We have been discussing the campaigns to remove faculty who voice dissenting views on the current protests or underlying issues. The art world has now been swept into this disturbing trend where critics label any opposing views as racist and demand the removal of anyone who questions their demands. That was the case with Gary Garrels the long-standing senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). He resigned after museum employees circulated a petition that accused him of racism because he simply stated that, while seeking to diversify the artists featured in the collection, he would not bar acquisitions of artists simply because they are white. That would not only decouple ignore the inherent value of the art but apply a racial discriminatory rule.
The petition by Garrels’ colleagues and staff details statements that would seem entirely appropriate, if not essential, for an institution committed to featuring the greatest artistic works. The petition declares “Gary’s removal from SFMOMA is non-negotiable. Considering his lengthy tenure at this institution, we ask just how long have his toxic white supremacist beliefs regarding race and equity directed his position curating the content of the museum?” Given that hyperbolic language, I assumed that the petition would reveal a virtual Bull Connor of the art world. Instead, the petition is headed by the what the signers indicate is the most offensive example of such “white supremacist beliefs”:
According to artnet.com, he also said previously that to bar artists based solely on the fact that they are white would constitute “reverse discrimination.” Forced to resign, Garrels apologized for any insult that he may have caused but reaffirmed that “I do not believe I have ever said that it is important to collect the art of white men. I have said that it is important that we do not exclude consideration of the art of white men.”
If that is truly the full extent of Garrels’ offensive comments, the only thing more surprising than the language of the petition was its obvious success. We previously discussed quotas imposed for the gender of subjects shown in art as raising the same underlying controversy.
Garrels was criticized for accepting major pieces of art because the artists were not minorities. This includes an agreement with Gap founders Donald and Doris Fisher to take on their 1,100-piece collection of modern art.
I am less concerned about the ultimate merits as I am with the absence of support for these allegations against someone who has served the museum and the art community for so many years. Rather than offer specifics, Garrel was attacked as a white supremacist and racist. As has become a common feature in such attacks, his arguments were dismissed as “dog whistles” for other racists. The campaign was successful as have many such campaigns on college campuses.
When I lived in DC the second time, my job allowed me to have lunch at the National Gallery in the basement cafeteria. After lunch, I and some friends would go upstairs and sit before Salvador Dali’s “Sacrament of the Last Supper,” we called it “Dali’s Dinner.” It is a truly magical painting and sitting before it in silence was an excellent respite after lunch. No person who has ever enjoyed art would think of restricting museums only to certain races of artists. I agree with Prairie Rose. None of the losers whom the left is allowing to dictate the rules care anything about art or anything else except their unearned moment of power over people who are not yet willing to fight back.
“None of the losers whom the left is allowing to dictate the rules care anything about art or anything else except their unearned moment of power over people who are not yet willing to fight back.”
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Maybe. But I think their goal is to destroy Western culture in any of its manifestations. Controlling a museum, destroying a statue, burning a church (but not a mosque), corrupting the rule of law, are all part of the same diseased package. They will not stop.
Honest– I envy your time in front of the Dali.
The NGA will partially reopen next week, limiting occupancy via timed ticket entry. No word yet on when the Smithsonian will reopen. The last exhibit that I got to at the NGA before it temporarily closed was an interesting video work in the East Building using thermal radiation photography: https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2019/richard-mosse-incoming.html
There is also a demand to ‘decolonize’ libraries by removing white authors.
That should leave a lot of empty shelves for African art objects. Librarians can be replaced with dusters.
Young– I’m sure you know this but the demand to “decolonize” our libraries actually came from an article published on the PBS website, an organization that has promoted racism of this type for years. Remember how they always covered for anything Obama did? To the author’s and PBS’s way of thinking some old racist like Mark Twain does not deserve to be in our libraries. As noted above, since Obama is half-white I guess we should throw out his book as well.
“since Obama is half-white I guess we should throw out his book as well.”
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Throw out at least half his book.
I didn’t know that this insane ‘decolonization’ notion came from PBS but it does not surprise me.
The fact is that Africans have contributed essentially nothing to the rise of civilization. I don’t think any part of black Africa has independently invented writing, math, or monumental buildings. American Indians have done, as well as Asians and Europeans. Africa– nothing! And if we ‘decolonize’ the West that is what we will end up with–nothing.
Throw out half his book.
honestlawyer – Bill Ayers wrote that first book and Favreau wrote the 2nd one. Both are white, so yes, they must go.
Sprec Frei or forever hold your piece.
PS – was at The Getty a couple of years ago and it was the same story. Everything had been filtered through the lens of woke agenda. We could stop it, but it would mean acting like actual grown-ups.
James – I love both the Gettys. Hate to take them off my list. Been to the Norton Simon lately?
That’s a shame. When I went to the Getty a few years back it was still devoted to excellence. Same with the Getty Villa which was extraordinary.
Young – I really like the thoughtful design of the new Getty Villa. I just wish it wasn’t located where it is. I keep driving by it every time. 😉
The design is based on a Roman villa in Herculaneum that was destroyed by Vesuvius. I think it is known as the House of the Scrolls because many carbonized scrolls from a large library were discovered there. First attempts to unroll them failed and now some effort is being made to recover the words by modern scanning techniques. If it succeeds it may be some famous, but lost, great works can be recovered. I hope so. Of course if the ‘decolonizers’ get there they may just be stomped into dust.
Young – last time we were there we took ALL the tours. It was information overload. I particularly like the wall as you come in that looks like layers of earth that they dug through. Exhibits are always fantastic, I am glad the Villa has been split from the Getty main so it can focus on ancient art.
We can stop it but will mean organization according to explicitly stated shared white American racial interests just as they have the NAACP and so forth, we must now have our own explicit leadership and representatives. Not just that but also implicit organization and leadership and resistance but the overt explicit white defense of our right to exist both individually and socially as a group must happen now or we will end up liquidated. This is happening very fast and you have to wake up. I realize this is a class taboo upwardly mobile white people have been taught at all costs never sound like a racist.
But I break this taboo and spit upon it and say, you must break it too now to survive. I do not mean metaphorical survival. I mean literal physical survival.
This might have been histrionics when the white segregationists were saying it in 1964. But now? Now, it’s not histronics, it’s history, unfolding before our eyes.
Look at Zimbabwe or South Africa or Baltimore to see where this leads if not stopped.
Mr. Kurtz,
“We can stop it but will mean organization according to explicitly stated shared white American racial interests”
I completely disagree. The interests of free people, no matter your racial or sexual or whatever background, is of the highest import. Focusing on race leads us only back to the violence and narrowmindedness of tribalism.
Come to think of it, I saw a Getty exhibit on Mesoamerican culture and they couldn’t quite bring themselves to admit that some of the things on display related to human sacrifice. I saw it as a failure if the intention was to accurately portray those cultures.
Aztecs, bloodthirsty genocidists of many tribes, some of which are lost to history. But not just them! Mayans too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_pre-Columbian_cultures
Cortez, we need men like that today
One of the first things Cortez did on landing was free hundreds of people in pens waiting to be sacrificed.
Yes, the Mayans, too. Visit Yucatan and you can see a lot of evidence of human sacrifice carved on their monuments.
See Bernal Diaz, “The Conquest of New Spain”. Her was there.
It’s because the Bay has been coopted by wealthy millennials, plain and simple. Why is this still so confusing to people, particularly JT, who sees it everyday on campus? Synapse failure or deep denial?
That’s right James. The big tall money is what set all this in motion. This is a planned crisis to intimidate and destroy the American middle class, engineered by plutocrats like George Soros. Flat out, simple as that. Globalism versus nationalism., them versus us.
They have unleashed physical violence on us, and if the American government is any friend of the people at all, it must return violence for violence against these plutocrats.
Again, the complainers at the museum are damaged goods. If the management accommodates damaged goods, you’ll get more displays of their damage. Employee grievances should be about working conditions, not about institutional policy. What’s your business in a work setting is your job. (And the substance of their complaint is humbug).
So sick of all this and the tired “dog whistle” crap. Art should be blind as to the race of the artist. Same as acting, which is why I quit watching the Oscars (and judging based on any winning) because art of all kinds shouldn’t be judged or rewarded (or bought/displayed, as in this case) because of race. How ludicrous!
I was just going to say, this could be excerpted from a treatise on the AB. And true enough, in jail, and during forced busing, the normal tribal reaction is to bond according to race. That’s not where the exceptional happens though…, and in each of these circumstances there are counterintuitive examples that you’re missing by a wide mark in your screed, Kurtz.
In fact, the difference in today’s demonstrations of BLM and 5 yrs ago BLM is the back up of other groups added to the mix. Will it stay that way? Let’s hope it turns out to be 2 steps forward, one back. Infighting? Certainly. The goal of any social movement though? Move the world one inch and then defend that one inch against the inevitable backlash. In fact, that’s what we’re seeing with the post Obama – Trumpism dynamic. Good thing Trump is flaming out after just one term.
What wonderful common sense for psychopaths. Move one step forward by killing people, destroying business and homes, destroying places of worship, and making the lives of many more miserable in the years to come. What have they accomplished? Certainly not better race relations except perhaps the father in NYC that lost a one year old to violence. Maybe he will better understand the devastation that occurs when psychopaths lead the mob.
On the other hand Trump has done wonderful things including the best employment figures for blacks and hispanics. A better economy so that families can prosper.and a whole host of other things. The psychopaths are really inflamed by such successes even if they are good at using spellcheck.
Sorry, I have only one sentence to spare for idiots.
Bugfest:
Judging by what I see, you don’t have that either.
Messmeister: I tried to pare it down for you but could only go so far.
Bugged:
For you, that’s a magna opus.
Did you mean this instead?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/magnum%20opus
…And that one sentence is …..Duh.
Sorry for Garrels, but he is just another casualty of the left’s fascism
They are forcing a choice – us or them.
The left wants to destroy American values and are willing to risk civil war (probably short of actual conflict) to achieve it.
Great. Make the choices absolutely clear as we pick sides.
America or cultural revolution.
“The art world has now been swept into this disturbing trend where critics label any opposing views as racist and demand the removal of anyone who questions their demands.”
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Disturbing? Try “dangerous.” Why is anyone surprised? You have a death cult refusing to grant any divergence from their world view. We have a few adherents here who begin every comment “Bad Trump did it.” Death cults always die by their own hand or with lots of help. Bring on the reckoning.
So maybe ‘diversity’ isn’t so great after all. Not, at least, if it goes only one way which, of course, it will.
diversity is great for consumer choice at restaurants and bookstores.
diversity in society is a ticking time bomb ready to blow a nation to bits
Right now, it’s already exploded, and the question is do we get it together in time to avoid being liquidated or not.
Here’s a great book I am reading. It’s called Masters of the Yen. It’s a book of economics. But it shows how fast engineered crisis can bring about massive social change.
That is happening NOW. We do not know where it leads but the big money, yes, Baba Yaga Geo Soros, makes it clear he wants an end to the nation state and unlimited flow of capital and labor across national boundaries.
globalism = unlimited flows of capital and labor and goods across national boundaries
What would that mean, once implemented?
The national boundaries that protect us from being sunk into the state of a third world nation would be gone; third world labor would come here by tens of millions; the US Dollar would fall and be replaced by an IMF SDR perhaps; deindustrialization and offshoring would start up again right where they left off when Donald was elected; and we would be on the road to ruin very very fast
See, Geo Soros, a naturalized American mega billionaire nation wrecker, could care less how we end up. He has security teams 24/7. You and I will never be able to afford that– we need law and order, and that means, we need police.
Now you understand why they want to defund the police? They want more crime, more chaos, more ruin, because the objective is to intimidate us into surrender, en route to this globalism that will literally destroy the United States as a viable political state if it is allowed.
Hence we are already in a state of civil war with these cunning destroyers. It will be them or us, and it will and must get physical. The American CIA if it was really on the side of America, would be assassinating the enemies of our people. Of course, one wonders, if CIA is perhaps not entirely in their pockets already, and maybe it always was.
That matters little right now. There is one dynamic now which stands out. Law and order versus chaos. Defunding police is the dividing line.
The police right now should be fully defended by our side, not de-funded. They want to defund, we want to defend.
Law and order is everything right now. The police must see who are their allies. Because they will be our foot soldiers if we go to the next phase.
They will be looking for work, and we can give it to them.
“diversity in society is a ticking time bomb ready to blow a nation to bits”
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That is the type of ‘diversity’ I was saying is not so great. In fact, it is a disaster when ‘diversity’ preempts merit and a civil society.
“The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”
– Alexander Hamilton
The Taliban has arrived in America.
Been here since the 60s.
another example of the growing Far Left fascism in our society…but also an indicator of an ominous anti-White sentiment
Did the mob forget that many w/m artists are gay?
That seems true and interesting. Can the gay gene(s) confer talent? Just wondering.
Young – no, you are just a talentless gay.
I am the boy who is saying “the emperor has no close” All of the nonsense from the left is going to destroy this nation. Pick a side, America or the left. You can’t be supportive of both.
This is/was an excellent museum. I am now going to have to take it off my list of museums to revist. SFMOMA would not be what it is without its collection of great modern WHITE artists.
His colleagues and staff do not really love art. If they did, excellence would be valued and encouraged and desired no matter the artist’s background. The person’s background should not matter one whit–it is the quality of the art the person produces that matters.
Good point.
Since contemporary art is largely trash, it’s a reasonable wager that a great many people employed in museums do not value art.
TIA,
“Since contemporary art is largely trash, it’s a reasonable wager that a great many people employed in museums do not value art.”
Oh, my. That is too true!
Some curators have gotten rich buying art that would otherwise might never have been considered.
This is horrid.
Dreadful.
The cancel culture celebrates this win.
He should not have resigned.
Thank you again. Free speech and expression is one of my most important topics. Your vigil on these battlefields, especially in the arts and universities, is huge and gratefully appreciated.