A Collection of Links

We've just discovered the Georgia College Curator blog, run by Shannon Morris, who works at the Georgia College and State University Museum, in Milledgeville and posts her thoughts about artists, upcoming events and exhibitions and more. It has far more information than the museum's Web site and some interesting investigations into artistic production.

This article from the Wall Street Journal's arts and entertainment section discusses those cases where facts and accuracy are necessary in art, which tends not to be a situation we think about very often.

If you've been wondering what Michael Rush, former director of the Rose Museum at Brandeis, has been doing to occupy his time, this piece from the Boston Globe on an exhibition he's organized at MIT will clue you in.

We also really enjoyed flipping through this Flickr gallery of visitor responses to an exhibition on WPA art (something GMOA specializes in) at the Detroit Institute of Arts. People were asked to imagine what they would produce if they were a WPA artist working today, and the range of responses (as evidenced by the one we selected above) is odd, amusing and inspiring all at once.

Finally, we've been meaning to post this link to the Art Newspaper's article about whether U.S. museums will be able to reinvent themselves in the current economic era. Although it ran in mid-January, its questions are by no means outdated a month and a half on, and they are serious ones to consider.

Economic Recovery for Art Museums

Not that the Art Newspaper isn't correct in that things are starting to look up, a bit, for art museums, but the focus on 25 leading institutions means a focus on 25 of the wealthier institutions in the country. The size of their various endowments means that a percentage drop means a bigger number on which to focus, as in this opening paragraph:

A year ago, with forecasters predicting another Great Depression, museum directors were slashing operating budgets as the value of endowments fell by at least 15%. The results: cancelled exhibitions, redundancy notices and pay freezes for those who survived (a few directors voluntarily cut their own salaries). Even the wealthiest museum was affected. The J. Paul Getty Trust was forced to make a 24% cut in employees, as the value of its endowment shrank to $4.4bn in June 2009, from $5.9bn a year before, a fall of 25%.

On the other hand, 1) having $4.4 billion at all seems like rather a lot compared to the amounts much smaller institutions have on hand, and 2) when the stock market recovers, those endowments and institutions seem to have an easier time recovering. Again, it's good news, but please don't forget the difficulties of smaller museums, where laying off staff and cutting programs can have a bigger impact, proportionately.