The cognitive dissonance of the presentation of political art has become clear of Rachel Spence long-standing criticism in 2006. She visited Palazzo Grassi, the Venice's outpost of the Pinault collection, when she saw, paradoxically suspended in the private museum of a French billionaire, an edition of Barbara Kruger in 1987 in 1987, I am therefore a publication. The dark visual left her amazed by the ability that the context must undermine the vital force of the work as a political proclamation, which makes it an oxymoronic caricature of anti -capitalist criticism.
This introductory anecdote laid the basics of the tone of a new ambitious publication of Spence, which supports that in the 21st century, the relationship of art with capital, climate and politics is more important and insidious than ever – and the state of culture more disastrous. The confluence of visual art, money and ethics is a heavy subject, but Spence takes Battle for the museum: cultural institutions in crisis. Its nearly 200 pages are closely filled with the main controversies in the artistic world of the last decade. Offering a useful overview for those who join the art world who do not know much and who want to know more, Spence succinctly explains the power struggles that brought us to this point.
Spence begins by presenting to readers “planet art”, its nickname “the capricious and contradictory ecosystem” of the art world. It postulates that the main concern and the function of contemporary art – auction houses, galleries, museums, fairs – is the production of money, with its greatest advantages sold for mega -riche buyers at the expense of workers. In this ecosystem, she explains, the bad wealthy actors remedy their reputation for the public by investing in precious institutions, not to mention the escape of taxes with their art purchases. In a chapter entitled “Declonize this philanthropy” (entitled as it in the vein of the activist organization Decrease this placewho led demonstrations in New York museums), Spence leads with a report of Several months In 2018 at Whitney Museum against his former vice-president and member of the board of directors Warren KandersCEO of the Safariland ammunition manufacturer. HyperalgicThe reports are strongly mentioned (complete disclosure: including a first report from me), preparing the land so that Spence sails in the besieged landscape of the museum funding. It condemns the questionable financing of other administrators and donors dissected as Leon Black and the Sackler familyas well as the wave of European and American museums which build outposts in the United Arab Emirates, encouraged by large payments while ignoring human rights violations. “There is nothing intrinsically contrary to ethics to sell art,” she writes. “But there is something that does not go with a system in which trade and the art manifestation are inextricable in the exploitation of people and the natural world because money has more influence than morality.”
Spence is manifestly exasperated by the state of art under capitalism, and this just indignation infiltrates its prose. She finds her voice somewhere between the scientist and the critic. While the book continues, it recognizes its own change in the term “planet art”, explaining that the writing process Fight for the museum Relled to him that “the sector is not an airtight bubble sealed in its environment”. Although the book is well documented and in-depth in its overview of ethics and activism in art, it turns on rigid non-fiction, ultimately deeply opinionable and editorial. During its course, Spence pleads for the degroduction and shaving of this avant-garde landscape to build a reconstituted ecosystem benefiting the majority rather than an elite minority of buyers, trustee and managers. It offers new paths – for example, a change to performance and hyperfocus on local art scenes instead of international art fairs to reduce the impact of art on emissions. She sometimes recognizes her idealism but remains firm in her beliefs: “Just because the abuse of power is omnipresent, simply because no system is without faults, it does not mean that it is not worth improving what we can, when and where we can.”
For the sake of reach, Spence narrows his attention to a brief and recent edge of art history, focusing mainly on the controversies that have occurred in the last decade. It is insistent that the art world is lower of all time, more toxically dependent on capital than ever before. It recognizes the dissidents who could shout that this has always been thus, citing the Medici and other rich customers through history, but says that our current confluence of income inequality and climate disaster is particularly serious; Even the book jacket declares that “culture and power” are more “more than ever”.
However, Fight for the museum I did not convince myself that this era is quantifiable worse than in previous years; Such generalizations lack nuances and coverage on the already under control of basic artistic activism. I can, of course, agree that the last 10 years in the culture industry have been historic. Workers' exploitation is disastrous, and this recent series of unionization in museums and demonstrations Against unscrupulous institutional funding, a culture sector has an impasse, where the values of workers, artists and leadership are in contradiction. As was the case in the 1960s and 70s, too, when the artists of the working class who launched organizations such as the Coalition of art workers And the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition took the leadership of museums for their exploitation and their exclusion from marginalized groups in the arts. In any case, these examples do not undermine the huge jumps made in recent years, but stifle them.
Spence is disputed a lot of high-speed information and limits, quickly mentioning almost all the controversies, small and large, addressed by contemporary artists-activists. But the writer is best when he has developed crucial historical moments that led the arts ecosystem to this exacerbated point. It broke down, for example, the change in British public museums “secretly privatized” (encouraged by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and solidified by the 90s under Tony Blair). This clever section criticizes the new commodification of museums as trendy “destinations” which are concentrated as much on a well -supplied gift shop as their collections. It lucishly traces this transition to oil sponsorship, as COP at British Museum and Shell At the National Gallery, and has led to demonstrations between climate activists in the sector, who have devoted themselves to massive occupations of their lobbies in recent years.
Spence believes that art can “help save the world”. Whether you agree or not, it is essential and necessary for our lives – activists know it, politicians know it, investors know it. Its connectivity with capitalism and the government is indisputable, and ignoring this fact only exacerbates the corrosion of the art world. Fight for the museum We ask to consider what we are ready to sacrifice to save him.
Battle for the museum: cultural institutions in crisis (2024) by Rachel Spence is published by Hurst Publishers and is available online and via independent booksellers.
