Kenneth Barker slams the de Young
Tyler Green promised that this would hit the fan, and now it has. Hitting all the right notes, San Francisco Chronicle art writer Kenneth Barker has come out and neatly cataloged the many, many crises and failures plaguing the de Young museum. It’s a brilliant article, and it demands reading. We now live in an age where museums are increasingly concerned with “capacity building”, “revenue streams” and “capital campaigns” and less and less concerned about their long term legacies. The directors of museums are, increasingly, not visionaries or skilled managers, but individuals with established track records for increasing the number of feet on the floor and dollars in the till.
My favourite quote from the article is this:
One local museum professional,
who declined to be identified for business reasons, echoed concerns
expressed in Chronicle reader e-mails and the art blogosphere when he
asked: “Are the people coming into the museum having a museum
experience?”
That’s a damn good question. What kind of experience are these new visitors and their dollars having? Sure they’re experiencing something, but what is it? Is it more akin to window shopping on Rodeo Drive than it is to experiencing the aesthetic achievements of our species? If museums are libraries of objects, then what are they learning at the de Young?
The biggest and most glaring criticism is current director John Buchanan’s almost single minded fixation on dumbing down the museum with a seemingly endless parade of fashion oriented shows. I’m much, much more interested and enthusiastic about fashion than most “fine art” folks, but my interest has petered out. What’s most ridiculous is the upcoming Yves Saint Laurent show, since the whole “make love to some dead socialite’s closet” Nan Kemper show is. It’s all Yves Saint Laurent. It’s basically a Yves Saint Laurent show. For all the shit talked about it, the Nan Kemper show could have been a good one - her collection provides an excellent opening to talk about class, race and economic disparities in America - something that would never be allowed by the MOMA, who own the show, and are no doubt indebted to her survivors.
The best part about the article is when John Buchanan crowns himself “director of the museums and chief curator of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.” That is an ungainly and mythical beast. Confronted with that claim, the article has Barnaby Conrad III (Wow! I need a name like that in my next life), a FAMSF board member stating “I didn’t realize that. If the board was informed, it was at a meeting I didn’t attend.” Sounds like someone has overextended their authority. It’s a shame when someone who’s as highly paid as Buchanan is, and who theoretically has a certain degree of professional skill can’t understand the limits of their job description.
I’ve never worked for a major institution, so maybe my take on the situation is muddled by my lack of knowledge as to how things work in those kinds of facilities, but the idea of a Director/Chief Curator is a major mistake. In my institution, a large part of our creative strength comes from the fact I, the Visual Arts Director (and therefore “chief/only curator”), serve at the behest and trust of my Executive Director. My boss knows that although he has the ultimate oversight and provides approval for all of our major projects, that he is not a curator, and that he trusts me to do the job that I was hired to do. It’s an insult to the professional skill of real curators when they aren’t allowed to do their jobs, or their hard work is trumped by the aggressive authority of a Director who’s ambitions exceed his capabilities.
I’ve seen institutions where the curatorial staff has all of their knowledge, experience and work mediated by an oppressive and ego driven administrator or director. The employees aren’t happy, and they start phoning in their jobs. The ones who care more about their work than their paycheck migrate out, and a class of dispirited check collectors takes up residence in their former offices. It’s not pretty, and it’s the case at more than one major American museum.
I hadn’t realized, prior to reading the article, that John Buchanan was previously the director of the Portland Art Museum (for 12 years, during the time of their most recent expansion. He was also paid very, very well.) I’ve been to PAM and I found it severely lacking. Based upon my experience at PAM, I also have to wonder - why did the board hire Buchanan? I presume that the board has enough experience to tell a successful institution from a middling one, and that at least one of the must have visited PAM. If I were to judge a hire, I would judge them by their most recent, largest project, in this case, the expansion of PAM. Maybe Buchanan’s experience at PAM was seen as a plus, given that PAM, like the de Young, suffers from a recent expansion/re-design that’s created an incredibly limited and cluttered space. Maybe Buchanan seemed like a good candidate, since he wouldn’t mind being in charge of one of the worst laid out museum interiors in America, given that the de Young would be a step up from his own institution.
I guess my question is this - What would motivate FAMSF to hire the Director of the Portland Art Museum? How on earth did that happen? Is there just such a shortage of talent at that level of the industry? Or did Buchanan’s “blockbusterism” and the dollars it brought to PAM blind the board to the failures of that institution?
Technorati Tags: de Young Museum, FAMSF, John Buchanan, museum, San Francisco Chronicle
