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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the ends of being and ideal grace.I love thee to the level of every day'sMost quiet need, by sun and candle-light.I love thee freely, as men strive for right.I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.I love thee with the passion put to useIn my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.I love thee with a love I seemed to loseWith my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
August 27, 2019
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Letter from the Editor:
The International Council of Museums (ICOM) released a new definition of "museum" this month, and not everyone is happy. Danish curator Jette Sandahl, who lead ICOM’s commission on the new definition, suggested, among other things:
Museums are democratising, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging and addressing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artefacts and specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for all people.
Museums are not for profit. They are participatory and transparent, and work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collect, preserve, research, interpret, exhibit, and enhance understandings of the world, aiming to contribute to human dignity and social justice, global equality and planetary wellbeing.
Some immediately considered the definition too ideological, but it raises bigger questions as to whether we actually have a working definition for the institutions that are the foundation of the art world. And is defining them even possible nowadays?
I think the question of what a museum is today is just as complicated as defining what art can be. We're more likely to recognize when something isn't a museum (or art) rather than when it actually is. In an era of more private vanity museums than ever, ersatz corporate entities designed for selfie takers (Museum of Ice Cream, etc.), and the push toward expensive spectacles that require outside funding, the meaning of museum is changing.
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Judge Charlotte Huddleston with Dane Mitchell's Collateral 2009, in the 2009 Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award, Waikato Museum, Hamilton. © Fairfax Media
DAVID JONES, ARTIST AND POET 1895-1974 BEGINS HIS PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :
'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)
(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.
l - r : Michele Helmrich, Robert MacPherson, Rex ButlerIn it, MacPherson talks at length and in great detail about his art. And, in a note towards the end, explains why one year he sent 3000 items through the Hepburn Springs Post Office and received in return a thank you letter from postmistress Debbie.
An Evening with Robert MacPherson
The University of Queensland Art Museum
1 May 2013
33 envelopes from Bob (23 January 2007)detail
badges from The Democratic Art Show (PT 1974) quote :In London, top-end galleries in Mayfair's Bond Street are closing at an ''alarming rate'', according to a March report in The Telegraph. Rents have tripled amid competition for space from global retail brands, forcing out dealers such as Colnaghi, which shut its West End shop recently after 250 years.San Francisco's downtown gallery district has also been hit hard by rising rents. One displaced gallerist, moving his business to his home after 22 years, told the San Francisco Chronicle his peers in Chicago and Los Angeles were doing the same.''Ten years from now, traditional galleries will be a thing of the past,'' he said. ''The auction houses and art fairs will have taken over - and the internet.''
Traditionally, a gallery represents and supports a stable of artists, mounting exhibitions of their work and bringing them to the attention of collectors, public institutions and corporate clients. So tough times for commercial art galleries mean tough times for contemporary artists.This is spelt out in figures Lowenstein has compiled from a survey of about 100 of his artist clients, comparing their 2008 and 2012 incomes. The total income for Lowenstein's top group, comprising well-established and successful artists, dropped 46 per cent, while the second group of mid-career artists earned 30 per cent less. It was only the third group, comprising young emerging artists, that earned more in 2012.
Honoré Daumier, Two Print-lovers c. 1860–63
