The ArtsBeat blog, home since 2007 to our bite-sized coverage of art, theater, literature, classical music and film, has reached the end of its road. From now on, updated and improved bloggy coverage of the arts from Buffalo News critics Jeff Simon, Mary Kunz Goldman and Jeff Miers, along with arts writer Colin Dabkowski and literary blogger R.D. Pohl, can be found on the new Gusto blog. Thanks for being loyal readers of ArtsBeat, and please join us over at the Gusto blog for a new series of regular features and updates on the local arts and cultural scene.
New York State Assemblyman Sam Hoyt. Buffalo News file photo / Derek Gee.
Much more to come on Erie County Executive Chris Collins' decision last week to slash funding for all but 10 local cultural groups. But I wanted to post some comments made today by Assemblyman Sam Hoyt at a press conference protesting yet more funding cuts (this time from the New York State Council on the Arts) to local arts education groups. Here's what Hoyt had to say (audio of Hoyt's comments is also posted above):
As a state assembly member who represents a good portion of the city of Buffalo, I can say that it appears to be an assault on the city. I did an inventory of those organizations whose funding was cut and I’d say about 95 percent of the organizations who received funding cuts were in the city of Buffalo. I hope that the mayor of Buffalo and that the county legislators who represent the City of Buffalo will stand up and express their outrage as well. Again, there isn’t a person in this room who doesn’t acknowledge that during tough times, we all have to tighten our belts. As we said about the main topic of this discussion today, when New York City is receiving virtually 100 percent funding and the City of Buffalo is receiving a 69 percent cut, that’s unacceptable.
Secondly, on top of that, the dramatic, draconian cuts that Mr. Collins has proposed for these arts organizations is the most short-sighted thing I’ve seen from this county executive, and there’s been a lot since he became county executive. Why? Because we’ve watched, over the years, our city struggle. We’ve watched the manufacturing base leave, we’ve watched our economy in a downward spiral. We’ve watched the population flee this city. And one of the most consistent and steady and stable, positive forces in the City of Buffalo is its extraordinary arts and cultural environment. It’s not just recognized here in this room; it’s not just recognized in New York State. It’s recognized nationally and internationally.
That a city of our size can have the incredible inventory and collection of magnificent arts and cultural organizations, large and small, large and small, is really something that we need to embrace, celebrate, promote and invest in. And to divest now, as has been done at the county level and at the state level through these arts in education programs, is at the very least short-sighted, at worst disastrous. Because we’re recognized as an extraordinary center of a healthy and vibrant and prospering arts and cultural community. And to strip that away, which is what you do when you cut the funding? The age old question of, 'Whoever the last one out is, please turn out the lights,' will be answered.
This morning on WECK 1230, Loraine O'Donnell interviewed a number of people on the Western New York cultural scene about Erie County Executive Chris Collins' recent decision to cut funding for 33 local cultural groups (including myself).
County Executive Chris Collins. Buffalo News file photo.
Today, the cultural community of Western New York awoke to some of the worst news it's seen in years. County Executive Chris Collins announced that he would cut cultural funding completely for 31 small and mid-sized arts organizations in his 2011 budget. For some background, read Matt Spina's story here and look for my column, which will appear in Sunday's Spotlight section.
One point that needs to be made right off the bat about Collins' move has to do with Beyond/In Western New York, the mammoth international art exhibition which kicked off last weekend. This is a project that grew out of a collaboration among small, medium and large cultural organizations across Western New York, and which has already drawn large number of cultural tourists to the area and promises to continue doing so throughout its three-month run.
It was a genuinely democratic project that Collins supported with county dollars. (UPDATE: That money, which Collins said he had pledged in a June interview, was not provided. Collins spokesperson Grant Loomis said that the county money was contingent on Beyond/In Western New York organizers getting funding from the City of Buffalo, which the organization was not able to secure.) But it would never have been imaginable, much less possible, without county funding for small and mid-size galleries like Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, El Museo Gallery, Buffalo Arts Studio, Squeaky Wheel and many other groups that use vital county dollars to leverage and pull in support from outside funding sources.
To many, this smacks just ever so slightly of hypocrisy, and seems to be yet another example of how Western New York politicians find innovative ways to shoot themselves in the foot and stunt the region's potential growth. As Hallwalls curator John Massier put it in a Facebook status update:
"Last Friday, I stood on the observation deck at City Hall and heard the Mayor make the point that there were NO HOTEL ROOMS available for the coming weekend, as a result of the Beyond/In WNY 2010 project, clear evidence of the value of cultural activityy. Five days after the Mayor gave us two thumbs up, the County Executive has given us the finger."
In adavance of this year's mammoth, region-wide exhibition of art known as "Beyond/In Western New York," organizers took a trip down to New York City to meet with some members of the media. Those efforts are beginning to pay dividends for the regional arts exhibition with international aspirations, as today, the Wall Street Journal included the show on a very short list of art exhibitions to watch for this season.
"Beyond/In" appears next to the Metropolitan Museum's Khubilai Khan exhibition, a show on Alexander the Great at Amsterdam's Hermitage Museum, "Art of the Americas" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and an exhibition of work by the painter Wayne Thiebaud in the Crocker Museum in Sacramento, Calif.
Here (with the note that the exhibition was advised, not organized, by Bruce Ferguson) is what the WSJ has to say about what it termed the "Great Lakes Biennial":
A sleeper hit of the fall art season could be the little-known biennial "Beyond/In Western New York," a survey of emerging artists living mainly in and around the Great Lakes region (which of course includes several other states). This is the same Rust Belt country that nurtured Ohioan Charles Burchfield. The biennial's organizer, Bruce Ferguson, was the founding director of another underrated U.S. biennial, "SITE Santa Fe." "Beyond/In" features more than 100 artists exhibiting new works in 25 venues such as Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Burchfield Penney Art Center. For the first time, the biennial also invited artists from outside the region; Do Ho Suh and Kai Althoff are among the many rising stars who signed up.
Artist Josh Turner hangs upside down from scaffolding in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery while executing a Sol LeWitt scribble drawing. Photos by Tom Loonan of the Albright-Knox.
The ongoing installation of Sol LeWitt's final commissioned wall drawing in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery ranks as one of the most technically intriguing and painstaking art-making processes we've witnessed in quite a while. The 2,200 square-foot scribble drawing, which will resemble a series of interconnected tubes by the time it is complete in October, is being meticulously executed by 16 artists (some local and some from the Connecticut studio where LeWitt worked until his death in 2007).
Thankfully for those interested in a day-by-day account of the drawing's progress, the Albright-Knox has launched a Tumblr blog that gives some juicy insights into the process and the people executing it. From personal reflections on the physically and mentally exhausting scribbling process from individual artists, to a fascinating account from Albright-Knox Curatorial Assistant Ilana Chlebowski on the mental process of scribbling under LeWitt's instructions, the Tumblr template provides a great way for a museum to interact with the public without resorting to high-faulutin curatorial wall text. It's kind of a low-effort blog -- a step up from the Facebook status update, but with pictures. I highly recommend following the process here.
A detail of the LeWitt drawing being executed in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
The Castellani Art Museum is extending its popular summertime show of photographs of North American ballparks by Jim Dow. The show, which I previewed here, will now run through Aug. 22.
For the above video, I asked several Infringers to recount their favorite moments of the festival's 11 days. The answers, as expected, range from strange to stranger. I've had a few favorite moments myself, one of which was watching Jack Topht perform a hilarious, 45-minute-long stream-of-consciousness storytelling session peppered with raps he'd written at SP@CE 224. Jack Topht does what's called "Awesome Rap," a not-very-widespread style of hip hop to which this graffiti scrawled on the wall of the Nietzsche's bathroom pays tribute:
Another fave moment, which involved a naked performance artist and a Mark Twain impersonator, I wrote about here.
It's utterly stunning -- just in case I have not been enthusiastic enough about it yet -- that this city supplies so many daring, restless and productive creative minds, and that there exists here an infrastructure to let them do their thing for free and with zero rules. It's great for them, certainly, but it's an even sweeter deal for the ambitious consumer of the arts, who had an almost endless supply of projects and performances to choose from over the past 11 days. The festival proper, as of 1 a.m. Monday, is over. But it's important to stress that many of the acts Infringement has showcased -- along with the art and, to an unfortunately lesser extent, the wacky, one-off theatrical projects -- are going on all year long, often in the same venues that hosted festival performances.
(Side note: The letter below was my "Self-Infringement" project, drawn at random from a box in Rust Belt Books, something I plan to work on in the wake of the festival. I'll report on my progress here. I'm thinking my skill should be juggling, but I'm open to suggestions.)
I've tried to get across a sense of just some of the acts and projects that caught my attention this year at the festival, but obviously what I've written about on this blog and in the newspaper hardly scratches the surface of what was on offer. Feel free to contribute your own favorite festival moment in the comments section of this blog. I'm sad it's over, but glad I had the chance to see a lot of intriguing new talents, some great stuff, and even some awful stuff. But ultimately, what I gained from the festival was a renewed faith in the creative potential of the city of Buffalo. And that faith was pretty strong in the first place.
Hope you all had a similarly gratifying experience, and until next year, Infringe on!
Buffalo loves competitions. And while I have my own reservations about the worth of such dubious distinctions as American Style Magazine's list of of America's "Top 25 Arts Destinations," or, for that matter, Forbes' list of America's "Most Miserable Cities," there's a new competition out there that Buffalo art lovers may find enticing.
Critic and art blogger Tyler Green has launched a good-natured contest in which Americans can vote for their favorite art spaces. He makes the important distinction that the competition is not about the "best" art museum or gallery, but simply the most beloved. On Green's widely read blog Modern Art Notes, he seeds the Albright-Knox Art Gallery at number 17 out of 64, right between Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In the first round of the competition, the Albright-Knox is up against New York City's Neue Galerie.
Karen Finley, the respected artist, performer, writer and provocateur who last performed at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center two years ago, returns on Wednesday to deliver a brand-new piece of experimental theater. Finley last performed in Buffalo in June, 2008, when she workshopped a piece called "Impulse to Suck," about the tribulations of the Eliot and Silda Wall Spitzer in the wake of the former governor's resignation. (Read a preview and review of that performance.)
Since Sept. 11, 2001, Finley explained, she has been fascinated with public grief and the figures who embody it. Hence her current project, "The Jackie Look," in which Finley adopts the persona of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis -- perhaps the most enduring example of the grieving American celebrity -- as a jumping-off point into a performance that has been variously described as "Roland Barthes in designer drag" and "a horror movie about women living public lives."
I called Finley far too late on Monday evening before she boarded her train to Buffalo this morning. She was kind enough not to hang up on me. Read our conversation below, and look for a review of "The Jackie Look" in Friday's Gusto.
