DC Museum Report
Wrapping up my stay in Washington, DC, here’s a report on the museums. The National Gallery has a Dan Flavin show. Even if you have seen his fluorescent light works in Marfa, Texas or at Dia:Beacon this exhibition is worthwhile. My favorite piece is “untitled (honor of Harold Joachim) 3″, a corner installation that graces the cover of Dan Flavin: The Complete Lights. The new National Museum of the American Indian has a temporary show of George Morrison wood collages. Morrison was a 20th century Chippewa artist. The cafeteria is fantastic. The rest of the American Indian museum is worth seeing in the sense that a train wreck is fascinating. The project cost more than $220 million and is kind of a sick supersized parody of Frank Lloyd Wright’s NY Guggenheim. There is a huge cylindrical atrium that is basically empty and that barely relates to the exhibits, which are well off to the side in dark claustrophobic galleries. The artwork and artifacts are dimly lit and crammed into crowded display cases. Compared to the anthropology museum in Mexico City or the average American Indian museum in Oklahoma or South Dakota this new Smithsonian is a depressing example of the current state of American non-profit organization management. It reminds one of the disappointing Udvar-Hazy Air and Space annex at Dulles Airport, where nearly $1 billion seems to have been invested in the kind of museum that Polynesian cargo cultists might have built. I.e., a lot of interesting objects (airplanes) are displayed but the assumption is that they can’t be understood or explained.
[Update: Ellis Vener just emailed a photo that he snapped of Alex in the back seat.]
