On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, John A. Bing wrote:

> I am neither an art professional nor a museum professional.  So I pose
> a question to this list for comments to a statement:
>
> A professional made a statement that no art museum (in the USA, I
> assume) has purchased  contemporary landscape (plein air) art in the
> last 15 years.   And further, that if one did, it (the museum, I
> assume) might be laughed at.
>
> Is this really true? I thought museums, especially contemporary art
> museums bought contemporary art, or does it only apply to certain art?

===================================

I would have thought that this was something of an exaggeration, but
during my 24 years directing major regional museum services (including
contemporary art museums & collections) in the UK I was alarmed many times
at the "sameness" of contemporary art acquisitions and exhibitions and
subsequent experience hasn't changed this impression.

That applies in both directions.  If I sent back to my previus insitutions
we could put together a remarkable "Salon des Refusees" exhibition of
works that I acquired despite being refused funding from the various
national or regional grant schemes because they did not conform to then
current orthodoxy.  In fact in most of these cases I was turned down by
the government grant schemes for being too far ahead of the then current
fashion or approved orthodoxy.

Those of who dared to defy the establishment in the 1960s and do business
with London dealers such as Nigel Greenwood or Nicolas Logsdail had to
have a ready answer as to why we were near Grosvenor Square ("On my way to
an anti-Vietnam War demonstration at the American Embassy") or the Lisson
Gallery (easy answer - short cut to a "red light" district in those days).
Certainly it was a total waste of time trying to get a grant on anything
such then avant-garde galleries were selling. At that time the only
acceptable contemporary art was what the leading British critic Peter
Fuller used to call "the Official State Art of the NATO Capitalist Powers"
i.e. American Abstract Expressionism and its numerous European imitators.

Yet the Lisson in particular became the very height of  fashionable and
"establishment" orthodoxy less than ten years later and has maintained
that status ever since.

Certainly, over recent years the new orthodoxy has been very much focused
on conceptual art, installations, video art etc. and few "serious"
collectors and even fewer contemporary art museums have been collecting
more traditional works, such as the sort of landscapes that you refer to.


Patrick J. Boylan  (Professor of Heritage Policy and Management)

City University, Frobisher Crescent, Barbican, London EC2Y 8HB, UK;
phone: +44-171-477.8750, fax:+44-171-477.8887;
Home: "The Deepings", Gun Lane, Knebworth, Herts. SG3 6BJ, UK;
phone & fax: +44-1438-812.658;
E-mail: [log in to unmask];  Web site: http://www.city.ac.uk/artspol/

=========================================================
Important Subscriber Information:

The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ museum-l.html. You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).

If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to
[log in to unmask] The body of the message should read "Signoff
Museum-L" (without the quotes).