Remembering James Wood (and Alan Artner)
Former Tribune art critic, Alan Artner's 1200 word tribute to former A.I.C. director, James Wood, appeared in the Chicago Tribune yesterday (June 20)
But hardly any details were offered to support its laudations.
Of course, there is the Modern Wing, and if that would not have happened without James Wood, then he deserves a lot of credit.
And the same thing for the dark and quiet Ando Gallery of Japanese screens and ceramics.
But how can we judge his contribution to the "numerous groundbreaking exhibitions" unless we know which exhibits were turned down, and which ones really had to be fought for?
And what is involved in "a higher level of professionalism"?
Has anyone ever described his predecessor, the former Kansas University President, Laurence Chalmers, as un-professional?
The problem is that the administration of a not-for-profit corporation, like the Art Institute, happens behind closed doors, and nobody can get behind those doors except a journalist from a major newspaper.
We don't need the kind of adversarial relationships that a columnist like John Kass has with Mayor "Shortshanks" Daley, or Governor "Deadmeat" Blagojevich.
But we do need a reporter who is looking for a story, instead of looking for approval from the powerful people he is covering.
From the little that I know about James Wood, he shared my enthusiasm for the Japanese Print room (which may be why it happily continued to be put on regular rotation), but he also had a taste for minimalism in contemporary art, and so I think we were shown a bit too much of Ellsworth Kelly and Jasper Johns.
But more importantly, it was at the beginning of his tenure that the Art Institute discontinued both it's American Painting and Sculpture Show and the Chicago Vicinity Show.
Two shows which the museum had been conducting regularly for the previous 90 years.
Why were they cut?
Perhaps because it was no longer fashionable to entertain an idea of Chicago art or American art as distinct from an international artworld.
So to assert the former would be to lose status in the latter.
But who knows?
This decision, along with all the others, was made in a boardroom closed to the public, and the city's most important art critic appears to have been more concerned with being the Director's friend than with being his critic.
But hardly any details were offered to support its laudations.
Of course, there is the Modern Wing, and if that would not have happened without James Wood, then he deserves a lot of credit.
And the same thing for the dark and quiet Ando Gallery of Japanese screens and ceramics.
But how can we judge his contribution to the "numerous groundbreaking exhibitions" unless we know which exhibits were turned down, and which ones really had to be fought for?
And what is involved in "a higher level of professionalism"?
Has anyone ever described his predecessor, the former Kansas University President, Laurence Chalmers, as un-professional?
The problem is that the administration of a not-for-profit corporation, like the Art Institute, happens behind closed doors, and nobody can get behind those doors except a journalist from a major newspaper.
We don't need the kind of adversarial relationships that a columnist like John Kass has with Mayor "Shortshanks" Daley, or Governor "Deadmeat" Blagojevich.
But we do need a reporter who is looking for a story, instead of looking for approval from the powerful people he is covering.
From the little that I know about James Wood, he shared my enthusiasm for the Japanese Print room (which may be why it happily continued to be put on regular rotation), but he also had a taste for minimalism in contemporary art, and so I think we were shown a bit too much of Ellsworth Kelly and Jasper Johns.
But more importantly, it was at the beginning of his tenure that the Art Institute discontinued both it's American Painting and Sculpture Show and the Chicago Vicinity Show.
Two shows which the museum had been conducting regularly for the previous 90 years.
Why were they cut?
Perhaps because it was no longer fashionable to entertain an idea of Chicago art or American art as distinct from an international artworld.
So to assert the former would be to lose status in the latter.
But who knows?
This decision, along with all the others, was made in a boardroom closed to the public, and the city's most important art critic appears to have been more concerned with being the Director's friend than with being his critic.
posted by chris miller at 5:14 AM
2 Comments:
Interesting observation...look not for what was said, but what wasn't.
Hi Sharon,
Your response reminds me that I've been neglecting this blog. No one else has expressed much interest in looking at our local museum with a critical eye.
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