Post by Admin on Jun 15, 2020 10:51:56 GMT -5
Not new, but interesting read if you haven't seen it.
The Ringmaster: Is Charles Venable Democratizing a Great Art Museum in Indianapolis—or Destroying It?
Venable brought up the beer garden he’d opened on the museum’s grounds, and—once again pretending to be one of his detractors—said, “You care more about beer than you care about Matisse! And by the way, I’ve never been to Indiana.”
“And guess what,” [Josh] Ratliff, the sommelier, cut in. “Hoosiers do care more about beer than Matisse.”
“That’s true,” Venable said. “I would say more Americans care about beer. Our studies will tell you.”
Venable has his supporters and detractors.
For:
Newfields has its defenders. “Enjoy your art snobbery,” one letter writer retorted to critics in the Indianapolis Star. “We in Indianapolis don’t need your approval to know we have a fantastic art museum and beautiful Newfields campus to enjoy.”
and
“Museum is a dirty word,” said Matt Gutwein, who joined the IMA board in 2010 and remains a Newfields board member, explaining that it alienates many. He said that, in plotting the Newfields agenda, Venable and the board looked at everything they had—the museum’s collection, the gardens, the sprawling 100 Acres art park, historic homes—and thought, “How can we take full advantage of those assets to give really enriching experiences to those who visit?”
Against:
“I feel very comfortable saying that my vision doesn’t align with Venable’s” the contemporary art curator Sarah Urist Green told the local publication Nuvo in 2013 on her way out the door.
and
In a recent op-ed in Nuvo, Bill Watts, an English professor at nearby Butler University, termed Newfields a “nowhere name” and accused it of becoming “less a museum and more like an 18th-century pleasure garden.” Watts told me, “One of the painful things to me is that this is a marketing campaign that is driving an institution that should be driven by ideas, and by some sense of civic responsibility.”
Others in Indianapolis said they had concerns but declined to speak.
Is Indy and the surrounding area a large enough market to fully sustain Newfields without lowering the academic standard of experience museum purists are wanting?
Has your opinion changed any since this article first came out last year?
The Ringmaster: Is Charles Venable Democratizing a Great Art Museum in Indianapolis—or Destroying It?
Venable brought up the beer garden he’d opened on the museum’s grounds, and—once again pretending to be one of his detractors—said, “You care more about beer than you care about Matisse! And by the way, I’ve never been to Indiana.”
“And guess what,” [Josh] Ratliff, the sommelier, cut in. “Hoosiers do care more about beer than Matisse.”
“That’s true,” Venable said. “I would say more Americans care about beer. Our studies will tell you.”
Venable has his supporters and detractors.
For:
Newfields has its defenders. “Enjoy your art snobbery,” one letter writer retorted to critics in the Indianapolis Star. “We in Indianapolis don’t need your approval to know we have a fantastic art museum and beautiful Newfields campus to enjoy.”
and
“Museum is a dirty word,” said Matt Gutwein, who joined the IMA board in 2010 and remains a Newfields board member, explaining that it alienates many. He said that, in plotting the Newfields agenda, Venable and the board looked at everything they had—the museum’s collection, the gardens, the sprawling 100 Acres art park, historic homes—and thought, “How can we take full advantage of those assets to give really enriching experiences to those who visit?”
Against:
“I feel very comfortable saying that my vision doesn’t align with Venable’s” the contemporary art curator Sarah Urist Green told the local publication Nuvo in 2013 on her way out the door.
and
In a recent op-ed in Nuvo, Bill Watts, an English professor at nearby Butler University, termed Newfields a “nowhere name” and accused it of becoming “less a museum and more like an 18th-century pleasure garden.” Watts told me, “One of the painful things to me is that this is a marketing campaign that is driving an institution that should be driven by ideas, and by some sense of civic responsibility.”
Others in Indianapolis said they had concerns but declined to speak.
Is Indy and the surrounding area a large enough market to fully sustain Newfields without lowering the academic standard of experience museum purists are wanting?
Has your opinion changed any since this article first came out last year?