Compare and Contrast: Museum vs. Casino

both images copyright: Potawatomi Bingo Casino

The post by Eddie Jones has brought to mind a conversation I've been having with architect Will Bruder, who, in addition to creating glorious, green buildings around the region and the globe, studied sculpture at UW-Milwaukee. Will and I have talked about the impact of buildings on a city's pride of place, and the intriguing comparison between the aesthetics, ethics and economics of the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Potawatomi Nation's Bingo Casino.

Briefly: The Milwaukee Art Museum's delicate Santiago Calatrava addition budget started at $35 million and ended up at $120 million (they added the brise soleil, parking lot and formal gardens). It took years to pay off the debt, there's been great turnover in staff, and in the meantime, caused great financial stress on other non-profit organizations in the city, whose own donations dropped as a result.

While everyone might agree that the building has become the spectacular icon as intended, the "Bilbao" effect (iconic building drives economic prosperity in the region) came to life in the U.S.

But some larger questions remain: what is happening inside the building, is the space used effectively enough, has this landed spacecraft had a ripple effect in the arts community, etc...

By contrast, when the Potawatomi Nation was allowed to build a casino in the Menomonee river valley, a former industrial site used by tanneries in the 19th and 20th centuries, there was a sense that the tribe was getting bum land. People fought against the Casino in downtown Milwaukee, couched in anti-gambling rhetoric but often with a soupcon of something else. An article in the local weekly paper had an interesting observation: We have taken from the Native Americans what is most important to them--their land--and they are taking away from us what is most important to us--our money. The history of treatment of Native tribes in the state became an issue in this building.

Once the Casino was up--$120 million of their own money--the city realized how in-fill in the valley would connect the disconnected parts of the commercial corridor of the city. All of a sudden, former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson wanted to up the taxes on the casino, beyond what had been negotiated before and with other Casinos. When in-coming Governor Jim Doyle, however, was willing to renew, and renegotiate, the Tribe's compact on the land, the Potawatomi announced they would double the space of the casino, another cool $120 million from their own coffers. The Tribe handled their own resources and has played a leading role in the revitalization of the entire area.

What struck me in this story was the similar budgets between the high-end, arch modernist building of the Calatrava addition and the for-profit, low-end, also modernist block of the Casino.

Is MAM suffering an "edifice" complex (I used this phrase well before the book came out): gorgeous exterior, empty interior? (In my medieval art history class they called this the butter tax, and affected buildings such as Notre Dame--the wealthy would give for above-ground building, not for substructure construction, which is why the church has had foundation problems). Despite a constant stream of good shows, the program has never been able to get out from under the shadow of the shell. Should architecture dominate what art museums do?














The Potawatomi Bingo Casino, on the other hand, has lots of content--gambling, restaurants, entertainment, and has continued as a hot bed of economic activity and tax dollars for the state.

Ultimately, what is intriguing in this building comparison is the schism that exists in public dialogue about the role buildings play in our image of self and community, and how people with different concerns and goals try to control that image. We, as citizens, typically have little to say in what is built in the environment, but we have a lot to gain or lose if we aren't more vocal in issues concerning our urban environment.

Great Architecture into Great Museum

As part of my on-going series where I invite friends to write about contemporary art, I have invited architect Eddie Jones to finally put into writing the discussion we’ve had over the years regarding museums we like / don’t like, and why Frank Lloyd Wright made it tough for curators to work with spaces (this, you must understand, is blasphemy here in Phoenix.)

This is the first in a three-part series “Has there ever been a museum with the courage and sophistication to combine both “great architecture” and “great museum”?” completed by Eddie on a flight between New York and Charlotte on August 5, 2009. To his notes I will append a few thoughts.

Eddie Jones is the founding principle of Jones Studio, Inc., and together with his rakish brother Neal Jones and a staff of smart, funny architects and designers, have created elegant, soaring public and private buildings.

I did a project, one of my favorite ever, with Jones Studio at SMoCA, several years ago. When Jones Studio came to visit SMoCA for a site visit I remember saying to them that we'd love to do a show with them but I disliked architecture shows, they are rather dull, and a museum needs to be about life.

The entire studio moved into the gallery and worked for four months, during which time they engaged with the deliberate, and hapless, audiences who wandered in. I've never seen a museum space so energized and vibrant, and together we tried to understand what this experience meant for museum practice as it intersects with architectural practice.

This series is a result of our talking about what we like about museums, and whose fault is it if they don't work.

















image copyright: http://museumarchitecture.org

Eddie Jones:

“Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul.” – Ernest Dimnet, The Art of Thinking

Yes, my art buddies, architecture is art. In fact, only when a building achieves the elusive quality of art can it be described as architecture. If I really want to piss you off, I can argue it is the most difficult of art forms because it necessarily involves the responsibility of human habitation and, as it has been said, “Architects have to leave their work out in the rain!”

Therefore, I find the programmatic intersection of art and architecture, i.e. the art museum, to be a fascinating challenge and an opportunity to explore the relationship of museum visitor, curator, artist and architect.

The Guggenheim Museum is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary, appropriately with a Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition of drawings and models. Much has been written about the extraordinary original drawings and the buildings, which changed the course of American architectural history.

The Guggenheim, like it or not, remains a remarkable and unique way to experience a one-of-a-kind art museum. Study the circulation diagram: few remember Wright’s intention to take people to the top level, allowing a slow, thoughtful decent along the famous spiraling ramp. As of this writing, it was only a few hours ago I spent the morning reveling in the drawings and exhilarating space of Guggenheim.

However, the curating was weak and uninspired. For example, upon entering the rotunda, people were immediately directed “up” the ramp opposite to the architect’s intention.

Hence a dilemma: are curators unable or unwilling to cope with a unique exhibition space OR are architects making the art secondary to a dominant form?

I believe Wright sincerely aspired to connect the act of viewing art with the form of the space to the point that the physical form was a direct result of the exhibition experience. Not only was the circulation augmenting and simplifying movement, it was balanced with a central day-lit point of reference, allowing visitors to see where they had been and where they were going. The display walls were tilted outward and lit from above, not unlike the painter’s easel.

Marilu's counterpoint:
I didn't see the Wright show at the Guggenheim, but like architects, some curators get it, some don't. I am often shocked at curator colleagues who think two-dimensionally about space, where objects are little toys moved around inside a maquette of the space, not taking into account the other elements that come into play between works and between work and audience.

When I moved to New York in the 1980s I visited the Guggenheim and went up to the top and worked my way down, as Wright intended. I felt a little nauseous the whole way, as if I was being sucked into a giant drain. One of my first internships was for Tom Messer, where I did some office work for the reinstallation of the Guggenheim's Justin K. Thannhauser Collection. The space was cramped and dingy, but that is being corrected now.

What we need to consider with the Guggenheim, however, is that Wright was first contacted about the commission in 1943 and the building completed in 1959. The world--and the art world--changed totally in that time, and despite its modern feel, the museum has limitations a Beaux Art classic like the Met does not have. (And no way he could have predicted Museum's extreme fascination with the new).

Still, I always have the feeling while in the museum that Wright preferred small, obedient art works, nothing fussy, nothing dramatic--no scratchy detritus from World War II, no Abstract Expressionism, no Bay Area Funk--just the jewel-like objects in the Guggenheim's vaults.

Frank Lloyd Wright was the first starchitect, the one whose overarching design sensibility freed architects to dominate the discourse about art--a domination many museum curators have to deal with every day.

The Face of Grain

two pictures from the drive between Detroit and Milwaukee

This grain elevator in Chelsea, Michigan reminded me of my first apartment in New York, my bad cooking, my first efforts from the "Joy of Cooking" (that brownie recipe was wrong I tell you!) I started using simple boxed foods like this corn muffin package, luckily, I've moved on to making things from scratch, growing fresh vegetables when I have access to a garden, and so forth.













I took this second image at the Oasis on the Illinois tollway north of Chicago. Ritz has really snapped up its graphics!

I feel conflicted: if corn is the source of our fast-food obesity, why haven't we outlawed it, controlled it, regulated it? Nature is just doing what she does; it's up to us to be mindful of it.

Although there is so much high and low-level dissension over farm subsidies and the calories in packaged food, we must remember how important advanced food distribution and preservatives have been to preventing widespread hunger in the US. The bounty that faces us now needs to be recalibrated. Farming has been an honorable and critically important job to every society; how can we encourage organic, local farming practices while feeding the country? I suspect I'll learn more about this living back in the mid-west.

Modern totems

all images, unless otherwise noted, courtesy the author

I was in Washington in mid-July to participate on an NEA panel (doing "the people's work," as Kevin says), and had the chance to see lots of art in different museums. New Orleans artist Ron Bechet and I got our exercise by running to and from the Mall every day at lunch, seeing the National Gallery West, the National Museum of African Arts and the Hirshhorn Museum. It was great to share the pleasure of being in big buildings full of cultural richness from around the world.

On Friday, after the panel, I walked to the National Museum of American Indian that featured an exhibition of the artist Fritz Scholder (1937-2005). I'm not a fan of Scholder's work--although much of what I read makes me understand how his work broke through the cliches of "native" art--but I was struck by his obelisk from 1987, somewhat hidden in the garden outside the museum.

This work seemed to throw out a real challenge to the culture that has suppressed Native peoples in the US, represented by the thrusting Washington Monument nearby. (Begun in 1848, the Washington Monument was intended to be the largest structure on earth. Construction halted during the Civil War, but was finally completed in 1885.) That Americans would commemorate their new republic with a cultural form borrowed from an ancient, "pagan" culture is interesting--why not borrow the indigenous American form of a totem?












































Fritz Scholder Obelisk, 1987, bronze, detail bottom

Unfortunately, however, Scholder's obelisk also looks Egyptian, influenced, no doubt, by the time he spent in Egypt. I never found a didactic panel that explained the work. The Museum missed the opportunity to toss out a social bomb in the form of an art object, but they are right to avoid the kind of controversies caused when Museums look at history through different eyes.

The Native American artist who does artistically bridge the death-defying gap between white and Native cultures is Brad Kahlhamer. His obelisk, Waqui Totem, 2007, below, is sharp edged, sarcastic and penetrating. Kahlhamer embraces and challenges both Western and indigenous artistic forms, creating vibrant, sex-death-and-rock 'n roll odes to finding identity and spirituality in contemporary America.












































images courtesy of Brad Kahlhamer

Kahlhamer's totem was built of cardboard then cast in that uber-art material bronze. It's a bird of prey / nightmare head, tree limbs stripped of leaves by rapacious industry and a provisional base suggestive of the persistence of the ancient myths of Native spiritual systems.

Kahlhamer's totem would be a spectacular apparition on the mall in honor of the millions of Native peoples who lived in North America upon first contact. His work reclaims not only the physical shape of Native American art, but some of its psychic space, too. This work would be a testament to the persistence of indigenous peoples and their evolving cultures long lain dormant underneath the self-aggrandizing myths of the American conquest of a wild but empty paradise.

I think the issue of internal diaspora or exile is a compelling and urgent one for Native artists, and deserves much broader discussion in the art world.

lions and tigers and cars, oh my!

All these pictures are from a recent trip to Detroit, where I saw the following:

The fabled murals by Diego Rivera (above) and a coffered ceiling at the Detroit Institute of Art (below).










































A carousel at the Detroit waterfront (above) and an oddly deflated yet violent sculptural memorial to Joe Louis by Robert Graham downtown (below).














































A tale of two modes of transportation: GM headquarters (above), and the old Union station (below).









































A tale of two mansions: The Whitney restaurant above, and another, nearby, below.


















What did I learn from these disparate images and experiences?

Detroit is rich and devastated, the "first" car city in America (as said to me by Greg Wittkopp, director of the Cranbrook Art Museum) with Phoenix the last. There are many small businesses popping up in town, signs of the grass roots growth that creates communities--the top down, one company / one industry town is what leads to this kind of economic collapse (Phoenix, are you listening?) The early industrial leaders invested in the arts, but new multi-national corporations are not invested in place in the same way. How can we in the arts protect our institutions from the vagaries of institutional raiding?

Many of the people we encountered in Detroit said there are many valuable, interesting things and people in this diverse town, and perhaps as Detroit redefines itself, we'll learn more about how America will reinvent itself over the next 20 years. Artists like Rivera and Graham are witnesses to our communal hopes and dreams--what will this generation of artists say about this time of crisis?

I'll keep looking, let me know when you see signs of that vision.

Hi ho, off to M.O.

truck on 10 freeway east, Tempe, Arizona, on my way to Austin, Texas

It's official: I am moving to St. Louis, Missouri, to become the Executive Director of the Laumeier Sculpture Park (see why I included the picture above? I think about Johnny Sokko's episode about the giant flying eyeball as well).

I am thrilled. I'm joining a great board and staff, a culturally complex and rich community. I've just gotten my two amazon.com purchases--"Hidden Assets: Connecting the Past to the Future of St. Louis", edited by Richard Rosenfeld and "Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City" by Colin Gordon--to become more knowledgeable and grounded in the city's past. I want to be able to clearly articulate, and activate, the next phase of the LSP's contribution to the region's visual future.

I've already gotten lovely notes from board members, staff, colleagues and artists (both in St. Louis and across the country) about their great enthusiasm for the Laumeier Sculpture Park--I think I'm going to have a great time, and isn't that ultimately why we do what we do?

In addition to a great new challenge, I am also going to be nearer to Kevin and my pals in Milwaukee (plus my Milwaukee family Lou and Carmel), my mom in Kansas City and water. This last word is so meaningful. As much as I have had many great experiences and opportunities in Phoenix, the biggest question I have had for urbanists, architects and city people concerns the sustainability of post-industrial cities. Are any of them sustainable at their current rate of growth and our economic collapse?

















Jack Becker speaking in Milwaukee, July 16, 2009

Last night I went with friends to a Public Art Symposium at Cardinal Stritch University, Milwaukee. Jack Becker, founder and executive director of Forecast Public Art, St. Paul, spoke about the evolving field of public art. We met for breakfast the next morning to speak more fully about the field, opportunities, the new amendment to the Minnesota State constitution that dedicates funds to arts, parks and legacy projects like public art--inspiring. Art in the public realm--not plop art, mind you--is a compelling area of contemporary artistic production that I've been dealing with for a decade, and I think the Laumeier Sculpture Park will continue to play an important role in creating opportunities for artists testing new media and materials.

















And since I am technically on vacation, I include a picture of Lou Miyazaki's garden in Wauwatosa. She, Kevin and I have been working on this for a few years now, and with all the rain this spring, the garden has popped. We love the fresh produce and cut flowers, and with almost all perennials, the garden is self-sustaining (Dutch iris, anyone?). I've got some more mulch to put down but I will wait until fall to move and plant some things. I'll stop by Starbucks for a sac full of coffee grounds, great for the tomatoes. How can a family plot yield more food--that's next on our agenda; amending the soil and encouraging worms comes first.

Happy summer everyone!

Public space, public speech

Scott Illman on Gormley's Plinth, 2009

I am amused, captivated and mortified by Anthony Gormley's Fourth Plinth project "One & Other."

Amused because it's a simple gesture, harkening back to soapbox preachers and, as more morbid commentators have noted, the prisoner's walk to the guillotine in history past. Amused because it's officially sanctioned anarchy. Anything could be said, although I suspect anyone willing to sign up for the computer lottery is less nutcase than media hound.

I love this image of Scott Illman dressed as a town crier; it makes me think of the diaries of Samuel Peyps, a 17th century London merchant who chronicled London's great fire, the exile and return of his King, and his personal picadillos. LA-based artist Monique Prieto brought his writings to my attention; her recent work uses phrases from his diaries to comment on our own time, giving voice to the human concerns that return over and over. I think Illman understood the possibilities and responsibilities of the Plinth opportunity to disseminate news, release decrees or plea for mercy.

Captivated because there is no public space anymore, every nook and cranny of the streets and public plazas are controlled and corporatized--the arts may be one of the few places where embarrassing, angry dialogue can flow (well, outside of the tight control the market has).

Mortified, and this is why I have such respect for artists: what would you (me) do if you were given such an offer? What makes performance transformative is not just an artist's depth of historical knowledge or years of practice, it's the spark of a unique mind which cannot be scripted. This is when their magical spark lights your own, this is what art can do.

It's possible that most of the people who signed up for Gormely's Plinth are egotists, trained perhaps by reality tv that their every inanity is a meaningful as my every inanity--and why not? But this is where a range of people can have a voice. And not all reality tv is bad of course--competitive shows like Project Runway, and even the Antiques Road show, show off forms of expertise and critical judgement so that the use of a ruche front or square-headed nails separates the women from the girls. Enlightening.






















© Sam Durant, This is Freedom?, 2009

The Plinth project makes me think of LA-based artist Sam Durant, who has been exploring public speech and its manifestation, and suppression, in American public life over the past half-century. Durant's sign in lower Manhattan is poignant and distressing--indeed, what is freedom in the face of official speech?