Clusters

by Robert Boyd

When I read that the Aurora Picture Show was moving over to 2442 Bartlett St. behind the Deborah Colton Gallery, my first thought was that whatever improvement this new space provided for the Aurora Picture Show, the real winner was Deborah Colton Gallery. The reason for this is that instead of one visual arts destination in that spot, there are now two. And that means that when people come to check out one of the venues, they have the opportunity to simultaneously check out the second venue. Now this doesn't easily work in the case of Deborah Colton Gallery and the Aurora Picture Show because Aurora is about showing movies--time based artworks with specific starting times. You can't just wander into the Aurora picture show the same way you can a museum or art gallery.

Anyway, my gut feeling is that when you have visual art institutions (public or private) within sight of other art institutions, you can get this cluster effect. I define a cluster of at least two art spaces, within sight of and walking distance of one another. Visiting an art gallery or museum generally requires someone drive (or bike) to it--to make a dedicated trip, in other words. But if there is a second gallery there, the marginal effort required to visit the second art space is practically nil. Might as well, right?  Consequently, it seems to me that clustering is always good, all other things being equal. There's a reason that so many galleries in New York City are right next to each other on a small number of parallel streets in Chelsea.



Here's a map of some clusters in Houston.
1. Ggallery, Nau-Haus, Redbud
2. Diverseworks, FotoFest
3. Wade Wilson Gallery, Anya Tish, Peel Gallery, Barbara Davis Gallery
4. MFAH, CAMH, Harris Gallery
5. Lawndale Art Center, Center for Contemporary Craft
6. Menil Museum (and Flavin Hall and Cy Twombly Gallery), Houston Center for Photography, Rothko Chapel, The Joanna, and (under construction) Sicardi Gallery [this is the most varied cluster, with a major museum, small non-profit, commercial gallery and artist-run space all in one small area]
7. The Colquitt galleries--Goldesberry Gallery, Hooks-Epstein Gallery, Peveto, John Cleary Gallery, McMurtrey Gallery, d m allison art, Moody Gallery, etc.
8. The Isabella Court galleries--Inman Gallery, Bryan Miller Gallery, Art Palace, and Devin Borden Gallery
9. PG Contemporary and New Gallery

I like that when I make the rounds, I can see more than one exhibit at any one of these clusters. But the question I have is, does clustering actually help? This is the kind of question that a solid urbanist armed with the history of gallery openings and closings in Houston could probably answer statistically. Maybe I'll delve into that someday. I will say that since I started this blog, none of the institutions in clusters have shut their doors except for Joan Wich's gallery, which died when she did. But isolated, non-clustered institutions have had problems. Apama Mackey Gallery shut down and the New World Museum seems to be sputtering along. (Both of these still exist on varying levels--in the world of galleries and art spaces, life and death are not binary terms.) That said, Hiram Butler Gallery is still thriving in its weird (but beautiful) out-of-the-way location. Box 13 and the Pearl Fincher Museum seem to be making a go of it without any art neighbors.

There are probably some rules for clusters. The visual arts spaces can't be too dissimilar, for example. You can't expect to have synergies if you put a cutting edge art space next to a gallery specializing in paintings of bluebonnets. Or a poster shop next to a blue chip art gallery. And there has to be a minimal amount of coordination. If one gallery has an opening and the rest of the galleries are closed, they don't get any cluster benefits at that moment.

I was speaking to Britt Ragsdale last night, and she told me that clustering was the who idea behind The Lens Capsule. By taking their mobile gallery space and parking next to an opening, they created their own temporary cluster effect. She also told me that she had considered starting an artist-run space a few doors down from Box 13, thinking that the clustering effect would benefit both institutions. (The rent turned out to be too steep for her. And I assume that when the light rail line is completed, rents along that stretch of Harrisburg will blow up.)

You Can't Scare Me, I'm Sticking to the Links

by Robert Boyd

How To Help the Striking Sotheby's Art Handlers: Art Fag City asks that people "Stop Shopping at Sotheby's". This seems a bit unrealistic. Most people who are interested in or otherwise involved in art have never purchased anything at Sotheby's and probably never will. Furthermore, amongst those who do buy from Sotheby's, you can't really argue that they, say, buy from Christie's instead because the items they are bidding on are unique. You can't get a substitute for that art object you want from Sotheby's at Christie's or Phillips de Pury or Heritage. And finally, the buyers of art at Sotheby's are the 1%--their sympathies are likely to be with Sotheby's management more than with the working class. No, who should be targeted are the consigners. Consigners should be more-or-less indifferent about who auctions off their possessions. If you can convince someone who would have sold through Sotheby's to instead sell through Christie's, you hurt Sotheby's. [Art Fag City, "Stop Shopping at Sotheby's", Whitney Kimball and Will Brand]


Forrest Bess, untitled, not dated

Forrest Bess is All Over the News: The New York Times critic Roberta Smith has a long article on Bess which also criticizes the Christie's sale (benefiting M.D. Anderson) for containing too many lesser works. (There is a nice slideshow, too.) Then over at Hyperallergic, longtime Bess devotee John Yau has a penetrating two-part article about the man from Bay City. ["A New Vision of a Visionary Fisherma" by Roberta Smith, The New York Times; "Without Elaboration" by John Yau part 1 and part 2, Hyperallergic]


Exeunt Exit Art


Institutions that die with their founders: Exit Art was founded in 1982 as a scrappy alternative art space by Jeanette Ingberman. It's known for its commitment to emerging artists and art by "the art-world underdog, focusing almost entirely on work by minorities, women and non-mainstream artists." So says Rachel Corbett in Artnet. Ingberman died last year, and now Exit Art is shutting down with one final valedictory exhibit. The final day for Exit Art is May 20. This got me thinking. Are there many spaces like this that are run by a single person for her entire life? Spaces that close after the founder's death? I'm thinking this because I usually think the intention of non-profit space is to go on indefinitely, even though many fail to reach that goal. Even when an institution is strongly identified with one person, there is often a succession plan for the event of the founder's death. (The Menil is probably an example of this--it seemed to run quite smoothly after the death of Dominique DeMenil.) I wonder if Ingberman planned for Exit Art to exit when she did? ["Exit Art Exit Interview" by Rachel Corbett, Artnet; "The Fantastic Dream: a memorial to Jeanette" by Melissa Rachleff Burtt, Artnet]

From Boston to Brazil Links

by Robert Boyd


Reid Sutton and Brad Nagar's House

I like looking at other people's art collections. That's why the Rice Design Alliance Living With Art tour would be so perfect for me. Two days, eight houses, lots of art. But alas, by the time I heard about it, it was full up. One of the houses to be toured is Reid Sutton and Brad Nagar's home, which was featured in an article in the Houston Chronicle. The article is accompanied by a short slideshow of some of the houses. I can see Rachel Hecker and Aaron Parazette paintings in this photo from Sutton and Nagar's home.  See how many pieces of art you recognize. (By the way, if you are one of the lucky ones on the tour, we'd love to publish your annotated photos--or even just see them.) [RDA, The Houston Chronicle]


Jaca, painting from his exhibit at the Museu do Trabalho

Art spaces around the world 1: the Museu do Trabalho in Porto Alegre, Brazil. I stumbled across this space's Flickr page and it looks awesome. The Museu do Trabalho (literally, the "Museum of Work") was founded in 1982 to be a museum of labor. At first it was housed in the sheds below with the intention of moving into a refurbished factory. However, the factory never got refurbished so they stayed in the sheds. The space was too small for a full-on museum, so it has evolved over the years into an alternative art space. Which would not be all that exciting if the art weren't really interesting--which it is. Looks like I will have to save up for a Brazilian vacation... [Museu do Trabalho, Museo do Trabalho's Photostream]


The Museu do Trabalho


Lilian Maus, art shown at Museu do Trabalho


George Kuchar opening at Mulherin + Pollard [VernissageTV]

When underground comics met underground films. George Kuchar was a well known underground filmmaker (if you haven't seen his work, I recommend the documentary It Came From Kuchar, available on Netflix), but did you know he also dabbled in underground comics? He was friends in San Francisco with Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith, who both occasionally appeared in Kuchar's films. They returned the favor, occasionally running his comics in their great anthology Arcade. Some of his film work is being shown at the Whitney Biennial, but if you are in New York, you can see his comics work at Mulherin+Pollard through March 25. [VernissageTV]

Awright you artist maggots--drop down and give me 50! This is one of the weirdest stories I've seen in a while. In Boston, there is a building called Midway Studios, a mixed live/work building intended for use by artists. Then, weirdly enough, a small defense contractor, Ops-Core, moved into one of the office spaces. Weird, but not alarming. But then they rented the basement, which hitherto had been theater space used by the Actors Shakespeare Project, to turn it into a manufacturing plant for military headgear. (Between moving in and taking over the basement, Ops-Core had been purchased by Gentex, a large military contractor.) When the artists complained to their landlord that they didn't want to be living on top of a military products factory, they got a letter from David Rogers, former Ops-Core CEO and now a VP at Gentex. Among other things, it said:

The false sense of entitlement of many of our fellow residents astounds me. I have lived in the neighborhood for the past 18 years and am also very familiar with the expectations of some local artists. . .The majority (and some of the most outspoken)"posers" do not create anything whatsoever. They are merely self delluted [sic] bullshitters and drama queens who use art as an excuse to justify and rationalize their pathetic existence [sic] while mooching from others to sustain a living

A rancorous public meeting was held next, and the situation is still unresolved. [The Boston Phoenix (part 1 and 2) via Hyperallergic]

22 Lawndales

by Robert Boyd


It used to be a JCPenney's. Now it's for art

22 Lawndales. That's one way to think of the amount of potential exhibition space that has suddenly--miraculously--become available to Houston artists. Out on the far west side of town, where Westheimer and Richmond hit Highway 6, is a hard luck mall--West Oaks Mall. Just a little history of the mall. In July, 2003, it was acquired by Pacific Retail Capital Partners for $58 million. This mall has over a million square feet of retail, including 100,000 square feet in a free standing department store building that had been occupied by a JCPenney's up until 2003. In September, 2005, they sold the mall to a company owned by Edward H. Okun for $102 million. Okun turned out to be a criminal with a terrible sense of timing. In particular, malls have been in decline in the US for a while (which is not to say that there aren't lots of successful ones), that area of Houston has been in decline for a while, and just three years after Okun bought West Oaks, the U.S. economy collapsed, bringing his criminal real estate empire crashing down. The mall was foreclosed on and sold for $15 million (!). And guess who bought it? Pacific Retail Capital Partners. So when you think about it, they ended up with a mall and $29 million in the bank.

So they have with a seriously underutilized mall and a nice cash cushion. The mall may be a white elephant now, but with this cash in the bank, Pacific Retail is in the position to try something really innovative. Enter Sharsten Plenge, daughter Pacific Retail managing principal, Steve Plenge. She came up with the idea of using the old Penney's as an art space.

How it will be used is up for discussion. Plenge has been talking to local artists about it for a while, but it's still early days. And it has a lot of obstacles--West Oaks Mall is not exactly an art destination. (Although Houston hipsters might be familiar with it because of its Alamo Drafthouse location.) It's a long way from Montrose, baby. So to me, this means that success would be dependent on both attracting Houston's art people to make the 20+ mile trip out plus reaching out to the local community, which includes both rough-and-tumble Alief and ultra-suburban Cinco Ranch. But an equal challenge will be to artists and curators. This space is huge. That means that exhibits in this space will have to measure up to it. Your suite of pencil drawings won't cut it, nor will your one-person performance.


Some seriously big artworks could fit in this space

That's what I mean by 22 Lawndales. Lawndale has 4375 square feet of exhibition space--2100 square feet in the large John O'Quin gallery, 1100 in the mezzanine, 650 in the Grace R. Cavner gallery, and 525 in the project space. And Lawndale doesn't in any way feel small. Imagine the challenge of filling Lawndale 22 times over. All the alternative art space in Houston--Lawndale, Diverse Works, FotoFest, Project Row Houses, Box 13, Skydive, the Joanna and anything I'm missing doesn't add up half this new space. This alone could tilt Houston's artistic center of gravity severely to the west.

Houston artists and curators--put on your thinking caps! How will you utilize this astonishing resource? Sharsten Plenge wants to hear from you.