I’m avoiding BCAM until I feel like thinking about it, but I’ll take Coagula editor Mat Gleason’s recent post on BCAM as a semi-confirmation of my suppositions about the worst case scenario regarding the collection on display.  Knowing what I know about Broad’s collection, how New York/Blue Chip centric it is, I figure it’s a museum more for yesterday than for tomorrow. Fuck it, for me the tipping point is that I’m curatorially disappointed about the presence of way too much Koons in an LA museum.  If all that Koons means anything to me, its as the yellow writing in the snow by territory marker Eli Broad.  Anyways, here’s the meaty bit Gleason’s post (bold added for emphasis by me), but go read the whole thing.

The BCAM hardly seems to be here for Los Angeles. It features few local artists, and with its 1980s sensibilities, no contemporary artists. The BCAM exists for cultural tourists from abroad. It is a Disneyland-like attraction for European and Asian tourists. This museum gives them the chance to see the real America while simultaneously feeding the fine art urge that defines cultural tourism and the weak dollar it so loves. This is the real America of lip-service-liberalism, superficial philosophers, icons of fame and filth, big brash bold banalities and restrooms so clean you could eat your breakfast off their floors. If the security guards carried loaded pistols and the parking lot had traffic signals it would be the only place anyone ever needed to visit to comprehend the greatness, glory and ignorant grandeur of the United States of America.

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