REVIEW OF MADE IN LA AT THE HAMMER MUSEUM it’s okay that the artists are all white, even the nonwhite artists (2?) are kind of white it’s okay that the curators are all white, it’s okay that the l.a. reflected in this show is like the l.a. in robert altman’s “shortcuts” which is a strange all-white l.a. (in charlton heston’s “omega man,” (1971) i think the head vampire or whatever they were who was menacing the ‘real’ last human beings on earth, that is the humans who were not vampires or whatever (all white, except maybe the black woman hipster with her militant afro) was black) let’s not go into “planet of the apes” at this juncture, but in the apartheid imagination of the future white people are in peril, isolated with jutting jaw of manifest destiny determination like charlton heston with his guns and his alzheimer’s it’s okay that the curators at the ucla hammer museum think that ‘minorities’ are best represented by white queer artists (that shows diversity like on “star trek” the aliens are white people who wear prosthetic make-up or paint their skin blue or green—that’s a kind of diversity) it’s okay that the white artists who are queer artists don’t have anything to do with POC (people of color) it’s okay in the little museum labels where the curators note the background, issues and ideas in the artist’s work, that none of it referenced POC even when it mentioned “highest rates of incarceration in the world in spite of having only 5% of the worlds population” (it’s okay not to mention that blacks and latinos make up 60% of the incarcerated even though they are 30% of the american people) it’s okay it’s all right, like when i sat in one day in marilyn robinson’s mfa writing class at the university of iowa and she shared her course reading list which was all white except for one book by the only black writer and only POC in creative writing at U of I, and she asked did anyone have any remarks or suggestions, and i said, apart from the one, the reading list isn’t very diverse, it’s all white robinson didn’t answer, she just smiled and white students (maybe i was the only nonwhite in the room) said, “it’s a very diverse list, already” and “yes, for example, look at all the women writers” and “and kafka,” one added and robinson just smiled and i left that’s all right it’s okay that was in 1994, 20 years ago it’s okay 20 years later to walk through the ucla hammer museum through an all white show when i was a kid i thought maybe american apartheid would slowly change and now we have a black president who does everything white presidents do he does everything just like them, all his policies are the same—he’s like colin powell and in the 1990s i felt like things could change, maybe but now i see white thinking’s not changing and this exhibit and the exhibits at every other museum in the city show this, but it’s all right because the ucla hammer museum curated and hosted “now dig this! art and black los angeles 1960 – 1980” which exhibited from october 2011 to january 2012 so it’s okay, because “black los angeles” had its day it had the one exhibit it has black history month every year it had wanda coleman (in those days) so it’s okay that all the official museums in l.a. show white art all the time it’s okay because you can go to the “california african american museum” if you want to see art by POC or you can drive to long beach to the museum of latin american art, or the l.a. county museum of art probably has one or two frida kahlos or diego riveras and some great precolombian ceramics so it’s okay if the all the other museums like lacma and moca and etc. show white art at all times asco had it’s one lacma show “asco: the elite of the obscure, a retrospective 1972 – 1987” on exhibition from sept. 2011 to december 2011, so it’s okay they had that one one is good, now we can go back to our regularly scheduled programming like after a public service announcement it’s okay that the apartheid imagination remains in place and is not disrupted thank you that reassurance is like walking on a broken toe gas-board-echolot sesshu foster alhambra, ca
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 20:59:37 +0000
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