We need an art museum
So the art world was taken aback last month when, on the eve of the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, a $56 million addition to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for which he chose the architect and paid the bill, Mr. Broad abruptly seemed to undermine his own cause.
Rather than pledge to donate his extensive collection of contemporary art to the new institution  a move that some viewed as inevitable, given that his name was to be on the door  Mr. Broad said he had decided instead to keep it in his private foundation. Far better, he argued, to lend the 2,000-odd works to museums around the world than to risk their being largely relegated to storage in Los Angeles. (New York Times 2/10/08)
Two things to pay attention to here:
First, it cost the LACMA only $56M for the expansion–and that by a top-tier architect (designer of the Menil Collection, the Art Institute expansion, etc.). Compare this to the $125M figure that has been thrown around for an Elgin concert hall.
Second, note that art owners lend their art works to museums, which means we don’t need to have a permanent collection in order to have an art museum. There are many museums in this country that do not have permanent collections. One such museum is St. Louis’s contemporary art museum, recently finished on a tight budget of $6.5M, something we can easily manage in Elgin.
The St. Louis museum:
Possibly related posts:
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In certain respects Elgin already has art museums, and they are displaying the work of some rather more sinister disciples of the Keith Haring school. The “Elgin atelier” of Mr. Haring’s graffiti style, you see, involves gang symbols.
Take the train to Chicago from Elgin’s Big Timber Metra station and you will see one of the most impressive and colorful exhibits of gang graffiti in the Chicago area. Giant red devils, pitchforks, Latin crowns, stars… it’s all there for our local gang expert Fran Cella to translate. It has recently gone up on the white building directly east of the station and certainly speaks eloquently to the “unique diversity” that so charms our new City Councilman Mike Warren and his promoter the Daily Herald. Hurry up and take your cameras because I can’t imagine the building’s owners will want this exhibit up much longer.
Note, too, that this form of art education is not being administered to the residents of Elgin’s east side who have become accustomed to All Things Ghetto. Instead, we are seeing that Unique Diversity is spreading faster than “swine flu” across the community. This particular show has gone up just across the tracks from the wretched apartments on Mark Avenue - an area within “Eagle Heights,” the home base of the Sustainability Couple, the Kaptains. You know…, the folks who ignore all the real problems ordinary residents face and think Elgin’s biggest challenge is reducing its “carbon footprint.” And Kaptain is the High Panjandrum of the Elgin Community Network, another group of irrelevant, city-funded activists who prattle on endlessly about “sustainablity” while their neighborhoods descend into gang and foreclosure hell. He should be pleased to see that one of Elgin’s most impressive new art museums has opened near his neighborhood. And he should invite Kiwanis Jeanette to an opening reception since she and her employer (the Chamber of Commerce)have played such a big part in making this sort of thing possible.
rm, thank you. Really.
An outstanding piece of writing. You hit the nail dead center on the head. Your commentary needs greater distribution. Please send it to the Herald and Courier. They won’t print it - it would be deemed offensive - but you put the onus on them for censuring truth and reality (redundant? isn’t truth and reality the same thing - sadly no).
The new mantra: sustainability. It has that generic good feel appeal to it - kind of like world peace. We’re all for it! Except that it really doesn’t mean ANYTHING. Something about rain barrels while ignoring how to sustain my every rising property tax ECC bond payments! The vote that really counts is the vote my feet register when I move out.
They are unsustainably clueless.
Having worked at an art museum I can tell you that Mr. Broad might be surprised to learn that only 5%-10% of any art museums work is on display at any given time.