Iconography Obsession

Iconography Obsession: A Response to Ken Johnson’s “A Museum’s Mission in Artists’ Statement”

In a recent article in the New York Times, Ken Johnson wrote about an exhibition at the Newark Museum entitled Unbounded: New Art for a New Century. He begins with a truth that I see a lot in the museums that I work in which is collecting contemporary art from collectors who might not be getting the best advice on what to buy leads to contemporary collections made up of bad art. Mr. Johnson begins his article as such “For museums, collecting contemporary art is a crapshoot.” With that statement I am in total agreement. Who knows if the artists that are getting big gallery shows are going to have a lasting importance upon the history of art or if they are just fashion plates representative of a timed aesthetic? The critic then continues on to make a comparison based upon geography that:

“Just across the river, several big museums collect and exhibit contemporary art for a huge, international audience that is interested in all things new, experimental and provocative. Not to know the once proud, now down-at-the-heels city of Newark, but why would anyone come here to see cutting edge art when it’s so easy to do in Manhattan?”

This statement made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. In hearing a lot lately about unique architecture along with biographies on the radio of Merce Cunningham and Andy Warhol, these stories have just really brought into sharp focus the driving force of the ambitions of this city: iconography. New York City itself is an icon on numerous facets, from Elise Island to the WTC, from the Yankees to Lincoln Center. This is a city obsessed with iconography. Many of the buildings listed in a recent article on cutting edge architecture were in Manhattan, the Guggenheim and the New Museum both, being raved about for their iconic additions to the architectural fabric of Manhattan. While listening to a biography on Andy Warhol, there was a statement made about how he arrived at the Campbell’s soup can works. Basically he was in search of something in front of him to give him some inspiration. Leave it to a designer turned “artist” to lock on to Campbell’s soup. For someone who later would outshine his own work it is fitting that Warhol built his ladder of fame out of the iconic status of an already American icon.
With all of these collisions coming to a head right now, seeing New York City’s obsession with being an icon of culture in America has just never been clearer. This city collects and lays ownership over icons in a manner similar to kids going after baseball cards of players like Sammy Sosa, Derek Jeter or Babe Ruth. Even when they can’t have the iconic person themselves they retain the object that makes the icon an icon. Where would the Met be with out Hirst’s “Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”? It would still be an icon of cultural collecting but now it spans all of time from the ancient to the contemporary.
If New Yorkers are only obsessed with the fashionably avant-garde then where does the real thought provoking work end up?