The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, following in the footsteps of a number of museums around the country, has started a program of having local artists go through their storage warehouse and curate a collection of rarely-seen works.
The current curator is a successful 40-year-old local sculptor named Vincent Fecteau (for an interesting interview with Kenneth Baker at SFGate, click here).
The idea is a good one, but I wish the museum had given Fecteau a bit more room and allowed him a larger show.
As it stands, the exhibit is one and a half small rooms with mostly tiny works of art getting lost.
There was the delightful shock of seeing gay porn icon Tom of Finland represented by one of his less explicit drawings, wedged between a dull Jess drawing and a duller Diego Rivera painting.
Also amusing was Judy Chicago's "George O'Keeffe Plate" from "The Dinner Party," complete with an upraised technicolor vagina. "That sure looks like it would be difficult to eat anything off of it," I blurted. "It's meant to be more conceptual than practical, I believe," my patient host Patrick Vaz replied.
Damn -- that Judy Chicago thing takes me back. I wrote up the original show for a lesbian mag -- and later met a woman who served as abused labor on the project.
ReplyDeleteShould we be sad or glad that MOMA gets the Fisher stuff? I count on you for such things ...
Dear Jan: I had heard Ms. Chicago was something of a monster who exploited her artist "volunteers," but it's nice to have some confirmation.
ReplyDeleteAnd we should be very, very glad that MOMA is getting the Fisher stuff. It's where his collection belongs and we're spared the white elephant that would be involved with Fisher's edifice complex for his art.