Heaven on Earth

Fuzzy fugitive photo by furtive fan.

I am still recovering from a four-day trip I led to New York with students from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Along with colleagues Dr. Ruth Bohan, chair of art and art history, and Gretchen Schisla, graphic design professor, we ran 12 students all around town.

It was exhausting but a lot of fun. Everyone was engaged, even if quiet, eyes were wide open. That was the goal!

The program, founded by former UMSL professor Susan Cahan, who is now at Yale, is an amazing program whereby students travel for free, (almost) all expenses paid for the trip. Friday we were at MoMA for four hours, with tours by Connie Butler, head of drawings, Emily Talbot, assistant in prints and illustrated books, with time for William Kentridge and Yin Xiuzhe. Then Marian Goodman, Greenberg VanDoren Gallery, a tour of Pentagram, then up to the Whitney for a tour and brief introduction by Biennial co-curator Gary Carrion-Murayami.

Then, the Met.

My favorite areas of the Met are the proto-Renaissance galleries, Velazquez, the Oceania rooms, Greek & Roman glass.

But they had up a show that made me weep with joy.

The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry was an exquisite show. Each page was mounted in a two-sided glass sheet so I could poke my nose in as close as I could, sans glasses.

I felt shivers of recognition with the works, thinking about the first time I was ever abroad, visiting the cool Gothic cathedrals all over France. I remembered taking an early winter train to Padua to see the Arena Chapel by Giotto, poking my head out of a round window in a foot-thick earthen wall in Ravenna while visiting the Byzantine mosaics, the insane cab ride I took my last trip in Istanbul to see some precious churches buried inside a bazaar.

I love my job, but in the flood of paperwork there must always be art at the center of the whirlwind.

Sore feet and hoarse voice aside, my eyes were wide open in New York. Again.

The American West

White House ruins, Canyon de Chelly, Navajo Nation, Arizona

Kevin and I went up to Canyon de Chelly last weekend, a dream of mine since I took a history of photography class from Tom Southall at the University of Kansas many moons ago.

His wasn't the only class that described my dreams to me: my class in Greek & Roman art propelled me to Athens one summer, and Marilyn Stockstad's medieval art class drove me to see the Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna, where I spent one New Year's eve, age 21, at a small b & b, sticking my head out of the round window carved out of the one foot thick walls, looking for the fireworks below.

I found my calling sitting in those darkened art history classes, which are a glorious admixture of politics, history and pretty pictures--what more could you want?

This makes me think about the defunding of arts classes in schools. This punitive action (art is too girly? Not enough chances to monetize / control the market? Questions authority?) suggests that the American compulsion to put value on everything devalues all those kids who want to play, sing, dance, write, shoot and look. And as we know, idle hands are the devil's work--it's critical that we allow kids the widest range of experiences so that they become productive, smart citizens. New industries don't erupt only from the sciences, they come from creative innovators in the arts as well.

(I was so distressed in the late 1980s at the idea that a minority of voices could try to excise arts funding (Culture Wars) from our Social Contract (i.e. taxes) that I called Hans Haacke to see if it was possible to do a survey of arts people, give them a list of tax programs their taxes go towards, and allow them to individually reapportion their tax dollars. While it's a great idea, he said, that's a complex sociological / statistical process that was beyond his capacity. Fair enough. Anyone else who wants to do this, break a leg!)

Back to Canyon de Chelly: Of course my photo history class showed me black & white prints, and the Canyon and its people are in living color. Those early photographs of the American West gave face to the myths of the West, myths that washed over the harsh imperialist realities of Manifest Destiny.

















Monument Valley, Navajo Nation, Arizona / Utah

What struck me is how our perceptions of the West have changed since the 1970s. The American Indian Movement drew attention to the treatment of indigenous peoples across this continent (and to oppressed indigenous peoples around the globe as well). Writers as diverse as Rebecca Solnit and Tony Hillerman have given us vivid portraits of the First Nations peoples who numbered between 20 and 35 million at first recorded contact (Columbus, not the Vikings). Historians like Patty Limerick and Lawrence Culver (up-coming book "The Frontier of Leisure: Southern California and the Shaping of Modern America") are re-writing these myths of the West, allowing us to re-think how we function as a country.

And at this tipping point in our history--economic collapse, environmental degradation, population explosion--this re-evaluation is critical to remaking the American Dream. And I got there via art history.

What a valuable education.