EMP hiring Christina Orr-Cahall as its next director did not go unnoticed by Seattle press: The Seattle Times published an interview earlier in the week (here), and the online-only Seattle PI managed a brief note, as did the Stranger.
Today, however, Tyler Green pointed out that Orr-Cahall was director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1989 and canceled the Robert Mapplethorpe show in response to outrage from Congress, led by Jesse Helms.
It was absolutely the wrong thing to do. She resigned in response to the chaos caused by her decision. (New York Times story here.) As Green noted,
The Corcoran — and in some ways the art world — still hasn’t recovered.
Orr-Cahall appears to have been a big success as director of the Norton Museum of Art for the last 19 years. (Story here.) Surely her life’s work cannot be defined by one false move.
But nobody in Seattle appears to have asked her about it. The Seattle Times’ reporter quoted her saying she was interested in the “whole visionary side” of museums and wanted to – wait for it – “push boundaries.”
“I knew I remembered something attached to her name,” wrote Jen Graves, acknowledging Green’s post. Me too. I glanced at the PI story and thought, hmmm. Where have I heard that name before? Neither of us sees EMP as our particular concern. We don’t cover it. Isn’t that somebody else’s job? Somebody, anybody?
The mark of tiny town journalism is, when something worth digging into happens, outsiders do it or it doesn’t get done.
I think that there is a sense among everyone who’s watched the EMP over the years that it simply does not matter. It was ill-conceived from the start and continues to embarrass with its irrelevance. Will any curator, good or bad, make much of a difference? But the question would have been a good one to ask all the same.
Ill conceived? Jim, you’re too polite. It’s a playtoy for a billion dollar boy who also exerted upon us a shiny new(and nearly empty trolly).
The most that can be said for these two enterprises is that one looks nice and the other looks, well, interesting.
Several years ago I had the pleasure of interviewing at the Norton Museum for a curatorial post, and during a private interview with Christina Orr-Cahall, I found her to be a person of uncommon graciousness and open-minded insight. Her entire staff, with whom I had interviewed earlier that same day, had already demonstrated the same. By late that afternoon, stepping into her spacious and comfortable offices overlooking Palm Beach, I found there no dullard but someone of uncommon perspicacity. I happen to have a background in classical music, something that she seemed to take into account very seriously, and this left me impressed by her appreciation of interdisciplinary thinking in both the academy and the museum—all too rare these days.
So perhaps this critical axe-grinding over her Corcoran debacle of over two decades ago would be more constructive if we thoughtfully revisited those heated contextual circumstances over simply seeking to “out” somebody who has, apparently, effectively moved forward and, for all we can tell, learned something constructive that she might now contribute to Seattle.
Best,
Gregory Galligan
Hello Gregory Galligan:
You advocate precisely what should have occurred. My point was not that journalists needed (your verb) to out her, but that we needed to ask the questions about what she learned.
That didn’t happen. Why? The Seattle PI has no staff at all, including, as far as I can tell, stringers. The Seattle Times has no art or music critic.
If the old PI were still in business, I assure you that we’d have raised the issue. There’s a kicking-around phase to a story like this. I would have been consulted, because she came from the Norton. I would have done the elementary checking, and she would have had a chance to discuss her past in light of her future plans.
Regina
Arts writers who have no one to write for can do nothing. EMP is stuck in some sort of limbo with an ill defined mission. EMP is only occasionally an Visual Arts Venue and not on the media screen.
So for goodness sake, interview her already! Best-GG