Light Posting for a While

I will be traveling abroad and will be unable to add any new posts. Please try out some of my links and check back next week. Thanks for reading!

A Response to Ron Galloway

I posted this in response to a comment left on my last post. Ron Galloway, the director of the upcoming documentary "Why WalMart Works," had problems with my preliminary assessment of his film. Here it is:

Ron - Thanks for your comment. I appreciate your position that one should not judge something before one is able to actually experience it, however in this case the documentary you are directing seems to be fairly straightforward. Your documentary, as it is described by the New York Times, praises WalMart. I am quite eager to see exactly what it was that you found so praiseworthy about WalMart, the company that has prospered for years at the expense of their employees and, for that matter, the larger social good. The mega-chain has effectively lowered retail and manufacturing wages in order to bring you those “every-day-low-prices.” Employees suffer benefit cut-backs in order for WalMart to offer identical or comparable products at prices that are lower than its competition. In short, I believe – let me rephrase – I am convinced, that Wal-Mart’s successes have come at the expense of others (see Fast Company’s 2003 story “The WalMart You Don’t Know” for just a few examples of the companies profound negative impact on commercial business). But alas, this is a blog (no quotations necessary) that focuses on the arts. Documentaries were originally created to examine a subject matter or topic without bias, distortion or personal opinions. They were non-fiction, objective films designed to inform and educate. We know that from films like “Super Size Me,” “Bowling for Columbine,” and “Grizzly Man” that documentaries have come to include films that are something of a hybrid of information and reality-tv. Ultimately what makes these, and many other films interesting, is that there is a focus on a particular issue (be it fast food, gun control or our understanding of animal behavior) and a criticism of the prevailing perceptions on that issue. A pro-McDonalds documentary that attempted to explain, rationalize or in any way excuse the unhealthy food they produce should sound absurd to most people. Spurlock’s film was successful because he confirmed our suspicions about the negative effects of a fast food diet by sacrificing his own health. If people wanted to see a pro-hand gun film they would join the NRA and an ordinary documentary on grizzly bears can be found on the National Geographic channel. People enjoy documentaries because they offer a critical examination of a subject, often revealing sordid truths or harsh realities that we are normally protected from. They are aggressive, proactive and information seeking. By contrast, your film, by its very nature, sounds to be a reaction to criticisms of WalMart that sugar-coats the reality of the company’s horrible practices. For anyone still wondering: WalMart works because big business trumps humanity and compassion, because money matters not people.

No Dice for Munch Museum; “Documentary” on Wal-Mart in the Works

Last year the art world was caught off guard when thieves removed one of the most famous works of art in the world in broad daylight from The Munch Museum. “The Scream” and “Madonna,” another work stolen at the same time, have yet to be recovered. The Munch Museum remained closed for quite a while after the thefts to increase security and has no doubt taken a huge financial blow. In perhaps an honest effort to generate income for the struggling institution, The Mystery of The Scream, a board game, was being sold at their museum gift shop last week. The Museum and manufacturer argue that the game is educational while others felt it trivialized the theft. After pressure from government officials and art world critics, the game was pulled yesterday.

In the same arts brief section as the above story, the New York Times is reporting that Wal-Mart is planning a documentary on…Wal-Mart. The “film” is a response to Robert Greenwald’s none too flattering documentary on the mega-chain “"Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" which is due to be released early next month. While Greenwald’s film is likely to shed some light on Wal-Mart’s impieties (the most recent being the company’s attempt to lower healthcare benefits and recruit younger employees who are “healthier,” via Das Haus - story here), Ron Galloway’s film about how wonderful Wal-Mart is sounds like a really long and dreadfully boring promotional video. Apparently Mr. Galloway doesn’t understand that the effectiveness of documentaries is partly derived from the criticism of the film’s target subject.

Recent News in the Art World

The New Orleans Art Museum has cut its staff from 86 employees to just 16 in an effort to balance its budget in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Excerpt:

The city-financed museum, which has been shut since the day before Katrina hit in late August, was instructed by the municipal government to keep only a minimal staff needed to administer the institution in its current closed state.

"I have put in 23 years of service and have been a donor," said John Keefe, the museum's decorative arts curator and one of those laid off. "This has all been done in a very callous manner. I feel the board and the director should have done something. They're hanging on to their endowment at the expense of the staff."

But Stewart Farnet, chairman of the museum's board, said the layoffs were unavoidable. "It would have been irresponsible to keep paying those salaries," he said in a telephone interview. "As tough as it is, there was no alternative."

MoMA to receive 174 works from LA real estate developer Edward R. Broida.

Excerpt:

The entire gift is worth about $50 million, said a museum official who requested anonymity because it is a policy not to disclose the financial value of gifts.

These works not only help fill many gaps in the Modern's contemporary art collection, but also enlarge its previous holdings of certain artists. For example, Mr. Broida is giving the museum 36 works by Guston, including 12 paintings, 16 drawings and 8 prints dating from 1938 to 1980. Ann Temkin, a curator in the Modern's department of painting and sculpture, said that while the museum already had 12 paintings by Guston, "the extraordinary quality of Mr. Broida's gift transforms the collection, making it the greatest holdings of Guston in the world."

Mr. Broida's decision to give the Modern first choice was easy, he said. "Ever since I was old enough to come to New York by myself from Cleveland, where I grew up, I went to MoMA," he said. "It was like a beacon. The fact that the museum is weak in some areas where my collection is strong is coincidental."

151 countries voted yesterday to create an international convention on cultural diversity - Only the U.S. and Israel oppose.

Excerpt:

Commission IV of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which has been meeting in Paris, voted 151 to 2 in favour of the Canadian initiative, with only the United States and Israel voting against.

The international agreement — formally the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions — reaffirms the right of sovereign states to "maintain, adopt and implement" policies that protect and promote cultural expression, and exempt certain cultural products from free-trade agreements.

The impetus behind the convention was the Chrétien government's 1999 attempt to protect the magazine industry in the face of pressure from the U.S., which successfully argued that the magazine law was in breach of the World Trade Organization's subsidy rules.

David attacker strikes again in Florence - Italian officials concerned about public art and cultural heritage safety.

Excerpt:

Curators and guardians of Italy's artistic heritage, much of it on open display, will be on high alert this week following the discovery that the country's most persistent art vandal is back in action.
Piero Cannata, who earned worldwide notoriety by taking a hammer to Michelangelo's David, confessed to local newspapers in Tuscany that he had struck again in the very centre of Florence. It was discovered that somebody had sprayed a thick black "x" on a plaque, set into the paving of Piazza della Signoria, commemorating the burning to death of the 15th-century preacher and reformer Girolamo Savonarola.

Mr Cannata said that he had tried to cover it up "because it has a sentence that doesn't make any sense".

The plaque has no intrinsic artistic merit and the damage was speedily put right by local authority contractors. But the incident has highlighted the vulnerability of more valuable works and reignited a debate over how best to protect them from thieves, vandals and people who are mentally disturbed.