12.22.09
A couple weeks ago, the Whitney Museum of American Art announced its lineup for the upcoming 2010 biennial. The Portland artist Storm Tharp will be included, following the selection of MK Guth in 2008. The outside validation for an artist like Tharp or Guth marks an important milestone in their careers. Additionally, their work has been collected by individuals across the country and has been featured in national publications. For me, this type of achievement becomes important in reinforcing my assessment of their work and underscores their importance as markers of this moment in the region's art history. The question for me is how does a collector or curator weight this present-day judgment in five, ten, or a hundred years?
10.2.09
Because A Concise History of Northwest Art is composed of works almost entirely from Tacoma Art Museum's permanent collection, it is important to acknowledge that there are many notable artists missing. The development of the studio glass and ceramics movements is only briefly addressed. Additionally, artists from British Columbia and Alaska are underrepresented because Tacoma Art Museum only last year expanded its definition of Northwest art to include these areas.
In the historical period the survey would include Edward Curtis, Sarah Ladd, Harriet Foster Beecher, Abby Hill, Kyo Koike, the extensive group of Northwest impressionists, Harry Wentz, Kamekichi Tokita, Malcolm Roberts, Emily Carr, Lance Hart, Minor White, and Russell Lee.
In the contemporary period (defined as roughly 1960 to the present), these artists and many others would be included in a comprehensive history of the art of the Northwest: Anne Appleby, Deborah Butterfield, Michael Dailey, MK Guth, Gary Hill, Jim Hodges, Denzil Hurley, Mel Katz, Ed and Nancy Keinholz, Sherrie Markovitz, Roy McMakin, Nancy Mee, Josiah McElheny, Frank Okada, Henk Pander, Terry Toedtemeier, and artists associated with the "Vancouver School" (notably Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham, and Ken Lum).
We invite your participation in composing this list. Please, post your suggestions of other artists who have defined the art of the Northwest.
09.30.09
Once my colleague Margaret and I started to think about this exhibition, it became apparent that one of the most daunting challenges was to distill half a century of artistic development into a single arc while trying to allow space for an open, meaningful, and long-term dialogue about art in the region since 1960. Trying to present this arc in a single exhibition will generate a tangle of interrelated critical issues. I hope to test drive my beliefs and expectations about quality, ambition, stature, influence, and impact. What other factors will ensure that an artist is remembered as a central part of the story of Northwest art?
09.30.09
This exhibition was a huge challenge. How do you boil down 100+ years of art history into a coherent story? I made a lot of lists, a LOT of lists, talked with colleagues and collectors, debated and argued with my co-curator, Rock. Ultimately I had to let go of the idea that I could talk about all of it—this was going to be one particular story focusing on key figures and major art movements. But this blog allows us to open up the discussion to other threads through this history. Who would you add? Are you curious about why one artist and not another?
