de Young Kick-off
Sunday was my first experience at the de Young Museum, situated in Golden Gate Park near the Japanese Tea Gardens, since the new building opened– or ever, for that matter. As a friend said to me today, “People go for the building, not the art.” I don’t know if I’d be quite that harsh, but it’s certainly true that the de Young is a sub-par, second/third-string collection housed in an amazing building. But as much as it sounds like one, I don’t mean this as a criticism; not every museum can have “quintessential” collections of, for example, modern art, like MoMA and the Pompidou. In fact, most museums have second and third-string collections, but the way a smart museum deals with this and makes their permanent collection relevant and interesting is by (1) putting it in a really interesting, dynamic space; (2) frequently reexamining that collection and reorganizing it carefully, creatively and selectively; (3) making curatorial connections between the art of that particular collection and its surrounding region or geographic and social environment; and (4) creating and inviting important and unique temporary exhibitions to supplement that collection. From what I saw on my first visit, the de Young is working to do all of these things. It reminds me a lot of the Brooklyn Museum– another institutional with kind of a large but not great collection that was able to reinvent itself when it got an architectural facelift. I think it’s so smart and also important for museums to go through this process; they are force to completely reevaluate their place and identity as institutions and are thus able to avoid the kind of stagnation that plagues certain other major museums (the most obvious example that comes to mind is the Met). The MoMA went through a similar reinvention and reorganization when it was redesigned, which was a great thing, particularly because its collection is so prolific and its physical organization has literally affected the way modern and contemporary art is understood and taught. Anyway, I’ll just hit the highlights of my first visit to the de Young, because I could go on forever on this topic.
The building opened last October and was designed by Herzog and de Meuron, so naturally it’s amazing. The shape is asymmetrical and angular, and the building is coated with a puckered, textured metal that becomes rusted and corroded, literally documenting the physical wear on the exterior. The interior is riddled with lots of fun windows that provide awesome views of various parts of the museum interior, beautiful courtyards and the surrounding grounds of Golden Gate Park. Every material in the building, from staircases to beautiful mix-and-match geometric benches was carefully chosen and feels authentic to the building’s geographic location. There are also several large commissioned artworks in the open foyers and courtyards of the museum. My favorites were an Andy Goldsworthy piece in the main outdoor entryway involving the local geology and topography of the San Francisco area (he’s so awesome), a huge mural by Gerhard Richter, and a large-scale triptych by Ed Ruscha. The Pazzioni Murals Room is really beautiful and has a huge wall-length window facing out into the park, although as Tyler Green pointed out in his awesome blog, Modern Art Notes (www.artsjournal.com/man), the odd choice was made to have bars across the middle of each mural, literally in front of the works of art… very bizarre. There must be an explanation for this. The Fern Courtyard (a very long, triangular strip located behind the two main staircases, moving with the elevation of the building) is exceptionally beautiful.
The temporary exhibitions currently on view at the de Young are Chicano (a three-part show) and The Quilts of Gee’s Bend. I spent a lot more time at the Chicano show, so I’ll give the very brief review of the quilt show: It’s a show of (and about) quilts made by this community of women in Alabama. The quilts are really beautiful, and the museum provides some nice background info about the quilters as well as photos and a video of them “in their natural habitat”. It was a little anthropological, but I appreciate the effort to bring a “craft” into the realm of fine arts and acknowledge what beautiful and complex works of art these quilts are. Cool.
So, the Chicano show is divided into three parts: Visions, Encounters and Now. Chicano Visions is painting by various Chicano artists (mostly from California and Texas) from the collection of Cheech Marin. It was a really interesting collection– eye-opening in the sense that virtually none of the work or artists are well-known, though it all looked familiar to me, having grown up in Texas, but certainly not from a fine art context. The wall text gave background info about each artist, introducing them in a mini-CV narrative format, which was really refreshing (as opposed to being lectured at about how to interpret the art, as most wall text does). It was actually the type of information you want to read and doesn’t prevent you from having your own opinion about the work. The introductory text was also really well written and informal, breaking the usual academic, didactic language of wall text that’s pretty uninviting. The text situated the exhibition in the context of Chicano socio-political struggle with a plea at the end for young Chicanos to remember that this struggle is not over. After all, this is the first survey of Chicano painting that I can even remember seeing, so clearly we have a way to go (Chicanos and the rest of us). However, I have to point out that I’ve never seen more prominent acknowledgement of corporate sponsorship in an exhibition before; there were two huge panels next to the intro, one for Hewlett-Packard and one for Target (and every time the title of the show appears on any of the museum literature or walls, it’s accompanied by “presented by Target”). I guess this is unavoidable, and I suppose a positive spin on this is to say that at least these companies are supporting worthy cultural endeavors. But it’s still incredibly distracting… I wouldn’t prefer that they hide all the names of sponsors and trustees, because it’s important to remind people that this didn’t all just happen for free, but it’s sad to be constantly reminded of how much money is involved with just getting art out there for people to see….
The painting itself was very interesting, especially some of the more surreal stuff. There was a lot of political commentary, often about stereotypes in the Chicano community. Many of the artists made art historical references, such as religious painting and imagery, Goya, and Stephen Shore (that one might not have been intentional but it really reminded me of him). It was all very colorful and interesting, and a lot of it was very funny, which is sort of hard to do well in painting. According to the bio texts, the majority of these artists have worked on murals, which is a pretty astonishing reality check; most Chicano artists only have alternative avenues of art production available to them, so making art becomes much more community-oriented, as most Chicanos are ostracized from art schools and the art world, generally.
Chicano Encounters was a small exhibition of posters made in Mission Gráfica, a printmaking shop in the Mission district of San Francisco (my neighborhood!), many of them political and used as tools for community organization. The posters were my favorite part of the whole Chicano exhibition extravaganza. I’ve always really loved posters as a medium in general, and it’s always so interesting to decontextualize something like a poster and put it in a museum. It’s kind of fun, because the posters made the museum seem out of place and not the other way around, as you might expect.
Chicano Now is really hard to describe. It was basically an experiential fun house about debunking Chicano stereotypes and celebrating authentic parts of Chicano culture at the same time. My favorite little station was called “Juiced”, a tongue-in-cheek model and explanation of hydraulics and sparking, giving detailed instructions about how to “juice up” your car. There was also a little diner booth where you could sit down and read about various Chicano musical contributions on the table top while listening to the songs on a little jukebox. The best thing was the introductory video, which involved these three men from outer space coming to America and absorbing all the ridiculous Chicano stereotypes. It was pretty funny. This whole section of the exhibition was loud, colorful, chaotic and overwhelming– which, I realized, is probably the most true way to try to design a physical space that tackles issues of identity and debunking stereotypes. It was pretty clever.
A final note: The entire three-part Chicano exhibition was organized in a giant horseshoe shape, which meant that you could enter from one of two sides, and I noticed as I exited that it would have worked either way, which was well done.
The building opened last October and was designed by Herzog and de Meuron, so naturally it’s amazing. The shape is asymmetrical and angular, and the building is coated with a puckered, textured metal that becomes rusted and corroded, literally documenting the physical wear on the exterior. The interior is riddled with lots of fun windows that provide awesome views of various parts of the museum interior, beautiful courtyards and the surrounding grounds of Golden Gate Park. Every material in the building, from staircases to beautiful mix-and-match geometric benches was carefully chosen and feels authentic to the building’s geographic location. There are also several large commissioned artworks in the open foyers and courtyards of the museum. My favorites were an Andy Goldsworthy piece in the main outdoor entryway involving the local geology and topography of the San Francisco area (he’s so awesome), a huge mural by Gerhard Richter, and a large-scale triptych by Ed Ruscha. The Pazzioni Murals Room is really beautiful and has a huge wall-length window facing out into the park, although as Tyler Green pointed out in his awesome blog, Modern Art Notes (www.artsjournal.com/man), the odd choice was made to have bars across the middle of each mural, literally in front of the works of art… very bizarre. There must be an explanation for this. The Fern Courtyard (a very long, triangular strip located behind the two main staircases, moving with the elevation of the building) is exceptionally beautiful.
The temporary exhibitions currently on view at the de Young are Chicano (a three-part show) and The Quilts of Gee’s Bend. I spent a lot more time at the Chicano show, so I’ll give the very brief review of the quilt show: It’s a show of (and about) quilts made by this community of women in Alabama. The quilts are really beautiful, and the museum provides some nice background info about the quilters as well as photos and a video of them “in their natural habitat”. It was a little anthropological, but I appreciate the effort to bring a “craft” into the realm of fine arts and acknowledge what beautiful and complex works of art these quilts are. Cool.
So, the Chicano show is divided into three parts: Visions, Encounters and Now. Chicano Visions is painting by various Chicano artists (mostly from California and Texas) from the collection of Cheech Marin. It was a really interesting collection– eye-opening in the sense that virtually none of the work or artists are well-known, though it all looked familiar to me, having grown up in Texas, but certainly not from a fine art context. The wall text gave background info about each artist, introducing them in a mini-CV narrative format, which was really refreshing (as opposed to being lectured at about how to interpret the art, as most wall text does). It was actually the type of information you want to read and doesn’t prevent you from having your own opinion about the work. The introductory text was also really well written and informal, breaking the usual academic, didactic language of wall text that’s pretty uninviting. The text situated the exhibition in the context of Chicano socio-political struggle with a plea at the end for young Chicanos to remember that this struggle is not over. After all, this is the first survey of Chicano painting that I can even remember seeing, so clearly we have a way to go (Chicanos and the rest of us). However, I have to point out that I’ve never seen more prominent acknowledgement of corporate sponsorship in an exhibition before; there were two huge panels next to the intro, one for Hewlett-Packard and one for Target (and every time the title of the show appears on any of the museum literature or walls, it’s accompanied by “presented by Target”). I guess this is unavoidable, and I suppose a positive spin on this is to say that at least these companies are supporting worthy cultural endeavors. But it’s still incredibly distracting… I wouldn’t prefer that they hide all the names of sponsors and trustees, because it’s important to remind people that this didn’t all just happen for free, but it’s sad to be constantly reminded of how much money is involved with just getting art out there for people to see….
The painting itself was very interesting, especially some of the more surreal stuff. There was a lot of political commentary, often about stereotypes in the Chicano community. Many of the artists made art historical references, such as religious painting and imagery, Goya, and Stephen Shore (that one might not have been intentional but it really reminded me of him). It was all very colorful and interesting, and a lot of it was very funny, which is sort of hard to do well in painting. According to the bio texts, the majority of these artists have worked on murals, which is a pretty astonishing reality check; most Chicano artists only have alternative avenues of art production available to them, so making art becomes much more community-oriented, as most Chicanos are ostracized from art schools and the art world, generally.
Chicano Encounters was a small exhibition of posters made in Mission Gráfica, a printmaking shop in the Mission district of San Francisco (my neighborhood!), many of them political and used as tools for community organization. The posters were my favorite part of the whole Chicano exhibition extravaganza. I’ve always really loved posters as a medium in general, and it’s always so interesting to decontextualize something like a poster and put it in a museum. It’s kind of fun, because the posters made the museum seem out of place and not the other way around, as you might expect.
Chicano Now is really hard to describe. It was basically an experiential fun house about debunking Chicano stereotypes and celebrating authentic parts of Chicano culture at the same time. My favorite little station was called “Juiced”, a tongue-in-cheek model and explanation of hydraulics and sparking, giving detailed instructions about how to “juice up” your car. There was also a little diner booth where you could sit down and read about various Chicano musical contributions on the table top while listening to the songs on a little jukebox. The best thing was the introductory video, which involved these three men from outer space coming to America and absorbing all the ridiculous Chicano stereotypes. It was pretty funny. This whole section of the exhibition was loud, colorful, chaotic and overwhelming– which, I realized, is probably the most true way to try to design a physical space that tackles issues of identity and debunking stereotypes. It was pretty clever.
A final note: The entire three-part Chicano exhibition was organized in a giant horseshoe shape, which meant that you could enter from one of two sides, and I noticed as I exited that it would have worked either way, which was well done.
posted by Jess Brier at 9:48 AM
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