Archives for September 2012

Kimerly Rorschach, incoming director of Seattle Art MuseumI don't know about you, but I've been compulsively checking the LA Times' Culture Monster to see if its ace arts-reporting team has uncovered anything about what happened at LA MOCA's special board meeting on Tuesday. (Okay, so you're probably not compulsively checking that site. That's what you've got CultureGrrl … [Read more...] about Rorschach Blot: AAMD President’s Implicit Endorsement of MOCA’s Jeffrey Deitch UPDATED

Ford BellPhoto by Lee RosenbaumFord Bell, president of the American Alliance (formerly "Association") of Museums, responds to AAM's New Name: Marketing Gambit Disguised as "Coming Together: The questions posed in your post on the newly re-named American Alliance of Museums deserve a response. The change in our name and the programmatic changes that we have announced represent … [Read more...] about BlogBack: AAM’s President, Ford Bell, Defends the New “Alliance”

Anne-Imelda Radice with Michael Conforti, director of the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, at the Clark's inclement 2008 ribbon-cutting ceremony for its Stone Hill Center Photo by Lee Rosenbaum A crucial missing ingredient for the American Folk Art Museum's recovery was a new permanent director. Now, more than a year after Maria Ann Conelli left the building and … [Read more...] about American Folk Art Museum Names Anne-Imelda Radice As Director

Toddler's safety gate? No, it's the rebranded AAM's new logo.From the information released today, it appears that last week's mysterious morphing of the American Association of Museums into the American Alliance of Museums is a membership drive and marketing campaign dressed up in new clothing (topped off with a jazzy new logo).AAM's webpage that explains the change is titled: … [Read more...] about AAM’s New Name: Marketing Gambit Disguised as “Coming Together”

I already outed the former American Association of Museums' "stealth name change" in a CultureGrrl post last week. Now Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums (CFM) has published some coy hints about the substance behind this rebranding, which AAM will formally announce tomorrow. Merritt's foreshadowing today of tomorrow's AAM announcement … [Read more...] about AAM’s Stealth Reinvention: Herding the Cats

I don't think that even the most ardent art-lings would regard arts support as the litmus test for supporting a Presidential candidate. Still, when it comes to the Culture Test, the Republican Party platform (which I discussed last week) flunks and its standard-bearer has repeatedly announced his intention to eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and PBS. By … [Read more...] about Cultural Politics: Democratic Platform Commits to Continuing Arts Support