I passed the stand set up on the corner of 7th Avenue and 23rd Street. It was late last evening, windy and bitterly cold. The two vendors were selling New Year's Eve party hats, light wands, and noise makers. I had already passed them by when I stopped to think about checking out the merchandise. My arms however were already juggling several heavy bags of food, so I decided I'd go back today to pick up something for a occasion to whose observance I've never been indifferent.

I've saved stuff from past years when I thought something was a little more special than most of the ephemera manufactured for this ancient holiday; I could recycle the old tin horns and such, but I probably needed some fresh party streamers. Then I asked myself, should I also get two pairs of 2010 spectacles? I'd never worn the silly things before, but this just might be the very last year for that classic template.

Aside from satisfying my needs, or encouraging last-minute buying impulses, I was looking forward to seeing what I expected would be a colorful array of merchandise (bring the camera!). It hadn't occurred to me that the market experience, the bargaining between customer and seller would itself have been a powerful draw.

I didn't see any streamers, and I didn't spring for the glasses, but Serigne gave me a good price on two outrageous tinsel "wigs" (I might have some work in persuading Barry to wear his). I had already asked Serigne if I might take a few pictures of his table display, and he was kind enough to ascent - even without the condition that I make a purchase, although he encouraged me to do so. I heard him talking to the woman he was with, who later told me he was her son, and I was mesmerized by the cadences of their speech. I asked what language they were speaking, and they told me it was Wolof, that they were Wolof, from Senegal.

Serigne suggested I take a picture of his hat. It was one of the many models arrayed accross the table, but I doubt it could ever look as good as it does on his own handsome head.

The beauty created by a heavy snowfall is even more exceptional for its certain evanescence - although a camera can still try to keep it from vanishing.

This afternoon, 24 hours or so after the snow had ended here, I took all three of these images in the central garden of our building, but the pair which appear below really want to be together.

a shot of the crowd before the room filled up yesterday, from a camera held high overhead, feeling the power, and documenting all the super Lesbians, and some very enthusiastic friends and supporters

The entire event was run incredibly well, as efficiently and perhaps more efficiently than many benefits organized by non-profits that have been doing it for years. And we've seen a lot. Barry and I had a blast at yesterday's first ever art benefit for the Lesbian Herstory Archives [LHA], held at the gallery of Alexander Gray Associates.

As the snow began shortly after midday, we were gathered with a lot of other people, many of them friends, many of them heroes known only from a distance, some soon to become friends. We were ten floors above the Hudson River in west Chelsea, and all we had to do was enjoy ourselves; the real champagne; the delicate cookies and savories; emcees Moe Angelos, milDRED, the artist formerly known as DRED, and Kay Turner; the work mounted on the walls; and above all the tonic of a wonderful crowd.

Oh well, we did have to wait a while for our name to be drawn, when we would be able to announce our choice of the art, but the selection was so good there was little reason for anxiety and virtually no chance that anyone would be disappointed.

But a lot of people were saddened to learn that the 80-some tickets for 80-some pieces of art had been sold out early. Many of those couldn't come, and others did come by for the excitement, and to contribute directly to the endowment fund; maybe the LHA should rent an entire armory for their second art benefit.

Elizabeth Bonaventura Untitled, or 2010 Olympic Hopefuls casein paint on inkjet print 2009 8.5" x 11"

We went home with the beautiful paint-on-photograph piece by Lizzie Bonaventura [no link or website] shown above, and we were able to talk to the artist and exchange contact information even before we had a chance to pick her work.

I had already planned to do a very quick roundup of worthy shows closing very soon when I saw Art Fag City's holiday post, "What To See Before Christmas". Now I was further inspired to go ahead, but not wanting to copy her style (and also because I don't do xmas or any other conventional December holiday), and finally, noticing that tomorrow is my birthday, I've decided to go with the self-referential title at the top.

The Cinders show actually does close tomorrow, Saturday, but the rest will be visible for another one to four days.

Leidy Churchman Three Beards 2007 oil on wood 48" x 48"

The layered expression within this Leidy Churchman painting gives only a hint of what to expect from "Ridykeulouse Hits Bottom" at Leo Koenig Projekte, a group exhibition "curated with an iron fist" by Ridykeulous, otherwise known as as Nicky E., aka Nicole Eisenman and UnkAL, aka A.L. Steiner.

large detail of Dan Levenson's "Little Switzerland"

"Nothing Up My Sleeve" at Participant, an homage to Stewart Sherman, includes an installation by Dan Levenson, one of the artists in this truly amazing group show which focuses, in the words of its curator, the artist Jonathan Berger, on the creation of "alternate lived realities through the use of various forms of deception".

Nicole Eisenman iPod guy 2009 oil on canvas 24" x 21"

Nicole Eisenman's solo exhibition of paintings at Leo Koenig's main gallery is simply wonderful, awesomely humanistic, and one her most exciting outings.

an extraordinarily-detailed print by an artist identified only as Nuvish

Cinders is hosting Le Dernier Cri: vomir Des Yeux for just one more day, displaying a spectacular selection of prints, books and video from a remarkable operation run out of an old hospital in Marseilles by a pair of artists which for 16 years has been producing, in the words of the press release, "legendary volumes of painstakingly handmade, beautiful, vibrant and violent monograph prints, books, and videos featuring some of the most irreverent underground artists in the world", all in small runs of about 150.

These remarkable prints are also remarkably affordable: $75 sounds like a gift, in more ways than one.

detail of one of Jacques Louis Vidal's collages at Jancou

At Marc Jancou's gallery in Great Jones Alley Jacques Louis Vidal's powerful sculptures and delightfully-abstruse installations are framed on the main floor by a number of large-scale magazine-page-cutout collages mounted along the walls.

The show, "You are What You Look At" is worth every bit of time that can be spared for it.

still from the installation of Tommy Hartung's video, "The Ascent of Man"

On Stellar Rays is showing Tommy Hartung's stunning video, "The Ascent of Man", through this Wednesday. The title is adapted from the 1973 BBC documentary of the same name, and like the original, but with found footage and stop-action photography using his own remarkable models, it documents humanity’s ascent from ape to man.

It's an impressive followup to the exquisite work he's shown before, and I wouldn't want to let this artist out of my sight going forward.

[image at the top from the artist's website]

cover of Tom Tomorrow's "The Future's So Bright I Can't Bear to Look"

Just kill it. Put it out of [our] misery, now.

It's been both appalling and nationally embarrassing to watch the healthcare "debate" turn out to have been a flimflam all along. We've been punked. Let's admit it.

In a speech he gave to the AFL-CIO in 2003 [link includes video] Obama said:

I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.

Regardless of whether he was actually sincere at the time, in his statements since being elected he's moved from single payer to the red herring, "public option" to something like, "yeah, well, whatever", as long as he can pretend it's "change".

Today, the health care industry is not only back in charge, it's on top, and if anything like either of the bills currently alive in Congress manages to pass, it will have made out like bandits. It's what it does; it's all about money, and it's what its investors demand, but it's not what the people asked for, not what they need, and it's not what why they voted for a Democratic President and a strong Democratic majority in both houses.

Howard Dean begins his Washington Post op-ed piece of today:

If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers' monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.

"Health care" simply cannot be about the health of corporations and investors (there are alternative careers and earning sources, even if their numbers are shrinking as Health care assumes an ever larger share of the American GDP). We've been plugging away at real reform for almost a century now, battling greed and its fictions about socialism throughout. Simply nothing works better for everyone than single payer, and that's a fact.

[image via Cover Browser]

Robert Giard Mabel Hampton Sees the Pigeons at the Old Lesbian Herstory Archive 1989

The archive was somewhere out in Brooklyn, and also, as strange as it may seem today, I was pretty shy.

It was somewhere around 1990, and I had just read about a place called the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Accompanying the story was a picture of this wonderful older black woman sitting in the middle of stacks of books and papers. It was Mabel Hampton. She seemed to belong to the ages already. I was fascinated, and wanted to know more.

I also really wanted to visit the place, but although I was quickly becoming more and more involved with ACT UP, I still didn't think I knew any honest-to-goodness lesbians, at least as friends. I was also scared: The strong women activists I saw all around me were pretty fierce; besides, having grown up as a secret homo in the Midwest in the 40s and 50s, I had to confess I still wasn't even very comfortable with straight women.

I suppose it was pretty stupid, but I was also afraid I would be very much out of place, and perhaps even be challenged by the people who I believed had good reason to be there, unlike me.

I was learning fast (about all kinds of difference), but I wasn't there yet.

That was twenty years ago, and I feel much more comfortable in my own skin, and to my great delight, in every kind of skin. I still haven't been to the permanent home of the Archives, today "a grassroots collection supported by a non-hierarchical women’s collective, available for all Lesbians and housed within a communal, not an academic, setting in a 4-story limestone brownhouse [sic]" (according to Mickey Weems in the Boston Edge). But at noon on Saturday Barry and I are going to begin celebrating my birthday by attending the first ever Art Benefit for the Lesbian Herstory Archives here in Chelsea, before we go off to an equally festive holiday lunch.

Unfortunately, unless you've already purchased one of the 80 tickets (they're already sold out!), you won't be able to go home with a piece of art by one of the artists who is part of their incredible list of donors. Anyone who wishes to attend the event however (I would look forward to the hot crowd as much as a chance to see the art), and support the Archives, can just show up and donate $25 cash, "more or less if", according to the Archives site, at the door. The drawing itself begins at one o'clock.

The event is being held at Alexander Gray Associates, 526 W. 26th Street, and not at the Archives.

[image from the Bulger Gallery]

Kate Fauvell/Daniel Turner, Visitor Services/Security Guard Untitled [detail of ceiling installation]

Is an institution doing its job if its concern about ethics goes no further than the printed code it submits to its employees? A year ago a little-noticed exhibition mounted only ten blocks from the New Museum, a New York institution which is now the subject of a lively, and international, controversy about its curatorial decisions and ethical practice, seems to have anticipated some of the issues which were raised in reaction to a program announcement it released last September.

THE BACKGROUND: On September 25th this site became the first of many blogs to cry foul over NuMu's decision to host the art collection of its billionaire trustee, curated by a celebrity artist of whose work he is the foremost collector, the Museum adding that the exhibition was to be only the first of a number of similar ventures in a series it would call "the imaginary museum".

Since that time the story has snowballed dramatically.

In November of 2008 a group of artists mounted an exhibition at The Stanton Chapter Gallery on the Lower East Side, not far from the recently-opened new home of the New Museum. They did it entirely on their own, but their special relationship to NuMu was described in the title of the show, "New Work: Art from the Workers of The New Museum". The installation included only art created by people working at the museum, and their capacities there were described on the art labels immediately after their names.

Daniel Turner, one of the artists in the show, has written me that during the month the exhibition was open "there was high tension in the museum, a few staff members were afraid of getting fired etc. In the end several of the 'junior staff'* removed their works from the exhibition out of fear".

Turner was not the only one who thought it was a very good show, although it appears to have been much overlooked at the time - except by the New Museum itself. He now believes that, because of NuMu's September 24th announcement [the Times basically copied the press release the next day] of certain future installation practices, and the resulting and mushrooming discussion of general museum ethics and art market practice (see a short selection of recent discussions below), the 2008 show is definitely worth a first, or second, look, and argues that its merits should now command even more attention than it should have a year ago.

He wrote further that the exhibition catalog is "very rich with this topic" (ethics and practice) in general. It includes several very interesting essays, one by Ruby McNeil, the daughter of the founder of the Museum, Marcia Tucker. Although I missed the show itself, some of the work looks really great, and I totally agree with Turner about relevance, especially after looking at the piece he and Kate Fauvell created for the show (the New Museum code of ethics enlarged and wheat pasted on the gallery ceiling), and going on to read the actual text of that code, reproduced inside the catalog. The image at the top of this post is a detail of his and Fauvell's installation.

I've looked at the catalog in pdf form, and a printed copy is available through Lulu here.

The New Museum code of "ethics and collecting" a copy of which Fauvell and Turner mounted on the ceiling of the Stanton Chapter Gallery, is reproduced just below. I think it's particularly interesting In the context of current discussions both within and outside of the art world about institutional principles, as this code is addressed only to employees:

ETHICS AND COLLECTING

The Museum recognizes that its employees may and do collect works of art for their personal enjoyment, and encourages them to do so. The Museum employees, and in particular those employed in a curatorial capacity, occupy a position of trust in this regard, however, and must exercise care to assure that no conflict of interest arises between themselves and the Museum. An employee who learns of the availability of an artwork, either for purchase or offered as a gift, which is likely to be of interest to the Museum for its collection, is expected to place the interests of the Museum ahead of his/her own in acquiring the artwork. Accordingly in all such cases the employee shall bring the availability of the object to the attention of the Senior Curator or the Director in order to give the Museum first opportunity to acquire the work.

Each employee is expected to exercise reasonable judgment in determining whether the scope of his/her personal collection and/or collecting activities is such that the matter should be discussed with his/her Department Head, or, where appropriate, with the Director. Unless personal collection activities are minimal, they should be discussed as indicated.

An employee may not act as a dealer (i.e. purchasing and selling works of art) nor may an employee use her/his influence at the Museum for personal gain in the art market. An employee may not accept any commission on the sale of works of art, stipend, or gift from any collector, dealer, artist, or institution, except in cases where prior permission in writing is given by the Director.

An employee may not do indirectly, through family or friends, anything she/he may not do in the paragraph above. Works of art made by employees or family of employees will not be exploited during the time of employment and for two years after employment has terminated.

I have read the Employee Handbook of the New Museum of Contemporary Art and understand the policies and procedures it describes.

[below that line are spaces for name, signature and date]

Unfortunately one doesn't have to be a staff member of NuMu (either senior or "junior") to suspect or actually assert that this code of ethics, and similar protocols maintained by other arts institutions, may be honored in the breach more than the observance.

But, returning to my initial statement at the top, I think the big story isn't about how much the New Museum, or any arts institution, should worry about what its artist employees are up to, but whether the guardians at the top are properly performing the stewardship with which they have been entrusted.

*
Artist and writer Maureen Connor expands upon the "junior staff" identification in this excerpt from her extended essay in the catalog:

As I understand it the New Work show was initiated by the New Museum staff (later defined as "junior" staff by management), not exactly as a guerilla action, but certainly one that arose from a need for agency and for some acknowledgment of their identity as artists. A proposal for New Work expresses a desire to “further the mission of the museum…new art, new ideas…”, directly quoting from the New Museum's website banner — “Manhattan's only dedicated contemporary art museum…a leading destination for new art and new ideas.” Given the museum's stated mission, one would hardly expect the artist members of its staff to need permission from upper management to organize and participate in an offsite show of their work. With the broad range of alternative art practices the New Museum supports and represents, one would think that the curators would recognize how this show could embody a radical approach to exhibition thematics that, to further quote from New Work's proposal,“ allows the audience to experience a museum in a completely new way…we posit the museum as the people who make a building and its program happen.”

This may only be a footnote to the argument of this post, but I think it has a significance well beyond the recitation of a fact:

I've noticed that there are no staff credits on the New Museum site, only the names of the trustees and benefactors, who of course don't need the reinforcement artist-employee handlers, curators, guards, ticket takers, maintenance workers and coat checkers do. This is apparently standard, but not universal, museum practice. And just why would this seem to anyone like a good idea?

Finally, an idea of the nature of the ongoing discussion about museum practice, once it was picked up by mediums other than individual blogs, can be found in this very abbreviated list, which begins with the first critical treatment of the story by the New York Times:

• "Some Object as Museum Shows Its Trustee’s Art" in the Times November 10
• Georgina Adams. "Art for whose sake?", in the Financial Times
• David Goodman interviews William Powhida on the BOMBlog: "I don’t think the New Museum drawing would have elicited the kind of reactions it did, [if] there wasn’t such a problematic situation."

• Powhida inside "the belly of the beast": a New York Times report from the Basel Miami show
• Bettina Korek on the Ovation TV blog, describing the "Elephant in the Room"
• Ben Davis on artnet, under "politics", with: "the coronation of New York artist William Powhida as the anti-Koons"

[image, courtesy of the artists, from the "New Work" catalog]

HOW DO YOU ASK A SOLDIER
TO BE THE LAST SOLDIER TO DIE
FOR A PRESIDENT'S POLITICAL IMAGE?

I've taken some liberty with David Sirota's phrasing in the title of his blog post today, but I'm totally with his meaning, having pounded on that wall myself two days ago.

After discussing and then easily dismissing alternative explanations for Obama's decision to extend and expand our eight-year-long military effort to subdue or occupy Afghanistan, and before asking the question contained in his headline, Sirota poses and answers his own question about the President's Afghan "surge":

Is it really worth putting 100,000 Americans at risk for the next few years exclusively to protect the political image of a president? More specifically, is it worth putting those 100,000 American lives on the line so that President Obama can fulfill the media and political establishment's artificial definition of "strength"?

I certainly don't think so, and I think it's an almost unprecedented level of immorality [my emphases].

[this is the first post in a very, very long time for which I have not uploaded some image, either my own or that of someone else, which I would credit within these brackets; this time I felt that the subject itself was too obscene, its implications to graphic, to be captioned with anything so direct, and yet so particular, as a picture, and I thought no image could match the imagination of the reader]

minaret and church tower in Wangen bei Olten, in the northern Swiss canton of Solothurn

Tell me again: Why is this a problem?

[image from AFP, via Spiegel]

Max Ernst Europe After the Rain II 1940-1942 oil on canvas 21.5" x 58.25"

It's what we do.

For a while, I actually had hope he might do the right thing, although I realize now I had no reason to think so. Consequently, when the news finally came it made me physically sick: There will be more war, much more war. And the reason we're being given? Because we're at war.

Does he think we're all fools? Are we?

It was entirely fake: The endless reports over the past four months which had some of us believing that Obama was agonizing about what to do with the war in Afghanistan. I don't believe he ever intended to end this nation's disastrous, and possibly fatal, misadventures in Afghanistan (and where will we go next?), and there's no reason to believe he ever considered anything other than the mindless policy of escalation General McChrystal ordered his faint-hearted commander to undertake four months ago. The fact that it took Obama so long to order tens of thousands of additional troops to join one more Western fools mission in the Middle East does not reflect intelligence, judgment or compassion, only cowardice, not least since the order was given even before the grand public announcement he will deliver at West Point tonight, that sacred heart of the military establishment (shades of Bush - but what is this President afraid of?).

I wrote here about my distrust of our newly-elected President over a year ago. Eventually my skepticism grew into disgust, and I wrote about Obama's disastrous record as President, listing dozens of the promised, anticipated or implied reforms that were to come with the new administration but which were not accomplished. I stopped counting the "un-change" months ago, and I've seen nothing that might alter my opinion of our President's incompetence, or wrongheadedness (I'm not sure which it is).

I think the latest and best assessment of our Chief Executive, now as a public officer who has failed the crucial test of a Commander-in-Chief, is contained in this awesome piece by Michael Brenner.

The first and last paragraphs are:

The sham Afghanistan strategic review is now revealed for the empty exercise it always was. Escalation was inescapable, for Obama's staunch promotion of a 'necessary war' precluded a serious reappraisal of stakes and risks. Reversing himself would have demanded the kind of courage that is wholly foreign to him. So we are left with an open-ended commitment to an unwinnable war. That outcome speaks volumes about the failings of Obama as a leader as much as his impaired judgment.

. . . .

The country is ill served by a president who fails to meet his responsibility for the rigorous, open debate on matters of great consequence that he pledged and that is imperative for avoiding more dismal failure. What is the value of a 150 I.Q. when bereft of wisdom or conviction to guide it? Obama's audacity in pursuing his ambition is one thing; political and intellectual courage is quite another.

Bob Herbert's column in today's Times explains why weak politicians can't be trusted when they talk (publicly) about war.

[painting from the Wadsworth Atheneum collection; image from different.com]