''Sensation'' may have closed last month, but the reverberations linger.
The exhibition of cutting-edge British art owned by the collector Charles Saatchi, ''Sensation'' was meant to increase the audience at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and ended up getting the museum into a court battle with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani over city financing. Now it has had a new life in a different context: nearly 400 academics, arts administrators, students and others convened here on Saturday to examine the relationship between the arts and society in the wake of the show.
''The whole controversy has been high entertainment and good instruction,'' said W. T. J. Mitchell, an art historian at the University of Chicago, whose fledgling cultural policy program organized the one-day conference in the ornate maroon-and-gold ballroom of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. ''One thing I liked about the show is that it burst open the relationship between art and commerce. We even got to read e-mails. The role of big capital in the art world was made visible.''
Even more was revealed at the conference. Gilbert S. Edelson, administrative vice president of the Art Dealers Association of America, surprised many participants with the statement that some museums take a commission on sales of new art exhibited on their walls, just as dealers do.
James Cuno, the director of the Harvard University Art Museums, said he was shocked and called the practice inappropriate. Mr. Edelson declined to name names, but when asked, Thelma Golden, who was a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art for 10 years, said that the Whitney did it. ''It was in the loan agreement,'' said Ms. Golden, who is now the deputy director for exhibitions and programs at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Mr. Edelson also cited other museum practices that muddied the distinctions between museums and dealers. Some, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sell original prints, crafts and other unique works of art.
At least one, he said, sells original prints on consignment from dealers. And several regional museums, like the Nevada Museum of Art, hold special exhibitions and sales of works by artists in their communities, he added.
''We are pleased to welcome many museums to the ranks of art dealers,'' Mr. Edelson said to laughter. ''We await their application to join the Art Dealers Association of America.''
This being academia, there were few conclusions at the end of eight hours of sometimes humorous debate, discussion that include the modest suggestion from Professor Mitchell, who is also the editor of Critical Inquiry, for a blockbuster show of ''offending images'' where those offended could hurl stones, eggs, paint and dirt as therapy.
The most sobering comments came from David Strauss, a University of Chicago law professor. Although the courts ruled that Mr. Giuliani's threat to withdraw financing from the museum for showing art he thought was offensive was unconstitutional, Professor Strauss warned against relying on the ''false promise'' of the First Amendment for protection against such attacks.
''The message of the controversy to government officials is to be careful about getting into this business of arts funding, because once you get in you may not be able to get out,'' he said. ''The more often there are First Amendment decisions in court, the more powerfully the message goes out to legislators to be careful.''
''This is not a battle that can be won in court,'' Professor Strauss added. ''People who think that there is an important role for the government to play in funding the arts have to win in the court of public opinion.''
Mr. Giuliani declined an invitation to participate in the conference.
So did Arnold L. Lehman, the director of the Brooklyn Museum, who is under fire for allowing Mr. Saatchi to take control of the exhibition and for seeking financing from Mr. Saatchi, Christie's and others with a commercial interest in the art. In a letter to the organizers, with a copy to the museum's lawyer, Dr. Lehman objected to the conference title, ''Taking Funds, Giving Offense, Making Money,'' as inflammatory and judgmental.
Carroll Joynes, the executive director of the university's cultural policy program, said Dr. Lehman had asked that the title be changed, without success. ''In part it was meant to be inflammatory,'' Mr. Joynes said. ''It was meant to start a debate.''
The title, he added, was hardly provocative when viewed in the context of the advertisements Dr. Lehman had chosen for ''Sensation.''
''The bag I got with the catalog had words like vomit, shock and confusion,'' Mr. Joynes said.
But Dr. Lehman was not on trial here, and neither was Mr. Giuliani. Both took some criticism, and both had support (less for the mayor). The program focused far more on issues of public and private financing for museums and the impact on public trust, topics that Richard Epstein, the University of Chicago law professor who helped set the scene, called ''art and the grubby engines that are necessary to drive it.''
The participants' wishful thinking aside, hardly any of them foresaw an increase in government money for the arts. That left the discussion centering on private financing, usually from people like Mr. Saatchi who have an interest in the art. Though museums have long pursued collectors, they rarely discuss details like potential conflicts of interest, and there are no written rules that museums must follow. As a result, whether to show a collection and what arrangements should surround it are decisions usually made case by case basis; the consensus here held that was rightly so.
''Whether a museum should exhibit a private collection depends on whether the collection is important enough to merit a museum show,'' Mr. Edelson said. This time Dr. Cuno agreed with him and asked, ''What kind of collector is Mr. Saatchi?'' Dr. Cuno went on to characterize Mr. Saatchi as someone who bought large quantities of art, showed it in his own galleries, sold some of it (including works by artists in ''Sensation'' after its showing in London) and announced his intention to open restaurants called Sensation that would exhibit his artworks (which has not happened).
''Showing private collections and taking support from private collectors, indeed even from commercial concerns like auction houses and art galleries, are not in themselves opposed to the public mission of a museum,'' Dr. Cuno said. ''It all depends on the character and reputation of the collector.''
In other words, he and Mr. Edelson agreed, Paul Mellon, yes; Mr. Saatchi, probably not.
Mr. Saatchi and Dr. Lehman had a defender or two, notably Professor Mitchell, who suggested that it was late in the game to be outraged when museums pander to the rich to survive. But many more conference participants thought that the Brooklyn Museum violated the public trust.
''The appearance of impropriety is absolutely crucial,'' Dr. Cuno argued. ''Once one loses respect, it takes a long time to recover.''
He suggested that although with ''Sensation'' Dr. Lehman set out to expand his audience to those who felt no connection to the museum, he ended up reinforcing the appearance that the museum is a bastion of the elite united in the collusion of self-interest.
Correction: February 17, 2000, Thursday An article on Monday about a conference in Chicago examining the relationship between arts and society in light of the outcry over the ''Sensation'' show at the Brooklyn Museum reversed the initials of a University of Chicago art professor whose program organized the conference. He is W. J. T. Mitchell, not W. T. J.
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