One of the joys of New York was casual access to great art museums. Post-coronapanic, however, access is no longer so casual. They’re on the dreaded timed ticket system.
The lobby contains neon art by Eric Adams:
What other messages do we see in the Renzo Piano building who total project cost was $760 million in pre-Biden money?
In the oppressed after first investing $760 million in a fancy building?
My favorite work on display is by Josh Kline and reflects a compromise between Republicans and Democrats regarding whether it is permissible to install gas stoves in American households:
Kline predicted “mass layoffs” in a series called “Contagious Unemployment” back in 2016. He wasn’t completely wrong in that labor force participation is low, but technical “unemployment” (people who want jobs and can’t find them) is actually lower than it was in 2016. Even if the artist failed as an economic prophet, his shrink-wrapped middle managers are impressive:
The permanent collection is always worthwhile. Sailors and Floosies (Cadmus 1938) might need an update now that “US Navy hires active-duty drag queen to be face of recruitment drive” (New York Post):
(Cadmus could have painted himself in? He wasn’t famous for being straight.)
The view of the High Line is awesome:
The museum is also a good place to see the Little Island at Pier 55 (about $260 million in public and private money):
The main exhibit was by a Native American artist, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. It is uncontroversial and accurate to refer to people crossing the border without an invitation as a “European invasion”:
(Would the museum characterize the current flood of folks coming across the border as an “invasion”? If not, why not? Because they are generally not armed while the mostly-peaceful Pilgrims had rifles?)
A 2021 painting by Smith cashes in on Americans’ love of pronouns:
Her “trade canoes” are impressive. Examples:
Pilots may imagine that the FAA is everywhere in the galleries because the guards’ uniform says “Here to Help” on the back:
What’s the mask situation, you might ask? About half of the guards were masked. (If they’re worried, why don’t they switch to a job with less potential for virus transmission?) With the exception of the virtuous group, perhaps only 1 in 40 patrons was masked.
How’s the neighborhood?
Why are there no activists who glue themselves to the cis-normative hate painting until the pronouns are replaced by he/she/ze/they?
Maybe they’re sheltering at home, to bend the curve, as per Docter fauci?
No, those are unwrapped Chat GPT – powered mannequins to substitute corporate managers and regulators with random regulatory and corporate policy generating – dummies
Never heard of a timed ticket actually being enforced. Suspect the amerikan people will eventually ban all stoves. Too much freedom, you know.
The best things about the Whitney are the building and the views. The collection is not all that terrific. It is modern American art and in my opinion that subject encompasses a lot of con.
I think that Guggenheim’s content is even worse, even though it worth much more then Whitney’s. Total brain drain.
Is this crap supposed to be art?
I chose to discriminate agaist this kind of “art”, it has zero artistic value and evokes no emotions other than sadness at the loss of humanity’s ability to even understand what art is.
Well, discrimination is the essence of civilization and this age of “non-discrimination” is the age of decivilzation. The new Dark Ages are coming.
A long, long time ago, in a former life, far, far away, I was an artist who attended SMFA on a full, 4-year scholarship, right from high school (that should tell you how good I was (I was drawing before I could write)).
Once at SMFA, I quickly learned how bent and quirky art critics are but most importantly, how instructors encourage students to be “different” so they are “creative”. “different” means doing anything that will stand you out. This means junk artwork can be considered “artistic” or “beautiful” if you have some kind of a twist on it, any kind of twist: political, sexual, the month’s event, deeply personal story, etc. Take this, for example, a painting shredding itself after sale for $1.4m [1], or this 2-year-old “artist” [2].
Lucky for me, I was already into programming while I was in high school. On my own, I learned Assembly and BASIC programming on my Camaddor 64. While I was doing my MFA at SMFA, I started to teach Computer Graphics Programming for Artest on their Amiga computers (using C) and that was my key to getting me into Northeastern’s M.S. program without having to do an undergraduate in C.S.
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/watch-14-million-bansky-painting-shred-itself-soon-it-sold-180970486/
[2] https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/gma/story/meet-year-artwork-selling-1000-61642331