Latino Art Museum: Still a Bad Idea!

Eight years ago, when the story first surfaced in the Washington Post about a Latino Museum on the National Mall, I opposed it.

Back then, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) introduced the bill to set up a commission to study the idea’s feasibility. The museum would be based in Washington, around the National Mall and “might be under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Institution.”

According to the 2003 article by Jacqueline Trescott, “This is one issue that unites our community,” said Raul Yzaguirre, the president of the National Council of La Raza.

In 2008, the Washington Post updated the issue and reported that “President Bush

... signed legislation yesterday establishing a commission to study the feasibility of a National Museum of the American Latino.

The measure, part of a larger legislative package, creates a 23-member bipartisan panel that will give the president and Congress recommendations about the scope of the project.

Over a two-year period, it will consider the location, the cost of construction and maintenance, and the presentation of art, history, politics, business and entertainment in American Latino life.

Since we're still arguing about it, let me once again disagree and state for the record that this is one of the worst, most divisive artsy ideas to have come out of creative Congressional & Hollywood minds in years.

Why have a separate, segregated museum for Latinos? Why not get more Latinos into the national museums, period.

I note once again, the use of the word “Latino” as opposed to the now almost not PC term- “Hispanic.” Otherwise we may have to take all the Picassos, and Dalis, and Miros, and Goyas and Velazquezs out of the mainstream museums and put them in a “Hispanic” museum…. gracias a Dios for that.

As it is now, we may have to take all the Wifredo Lams, Roberto Mattas, Frida Kahlos, etc. out of the “other museums” and put them in the “Latino Museum.”

But ooops! the Frida Kahlo in the nation’s capital is already in a segregated museum - in this case segregated by sex.

The misguided semantic/ethnic/racial debate about Latino or Hispanic is a good, if somewhat silly bucket of ignorant fun.

Anyway… Latino is (I think) now associated with people of Latin American ancestry… it apparently includes the millions of Central and South Americans of pure Native American blood (many of who do not even speak Spanish), and the millions of South Americans of Italian, German, Jewish, Middle Eastern and Japanese ancestry. It also includes the millions of Latin Americans of African ancestry.

It doesn’t include Spaniards, Portuguese, French or Italians…. you Europeans Latins are out!

According to the Post, “Felix Sanchez, the chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, said, “The museum is really a long-overdue concept. There is a void of presenting in one location a more in-depth representation of the culture and its presence in the mainstream of American consciousness.”

Mr. Sanchez: There is no such thing as a single “Latino culture.” In fact, I submit that there are twenty-something different “Latino” cultures in Latin America - none of which is the same as the various Latino mini-cultures in the US.

We "Latinos", no matter how hard you politicians and label-makers try to assemble and push us and label us into one monolithic group, are not such a group; we are as different from each other as the English-speaking peoples of the world are different from each other.

Call a Scotsman "English" and see what will happen to your face.

As an example, anyone who thinks that Mexico’s gorgeously rich and sometimes proud native heritage is similar to Argentina’s cultural heritage is simply ignorant at best. In fact Argentina purposefully nearly wiped out its own indigenous population in an effort (according to the war rallies of the times) “not to become another Mexico.”

And the cultural heritage of the Dominican Republic is as different from that of Bolivia and Peru as two/three countries that technically share a same language can be.

And for example, Mexican-Americans’ tastes in food, music, and politics, etc. are wildly different from Cuban-Americans and Dominican-Americans, etc.

Would anyone ever group Swedes, Danes, Germans and Norwegians and create a “Nordic-American Museum”? Ahhh… they have; silly ideas are not restricted to Congress, are they?

Or how about French, Spaniards, Rumanians and Italians for a “Latin-European-American Museum” - hang on - that doesn’t fit or does it? Makes my head hurt.

For the record, as I did in 2003 when I first learned about this issue, I still don’t believe in segregating artists according to ethnicity, race or religion. How about letting the art itself decide inclusion in a museum. And if not enough African American, or Native American, or Latino/Hispanic or “fill-in-the-blank”-American artists are in the mainstream American museums, then let’s fight that good fight and not just take the easy/hard route of having “our own” museum.

Comemierdas... What does Little Junes think about this issue?

Things we learned in New York

It never ceases to amaze me how often I run into stories of what I thought were ethical gallerists only to discover otherwise from artists.

One of the most common things that unethical art dealers do at art fairs is to inflate prices. This allows them to "deal" with interested buyers, and offer them discounts on the art. Facing galleries that inflate their prices up to 40% or more... in order to then appear to offer great deals, ethical gallerists then have to deal with collectors "used" to getting 40% price chops.

"I decided a while back to just add 40% more to my prices," confessed a dealer in New York last week. "I got tired of explaining to buyers that I couldn't give them a 40% discount."

Feh.

Then there's the very cool NYC photographer who has exhibited several times in DC. She relates the story of how her DC dealer sold some of her work, then decided to move from DC, and told her that he couldn't "afford to pay her." A few years later she's still waiting to get paid. "Now I just tell everyone that I know to stay away from this gallery," she adds.

Airborne


Heading to the Left Coast with an unenviable 5:25AM departure... more later.

AAFNYC: Sunday Report

Yesterday was the final day for the Affordable Art Fair NYC, and the fair was pretty packed with mothers all day long. Sales seemed to be brisk along our immediate area, with the British galleries that surrounded the Mayer Fine Art booth all doing gang buster sales.

MFA sold a few more of my drawings, two more wood engravings by DMV artist Rosemary Feit Covey and a very cool aluminum sculpture by Norfolk area artist and Old Dominion University professor John R.G. Roth.

The two DMV area galleries in the fair (Fraser Gallery and Honfleur Gallery) both reported excellent sales as well, so it seems like this fair paid off for the local galleries as well.

Tear down and packing was the usual nightmare when you have 80 galleries or so all trying to bring all their stuff down one elevator from the 11th floor down to the loading dock on super busy 35th street.

Back to the DMV by midnight and heading out to San Diego tomorrow.

AAF: The Saturday report

Yesterday was another well-attended day, with a good stream of visitors all day long, although they tapered off by 7PM.

Mayer Fine Art sold yet another sculpture by Norfolk artist Christine K. Harris, a wood engraving by DMV artist Rosemary Feit Covey and one more of my drawings.

Today is the last day of the fair.

AAFNYC: The Friday report

Yesterday there were good crowds again; and once again they picked up at night. Mayer Fine Art sold my largest drawing in the show, plus another sculpture by Norfolk artist Christine K. Harris and a painting by Russian painter Alexey Terenin.

Eve, Agonizing Over The Sin.
Charcoal on Paper. 13 x 49 inches.
Now in a private collection in New Jersey

Highlights from the Affordable Art Fair New York City

Founded 12 years ago by London gallerist Will Ramsay (who also does the Pulse Art Fair), the Affordable Art Fair New York City holds fairs not only in New York and London, but also Amsterdam, Bristol, Brussels, Melbourne, Milan, Paris, Singapore, Sydney and for the first time later this year, Los Angeles.

I've been attending this fair (the New York version) since 2006, and it has never disappointed me. With a price ceiling of $10,000 USD, the term "affordable" is relative in more ways than one, but one can find a lot of art in this fair which starts as low as $75!

This year there were quite a few European galleries (see the exhibitors' list here) as well as a variety of American galleries, including two from the DMV.

In walking around the fair, I particularly liked the photography of Giuseppe Mastromatteo at New York's emmanuel fremin gallery.

They are subtly surreal without being overtly commercial, as a lot of this sort of photography tends to be. This NYC gallery has a whole host of photographers that share this sensibility, and they all work together in a very elegant booth display.

Britain's Fairfax Gallery also has a standout in the technically breath-taking work of Mary Jane Ansell, who manages to capture a sexy Lolita feel to her portraits of young women with a play on stares deeply submerged in psychological innuendos.

Another European gallery with super work, in this case by a photographer, is Spain's Villa de Arte Gallery. The minimalist work of Marc Harrold.

Louise Lawton at New York's Stricoff Fine Art also fits within the same minimalist niche occupied by Harrold, but this brilliant work is charcoal on gesso board.

Finally, Michelle Mikesell's paintings, with Dallas' DeCorazon Gallery, get my vote for best in show.

Mikesell's work spans an interesting narrative offering full of hidden clues within her paintings. They are superbly well painted, and as a devoted fan of technical skill, that always becomes attractive to me.

Technical skill alone does not a great artist make, say the Yodas of the art world, and they are right.

That is why that hard to describe ability to marry technical mastery with intelligent composition and the magic to grab a corner of our minds, is such a key component of what makes an artist's work go beyond well executed to begin to reach the first steps of the ladder to being a true visual art gem that stands above the rest; Mikesell is way up that ladder.

The fair runs through Sunday.

AAFNYC Opening Day

Yesterday was the "official" opening day for AAFNYC and through most of the day the crowds were very thin (some folks guessing that a lot of folks were avoiding NYC during Pres. Obama's visit to ground zero, due to the traffic snarls).

From 6-8PM, entry to the fair was free and the crowds poured in for the last two hours of the show, more than compensating for the thin crowds during the day.

Mayer Fine Art scored some sales, including a spectacular painting by the DMV's Sharon Moody and later in the day they sold my Frida Kahlo video drawing - my first ever sale of the new series of drawings with embedded narrative videos). Later on the night they also sold two more of my drawings.

And check out Maura Judkis' account of the acquisition of one of my pieces by a celeb that I didn't recognize.

AAFNYC Preview Day

Last night it was packed to the gills (in fact I am told that the attendance exceeded the maximum number of people allowed in the building).

Mayer Fine Art broke the ice even before the fair opened up to the public when they sold one my drawings to a member of the press during the press preview.

The rest of the night they also sold a really cool sculpture by Norfolk sculptor Christine K. Harris and a painting by Russian painter Alexey Terenin.

Wanna go to an opening this week?

Funny

In reference to the historic image below (by White House photog Peter Souza), notice the look in VP Biden.


I'm in New York and today, while waiting to cross the street at 34th and Eighth Avenue, I overheard a New Yorker say to his buddy: "I heard that the reason that Biden looks so pissed off is because Obama took the remote away from him because Biden kept changing the channel asking "What else is on?"

American humor at its best.

Close call

From now on, I'm doing this first before confirming a hotel room anywhere: Check them out in Bed Bug Registry.

I'm heading to NYC today for the Affordable Art Fair, and had booked my hotel months in advance. Yesterday I decided to check them out for bedbugs and here's what I found (one of four reports):

My friend ( who is a licensed pest control professional in the UK) checked in here tonight (7/3/10). Being a professional, he inspected the room and found a severe infestation of bedbugs in several locations. He informed management, and was moved to another room, which he inspected. It too was infested with bed bugs. After nearly an hour on the phone with the front desk person who informed me management would not be in for a few days but they would help me then, and begging the hotels.com people to help me (the hotels.com people were really sympathetic and very helpful, unlike the people at hotel 31) we managed to get switched to a new hotel for the remaining 4 days of the trip, but will have to take a loss on tonight. He cannot stay there, as these creatures are excellent hitchhikers, and even with great precaution can make their way home with you, which will cost thousands of dollars to deal with. THIS HOTEL SHOULD BE SHUT DOWN AS A HEALTH HAZARD.

I called them immediately and cancelled, and then began the process of hunting for a new hotel at the last minute.

I ended up in one without any bed bug reports, but at twice the price; but better safe than itchy. Nonetheless, as soon as I check into the room, I'm inspecting it for the little bloodsuckers, which I've been doing anyway for the last few years since these bugs began showing up everywhere.

History in a Photograph


I don't know who took this photograph, but this is an amazing marriage of technology, history, narrative art and drama.

Here we see the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Chief of Naval Operations, and other staff watch the operation to kill Osama bin Laden live at the White House.

Technology brought a life and death reality show to our leaders, safe in the White House, while superbly well-trained and highly qualified young men (Navy Seals) do what they do so well: their job.

The look on these faces, and what they were watching live, thanks to man-wearable technology, is now part of history, and it is a visual art genre which records it for us.

I wish that I knew the name of this photographer, so that I could give him or her a well deserved "Bravo Zulu"!

Update: This photograph is by Pete Souza, the official White House photographer

Ditto

"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure"

Mark Twain

How to Eat a Mango

Here's another peek at some of the writing that I've been doing about my early childhood in Guantanamo, Cuba. This particular chapter has a section which deals with the art of mango-eating which I think you may find of interest.

The chapter in question essentially describes my neighborhood and the below segment picks up on a house up the street from my grandparents' house which had a huge mango tree:

Next to Mongo’s house was another walled house where Enrique “El Manco” lived. His nickname was slang for someone missing a hand, although Enrique had both hands, but was missing several fingers from one of them. His front yard boasted a huge mango tree. It was easily the largest tree for blocks around, and during mango season, the huge branches, loaded with fruit, that hung above the street were an unending supply source of mangos for everyone with a good aim to knock some of them off with rocks and then pick them off the street.

But soon all the mangos from the branches that over hanged onto the streets were gone, and then we had to actually sneak into the walled garden and climb the tree and knock some mangos to the ground, climb down, grab them and scram back to the street before anyone in the house noticed the intrusion. This was nearly impossible, as it seemed that every member of Enrique’s family was always on the lookout for mango thieves, as the mango tree was a source of income, since they sold them by the bag-full from the side of their house.

The art of eating a mango deserves some attention.

There are several ways. The first one, and the most easy to perform by amateur mango eaters, is simply to take the mango, cut into it with a knife and slice off the meaty parts, peel the skin off and eat the hard slices.

Seldom did a mango knocked off Enrique’s tree make it to any house to be eaten this way.

Once you knocked off a mango, and provided that no one grabbed it before you got to it – as there was always a group of mango rock throwers, and anytime a mango came down, it was always a debate as to exactly whose rock had brought the fruit down. Cubans love to debate just about anything, and the mango debates provided very good training on this art. Anyway, once you had a mango, then you ran to either the shade of my grandparents' house’s portico or the bakery’s veranda to enjoy the fruit.

Here’s the proper way to eat a mango.

First roll it back and forth on the ground, a tiled floor is perfect, to mush up the inside of the mango. Then, using you fingertips, really liquefy the mango pulp by gently squeezing the mango over and over. Once that pulp is almost nothing but juice, with your teeth puncture a small hole at the tip of the mango.

You can now squeeze the mango and suck the juice through that hole. It’s sort of a nature-made box drink!

Once all the mango juice is all gone, now comes the messy part. No one, not even the British, have ever discovered a way to eat a mango without making a mess.

Once the juice is gone, then you bite the skin, strip it away from the seed, lick it clean and then begin to bite away all the strands of mango fiber still attached to the seed. By the time a good mango eater is done with a mango, the mango seed looks like a yellowish bar of used soap, slick and fiber-less.

Of course, your face and chest area are now completely covered in dried up, sticky mango juice, so then you'd usually head back home to clean up with the garden hose and drink water to quell the thirst that the mango sugar causes.

That’s how one eats a mango – at least in my childhood neighborhood.

Tic Tac Toe

“We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to families who have lost loved ones to al-Qaeda’s terror: Justice has been done.”

President Obama

Next Week in New York

Next week is the Affordable Art Fair in New York City, right across the street from the Empire State Building.

The Affordable Art Fair is always a very interesting art fair to me, from the psychological point and from the commercial point of view.

AAFNYC (as it is known, since there are versions of this fair in Europe and Australia as well) is put together by the same people who bring you the Pulse Art Fair, arguably the second best Miami art fair after ABMB.

And I say Miami on purpose to put it geographically in Miami, since there are some top notch European-based art fairs which are clearly higher than Pulse in the art fair food chain. But, when it comes to the first week of December in Miami, after ABMB, Pulse is clearly the number two darling of the art cognoscenti.

AAFNYC has an "affordable" ceiling price for art of $10,000 (used to be $5,000); this tells you a lot about the art world.

This NYC and London versions of this fair have a reputation as really good selling fairs, where galleries do fairly well, in spite of the current economic blues enveloping the world. From my own experience with this NYC-based fair (which goes back to 2005), it has always been a very successful art fair for the galleries that I have been associated with (sorry about the dangling preposition).

And if you review the list of galleries who have exhibited at AAFNYC over the years, you'll discover a lot of blue chip galleries, in fact, some of the same galleries which show at Pulse!

Yet some snooty galleries stay away from it. "I wish they'd change the name of the fair," told me a gallery owner once when I asked her why she didn't do the fair.

Enough said.

And yet, galleries from all over the planet (including a lot of British galleries) will come to New York next week, and a lot of savvy New York art collectors will come to the fair and a lot of artists and art galleries will do very well, since this is the only NYC art fair at this time of the year (among other things).

My work will be there, represented by Norfolk's top independently owned commercial fine arts gallery: Mayer Fine Arts, who will be showcasing work by Sheila Giolitti, John Roth, Alexey Terenin, Judith Peck, Rosemary Feit Covey, Sharon Moody, Rosalie Shane, Joey Manlapaz and Andrew Wodzianski... note that there are several DMV artists in that mix (Peck, Feit Covey, Moody, Manlapax, Wodzianski and I).

If you want some free tickets to the fair, send me an email and I'll make sure that the gallery leaves some free passes at "will call".

Open House

Walking Off the Artistic Cliff

Wednesday, June 1, 7:00 - 9:00pm

Panel Discussion - Walking Off the Artistic Cliff
Making good art requires taking risks. Join Jack Rasmussen, Director of the American University Museum at the Katzen Center, Claudia Rousseau, Ph.D., Professohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifr of Art History at Montgomery College and art critic for the Gazette Newspapers and Welmoed Laanstra, Curator of Public Art for Arlington County, and moderator Ellyn Weiss, as they discuss what it means to commit to the new and unknown.

Free. Open to the Public.

Brentwood Arts Exchange @ Gateway Arts Center
3901 Rhode Island Avenue
Brentwood, MD 20722
301-277-2863/ tty. 301-446-6802

Top Ten Artists to Watch

Bruce Helander, Editor-in-Chief of The Art Economist and a White House Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts picks ten artists to watch for The Huffington Post and picks DMV area artist Hadieh Shafie!

Shafie is represented locally by Morton Fine Art (MFA). Read the article here.