NuMu: raise money. live better.

Personally, I love it when the art world argues amongst itself. It’s like when comedians use self-deprecating humor to seem less smug and pompous, but for some reason the art world does it to be more smug and pompous. Recently, William Powhida (the Gary Larson of the art world) made this comic completely bashing the New Museum.

BAM! Take that multi-million dollar institution.

It ran on the cover of the Brooklyn Rail, which you don’t read if you live outside Brooklyn and its probably actually safer that way. Basically Powhida takes the NuMu to task for not actually showing new artists (NuMu recently debuted a mid-career retrospective on Elizabeth Peyton a figurative painter renowned since the 1990s), showing the same crap on crap art that the gallery scene has been touting for years, and most importantly acting as a safe haven for big-time collectors and gallerists.

It’s this last point that is most important to Powhida, and which maybe difficult to understand if you are not up to date on tax law and/or contemporary art collecting practices, oh you’re not? Read on. Museums depend on donations from art buyers to build their collections. Ever walk around the museum looking at the title cards of the art works and read, “By Generous Donation of Mr. Joe Schmo” and wonder, why the heck would someone buy a piece of art only to donate it to the museum? This is why, because the owner gets to write off the fair market value of that piece of art work. Cha-Ching! (Also here it’s important to note that artists don’t get the same preferential treatment when they decide to donate their work to group shows or auctions.) It’s whats called a Win Win Win WIN! situation. First, the artist/gallery gets to sell their work, and pay their bills. Second, the art collector gets to support the humanities and acquire an investment (they can sell the art once the artist blows up or dies, which could be the same thing for artists dealing with explosives). Third the museum gets to build its collection. Finally the collector gets to make some of that investment back come tax season.

Seem kind of corrupt? Read on. Say you are a collector (Hi collector!) and find a new artist you really like (Hi new artist I really like!). You get in on the ground level, purchasing all the animatronic horse heads from the artists graduate thesis at CMU. Awesome, big score! Now you need to off your collection (because honestly its not the type of thing you want lying around your house). You need to get some museums interested so you can collect some tax breaks from your investment. So you get the kid some shows, get some buzz going around them, and next thing you know, NuMu is calling asking you to donate “Smug Pun Title #IV”. End of story? Not quite. Your friends see what your doing and want in. They buy up all the art CMU student’s have done since graduation, upping the value of yours, and the art world starts to notice. “Hey who is this next big thing at NuMu? Why are all these important people buying their art? We want some of this art! This is really good and important!” they all scream. Next thing you know you are making it rain outside Sotheby, knee deep in hookers and blow after selling “Smug Pun Title IV”, “Untitled (Title)”, and a sweet of etchings a CMU graduate did based on his dads Playboy collection.

Need to shower? I’ll hold up…. Oh that felt nice didn’t it?

This is how it works, and its a practice as old as the art museum itself. This practice is also what is responsible for the “anything you can do I can do worse” mentality permeating through out the contemporary art world. It’s like art collectors are acting like a group of friends that like to impress each other with which one of them can find the most terrible ironic ugliest sweater from the goodwill store. I don’t want to make the collectors seem like the only bad people in this game however, as the artist’s definitely play along too. I mean Robert Mapplethorpe owes his whole entire career, life, persona, legend, etc. to the time or two he blew Sam Wagstaff.

My problem with the New Museum isn’t exactly this practice, thats going to go on whether I say something about it or don’t, because really Bruce Tennyson doesn’t have that much clout or money to stop it. My problem is the New Museum. The whole idea around is like watching the art world jerk itself off, which, SURPRISE!, isn’t really all that great to see. Its like when artists call themselves post modern. You fucking can’t call yourself that. History decides what to call you, and history decides whats worthy and important enough to go into a museum. The New Museum can’t exist, its an idea thats not obtainable. We can have a “Contemporary Art Museum” that shows only art of the last decade or so (see Elizabeth Peyton) but a “New Museum” is just dumb.

Listen, don’t think I have a problem with new art… I don’t, I absolutely love new art, but thats what galleries are for. For my money, nothing is funner than bundling up on a cool crisp fall day and lazily walking around Chelsea, River North, or Queen Street and seeing some of the funnest, dumbest, most thought provoking, senseless, beautiful, ugly, simplistic, complicated art being produced today. It just pains me to think, someone wants to take some of that and turn it into something more like this.