Friday, November 13, 2009

Reasonable Middle Ground

We don't know if you've been following all the weighing in over the past week or so with regard to the New Museum's upcoming exhibition drawn from Dakis Joannou's collection, sparked by Tyler Green (who has all of the relevant links, including to the recent front-page New York Times story on the subject), but Richard Lacayo, in Time, has a very measured response to all of it (Green even points out that he agrees with Lacayo), including the following important point:
I've written about these single collector shows before and as I said then I don't see the point of an absolutist position against them. Especially for smaller museums and museums outside the biggest cites, collector shows are a way to offer visitors a look at work the museum could never otherwise offer them. Obviously, the same could be said for a show in a larger museum. But those institutions, which are more likely to be on the circuit for big traveling shows, have other options for bringing in works from outside.

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