Public Art Fraud Sponsored by the NEA

 Federal Arts funding for public art is being subverted unscrupulously.  The sugar-coated rhetoric that advocates and excuses the practice is the well-known, disingenuous Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) rhetoric.

The scam is shamelessly performed in broad daylight. It involves a number of tightly coupled techniques that ensure that local funding for the arts is used as a proxy form of reparations toward local arts organizations that no longer represent artists but instead act as cash cows for exclusively self-serving political action groups. Naturally, the labels these organizations use claim to be arts organizations but the administrations of these organizations has been largely co-opted by individuals whose agendas don't honor the intent of public funding for the arts.

The National Endowment for the Arts is blatantly in need of an auditing of their funding and organizational integrity.  The lack of accountability as to how Arts money is spent and how its regional branches operate is negligent if not criminal. Following the fraudulent practices requires navigating a maze of clever and deceptive techniques that both distort the scam and obfuscate the network of deception involved.

What is "Public Art"?

You may think you know what "public art" means but its definition is the first casualty in the misuse of federal and local funds.

Most Americans will recognize that citizens move freely and often and that neighborhoods, towns, and cities routinely evolve with changing times. And therefore, one requirement of government funded public artwork must be that whatever the artwork is must reflect either the country or a common, shared trajectory that can stand the test of time and cultural change.

Today, that common sense expectation is no longer the case. Arts organizations nationwide are more likely to solicit public arts projects that immediately gratify the politics and cultural footprint of the current (and often temporal) cohort of residents who disproportionately influence, if not control, the arts organization in question.

In fact, the NEA spends federal arts funding on highly biased, advocacy, consulting firms who provide plausible deniability, gamed statistical polls and materials, and academically white-washed cover for the obviously unConstitutional funding behaviors. 

Forecast is one such consulting firm.  Their firm is entirely female yet they claim to represent a shopping cart of social justice goodness. 

This redefinition of public art is often sold as a re-imagining of public art funding as if its a rainbow of new and wonderful fairy dust the public can expect coming its way. 

Contrary to that salesmanship, this redefinition moves the goal posts for artists who hope to participate and share in the public arts spaces.  First, it codifies the bigotry required for the creation of "community" art. In other words if the arts organization that dispenses funding for an arts project insists on a specific identity politic artist profile to complete it, then not just anyone can apply.  Equal opportunity be damned. And quality and long term viability of the piece are compromised at best and reinforce racial and social stereotypes regardless. 

In New England, the New England Foundation for the Arts buries all visual arts grants under a public art subterfuge.

Wait. There's More

And public art's definition isn't the only thing under attack. Traditionally, an artist could apply for a public art commission by submitting a response to a "Request for Proposal" (RFP) that would describe and detail the submission the artist was proposing. 

That was before a a very sneaky and insidious change is being recommended to the application process.  The recommendation is that the RFP be replaced with something called a "Request for Qualification" (RFQ). In other words, the applicants will be selected or eliminated based on WHO the artist is rather than the quality of their proposal. And here, "who" is the equivalent of passing a bigoted litmus test of identity qualifications being judged by out-of-control arts administrators who think social engineering is a legitimate function of their responsibility.

This, just one more way artists are stabbed in the back.

Time for Accountability

The NEA has been off the chain for many years now.  Arts funding is either being diverted to elite college student activity slush funds or being used to pay off local social justice advocates who bum rush arts organizations as easy, territorial marks. In the meantime, nationally, artists of all kinds are not being funded and believe its their fault alone.

When will the NEA and its regional proxies be held accountable?

How NEFA Cripples the Visual Arts and Its Legitimacy

 The oxymoronic New England Foundation for the Arts does virtually nothing to fund or expose the Visual Arts in New England. "That can't be", you say. Wrong.  Wrap your head around the fact of the matter.

Having a Hard Time Getting Funded, Go Away

An argument can be made that just because visual artists are treated like unworthy and unwanted competition for funding consideration in the New England region - there is always the opportunity to apply for grants and funding from the National endowment for the Arts (NEA) directly.  And that's true but missing some critical context.

All of the other regions at least pay lip service to funding the Visual Arts and its aesthetic ecosystem of related practice. Artists who receive even perfunctory recognition at the regional level can also apply nationally and have something in their back pocket as a local reference. NEFA offers no such opportunity.

And for New England artists this means that they are not only competing for national recognition but that they are doing so against artists who already have a foot in the door.  If there is a complete disrespect for one's art at the regional level the why oh why would the NEA give you the time of day?

And While NEFA is at It, F.uck the Galleries Too

The local Art Gallery scene in America consists of seat-of-the-pants funding and all-hands-on-deck volunteerism.  

All of the aforementioned funding recipients have in-house, payrolled, grant writers. Few, if any, galleries and community venues have anyone who qualifies to help (see Rule #1).

The monopoly of dance, theater, and performance funding by NEFA is nothing short of money laundering.

The majority of funding is awarded to first, private school programs, occasionally State programs, and lastly the occasional, politically connected smaller venues. These well-endowed or tax-payer funded  University entertainment venues usually have budgets that fully fund the next year's offerings.  NEA funding is cycled back into their program funding priorities.  This is an obvious windfall for performing arts programs.

Woo hoo! Rule #1: Life. Ain't. Fair.

Pragmatically, that leaves ALL of the Visual Arts, Writing, Conservation, Folk Art, and myriad other galleries left to go fish for funding elsewhere.

For the record, art galleries are where all the platitudes are either practiced or ignored. The word community is synonymous with local art galleries.  Patrons looking for cultural mirrors of their community will find it here or not at all.

Body Blows

The NEFA Resilience Funds that were awarded as a consequence of Covid were feeble at best. The funding largely targeted arts administration. The description of the grants and amounts awarded sound like pissing in the ocean to change the tides.

*TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!*.  All they want to do is continue stable employment for a diverse full-time staff as well as 18 teaching assistants, provide technology, and reach 400 lower income kids. Ambitious?

The diversity of the staff is irrelevant to receiving funding.  Reaching 400 lower income kids is irrelevant to the funding. The biggest question here is that this example is a copy of numerous such requests.

The obvious need is for a virtual presence from which to broadcast arts programs. Period.  What was required is that NEFA itself would negotiate, fund, and train all New England Galleries with an autonomous web footprint, a paid subscription for social media meeting spaces, and some single source technical assistance. That would have been a cost-effective, ever-so-virtuous solution under the circumstances. Missed opportunity.

Resiliency Revisited

The concept of Disaster Capitalism is ubiquitous these days when natural disaster suddenly and unexpectedly shuffles the deck of normalcy.

NEFA's malfeasance in regard to Visual Arts extends much further. The New England States are home to thousands of historical and socially significant artifacts that range from buildings, functional institutions, burial grounds, and other social treasures.

Extreme weather, misguided natural resource management, and self-inflicted incompetence are compounding the risk that all of these cultural assets are in danger.

Visual Arts funding is one aspect of sustaining a healthy aesthetic infrastructure but promoting healthy gallery practices, restoration and future proofing of all of New England's brittle treasures, creating feedback and fundback loops so that local artists and artisans participate in the funding is critical.

Resiliency funding must be an ongoing program dedicated to the New England gallery infrastructure.  The Private Universities and State Schools should not be skimming these funds away from non-profits and individuals who enrich the region.

So at least one question is, "Why is NEFA so incompetent and mismanaged?"  Administration is not an art.   

American Art, Hostage to the Political Opportunists

 Some Context - Hostage to Whom Exactly?

Professional artists live in a state of near constant precarity. The immediate and long term viability of making a living or even continuing to make a living is always in question.  And so, applying for available grants and other funding opportunities is always an option assuming the artist or artist's assistants can navigate these murky and duplicitous social currents.  In this particular article, I'm constraining the discussion to government funded opportunities.  The broader range of potential funding will be addressed in a future entry.

Government involvement in the Fine Arts aesthetic realm by definition is a surrender of artistic autonomy to a bureaucratically directed, ingrown, unaccountable, and cluelessly tasteless crony appointees. The proof is in the funding pudding that includes, administration of the program, dispensation of funds, and the wholesale incompetence of the program's design.

While the artist suspends their misgivings and doubts their surrender to the system of application and subsequent processing is largely an exercise in self-denial.  The sordid history of the program, if one bothers to look, can be summarized as "Don't go away mad, just go away!" The program is a slush fund for large arts organizations, unscrupulous academic fiscal dippers, incestuous connections, and the shadow suggestions of prima donna influencers.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

There is occasional evidence of trickle down funding that slips through the cracks but it is loose change compared to the institutional takeaway bag.

Rather than rehash the arguments that are eternally recycled about the waste of actual money, the more important contagion that the National Endowment for the Arts succeeds in infecting into the very framework and self-acknowledgement of Fine Art is the political not-so-subliminal suggestion of what the art must represent either in presentation or in descriptive, documentary genuflection and specificity.

Artist and organizations are put on notice whether they score funding or not that they must and will modify their behavior, their aesthetic advocacy, and their administrative demeanor to conform to the presumptive Big Brother authority of government funding for any consideration. In other words, even the tease of available arts funds is plenty enough to bend the aesthetic arc of creativity in the arts to politically imprint the needy artists attracted to the fiscal honeypot.

The 'F' in NEFA Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

The Visual Arts Screwing in New England

Forgive the obvious.  The world is changing.

New England, once famous for Yankee Ingenuity has been abused and maliciously plundered by NEFA.  

The Visual Arts, Design and Design Thinking, and the inheritance of Folk Traditions, craftsmanship, and our past artifacts and architecture are the essence and and visionary influence that stimulate growth. (More on all of this in a future article.)

Today the vaudevillian painted faces of Woke, forever navel-gazing, self-traumatized performers are prioritized over vision and ideas that sustain the creative engine of ingenuity. New England is being dumbed-down and entertained into a creative coma. This has got to stop.

Actual Samples of Previously Funded New Work New England Projects

"Young students wear N95 masks and sit at their desks."

and 

"Two folks sit on the floor and caress between two speakers."

and 

"A screen shot of a bunch of images on an iphone. Pictures of a woman dancing in a field in a red wrap."

Huh?

Okay.  If the only qualification for the concept of new is, "I recently pulled this out of my keister" then, sure... "new work". I don't mean to pick on these alone, there's tsunami of this stuff you can look up.

OTOH, aren't there bigger fish to fry when it comes to art, curation, museums, galleries, and so on?  I think so.

Most obviously is that whoever is judging the quality of this stuff is working in a sensory deprivation chamber because we should be hearing a scream by now.  The goal of NEA funding no matter who administers it should be to ratchet up the quality of work being funded and not encourage recursive mediocrity.

That can be fixed by employing individuals who actually know and study art instead of mind numbing, sociological pathologies. Couple that with a feedback loop and some transparency as to the criteria that these works qualified for acceptance and we are that much closer to honest brokerage of the actual art submitted. I'll circle back to transparency before too long.

The Humiliation of Practicing Art

The NEA is in LOVE with the word "equity".  Hugs and kisses to all the artists that embrace equity and repeat the slogan over and over and over in their submissions. MmmmWah! Equity!

This and two handfuls of politically correct platitudes are required of everybody and as James Joyce noted years ago, "H.C.E., here comes everybody!"

Part of the hostage scenario is that artists are being held responsible for social ills and being made human sacrifices for society's real and imagined debt to the masses who think reparation checks are in the mail.

The practice of art has nothing to do with politics.  Let me repeat. The practice of art has nothing to do with politics.  You don't believe it because the NEA and the special interest propaganda advocates have convinced you otherwise.

A cook at a famous restaurant is not intimidated into insuring the equity of the meal purchases and preparation. The cooking staff need not compete with the United Nations. No.

Yet artists are expected and, let's face it, required to salute this Woke whoreshit and somehow incorporate it into their proposals. Makes us all feel so, um, free.

Instead

Instead, after NEFA is metaphorically administratively flushed, something along the lines of a re-imaging of the organization must take place.

First, foremost, and somewhat shockingly the organization must commit itself to art and - gasp - artists. And not just any artists - New England artists, architects, designers, imagineers, art writers, historians, public speakers, museum consultants, gallery rescues, and so on. Yes. All of that and more (More to come).

And Universities with huge endowments, say Wesleyan -

"In fiscal year 2022, Wesleyan's endowment dropped by 4.6%, ending the fiscal period at $1.56 billion. 

This was the first year of losses since fiscal 2016." - need to tap that slush fund (FIRST) long before applying for arts funding.  That drop though, so sad.

And the artists who must be given priority must be New England artists for exposure within the region and in other regions.  Likewise, other regions should be promoting their local artists nationwide.

Another high priority order of business must be transparency, ease of application with a bare minimum of intimidating rhetoric about somebody's latest political itch.

Whatever takes the place of NEFA needs to define equity as the recognition that art is a profession and NOT a social services agency. And it is not a slush fund for insiders.  Administrators need term limits not lifetime life rafts to float downstream for the rest of their lives."  

Add your own ideas to the comments.

The Criminal Negligence of the New England Foundation for the Arts

First, Organizational Context

The New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) is one of six State and Regional Arts Organizations organized under the National Assembly of State Arts Organizations and the U.S. Regional Arts Organization. I'm enclosing these links both as reference material and as factual assertions for the arguments that follow.

Regulation, Virtuous Cultural and Identity Politic Litmus Testing, and Funding

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is a stakeholder and Daddy Big Brother funder for all of these organizations.

There are regional and state funds that also support these arts funds and they all wrap yet another layer of "community" sentiment and political intimidation - a topic for a broader discussion in this link - to the rhetoric of applying for arts grants.  There is also a hefty degree of good will and good intention - another topic for later discussion - involved.

And lastly, there are a parade of corporate sponsors and giving individuals who do more than "care" about the arts but actually donate to their anticipated and fully expected promotion by all of the organizations previously listed.

Art, The Final Frontier

One would think that this fine, oiled hierarchy of goodwill and responsibility for promoting the arts might have a source of truth for establishing a minimum agreed upon set of artistic categories  or buckets of interest that, regardless of final labeling and marketing, would broadly represent arts.

For the sake of argument let's defer to the NEA as the source of such a list.

This listing represents NEA art Funding and Grants that exist on the National (and -nod,  wink - international level). Because the NEA represents a metaphorical bottomless pit of unaccountable, voluntary and involuntary taxpayer funding, it deserves and will later get a more thorough examination in this series.

To remain focused on the immediate topic, that is, the criminal negligence of NEFA in serving its demographic arts - *cough* - "community", the immediately startling difference between NEFA and all other Regional Arts organizations is the wholesale absence of ANY Visual Arts funding... nada... none... AND!, it gets worse.

NEFA is myopically almost exclusively funneling its resources into Theater and Dance and Performance work (and in identifying this, all of these are legitimate art practices).  Take a look.

 The topics dictate the scope of opportunity necessary to participate. By maliciously neglecting and eliminating Visual Arts the categories of at least Design and Folk and Traditional Arts are also retarded from full ability to participate.

So you ask, How can this get worse? Glad you asked. Any even cursory audit of who qualifies for the funding has a a set of aesthetic and social profiles and one of the blinding profiles is that the recipients are largely entertainers and over-amplified Identity Politic performers. 

But hold your breath, it's turtles all the way down.  In many, many cases, these performers are not local acts or performers.  The recipients of the grants appear to be curators or arts organizers closely coupled to arts organizations who have no intention of promoting community artists.  Instead, they are entertaining the community artists to death or to immigrate to some other, more arts friendly, region.

And underpinning much of this, is the fact that NEFA is subsidizing private companies and academic institutions with money intended for the professional development and practice of the regional artists to whom its targeted. Search for grants awarded to Wesleyan University and you will find a staggering sum of resources that for all intents and purposes are nothing more than subsidies for student body recreation and activity funds.  The same is true for other venues.

More troubling is that these performances - dance, theater, advocacy - charge admittance fees, prioritize their student bodies for ticket access (at discounts from the public), and, for all the rhetoric about equity, do nothing to adjust the ticket prices to acknowledge that public funds were ALREADY dedicated to the performances.  And by discriminating participation first to young, educated college attending students, the "community" both of local artists and local art supporters, is not being served -it is being marginalized and neglected.

New England,  America's Visual Arts Desert

NEFA is to Visual Arts in New England as climate change is to our burning forests.  There is no vision and no accountability to be found anywhere.  Oh, yes, we can fill out a complaint form here and there - more pain in the ass than they are worth.  And that form will get sucked into an administrative shedding machine that for the past forty years of NEFA's existence could not see what's obvious to anyone that looks.

NEFA needs a wholesale reorganization - all new administration and all new definition of art in New England.

Guerrilla Girls Body Count: EOY 2022 Summary

 Another year has gone by and a summary count of Juried gallery shows and fine art funding sources follows.

The Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants were given to 41 male artists, 45 women artists, and 1 trans artist.

Real Art Ways (Hartford, CT) selected 3 male artists, 2 female artists, and 1 trans artist.

I had to research a number of juried shows that I was not aware of in real-time during the year.

The Silvermine "A-One" juried show, juried by Sharon Butler, resulted in:

15 male artist's work and 32 female artist's work being selected.

 

The Bowery 31st Annual juried by Lance Esplund resulted in:

13 male artist's work and 15 female artist's work being selected.

The Guilford Art League's 74th Annual Juried Show resulted in:

work by 26 male artists and 59 female artists being selected.

These results combined with existing 2022 juried gallery show results sum up to reveal:

552 art works made by 524 women artists were selected in my inventory of 13 juried shows.
334 art works made by 324 male artists were selected.

Women represent 62% of all artists and artwork accepted in these juried art shows.
Men represent 38%.

Factiod # 1: "Matching Facts. Women earn 70% of bachelor of fine arts and 65–75% of master of fine arts degrees in the U.S., though only 46% of working artists (across all arts disciplines) are women."  NMWA National Museum of Women in the Arts

Factoid # 2:

Zippia

"What percentage of visual artists are women?

Visual Artists By Gender

Gender	Percentages
Male	59.5%
Female	40.5%

"

...

A Personal Obituary for Paul R. Gudaitis

 Alzheimer's is a ruthless thief but all this remains a truth.

Paul and I go back to the late nineteen seventies. Paul and Dorine are both gone now so all that's left is my spotty memory of all those years.  The long and short of it is that we laughed - long and hard - all of us. Our circle of friends and acquaintences were largely the children of working class parents. Humor was the only entitlement any of us inherited.

Paul and I met in a CETA program intended to instruct us to become Information technologists.  We commuted together, shared the same tastes in music, recreational pastimes, and entertainment.  We became and stayed the closest of friends.

Paul was a hell of a pinball player.  More often than not his scores bested mine.  We spent a bachelor's fortune on beer and pinball. We partied at every opportunity.

In the earliest of the eighties, we began to write songs together and before long invited Dave Micloskey and Wayne Cote to join.  We created many songs together and Paul and Dave created many solely their own. The band, Sonny Munroe and [we'd fill in this blank with some absurdly inappropriate and thoroughly offense filler] was always the common denominator for all of it.

Paul and Dorine and I took a vacation to England in the early eighties.  There's a picture somewhere of Paul and I crossing Abbey Road.  We bought Beatle boots on King's Road. This, a pilgrimage of sorts.

Dorine's encouragement and tolerance of Thursday night basement band nights was saintly. She and Paul were generous with their time, friendship, and goodwill always.  I can't remember it ever being otherwise.

Paul was an avid reader.  One of his favorite books and recommendations was A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley - an obscure masterpiece and archetype for our sense of humor.

Well into the nineties we attended concerts big and small. We listened to everything new in music.  The more esoteric the better.  We made ear worm mix-tapes for each other.

With middle-age, families, and orthogonal life trajectories our visits and mutual contact became occasion.

Paul has had Alzheimer's for at least a decade.  At first, it was imperceptable. No big deal.

About five years ago, I visited and Paul was different.  Passive and cautious.  We sat in his beautifully cared for backyard and our conversation was dull.  Paul was quiet and seemingly incapable of a next thought or follow-up response.  I asked what he was reading and he pulled out a rock-and-roll book of essays.

The last time, the band got together with Paul was at Dave and Nancy's home.  This was just before the Covid lockdowns.  Dorine dropped him off with his guitar.  He was there physically but he held his guitar vertically in his lap like a bottle to be held on to. He had no idea what to do with it.  It broke us.  

I asked Dorine if I could drop off some books but she doubted he could read anymore.

Dorine loved Paul more than I ever imagined.  She cared and visited him daily when he was in managed care. She arranged a few video chat opportunities with Paul but aside from a few familiar physical ticks, Paul and I never again truly communicated.  She kept the faith and I think she was his last recognizable relation to society.

I'm glad his ordeal is over.  We were kindred spirits in this life and I loved him and Dorine dearly.  May their afterlife be filled with joy, adventure, and side-splitting laughter.

see: https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/southington-ct/paul-gudaitis-10955884

A Review of 30 Americans at the New Britain Museum of American Art

The 30 Americans show is touring art museums countrywide on the pretense that these institutions can't curate, acquire, or have the courage to show art by black americans all by themselves. According to the press release of the Rubell museum who curated the show, "30 Americans showcases works by many of the most important African American artists of the last three decades".

The NBMAA claims "30 Americans showcases works by some of the most significant artists of the last four decades" but who's counting? Well, I am. It's 2022 and if the claim is that the work represents art from the 1960s onward then the arithmetic is still missing a decade or two.  Be that as it may...

The show is further -cough- "supplemented" by the museum's own social justice warrior contributions. 

Museums are often criticized for their "white cube" display facilities but what this show manages to do is to turn the exibition space into a space resembling a psychiatric ward with the wall coverings serving as padded walls.

Within these walls exist the psychological demons that haunt these individuals and -   we are being sold they are the important African American artists!

Many are not only somehow important but troubled as well.  We can't blame the afflicted for this condition, its a by-product of the system that advances such "airing of the grievences" work to be marketed as representative of black and native american art.  After all, this is a half century of work with so little to show.  In fact, this show in many ways wholly explains why so little art from "people of color [who, btw, must conditionally vote democratic]" is shown.  This stuff is just not very good. 

Things that every art patron already knows entering this exhibit are that:

• Racism is bad - check
• 
  
• Poverty is bad - check
• 
  
• American history is violent, filled with injustices, and uneven at best - check
• 
  
• Capitalism is cruel when you are at the bottom of the barrel - check

The obligatory artistic, bingo card categories are of course race, celebrity, religion, politics, sex, identity, race, gender, glug, glug, glug.

One would think an art show doesn't have to condescend to illustrating, yet again and again, these worn out artistic tropes but, oh yes!, they do. One more time with feeling. Ah one, ah two...

Black face rants, appropriation celebrations, and "who me?" are three of the ways these walls scream.

Kara Walker's wall length, silhouette narrative is a rant against the Camptown races minstrel song that devolves into an imaginary trip into the seven rings of hell, most of which has absolutely nothing to do with the actual song, little to do with the occasions when it was commercialized by black-faced and black performers, and which distorts beyond all scope the behavior of most human beings. 

And if Walker's piece jumps the proverbial shark, Nina Chanel Abney's piece yells, "Hold my beer!". In "Class of 2007" painted her whole MFA class in black face because she was the only black MFA student in her class and, oh by the way, she was also upset by the number of black prisoners in jail so that kind of makes it okay.

Mickalene Thomas has a collection piece displayed that consists of a number of small self-portraits that could very well be a psychological study of Cybill.

The fictional histories of imagined oppressions doesn't end there. Kehindre Wiley's "Equestrian Portrait of the Count Duke of Olivares" - a finely executed piece of craftsmanship - smacks of a historical envy for a tradittion that never was.  Standing alone in an actual art for art's sake show it would convey mockery.  Here the context of grievance swallows it whole.

Confused yet?  Don't be.  Its not you and its not about art.  Its the by-product of a cottage industry that rewards social engineering and political polarization to capiitalize on art funding.  Most of the artisrs represented here are tenured, entitled, and socially well lubricated for the rest of their lives.

Appropriation when exercised by people of color whose color happens to be white is universally scorned by the Woke/feminist/decolonialist social media stream media.  In shows like 30 Americans its a downright obligation to appropriate until you drop. You won't hear a word of, "Wait, didn't you just say that this was a bad thing?" from anyone.  Nope. Uh, ah.

Wiley, Kerry James Marshall, Shinique Smith, Rozeal, Basquiat, Simmons, Weems, and Colescott's  textual complements all admit as much.

I have to confess I'm not being critical.  Appropriation in art is like a glass of lemonade on a hot day.  The groups claiming ownership of cultural ambient influences need to get a life.

As for the work that questions their own identity - its actually none of the business of art patrons.  These artists and curators are not so much confused as projecting a historical regret we all feel - nobody has to say, "Boy what a long, strange, and ugly trip history to this point has been."  We get it.

Confused about your identity.  Hey, me too.  Give me a break, our own baggage is more than enough.

Ironically, this show oozes of oppression envy.  In the 21st century, true poverty is being reduced daily, racism stops no one from getting ahead if they want to, and brow-beating patrons with guilt trips don't change a stinking thing.

Having said all that, there is some very nice work, some mediocre but big-name work, and, like all of life, some real crap in this show.  Go see it. It's like avisit to the Cabinet of Dr. Caligary.  Bring a sense of humor, you'll need it.

Art Hacks: Understanding How to See Art

You Are One of Multitudes

 In a previous Art Hacks posting I spoke to the issue of learning about art. And it concentrated on the resources available to a busy studio artist whose time and finances are limited.  Another aspect of learning about art is understanding the art you do see.  And this is profoundly more complex than it seems.  While you don't need to know Art History or Art Theory that doesn't mean that your art can ignore or otherwise that your point of origin for creating art has been thought about and studied for centuries and you're stuck with explaining why you are doing what you're doing given the inherited gifts of the past.

Visual Philosophy

One of the best descriptions of a visual artist to their art practice is that an artist is exercising a Visual Philosophy. The by-product, the artwork is rationalized by a belief system that has been developed by the individual artist to express a vision in a philosophical ecosystem of taste, implementation, and intellectual inertia.

Each of these considerations  depend on not only learning but refining the information you gather into something unique to your own art. And the idea of philosophy should not necessarily be confused with asserting messages of any kind. It can be nothing more than the esoteric biorhythm that you use to create the art that you do. 

Attention Span

Numerous studies of people's behavior in museum settings indicate that the average time spent looking at an individual art piece is very, very short. The Toledo Museum of Art has put together a primer on the subject for the average patron.  There are others and the studies are mixed ranging from 17 to 40-odd seconds.

All artists are different but anyone attempting to create fine art is attempting to speak to an order of humanity that shares a love and understanding of the work being produced. This is not the same as creating work that phishes for the attention of a well-known commercial audience.

Generally speaking, having your work exhibited in a museum is validation that the work you do is being accepted at a high level of aesthetic sophistication or curiosity. This brings us back around to the actual value of the piece being exhibited in a museum.  Does anyone actually see it? I will return to this subject in a much more detailed entry.

But the fact of the matter is that being shown in a museum is more important as resume highlight than as an exposure mechanism.  There is a robust discussion that questions whether or not showing in a museum is more important than having your work bought and exhibited in a well attended venue - public, private, or digital.

An artist who randomly visits a museum in which their work is being shown and expects to happen upon any meaningful criticism of their work is more likely to expect being struck by lightning given the statistical odds.

The exception to this scenario is attendance at art openings in which your art is exhibited. Art opening ceremonies first curate a cohort of attendees who are a peer audience for the work. Secondly, the audience is constrained to the perimeters of the show itself. Attending these openings is time well-spent.

An Artist's Reason for Museum Visits

Presumably artists have more targeted motivations for visiting museums. Unlike a tourist or patron who goes to a museum to see as much as they can in a constrained amount of time and energy, an artist (should) be better prepared to make use of the resource.

This means taking the time to do a personal inventory of work that is of interest and that that is not. Decide which list is a priority this visit.

Take a second pass of your wish list and further prioritize the candidates of interest. You know how much energy you'll have and you also know your saturation point. Draw a line under the last item you would expect to see no matter what and make that your plan 'A'.

Make a plan 'B' likewise as a backup should things change.

Finally, articulate what you hope to accomplish by going.  Consider this a set of expectations that you need to meet to consider the visit a success or 'Done'.

Attending with these things in hand, ensure that you don't get sidetracked before seeing what you what to see for good reasons.  Once you've accomplished all you wanted to (been there, done that), you can call it day or graze in other parts of the museum.

Define 'See'

An artist must be learning all the time. In fact, Robert Motherwell believed that art could not be taught but that "it could be learned". And learning was defined as deep, frequent exposure to other artists and art.

The act of seeing includes reading about the artist and their intentions in the art they create.  In the case of historical art, are there myths or stories you need to be familiar with to enjoy or critique the work?

And once you visit the art, take it in.  Dedicate some real time to just throwing around mental models of how and why it was made.  Why this solution to the problem?  How would you do it differently? Why?

Take the time to develop a more comprehensive and mature memory imprint than 'like'.  This  builds your  capacity to think about your own work.

Art Hacks: Curating a Taste in Art

Developing Your Own Art

This aspect of an artist's time is all about developing and investing in your ability to recognize what makes art in the world valuable and important and worth participating in.  This is different from the satisfaction of making a well-crafted thing or participating in a well-performed act (cooking, DIY assembly, and so on).  For a fine artist, this is a sharpening of personal sensibilities and thoughtful calibrations about making and advancing fine art.

And being an artist is different from being an arts and crafts professional that is manufacturing well-established, kitsch product for mass commercial consumption. If the art you create is all about how it looks then you're probably an arts and crafts professional concerned with skills mastery as a primary and maybe exclusive interest.

Taste and Time

One formula for a definition of (artistic) taste is that aesthetic distance and persistence of exposure to art equals a measure of the sophistication of taste. In other words, the closer and longer you expose yourself to art you can absorb, the better.

Regardless of how you define art, its a necessary (though some will debate this) and a time consuming exercise.  It does not necessarily need to be costly.

One of the first orders of business is to re-evaluate your art education to date.   This comes in at least two forms art skills you've been exposed to and art theory and recognition.

Skills

If you are exercising and refining skills that you have already established a trajectory with (say, painting or sculpture) then you already have some inertia going.  If you're unsatisfied with your existing skills and can't seem to make progress on your own then it makes sense to enroll in a skills based studio arts program that's very hands on. 

Art Familiarity and Recognition

This includes art history, art theory, and art curatorial subjects.

Art History

The study of Art History is increasingly a dubious exercise for a studio artist.  The mounting list of problems with History courses generally include their (politically motivated) veracity, the hopelessness of the scope of the field, and their actual affective and effective consequences on an artist.

The undiscussed much larger issue with history narratives themselves is that, for a studio arttist, sequencing historical art is unimportant.  What is of interest are the art problems represented and solved by artists working in familiar aesthetic topologies.

The sheer, ever expanding volume of artistic production, discovery, and redefinition is another impossibly complex problem with any artistic discussion.  For studio artists, the complexity can devour time and energy that is well beyond any benefit the exercise can deliver.

A comprehensive Rosetta Stone-like survey of Art History issues and recommendations can be found on Art Historian Dr. James Elkins' website.  There he suggests a number of exercises an interested party might experiment with to develop a bit of an art exploration map of what you have been exposed to, what you enjoy or dislike, and so on.

A 21st century approach to learning art taste and appreciation needs to start with taking advantage of the internet tools such as videos and digital recommendation agents. And it needs to be emphasized that in advocating the use of recommendation engines there is always the very real chance of intellectual claustrophobia setting in.  In other words, you need not allow yourself to get too comfortable in aesthetic echo chambers. Get comfortable with discomfort if you hope to learn and grow.

Art Theory

Like Art History, the study of Art Theory is debatable. A studio artist doesn't necessarily have a need for theory to create art.  But Art Theory is saturated with the vernacular of art past and present.  In this regard, becoming exposed to and at least mildly familiar with Art Theory subjects of the day promotes and broadens your individual taste. And to some degree, it ensures that you can be part of the art conversation.

Again, a comprehensive Rosetta Stone-like survey of Art Theory subjects can be found on Art Historian Dr. James Elkins' website.  You can, cafeteria-style, pick and choose what you think may be of interest and as your vocabulary grows you'll be able to search out art of interest with a far greater specificity.

Curating Your Taste and Your Art

Part of the learning process is an exercise in developing vocabulary, tools, and a pocket full of ideas. 

As you identify videos that capture your interest, add the to your own playlist for return visits. And each of these videos will recommend complementary content - other videos, artists, and topics that can extend your own artistic horizons.

An old adage advises that "travel broadens the mind".  This is true enough but being an artist with a full time job, family responsibilities, Time and budget considerations, and other constraints may make this impossible or minimal. Not everyone can travel and visit museums and cultural venues.

If travel broadens then let's add that surfing the web can be just as educational and satisfying.

All major and even minor museums have rich websites to browse.  The larger museums offer seminars and tutorials that are excellent sources of historical, theoretical, and contemporary art.

Google Arts and Culture is another excellent resource for learning about art.

And a personal favorite site of mine is Mary Lynn Buchanan's visits to art galleries.

In every case, its easy and important to explore what's been done and what's being done in order to navigate where your own art is going.  Spend a few hours a week just learning and laerning to see.

Art Hacks: Managing and Scheduling Show Opportunities

Managing Complexity

One of the many important day to day priorities for any artist is managing finances, schedules, and life's other plans. Here we'll assume you like the vast majority of artists work full-time at another job in addition to managing household and/or family obligations.

Digital Calendars Are Your Friend

The best way to schedule art show opportunities is by using a digital calendar that's available through most email providers. I use the Google calendar.

A good digital calendar will allow you to create more than one calendar. It makes a lot of sense to separate art events from your day-to-day activities. Calendars can then be overlaid, one into another when requiring a detailed look at more complex sets of arrangements. This becomes important to recognize and avoid timing conflicts.

In a previous Art Hacks entry, I discussed where you can look for art show opportunities. These sites will list local, national and sometimes international entry opportunities.

I also talked about how you might develop an algorithm to help you prioritize the importance and calculate the affordability of entering a show.

Scheduling Art Show Applications

The most important date requiring scheduling is the due date for application and payment. I'll borrow a computer science term here and refer to it as the last responsible moment.  In other words, regardless of whatever else may get scheduled between now and that date, that date is our last chance to take responsible action on it.  Today the date may look speculative because of conflicting other items of responsibility.  However, things change all the time and if we keep that date as a placeholder our schedules may in fact open up and make applying possible.

Labeling the Opportunity

Once you find an opportunity to show art, its promotional material will give you a wealth of information.  Using the unique name of the show for a label  maintains a corresponding tag should you later need to search for it.

You may also want to create a priority or value code as part of that label.  This code helps prioritize the opportunity in terms of affordability or desirability. 

You can schedule the due date either as a meeting or an all day event depending on your taste.

So a label might look like: ****-$$$, Big City Big Deal Art show

So far, so good.

Notifications

Creating a system to notify yourself of impending opportunities is a great way to manage a schedule that will soon consist of multiple opportunities that are often competing for your attention.

I happen to like and recommend email notifications because they can be left in one of my email categories (a tab, folder, whatever affordance the email service offers). I can also star or label them to make their identification and sorting a no-brainer.

I like to notify myself two weeks in advance.  That gives me plenty of time to plan and make decisions about my time and budget. Because these notifications are emails and because they aggregate in my email they will cluster around busy periods. This means I'm not only being notified of a shortly coming show but in my preview of those coming weeks I see *all* imminently available opportunities - a nice by-product of the email method.

If I wait until the last responsible moment to apply to any given opportunity, I've had the time to make the best choices.  Its also sensible to wait until you've been accepted to prune unwanted noise in the calendar that makes itself obvious.

One last detail.  Some galleries require a pre-application registration that may be different.  Use *that* date instead.

Details

Now all that's left is to add as uch or as little more you care about.  Location, times, and so on.  In the comments or notes field I like to insert the url that points to the application form and prerequisites. It is not unusual for galleries to extend application deadlines.  That bookmarked url becomes invaluable in maintaining your records.

Identifying what you plan to enter is a worthwhile note to self.  Don't double book your work.

Rinse and Repeat

Every opportunity to show art means drop-off and pick-up dates, show openings, and if you volunteer time that's to be scheduled.

These scheduled activities can sometimes span days - schedule it that way - you'll need to know.

Use the same unique label convention you used for the application deadline entry.  Drop-off notifications need to be received prior to your last responsible time to decide. If you can't drop-off then that's information you need up front.  Pick-ups can be negotiated (usually).

Once accepted, edit the calendar entry to cover the time from drop-off to pick-up and note the work that's exclusive to that show.

HowTo

Google calendar tutorials

Art Hacks: An Overview of Showing Art

 The act of showing and getting art shown has many relationships to other aspects of artist's opportunities and responsibilities. Here I'll attempt to both define what showing art might mean as well as identify what impacts the decision-making and logistics of that task.

Showing art is a fundamental activity that most artists spend time and money doing.  In fact, your identity as an artist on many social media forums will question with something along the lines of, "If you aren't showing and selling your art then *for whom* are you making it? For some critics, showing and selling art are closely and inextricably coupled. You can't be whole without the two because in their view artists do not create for self-satisfaction - there has to be an audience.

What Does "Showing" Art Mean?

I cannot speak to (usually global, urban) high-value commercial galleries An artist who has that kind of representation will find the information in my Art Hacks blog posts to be provincial and worthless.

So this is for the rest of the 99.99999% of us.

An obvious place to start showing your art is at a local arts organization's gallery.  Sometimes membership is required but usually there are shows open to non-members for a slight increase in entry fees. These organizations usually sponsor virtual galleries as well. These group shows are almost always an eclectic mix of quality.  That said, using your best judgement as to whether or not your work will complement the particular show is advisable.

Another source of exposure are restaurant and office spaces. In this case you simply can make arrangements with the proprietor to display work on their walls. There is risk involved. In one case, I showed at at popular Brooklyn restaurant and everything went seamlessly.  When I went to pick up the work it was coated with a layer of grease that accumulated from kitchen steam.

On another occasion I added a piece to the wall of a local bakery that closed abruptly and took the work with them.  So co-operative arrangements can get tricky.

Personally (and as a software professional) I don't recommend virtual art galleries unless its your own or an intimate peer group running it.  They are usually impossible to browse and even more difficult to navigate.  These things number in the thousands, the number of artists number in the tens of thousands, and the number of works are innumerable.  Its the artistic equivalent of putting a business card in a bottle and throwing it out to sea.

OTOH, having a personal (free) blog is wise. It saves money. Its exclusive to you and yours.  AND, you control its contents.  It ain't hard.

If you do commodity landscapes, portraits, cute animal pictures and so on you really more accurately belong in the *arts & crafts* fairs, festivals and pop-up shops. This cohort is out of scope for most of the Art Hacks blog post entries.

A previous Art Hacks blog entry discusses the cost of showing artwork.

Where Do I Find Shows to Apply To?

EventBrite and Cafe are two of the art ecosystem darling$ for advertising art shows.  Others exist and are listed on the side panel of this website.  You can always search your favorite search engine for "Call for Art".

Public service announcement: Do yourself and everyone else a favor and avoid art shows dedicated to the ubiquitous and insipid political dross that passes for art. The only way this intellectual sewer of litter will be cleaned up is by refusing to participate and attend.  

How is Showing Art Related To Seeing Art?

This topic will be discussed in a future dedicated blog post.

How is Learning About Art Related To Showing Art?

This topic will be discussed in a future dedicated blog post.

How Do I Manage My Time and Money to Do All This Stuff ?

These topics will be discussed in future dedicated blog posts.