‘Popper’s World 3 is in some respects reminiscent of Plato’s realm of the Forms, but differs in that Popper takes World 3 to be something man-made. As I noted in the earlier post just linked to, this makes his positon at least somewhat comparable the Aristotelian realist (as opposed to Platonic realist) view that universals are abstracted by the mind from the concrete objects that instantiate them rather than pre-existing such abstraction.’
Do we have a museum-industrial complex? Or better said, like many American institutions, is it time for a re-appraisal of many a core mission-statement and role of these institutions in the life of citizens?
If your intellectual bedrock lies within modernism itself, then perhaps you are more susceptible to the modern winds which kick-up and howl in the West:
‘This is not to say that the arts will “save Detroit,” as some have suggested. The sociologist Richard Florida, who wrote The Rise of the Creative Class in 2001, has staked much on this messianic and largely unproven claim for rustbelt renewal. Instead, cities work best when the planners get out of the way of artists rather than attempting to use them as tools of gentrification. Basing your urban future on jet-setting bohemians coming to town for a Matthew Barney film shoot is no way to keep the lights on and the water running, or, more to the point, strengthen the local cultural fabric.’
Are you looking at beautiful photos and feeling sorry for Detroit, and yourself? See Time Magazine’s photo essay by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre (less porn-like, more thoughtful).
My brother comes home from work and climbs the stairs to our room. I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop one by one. You can have it, he says.
The moonlight streams in the window and his unshaven face is whitened like the face of the moon. He will sleep long after noon and waken to find me gone.
Thirty years will pass before I remember that moment when suddenly I knew each man has one brother who dies when he sleeps and sleeps when he rises to face this life,
and that together they are only one man sharing a heart that always labours, hands yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?
All night at the ice plant he had fed the chute its silvery blocks, and then I stacked cases of orange soda for the children of Kentucky, one gray boxcar at a time
with always two more waiting. We were twenty for such a short time and always in the wrong clothes, crusted with dirt and sweat. I think now we were never twenty.
In 1948 the city of Detroit, founded by de la Mothe Cadillac for the distant purposes of Henry Ford, no one wakened or died, no one walked the streets or stoked a furnace,
for there was no such year, and now that year has fallen off all the old newspapers, calendars, doctors’ appointments, bonds wedding certificates, drivers licenses.
The city slept. The snow turned to ice. The ice to standing pools or rivers racing in the gutters. Then the bright grass rose between the thousands of cracked squares,
and that grass died. I give you back 1948. I give you all the years from then to the coming one. Give me back the moon with its frail light falling across a face.
Give me back my young brother, hard and furious, with wide shoulders and a curse for God and burning eyes that look upon all creation and say, You can have it.
There’s definitely some Spanish influence here, by way of Antonio Machado. Perhaps there’s also some labor/alienation sentiment for the working man on the factory floor, but hey, it’s Detroit and it’s a well-crafted poem.
Just because I love to highlight the generally Left-Of-Center political philosophy over at PBS and NPR, there’s a link to this PBS piece about life on the factory floor and Levine’s poem. Here’s a Paris Review interview with Levine.
A lot of breathing, technique, and multiphonics going on here.
‘Since 2007, billions of dollars have poured into New York’s “Silicon Alley,” which recently vaulted ahead of the greater Boston area to become the nation’s second-largest tech hub behind California’s Silicon Valley. For a city that has long relied on its financial industry to spur growth and innovation, the resurgence of the tech sector is welcome news.’
Here’s a video from TheStreet, posted two years ago now with a Bloomberg rep (this blog stays on the cutting edge).
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As to the city government and the politics of the thing, if you want cash, you need cows. From the NY Daily News on how the De Blasio administration is handling this development:
‘Alicia Glen, Mayor de Blasio’s deputy for housing and economic development, pledged to create a “real pipeline” of New Yorkers equipped for the new jobs in the city’s new economy.’
That won’t happen overnight, and for some people it won’t ever happen. It remains to be seen if labor activists can build pipelines that don’t primarily move labor activists and tax revenue around.
Oil and gas money can buy Qatar lots of art (and help it import cheap labor), but other tribal, autocratic ways haven’t changed much:
‘On the one hand, Qatar’s art initiatives can be seen as a modernizing force, one that could liberalize the tribal attitudes of the country’s native population and pave the way for further political reform. On the other hand, contemporary art may merely serve as a cover for further repressive policies.’
So, where does the evidence lead, and who are the people attaching themselves to causes, ideas, and politics? Naturally, I’m sympathetic to the conservative point of view, but I’m open to debate. There’s an entire industry now of documentary activism and political protest being rewarded by the current administration. Are they getting the facts right?
Panero also discusses how some NYC museums have come to rely upon the recommended donation fees that rich tourists often pay, and that this revenue stream could interfere with their mission to serve the public.
Addition: Here’s Bob Zubrin on the rather pseudo-religious and dangerous roots of much environmentalism:
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How to separate reasonable environmentalism from the authoritarian impulses, the Malthusians and various other people who “know” how many people is enough? Now that environmentalism is a primary focus in our schools, it’s probably worth thinking about.
Panero offers some course-correcting criticism for New York’s public museums, which may be depending too much upon ticket revenue, operating more like businesses.
You can get it in if you pay a penny, but they can pressure you to pay the full $25, mainly to get the higher amount from foreign tourists.
‘Thomas P. Campbell, the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has issued an “important message” responding to the criticism I and others have raised over the ticketing policies at his and other public-private institutions in New York City. The Director’s affable but ultimately defensive message tells me the Met has heard the criticism but hasn’t listened to it.’
Don’t forget the little people, and your core mission:
‘But big business can be bad business at a non-profit designed to serve the public good. The ever-increasing demands of what I call the museum-industrial complex was the topic of my essay in The New Criterion a year ago, titled “What’s a Museum?”
So, we’ve got the ‘educational-industrial complex’, the ‘military-industrial complex’, and now the ‘museum-industrial complex’.
We’ve got a lot of complexes.
This blog remains skeptical of people interested in broad definitions of the public good which often line up with their own interests, especially upon the ‘greatness’ model: ‘A great nation deserves great art.’
Such folks can eventually become entrenched on the public dime, having self-selected into a group of cultural gatekeepers, resistant to any change. They never manage to serve all the public, just usually the public as they’d like it to be, despite the good they can do.
