New director of Hirshhorn snubs D.C. to hold 40th-anniversary gala in New York
In 2012, Doug Aitken’s video display “Song I” was projected on the exterior of the Hirshhorn, drawing in tourists and locals and opening the museum to new audiences. (Francis Chung)
The decision to hold the Hirshhorn’s 40th-anniversary gala in New York is deeply troubling and raises concern about where the museum’s new director, Melissa Chiu, is taking the organization. According to the New York Times, the Nov. 9 gala will include 400 invited guests and honor 40 living artists whom the museum considers essential to its identity. But despite Chiu’s statement in the Times story announcing the event — that she intends no snub to the Washington arts crowd — it is a snub, and a distressing indication that she doesn’t understand the purpose, the history or the identity of the museum she now leads.
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New director of Hirshhorn snubs D.C. for Gala
The critic for the Washington Post
has found it most
annoying
that a Gala for the Hirshhorn Museum
is being held in New York City
rather than Washington DC.
destroying
his vision of our Capital
as a cultural Power
in full flower.
While I can understand his pique,
perhaps he should keep quiet and instead
try to develop his physique
rather than become a crank
because its among New York's celebrities--
just like Willie Sutton once may (or may not) have said,
when asked why he robbed a bank--
"that's where the money is"
and where our future Van Goghs
may be surviving on mangos
while many a former Hedge Fund trader
is now Art speculator.
HZL
8/9/15
I Rob Banks Because That's Where the Money Is | Quote ...
quoteinvestigator.com/2013/02/10/where-money-is/
Feb 10, 2013 - Dear Quote Investigator: The famous criminal Willie Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks, and his response was simple, eloquent, and ..
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When President Lyndon Johnson included the arts and humanities in his Great Society vision, it was expressly to spread access to them. Johnson felt strongly that ordinary people, all across the country, deserved the same exposure to the arts as elites who lived in the country’s cultural centers. Johnson helped facilitate the gift of Joseph Hirshhorn’s collection to the Smithsonian, telling an adviser: “I want the American people to see this stuff.” Placing it in Washington, which was a tourist magnet but far from a cultural capital in the 1960s, was part of that vision.
And throughout its 40-year history, the Hirshhorn has played an essential role in elevating the cultural conversation in the nation’s capital. Many countries have their cultural and political capitals in the same city; the importance of the Hirshhorn, essential to its identity and purpose, is to be a contemporary art museum in Washington, not just a franchise or an outpost of the New York art world.
When Hirshhorn spoke at the 1974 opening of the museum, he expressly emphasized the universality of his gift to the nation: “It is an honor to have given my art collection to the people of the United States as a small repayment for what this nation has done for me and others like me who arrived here as immigrants. What I accomplished in the United States I could not have accomplished anywhere else in the world.”
There are important reasons to hold fundraising events in New York. Every smart Washington museum director knows you have to go where the money is, whether that’s New York, Martha’s Vineyard or the Hamptons. It’s clear that far more energy has gone into planning this comprehensive gala, and that the glamour factor will be far greater, than an anniversary event the Hirshhorn might hold in Washington.
But this isn’t an ordinary gala. It is the capstone of the 40th-anniversary year, and will include access to a wide range of artists and art-world celebrities who might have been encouraged to come to Washington.
Another museum leader, one with deeper ties to Washington, might have conceived it altogether differently, as an opportunity to include and celebrate Hirshhorn volunteers, docents, donors (small and large), local artists and the larger contemporary art audience that has remained faithful to the museum over the past four decades. It could have been an event like the open-air festivities that surrounded Doug Aitken’s video display “Song I,” which became a community-wide event, drawing in tourists and locals, animating the Mall and the Hirshhorn grounds, and opening the museum to new audiences. Instead, it is an exclusive event at the World Trade Center, far from Washington, trumpeting the exclusionary and elitist values that Johnson so detested.
Chiu, who was born in Australia but was a longtime New York resident, defended the move out of Washington in a statement: “We started our 40th anniversary celebration last October in Washington with the reopening of our newly renovated 3rd floor for our collection and an opening celebration dinner. To close out the celebratory year we will have a gala in New York in recognition of Mr. Hirshhorn’s legacy where he was resident for most of his life.” By that logic, the event should be held in Latvia, where he was born. In any case, the famous meeting between Lady Bird Johnson and the Hirshhorns that paved the way for his gift to the United States took place at his Connecticut estate.
Asked about how often Chiu works from her D.C. office, a spokeswoman responded: “Melissa travels for her work, some of which is in NY, as many of our board members are from around the country or international.”
Since the announcement that Chiu would be the new director of the Hirshhorn in June 2014, it hasn’t been entirely clear which Chiu would come to D.C. Chiu is a respected curator and deeply knowledgeable about contemporary Asian art and Asian artists working in the West. But she is also an art-world player, socially connected within the ambitious New York art scene. Would she put a distinctive imprint on the Hirshhorn, connecting it to the larger art world without vitiating its particular identity? Or would she simply make it a satellite to the New York art world?
The Hirshhorn should not be provincial, and regular communion with New York and other art-world capitals is essential to its relevance. But it should never be treated as a minor dependency, or sinecure for curators who are essentially rooted in New York. Its mission is larger than that, and it’s a mission that Chiu doesn’t yet seem to fully understand.
Philip Kennicott is the Pulitzer Prize-winning Art and Architecture Critic of The Washington Post. He has been on staff at the Post since 1999, first as Classical Music Critic, then as Culture Critic.
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