Howdy!
On Sunday April 1st, Paul Werner author of _Museums Inc._ is going to be
speaking here at Zeke's Gallery. His book is a very short but extremely
savage (and funny) rip at current Museum practices - or how places like
the Guggenheim, Louvre and MOMA are behaving more and more like
Haliburton, and General Electric and why this isn't good.
He will be reading in French from the French translation of _Museums
Inc._ «Musée et cie : Globalisation de la culture» . He used to work at
the Guggenheim, and now teaches at NYU.
It will start at 7:30 pm and I hope you can make it. If you have any
questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
It is free and the address of Zeke's Gallery is 3955 Saint Laurent,
Montreal, QC H2W 1Y4. The phone number is +1 (514) 288-2233
From Paul Werner's publisher:
Werner, Paul Museum, Inc.: Inside the Global Art World. Distributed for
Prickly Paradigm Press. 88 p. 4-1/2 x 7 2005
Paper $10.00 ISBN: 978-0-9761475-1-0 (ISBN-10: 0-9761475-1-3) Fall 2005
Has corporate business overtaken the art world? It's no secret that art
and business have always mixed, but their relationship today sparks more
questions than ever. Museum, Inc. describes the new art conglomerates
from an insider's perspective, probing how their roots run deep into
corporate culture. Paul Werner draws on his nine years at the Guggenheim
Museum to reveal that contemporary art museums have not broken radically
with the past, as often claimed. Rather, Werner observes, they are the
logical outcome of the evolution of cultural institutions rooted in the
eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the colonial expansion of the liberal
nation-state, and the rhetoric of democracy.
In a witty and argumentative style, Werner critically analyzes today's
art institutions and reframes the public's accepted view of them,
exposing how their apparent success belies the troubling forces
operating within them. He ultimately argues that the art museum we know
and love may have already run its course. An engaging discourse
structured as an informal gallery talk, Museum, Inc. is a
thought-provoking and passionate polemic that offers ideas for a new,
more democratic museum.
_______________________________________________
"A must read. First of all, this book is funny. The stream of
consciousness, thinking aloud style of Paul Werner is terribly amusing
and extremely entertaining which puts it in a class of its
own....Anybody who thinks something is amiss in the art world must read
it." "La Chichimeca," Amazon.com, February 11, 2007
_______________________________________________
"Mr [sic] Werner [...] is sharp, cynical, searing, passionate and
occasionally world-weary by turns.
Even if you disagree with Mr Werner's arguments, and a lot of
people will, there are some spot-on swipes in among the verbal
fireworks.[...] Is it balanced, is it fair, is it conciliatory? No, it's
not. It is rude, overwrought and occasionally over-written - and all the
better for it." Jane Morris, The Art Newspaper, January 2007
_______________________________________________
"At the other extreme, the capitalist involution of art is
announced with cheerful rage in Paul Werner’s Museum, Inc: Inside the
Global Art World (2005), in which he parses the proposition that art
behaves like money because money behaves like art. This is the capital
of the America Werner dubs 'the Living Museum of Wild Capitalism'. Or
perhaps that’s Out West." Ian Wedde, New Zealand Listener, December
28-29, 2006.
_______________________________________________
"Cynical and delicious exposé of Thomas Krens’'Guggenheim brand.'"
Paula Rabinowitz, Against the Current, March/April 2006.
_______________________________________________
"Werner's writing style 'is unruly,' says Ida Applebroog; 'he has
no restraints, and that's the part I love." - "Eye-openers: Experts list
some of the best recent publications." Art News, November 2006.
_______________________________________________
"Punchy little book." Dushko Petrovich, Boston Globe
_______________________________________________
"I read the few chapters in the beginning, but the author wrote in
a very conversation or joking style, it seems hard for me to grasp at
times what he is really talking about. [...] But when the media is all
positive to projects like Bilbao (or Echigo-Trumari locally everywhere
now), how could you got yr skeptical message of them across anyhow?"
mini-Museum von Kaspar, Hong Kong
_______________________________________________
"WAY TO GO....You are the classic example of what I wanted the film
to accomplish." Teri Horton, subject of the documentary Who the @#$% is
Jackson Pollock?
________________________________________________
"[Werner's] little screed is relentlessly brilliant, hilarious,
dead-on and hyperwitty.
[He] extrapolates way beyond Krens [...] to all sorts of searing
insights about today's big-time art world, its unholy mixture of funny
money, fake egalitarianism, and backroom investment schemes.
Tucked in with all the rhetorical acrobatics, however, is a canny,
erudite analysis of the high-art market from the Enlightenment to now.
[H]e's so full of beans [...] it would be unsafe to leave him alone
in a room with a sacred cow. If you liked Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word,
[...] imagine it with a shot of Guy Debord, a twist of Walter Benjamin."
Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer
________________________________________________
"Under Museum, Inc.'s sparkle lies a wearisome cynicism [...]
as Werner continually collapses cultural ideals into power
relations.[...] Culture was promoted by business and politics, but it
was also set against them; it promised a degree of satisfaction and
value that they could not. Which means that [...] art will never be
completely for sale." Josie Appleton, Times Literary Supplement, April
14, 2006
________________________________________________
"It's truly enviable to write like this - and indeed envy, along
with all the other Seven Deadly Sins (pride, anger, greed, lust,
gluttony, and sloth) are accounted for in this tidy exposé" Beth
Gersh-Nešic, New York Arts Exchange
________________________________________________
"Most of the critical literature on museums [is] written by
Marxists...[Paul Werner] explains in clear language why he hates
present-day museums..
The ultimate function of art writing [...] is to support these
institutions[..] And the function of the gallery system is to create
commodities." David Carrier, "Art World, Mart World," ArtUS no. 13, 26-7
May/June 2006
--
Chris 'Zeke' Hand
Zeke's Gallery
3955 Saint Laurent
3 pm - 7 pm every day except Friday
http://zekesgallery.blogspot.com
~> Click on an ad & Zeke's Gallery gets 35¢ <~
Cool, eh?!
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