Notes from the Life of an Artist by Franklin Einspruch. Previous: Ruisdael at PMA Next: Images from the Fra Angelico show at the Met I can only speak for myself, but we're talking about a museum that has had a spate of so-so shows lately with six- to ten-month runs. I thought Kathleen, who docents there, would be all over this, but it's been blog silence chez The Next Few Hours. The expansion project slated for MAM has the pall of the Performing Arts Center looming over it, a money pit that has dealt with its critics by retaliating against them.
Alesh gets credit for commenting on this first, locally. I feel positive about the fact that he worked at MoMA and knows what an important museum looks like. His record? I dunno - how excited do you want me to get about an architecture guy? The board is trying to build a museum, so they got a museum builder. No proof of this, by the way - just my speculation. You can bet the flacks down at MAM wouldn't cop to any such thing. Oh, the rumors I have But Riley, here, he seems like he could do it.
Three things:. Whom he ends up hiring as curators affects my life more than anything else. Until he makes those hires, I'm waiting to get enthused about him. The reason that the four top art collectors in town as rated by that silly system in Whatevart Magazine have little to do with MAM seems to stem from friction between the collectors and the board, as far as I can get anybody to admit it.
I suspect that much of the lethargy surrounding MAM's programming has to do with the board, and whether Riley can either energize it or do an end run around it is an open question. I feel similarly about the Collections Council PDF , which might work, or might turn into the nastiest exercise in conflicted interests you can imagine. Is that within Riley's power? Here's where we find out. Well, that's nice of Tyler however, I have more than a blog I have an entire website that he did NOT see because I posted a longer piece on the appointment including a picture of Mr.
Everything remains to be seen, and I'm not interested in anything but tangible changes or results. An architecture guy, however, would certainly not have been my preference, and whatever he may do for MAM architecturally is of only secondary interest to me, at best. One of my major gripes has always been the intense focus that's been placed on a new building as opposed to a better collection and better relations with local big-money collectors.
