Holland Cotter's otherwise admiring review of Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video (here) chides the Guggenheim Museum for not devoting its central, spiraling rotunda to Weems. Right now, if you visit the Guggenheim, you'll find that sloping spiral roped off in preparation for the upcoming Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe and that show's crates filling much of the ground floor.

The original Weems retrospective, curated by Kathryn Delmez, opened in September 2012 at Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts. According to Cotter, the Guggenheim omits some works included in previous stops along the show's tour, and the exhibition has been broken up into galleries scattered over a few floors. Cotter points out that, for a first New York retrospective of Weems's career, thirty years worth of work, the limited selection and spatial placement give this Black American artist, a 2013 MacArthur Fellow, short shrift. Cotter's argument seems all the more reasonable and urgent once you appreciate Weems's entire mission, which is all about visibility--to underscore and creatively document presence and experience against racist, sexist omissions and erasures.

She has done this, magnificently, in a variety of ways. Often putting her own body--at once, deific and down-to-earth--front and center in her photography and video work is the boldest stroke. Whether facing us head-on and meeting our gaze with her own or, by turning her back to the camera, slipping into iconic anonymity as in her dramatic Roaming series, Weems answers a denying world with defiance as if to say, Without my presence, you could not have come to be what you are.

I took a tip from Frida who from her bed painted incessantly--beautifully while Diego scaled the scaffolds to the very top of the world. -- from Weems's text for Not Manet's Type (1997)

Weems claims space for African and Afro-Atlantic realities, for people of African descent, particularly women, and our families and communities within society and its art.

Weems also exerts an artist's right not just to make new stuff but to appropriate existing objects--say, J. T. Zealy's daguerreotypes of "Negroid types" from slavery days--sealing these excavated memories under glass etched in white text, seizing control of how they will be seen and understood. She brings marginalized history to the table just as, in The Kitchen Table Series, she brings everyday eros to the table. Because she locates herself or others in historical time and in dreamtime and in something eerily combining the two--see her 2008 video Constructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment--we come to understand that we can do and often do the same.

The Guggenheim show might not have everything it could have or take pride of place in the main gallery, but it does educate and inspire (Guggenheim visitor information). See also Brooklyn Museum's Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey (closing March 9).

Holland Cotter on money and power in the art industry

Lost in the Gallery-Industrial Complex
Holland Cotter Looks at Money in Art
by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, January 17, 2014

Becoming Holland Cotter: poetry in words and images

Finding Poetry on the Page and, Later, on the Canvas
An Art Critic Is First Inspired by Words
by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, August 14, 2013

Holland Cotter on Museo del Barrio's "Bienal 2013"

A Constellation of Identities, Winking and Shifting
Museo del Barrio’s ‘Bienal 2013’ Explores Self and Origins
by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, June 13, 2013

Mike Kelley, 57

Mike Kelley, California Artist, An Apparent Suicide at 57
by Patricia Cohen, The New York Times, February 1, 2012 

Mike Kelley, Influential American Artist, Dies at 57
by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, February 1, 2012

Islamic galleries open at the Met

The Met’s New Islamic Galleries
by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, October 27, 2011

If I want your opinion...

Joshua Benton, who directs the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, attributed the appetite for opinion journalism to the public's need for "someone to make sense of all the information we're confronted with every day."

"A series of straight news stories about a complicated subject may do a great job of providing facts, but it might not do a great job of making sense of those facts," he added. "A well-framed opinion or analysis piece can do that."

from Surrounded by Opinion, the Times Raises Its Voices by Arthur Brisbane, The New York Times, July 2, 2011

Reading this column by Arthur Brisbane, the Times' Public
Editor--about the recent replacement of The Week in Review section with opinion-focused Sunday Review--brought to mind a few conversations I'd recently had with Boston Phoenix dance critic Marcia B. Siegel. Siegel stood firm for the continued relevance of something she insists on calling "dance criticism" (informed analysis and evaluation) in this age of informal dance blogging and Twitter.

Siegel (along with a few other prominent New York critics) initiated me into this profession nearly 37 years ago. I have the highest respect for her, while I've long since done more than merely straddle the fence between legacy and new media. I don't spend a lot of time trying to shield dance criticism from the young, tech-savvy barbarians at the gate. In fact, I rather like holding that gate open and waving through a few scruffy insurgents. But Brisbane's column made me entertain the possibility that Siegel might have a point in sticking to her standards.

Is it possible that the audience we crave for dance and the readership we want for dance writing might be looking for the kind of sharp analysis, clear opinion and skilled voice that comes with experience and, yes, with a sense of entitlement to speak out?

Quoted by Brisbane, Peter S. Goodman--formerly of the Times and now an editor and columnist for The Huffington Post--deems this "the age of the columnist." Brisbane concludes that readers are looking for "strong voices and firm conclusions based on facts."

Dance isn't about facts or firm conclusions, certainly. But, at its best, it is about distinctive voices with intelligence, perspective and potent expression. It might be best met, in turn, with fearless, artful expression from the dance writer.

For example, I have a handful of Times columnists that I turn to, again and again, for enlightening and often entertaining writing--writers such as visual arts critic Holland Cotter and film critics A. O. Scott and Manohla Dargis. Before he departed for New York Magazine, political columnist Frank Rich was also one of these.

Whatever I'm reading, I look not only for authority but also individual, unmistakable style, aliveness of mind and courageous expressiveness, sometimes deft humor and a sense of fun where appropriate to the topic. In the case of dance or any other art, I like to feel that the writer is a real person sharing genuine, considered and possibly transformative encounters with art. There's an openness, immediacy and zest in the writing--much like the energies we love in dance--that can take you directly to your own feelings or make you sit up taller.

So, even though I doubt that readers of dance writing are looking for "just the facts, ma'am," I do think they desire more strength and vibrancy, more engagement and human presence in our writing. And I'm guessing that we'd draw many new readers to our work--and, consequently, to dance itself--if we turned our personal and creative power on full blast.

Loss of jobs and freelance assignments plus the rise of new forms and venues for writing have all plunged dance writers into a dizzying time of rapid transition. Some fear the change. Some want to grab it with both fists and make it work. The second type have the potential to use and even create new technological tools and platforms, sharpening the definition of dance writing and bringing us new personalities and material that more people will be eager to read--quite a boon for the art of dance itself.

Bellini’s--and Cotter's--St. Francis

Bellini’s ‘St. Francis in the Desert’ at the Frick
by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, June 9, 2011

Cotter: Stein is a Stein is a Stein

Modern Is Modern Is: Gertrude Stein in Two San Francisco Exhibitions
by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, June 2, 2011

Traditional non-Western art: Left in the past?

Under Threat: The Shock of the Old
Non-Western Art History Bypasses the Ancient
by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, April 14, 2011

Holland Cotter on "Glenn Ligon: America"

Messages That Conduct an Electric Charge
by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, March 10, 2011

Malangatana Ngwenya, painter, 74

Malangatana Ngwenya, Mozambican Painter and Poet, Dies at 74
by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, January 8, 2011

Culture wars revisited

As Ants Crawl Over Crucifix, Dead Artist Is Assailed Again

by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, December 10, 2010

David Goldblatt’s South Africa

David Goldblatt’s South Africa Photos at Jewish Museum

by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, July 1, 2010

Louise Bourgeois, 98

Louise Bourgeois, Artist and Sculptor, Is Dead

by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, May 31, 2010

Women control the images

‘Pictures by Women,’ History at MoMA

by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, May 27, 2010

Revisiting Emily

My Hero, Emily Dickinson, Outlaw of Amherst

by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, May 11, 2010

The essential Holland Cotter. I bow to him.

Monet: a world in a garden

Claude Monet at Gagosian Gallery

The Garden That Grew Into a Muse

by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, May 6, 2010

Flowers for "a Lunatic on Bulbs"

‘Emily Dickinson’s Garden,’ at New York Botanical Garden

by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, April 29, 2010