Hasta La Ideas

You’d think that with UN no-fly sanctions, doing battle with rebel forces trying to oust his command, and generally being one of the more unpopular people of the day, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi would have more pressing matters than his wardrobe. But you’d be absolutely wrong. The NY Times features and online director of the paper’s T Magazine, Horacio Silva, recently received this utterly bizarre letter, supposedly from a member of Libya’s Minister for Culture and Ethnic Affairs office, asking if he would like to come visit Tripoli to see Gaddafi’s stockpile of clothing. According to the letter, the “dear leader” is worried that his famously-colorful clothes will be damaged by bombs and that, were Mr. Silva to come, he might then be able to convince the Metropolitan Museum of Art to curate “a stylish retrospective of his fashion highlights” in their Costume Institute. No, not a lot of it makes sense, so of course we’re inclined to believe it’s true (even after we were so badly hoaxed with that clever Home Depot prank). Either way, it’s a wonderfully bizarre letter, which Silva has posted in full. Here’s a bit:

Indeed many of his clothes have featured in global magazines from the hundreds of state visits and functions he has hosted over the years fro world leaders. All of whom are in agreement, ahumdullillah, that our President is one of the very best dressed men of the last half century. It is not only African and Arab leaders who have been influenced by his style and substance but many western rock stars and celebrities have also been won over by the Gaddafi look: most notably Michael Jackson in the 1980′s copied the signature motif military style of our leader to great chart success on his own terms.

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Remember all that hemming and hawing, less than a month before the Wojnarowicz-Gate, pulled-art story broke, about how the Smithsonian was going to have their annual budget slashed to oblivion and would be forced to start charging a weirdly-specific entrance fee of $7.50 per visitor? Turns out that seems relatively all show, as details of their appropriation from Congress have now been released. While there have been some cuts (according to Bloomberg, these are largely “a small reduction for salaries and expenses”), it seems far short than the dire situation predicted a few months back. Last year the organization received $761.4 million. This year, they’ll receive $759.6 million, a difference of $1.8 million. Here’s a bit more on where some of that money will be going:

National Museum of American History: $18 million to convert the parking garage into useable space for collections storage (swing space) during the next renovation phase (west wing).

National Museum of Natural History: $16.6 million to replace the 40-year-old mechanical and electrical systems and continue replacing windows in the main building.

Smithsonian Environmental Research Center: $8.2 million for a laboratory and support facility to replace temporary trailers that have deteriorated.

National Zoo: $11.4 million for continued infrastructure work, repairs of the seals and sea lions pool and renovation of a training and education center at the Zoo’s facility in Front Royal, Va.

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum: $9 million for renovation of the Carnegie Mansion that houses the museum, including replacing the main elevator and upgrading the building’s systems.

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Last summer, you might recall that the city of Boston made a move that looked to be capitalizing on the then yet-to-be-determined, widespread popularity of the Tea Party activist movement by announcing plans to build a new Boston Tea Party Museum (honoring the original event, not the current incarnation). Three parties would be tasked the raise the $25 million needed to build the museum (or rather, rebuild, as the original burnt down in 2001 and then it burnt down again when they tried rebuilding in 2007), a collaboration between the city, the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority and the company, Historic Tours of America. That was a hefty price tag to begin with, but as the Boston Herald reports, it was originally intended to cost just $9 million and has since shot up another $3 million since last summer’s announcement, bringing it in currently at roughly $27 million to finish by next year. What’s more, the paper reports that a healthy chunk of that money is coming from both state and federal aid, or even being diverted from other government spending, like $3 million from a fund originally “slated for affordable housing.” The Herald, perhaps trying to give the story’s angle a bit of a nudge, mention early on that this direct government funding doesn’t exactly cotton to current Tea Party members’ worldview of less spending. They even talk to the head of the local chapter, who says, “The government shouldn’t be involved in something like this, in any way.”

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Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art‘s Art in the Streets exhibition was finally announced late last month and is set to open this weekend, but that isn’t to say the heat on museum director Jeffrey Deitch has faded. You’ll perhaps recall the last few months of various forms of fallout following Deitch’s decision to immediately paint over a mural by street artist Blu that the museum itself had commission but found too controversial for their tastes once it was nearly finished. Murals popped up depicting director-as-dictator and a handful of protests made the news, among other incidents of people socially expressing their distaste for Deitch’s move. Now we have a favorite from the movement against the decision, the recently launched “Red Sticker Campaign” by Nick Douglas and his MOCA-latte group. How it works: write in to the site, or check in soon at local stores who will be carrying them, and you’ll receive a batch of stickers that read “APPROVED” or “DISAPPROVED.” When you see a piece of street art that needs judgment, you can act like your very own LA MoCA director by deciding the merits of the work and stickering as you see fit. After you’ve made your decision, snap a photo and send it in to the site for their gallery (you might enjoy seeing that Mr. Brainwash seems not to be receiving much approval). It’s a terrific response to the Deitch debacle and we wish the project all the best. Here’s a bit from their excellent manifesto (because every worthwhile organization should have one):

Street art is a populist form of art. It is free. It is in the public space. MOCA is a publicly owned museum. Curating art holds a public trust. Culture is sifted, ranked, established, and rejected on behalf of the community by its curators. I’d like to ask, why not make this process a referendum? Let’s all vote for ourselves! There is so much art in the streets, I propose that we give Deitch a hand by personally curating the street art of Los Angeles on our own. Maybe he’ll even be interested to know how we vote. It’s our art, the public’s art that he is ensconcing into the history of art, it’s our museum he’s revitalizing, …or not.

Just a thought: how soon do you think these will start appearing in the exhibition itself? We give it two hours.

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Still haven’t made the journey to Bartlesville, Oklahoma to check out Frank Lloyd Wright‘s “prairie skyscraper“? Let us add yet another reason: a symposium devoted to architect Bruce Goff, the subject of an exhibition on view through May 1 at the Price Tower Arts Center, nestled in the base of the aforementioned Wright masterpiece. The day-long confab (free of charge and open to the public) is set for Saturday, April 23, at the Bartlesville Public Library and will explore Goff’s architecture, teaching philosophy, and legacy through a series of presentations by historians, architects, and museum professionals. The theory-flavored morning begins with a look at creativity and the organic architecture of Goff, and then Sidney K. Robinson, associate professor emeritus of art history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a faculty member at Taliesin, will compare Goff’s thinking with that of Frank Lloyd Wright through three points of comparison: music, waterfalls, and their plans for the Heurtley House site in Oak Park, Illinois. Later talks will focus on Goff’s paintings and his relationship to the modern organic interior. After lunch, things take a turn for the practical. Attendees will get a peek at the making of three-dimensional animations of Goff’s projects, his teaching methods, as well as the technology used to recreate the architect’s work for the current Price Tower exhibition, “Bruce Goff: A Creative Mind.”

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