Here we are on the Acropolis, in the picture gallery, the Pinakotheke, looking from the Propylaea to John Russell Pope’s National Gallery of Art. What a view, 5,125 miles and farther in time, 2,500 years, the distance between Phidias, Pericles, Plato, and you. What a view.
Over the long, glorious expanse we have grown in beauty, in knowledge, in great works … from Lysippos and Phidias to Vitruvius, to Raphael and Leonardo and Michelangelo, to Christopher Wren and our Sait Gaudens and our Daniel Chester French, the rank upon rank of generous paternity. And lately, Thomas Gordon Smith, Michael Aviano, William Girard, each recently mentioned in these pagers, each a highlight of Classive invention, Classive Civilization, each worthy to abide in the museo, the Home of the Muses, the National Gallery of Art.
John Russell Pope (1874 – 1937); the National Gallery of Art, West Building, 1941 … looking alike the temple that it is.
In my opinion, works of the Classive artist, and no other, are properly, comfortably at home in the museum. Why? The Muses are spiritual, intelligible, of mind divine. A Muse is not a thing of brain, material. The Muse is Platonic, in form an idea by man formed into being. The Classive arts participate in Beauty, Goodness, Truth, treasured qualities suitable to the treasure houses of museums. Progressive designs, political statements and other poses belong in Marxist coloring-books, the Ford Foundation annual reports, and along the path to the gates of Hell.
The humane, ennobling, West Building.
The inhumane, desolate, East Building.
There is so much I would like to share of our Classive ascendence to wealth, health, and happiness, of our Classive traditions of beauty, of goodness and truth, of Progressive importunities, shames and scams and sins, of the Religion of Science each day receding before proofs of Intelligent Design, yet there is little time and less space, here.
I would like to tell you of Athens’ picture gallery, the panorama of victory in war, of a divine statue’s inner life, of Ptolemy’s Mouseion, of collectors, of collections, of a monarch’s treasury, of an emperor’s loot, of the first museums, of W.W. Corcoran’s museum, of its dissolution by Progressives lusting after relevance, of the middling bureaucrats who are remodeling our National Gallery of Art into a politicized petting zoo. No, we haven’t time to scan the magnificence of our Classive Civilization, so we shall briefly dilate upon Kaywin Feldman, director, the National Gallery of Art, her sorority of do-goody, culture-makers, and the pretentious, sanctimonious, self-righteous Woke.
First, a picture composed by Raphael of Urbino, the Alba Madonna, a picture given into the care of Paolo Giovo, Bishop of Nocera de’ Pagani, sheltered in the Sanctuary of Madonna dei Miracoli, collected into the treasury of the Viceroy of Naples, on to the Dukes of Alba, its sale to a Danish Ambassador, its acquisition by Emperor Nicholas I, his execution and the communist theft, the failure of communism, the sale of the Madonna to an American industrialist, Andrew Melon, who gifted the picture to our National Gallery of Art.
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483 – 1520); The Alba Madonna, circa 1511; NGA 1937.1.24
Here, an anecdote: a friend in the know revealed to me that when hanging the Raphael pictures, Paul Mellon (Andrew’s son), marked the spot the Alba Madonna was to hang by dabbing oil from the ridge of his nose onto a precise spot of the gallery wall.
The Alba Madonna is visual theology. An idea made real. Not just any idea of blobs, drips, or squiggles, but an intelligent design of parts, heroic in universality. Notice the selection of forms appropriate to tree, cloud, wrist, sandal. Notice the eloquent visual language, a refinement of the Classive from ideal to real, to the souled humane. Notice the mastery of craft, the comprehensive artistry seldom achieved ease, the sprezzatura of “I’ve been here before”, an excellence, a confidence strange to preening moderns and dogmatic progressives who tend to spike balls and wiggle in end zones.
The National Gallery of Art’s Seminar, “Painting a Just Picture: Art and Activism”, co-hosted by Learning for Justice
Just now, you might be surprised that a picture almost divine is used, abused in illustration of Woke dogma, you know, the dogma of Social Justice rioters, Social Justice daycares, and of the National Gallery of Art sorority that weaves happy thought propaganda into masterpieces, as a coed might do in illustrating a term paper, as an HR progressive does in seminar and reeducation camps. Do not be surprised: Kaywin Feldman and her sorority of Social Justice cheerleaders scream, “Go Progressive Team!” Here, from the National Gallery of Art website, the standard cheers:
Standards of Beauty What’s beautiful to you? What does this work of art make you think about women in your own community and culture? Who might you want to be in dialogue with to better understand this painting? [the illustration on the NGA site is a sophomoric, plagiaristic ukiyo-e picture by an artist formerly known as, iona rozeal brown]
Racism and Immigration What does barbed wire make you think of? How does it function here as a symbol?
Gender and Identity Are there any activities or practices in your own life that are viewed as belonging to a specific gender? How do you feel about this perception?
Civil Rights and Taking Action What slogans or images have inspired you to act? How is kneeling used as a form of protest today?
Ben Shahn (1898 – 1969); Prenatal Clinic, 1941; NGA 2008.115.4345
Class and Citizenship; Incarceration; Healthcare Access; Internment and Discrimination; Stereotypes and Appropriation; Housing and Homelessness, blah, blah, blah … and we’ve heard it all before, and we contributed to the cause in hope that the do-good ladies would just go away and play bridge, vacation in the Hamptons, give one-another moralistic, glitzy gold stars and leave us alone; but no, now they intend to ruin the National Gallery of Art as they have ruined picnics, lives, the Oscars and the Olympics.
“Get Woke: Go Broke” is the lesson to be learned. Yet, Kaywin Feldman and the sorority ladies will not learn because the ladies are incapable of learning because the ladies are better than you because they tell themselves so. See (above) the excerpts from the National Gallery of Art “Social Justice Issues” page, and know: You need their instruction, their direction, their mommying if you are to grow into proper, Woke adults. “Independent thinking is not allowed, young lady.”
Yes, Kaywin Feldman cannot help but mommy, mommying is in her nature. Philosophy, aesthetics, taste are not in Kaywin Feldman’s nature, she cannot draw herself out of a paper-bag, cannot know a picture but in what some other scholar tells. Kaywin Feldman is a progressive administrator dedicated to outcomes, beholden to Woke allies, indifferent to wisdom. Kaywin Feldman does not value humane achievement, Goodness or Beauty or Truth. Kaywin Feldman’s values (from the National Gallery of Art website) are:
Values Integrity Excellence Curiosity and Continuous Learning Empathy and Generosity of Spirit Agility and Responsiveness
Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640); Daniel in the Lions’ Den, 1616, NGA 1965.13.1
Do you notice: Kaywin Feldman’s values, the values of the new and improved, diverse and inclusive National Gallery of Art are trite. Great works of art can be brutal, painful, exquisite, sensual, imperial, offensive, can be discriminating, elite, singular, exacting, dismissive of Kaywin Feldman’s petty values, those low and middling things appropriate to the entrance gates of petting zoos that command, “Do not Feed the Animals”. Great works of art scorn Kaywin feldman.
Why? Great works of pictuary and statuary are not “public-service announcements” to be employed as “bumper-stickers” for some Social Justice fashion statement. Kaywin Feldman: respect the artists, the pictures and statues, or leave the care of your betters to a person less frivolous than you, less meddling than the Ford Foundation’s Darren Walker. Yes, Raphael will survive you, Ingress will survive you, Saint Gaudens will survive the National Gallery of Art sorority-splaining, yet the National Gallery of Art might not survive the politicization of its artistic treasures.
The American people are rapidly losing respect for cultural institutions because you and other progressives have corrupted, have diminished us, and we are leaving you.
Oliver Lee Jackson (born, 1935): Triptych 3.20.15, 5.21.15, 6.8.15, 2015; NGA 2019.143.1
Christopher Myers (born, 1975); What Does It Mean to Matter (Community Autopsy), 2019; NGA 2021.1.1; the first thing acquired by KF, NGA, this year (2021)
Pardon, I am angered, more for the nation, more for civilization than for myself. You, reader, should know: museum administrators and museum curators have no higher an aesthetic IQ than yours. Museum staff, and most all art historians know art from their books, which they can recite, backwards and can footnote ad nauseum. Yet, art historians seldom experience honestly, authentically, without prepossession, as do you. This fear, this insecurity, is the cause of the tedious explaining, of the describing a picture by qualities posterior, extrinsic to the thing itself. You should know that art historians have a comic-book opinion of art, the good modernist gals and the bad classical guys and the obvious progressive plots each with a dialogue by Freud, Darwin, Marx, dialogues, plots and antagonists inconsequential to your transcendent experience when in Art.
Leonardo Drew (born, 1961); Number 76S, 2019; NGA 2020.105.1, (photo courtesy Anthony Meier Fine Arts)
Nancy Shaver (born, 1946): Georgiana, Shirley, and Sharon, 2011; NGA 2020.19.1.
Rosie Lee Tompkins and Irene Bankhead; untitled (detail), 1989 pieced – 1990 quilted; NGA 2021.10.1
As you will expect, the ladies are just now collecting quilts and the artsy nick-nacks typical of summer arts fairs (seen in the five images, directly above), and the occasional picture worthy of our nation.
* * *
In my opinion, and perhaps yours, before nick-nacks and quilts the National Gallery of Art should acquire the pictuary and statuary of superior Classive artists. Yet, as you know, the masterpieces of these artists will not be collected because these artists are Classives, brilliant, male, Caucasian, persons non grata to elite, privileged, Progressive museum ladies.
I.M. Pei (1917 – 2019); the National Gallery of Art, East Building, 1971 … appearing to be a parking garage, as it does.
John Russell Pope (1874 – 1937); the National Gallery of Art, West Building, 1941 … looking alike the temple that it is.
In my opinion, works of the Classive artist, and no other, are properly, comfortably at home in the museum. Why? The Muses are spiritual, intelligible, of mind divine. A Muse is not a thing of brain, material. The Muse is Platonic, in form an idea by man formed into being. The Classive arts participate in Beauty, Goodness, Truth, treasured qualities suitable to the treasure houses of museums. Progressive designs, political statements and other poses belong in Marxist coloring-books, the Ford Foundation annual reports, and along the path to the gates of Hell.
The humane, ennobling, West Building.
The inhumane, desolate, East Building.
There is so much I would like to share of our Classive ascendence to wealth, health, and happiness, of our Classive traditions of beauty, of goodness and truth, of Progressive importunities, shames and scams and sins, of the Religion of Science each day receding before proofs of Intelligent Design, yet there is little time and less space, here.
I would like to tell you of Athens’ picture gallery, the panorama of victory in war, of a divine statue’s inner life, of Ptolemy’s Mouseion, of collectors, of collections, of a monarch’s treasury, of an emperor’s loot, of the first museums, of W.W. Corcoran’s museum, of its dissolution by Progressives lusting after relevance, of the middling bureaucrats who are remodeling our National Gallery of Art into a politicized petting zoo. No, we haven’t time to scan the magnificence of our Classive Civilization, so we shall briefly dilate upon Kaywin Feldman, director, the National Gallery of Art, her sorority of do-goody, culture-makers, and the pretentious, sanctimonious, self-righteous Woke.
First, a picture composed by Raphael of Urbino, the Alba Madonna, a picture given into the care of Paolo Giovo, Bishop of Nocera de’ Pagani, sheltered in the Sanctuary of Madonna dei Miracoli, collected into the treasury of the Viceroy of Naples, on to the Dukes of Alba, its sale to a Danish Ambassador, its acquisition by Emperor Nicholas I, his execution and the communist theft, the failure of communism, the sale of the Madonna to an American industrialist, Andrew Melon, who gifted the picture to our National Gallery of Art.
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483 – 1520); The Alba Madonna, circa 1511; NGA 1937.1.24
Here, an anecdote: a friend in the know revealed to me that when hanging the Raphael pictures, Paul Mellon (Andrew’s son), marked the spot the Alba Madonna was to hang by dabbing oil from the ridge of his nose onto a precise spot of the gallery wall.
The Alba Madonna is visual theology. An idea made real. Not just any idea of blobs, drips, or squiggles, but an intelligent design of parts, heroic in universality. Notice the selection of forms appropriate to tree, cloud, wrist, sandal. Notice the eloquent visual language, a refinement of the Classive from ideal to real, to the souled humane. Notice the mastery of craft, the comprehensive artistry seldom achieved ease, the sprezzatura of “I’ve been here before”, an excellence, a confidence strange to preening moderns and dogmatic progressives who tend to spike balls and wiggle in end zones.
The National Gallery of Art’s Seminar, “Painting a Just Picture: Art and Activism”, co-hosted by Learning for Justice
Just now, you might be surprised that a picture almost divine is used, abused in illustration of Woke dogma, you know, the dogma of Social Justice rioters, Social Justice daycares, and of the National Gallery of Art sorority that weaves happy thought propaganda into masterpieces, as a coed might do in illustrating a term paper, as an HR progressive does in seminar and reeducation camps. Do not be surprised: Kaywin Feldman and her sorority of Social Justice cheerleaders scream, “Go Progressive Team!” Here, from the National Gallery of Art website, the standard cheers:
Standards of Beauty What’s beautiful to you? What does this work of art make you think about women in your own community and culture? Who might you want to be in dialogue with to better understand this painting? [the illustration on the NGA site is a sophomoric, plagiaristic ukiyo-e picture by an artist formerly known as, iona rozeal brown]
Racism and Immigration What does barbed wire make you think of? How does it function here as a symbol?
Gender and Identity Are there any activities or practices in your own life that are viewed as belonging to a specific gender? How do you feel about this perception?
Civil Rights and Taking Action What slogans or images have inspired you to act? How is kneeling used as a form of protest today?
Ben Shahn (1898 – 1969); Prenatal Clinic, 1941; NGA 2008.115.4345
Class and Citizenship; Incarceration; Healthcare Access; Internment and Discrimination; Stereotypes and Appropriation; Housing and Homelessness, blah, blah, blah … and we’ve heard it all before, and we contributed to the cause in hope that the do-good ladies would just go away and play bridge, vacation in the Hamptons, give one-another moralistic, glitzy gold stars and leave us alone; but no, now they intend to ruin the National Gallery of Art as they have ruined picnics, lives, the Oscars and the Olympics.
“Get Woke: Go Broke” is the lesson to be learned. Yet, Kaywin Feldman and the sorority ladies will not learn because the ladies are incapable of learning because the ladies are better than you because they tell themselves so. See (above) the excerpts from the National Gallery of Art “Social Justice Issues” page, and know: You need their instruction, their direction, their mommying if you are to grow into proper, Woke adults. “Independent thinking is not allowed, young lady.”
Yes, Kaywin Feldman cannot help but mommy, mommying is in her nature. Philosophy, aesthetics, taste are not in Kaywin Feldman’s nature, she cannot draw herself out of a paper-bag, cannot know a picture but in what some other scholar tells. Kaywin Feldman is a progressive administrator dedicated to outcomes, beholden to Woke allies, indifferent to wisdom. Kaywin Feldman does not value humane achievement, Goodness or Beauty or Truth. Kaywin Feldman’s values (from the National Gallery of Art website) are:
Values Integrity Excellence Curiosity and Continuous Learning Empathy and Generosity of Spirit Agility and Responsiveness
Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640); Daniel in the Lions’ Den, 1616, NGA 1965.13.1
Do you notice: Kaywin Feldman’s values, the values of the new and improved, diverse and inclusive National Gallery of Art are trite. Great works of art can be brutal, painful, exquisite, sensual, imperial, offensive, can be discriminating, elite, singular, exacting, dismissive of Kaywin Feldman’s petty values, those low and middling things appropriate to the entrance gates of petting zoos that command, “Do not Feed the Animals”. Great works of art scorn Kaywin feldman.
Why? Great works of pictuary and statuary are not “public-service announcements” to be employed as “bumper-stickers” for some Social Justice fashion statement. Kaywin Feldman: respect the artists, the pictures and statues, or leave the care of your betters to a person less frivolous than you, less meddling than the Ford Foundation’s Darren Walker. Yes, Raphael will survive you, Ingress will survive you, Saint Gaudens will survive the National Gallery of Art sorority-splaining, yet the National Gallery of Art might not survive the politicization of its artistic treasures.
The American people are rapidly losing respect for cultural institutions because you and other progressives have corrupted, have diminished us, and we are leaving you.
Oliver Lee Jackson (born, 1935): Triptych 3.20.15, 5.21.15, 6.8.15, 2015; NGA 2019.143.1
Christopher Myers (born, 1975); What Does It Mean to Matter (Community Autopsy), 2019; NGA 2021.1.1; the first thing acquired by KF, NGA, this year (2021)
Pardon, I am angered, more for the nation, more for civilization than for myself. You, reader, should know: museum administrators and museum curators have no higher an aesthetic IQ than yours. Museum staff, and most all art historians know art from their books, which they can recite, backwards and can footnote ad nauseum. Yet, art historians seldom experience honestly, authentically, without prepossession, as do you. This fear, this insecurity, is the cause of the tedious explaining, of the describing a picture by qualities posterior, extrinsic to the thing itself. You should know that art historians have a comic-book opinion of art, the good modernist gals and the bad classical guys and the obvious progressive plots each with a dialogue by Freud, Darwin, Marx, dialogues, plots and antagonists inconsequential to your transcendent experience when in Art.
Leonardo Drew (born, 1961); Number 76S, 2019; NGA 2020.105.1, (photo courtesy Anthony Meier Fine Arts)
Nancy Shaver (born, 1946): Georgiana, Shirley, and Sharon, 2011; NGA 2020.19.1.
Rosie Lee Tompkins and Irene Bankhead; untitled (detail), 1989 pieced – 1990 quilted; NGA 2021.10.1
As you will expect, the ladies are just now collecting quilts and the artsy nick-nacks typical of summer arts fairs (seen in the five images, directly above), and the occasional picture worthy of our nation.
* * *
In my opinion, and perhaps yours, before nick-nacks and quilts the National Gallery of Art should acquire the pictuary and statuary of superior Classive artists. Yet, as you know, the masterpieces of these artists will not be collected because these artists are Classives, brilliant, male, Caucasian, persons non grata to elite, privileged, Progressive museum ladies.
I.M. Pei (1917 – 2019); the National Gallery of Art, East Building, 1971 … appearing to be a parking garage, as it does.
John Russell Pope (1874 – 1937); the National Gallery of Art, West Building, 1941 … looking alike the temple that it is.
In my opinion, works of the Classive artist, and no other, are properly, comfortably at home in the museum. Why? The Muses are spiritual, intelligible, of mind divine. A Muse is not a thing of brain, material. The Muse is Platonic, in form an idea by man formed into being. The Classive arts participate in Beauty, Goodness, Truth, treasured qualities suitable to the treasure houses of museums. Progressive designs, political statements and other poses belong in Marxist coloring-books, the Ford Foundation annual reports, and along the path to the gates of Hell.
The humane, ennobling, West Building.
The inhumane, desolate, East Building.
There is so much I would like to share of our Classive ascendence to wealth, health, and happiness, of our Classive traditions of beauty, of goodness and truth, of Progressive importunities, shames and scams and sins, of the Religion of Science each day receding before proofs of Intelligent Design, yet there is little time and less space, here.
I would like to tell you of Athens’ picture gallery, the panorama of victory in war, of a divine statue’s inner life, of Ptolemy’s Mouseion, of collectors, of collections, of a monarch’s treasury, of an emperor’s loot, of the first museums, of W.W. Corcoran’s museum, of its dissolution by Progressives lusting after relevance, of the middling bureaucrats who are remodeling our National Gallery of Art into a politicized petting zoo. No, we haven’t time to scan the magnificence of our Classive Civilization, so we shall briefly dilate upon Kaywin Feldman, director, the National Gallery of Art, her sorority of do-goody, culture-makers, and the pretentious, sanctimonious, self-righteous Woke.
First, a picture composed by Raphael of Urbino, the Alba Madonna, a picture given into the care of Paolo Giovo, Bishop of Nocera de’ Pagani, sheltered in the Sanctuary of Madonna dei Miracoli, collected into the treasury of the Viceroy of Naples, on to the Dukes of Alba, its sale to a Danish Ambassador, its acquisition by Emperor Nicholas I, his execution and the communist theft, the failure of communism, the sale of the Madonna to an American industrialist, Andrew Melon, who gifted the picture to our National Gallery of Art.
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483 – 1520); The Alba Madonna, circa 1511; NGA 1937.1.24
Here, an anecdote: a friend in the know revealed to me that when hanging the Raphael pictures, Paul Mellon (Andrew’s son), marked the spot the Alba Madonna was to hang by dabbing oil from the ridge of his nose onto a precise spot of the gallery wall.
The Alba Madonna is visual theology. An idea made real. Not just any idea of blobs, drips, or squiggles, but an intelligent design of parts, heroic in universality. Notice the selection of forms appropriate to tree, cloud, wrist, sandal. Notice the eloquent visual language, a refinement of the Classive from ideal to real, to the souled humane. Notice the mastery of craft, the comprehensive artistry seldom achieved ease, the sprezzatura of “I’ve been here before”, an excellence, a confidence strange to preening moderns and dogmatic progressives who tend to spike balls and wiggle in end zones.
The National Gallery of Art’s Seminar, “Painting a Just Picture: Art and Activism”, co-hosted by Learning for Justice
Just now, you might be surprised that a picture almost divine is used, abused in illustration of Woke dogma, you know, the dogma of Social Justice rioters, Social Justice daycares, and of the National Gallery of Art sorority that weaves happy thought propaganda into masterpieces, as a coed might do in illustrating a term paper, as an HR progressive does in seminar and reeducation camps. Do not be surprised: Kaywin Feldman and her sorority of Social Justice cheerleaders scream, “Go Progressive Team!” Here, from the National Gallery of Art website, the standard cheers:
Standards of Beauty What’s beautiful to you? What does this work of art make you think about women in your own community and culture? Who might you want to be in dialogue with to better understand this painting? [the illustration on the NGA site is a sophomoric, plagiaristic ukiyo-e picture by an artist formerly known as, iona rozeal brown]
Racism and Immigration What does barbed wire make you think of? How does it function here as a symbol?
Gender and Identity Are there any activities or practices in your own life that are viewed as belonging to a specific gender? How do you feel about this perception?
Civil Rights and Taking Action What slogans or images have inspired you to act? How is kneeling used as a form of protest today?
Ben Shahn (1898 – 1969); Prenatal Clinic, 1941; NGA 2008.115.4345
Class and Citizenship; Incarceration; Healthcare Access; Internment and Discrimination; Stereotypes and Appropriation; Housing and Homelessness, blah, blah, blah … and we’ve heard it all before, and we contributed to the cause in hope that the do-good ladies would just go away and play bridge, vacation in the Hamptons, give one-another moralistic, glitzy gold stars and leave us alone; but no, now they intend to ruin the National Gallery of Art as they have ruined picnics, lives, the Oscars and the Olympics.
“Get Woke: Go Broke” is the lesson to be learned. Yet, Kaywin Feldman and the sorority ladies will not learn because the ladies are incapable of learning because the ladies are better than you because they tell themselves so. See (above) the excerpts from the National Gallery of Art “Social Justice Issues” page, and know: You need their instruction, their direction, their mommying if you are to grow into proper, Woke adults. “Independent thinking is not allowed, young lady.”
Yes, Kaywin Feldman cannot help but mommy, mommying is in her nature. Philosophy, aesthetics, taste are not in Kaywin Feldman’s nature, she cannot draw herself out of a paper-bag, cannot know a picture but in what some other scholar tells. Kaywin Feldman is a progressive administrator dedicated to outcomes, beholden to Woke allies, indifferent to wisdom. Kaywin Feldman does not value humane achievement, Goodness or Beauty or Truth. Kaywin Feldman’s values (from the National Gallery of Art website) are:
Values Integrity Excellence Curiosity and Continuous Learning Empathy and Generosity of Spirit Agility and Responsiveness
Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640); Daniel in the Lions’ Den, 1616, NGA 1965.13.1
Do you notice: Kaywin Feldman’s values, the values of the new and improved, diverse and inclusive National Gallery of Art are trite. Great works of art can be brutal, painful, exquisite, sensual, imperial, offensive, can be discriminating, elite, singular, exacting, dismissive of Kaywin Feldman’s petty values, those low and middling things appropriate to the entrance gates of petting zoos that command, “Do not Feed the Animals”. Great works of art scorn Kaywin feldman.
Why? Great works of pictuary and statuary are not “public-service announcements” to be employed as “bumper-stickers” for some Social Justice fashion statement. Kaywin Feldman: respect the artists, the pictures and statues, or leave the care of your betters to a person less frivolous than you, less meddling than the Ford Foundation’s Darren Walker. Yes, Raphael will survive you, Ingress will survive you, Saint Gaudens will survive the National Gallery of Art sorority-splaining, yet the National Gallery of Art might not survive the politicization of its artistic treasures.
The American people are rapidly losing respect for cultural institutions because you and other progressives have corrupted, have diminished us, and we are leaving you.
Oliver Lee Jackson (born, 1935): Triptych 3.20.15, 5.21.15, 6.8.15, 2015; NGA 2019.143.1
Christopher Myers (born, 1975); What Does It Mean to Matter (Community Autopsy), 2019; NGA 2021.1.1; the first thing acquired by KF, NGA, this year (2021)
Pardon, I am angered, more for the nation, more for civilization than for myself. You, reader, should know: museum administrators and museum curators have no higher an aesthetic IQ than yours. Museum staff, and most all art historians know art from their books, which they can recite, backwards and can footnote ad nauseum. Yet, art historians seldom experience honestly, authentically, without prepossession, as do you. This fear, this insecurity, is the cause of the tedious explaining, of the describing a picture by qualities posterior, extrinsic to the thing itself. You should know that art historians have a comic-book opinion of art, the good modernist gals and the bad classical guys and the obvious progressive plots each with a dialogue by Freud, Darwin, Marx, dialogues, plots and antagonists inconsequential to your transcendent experience when in Art.
Leonardo Drew (born, 1961); Number 76S, 2019; NGA 2020.105.1, (photo courtesy Anthony Meier Fine Arts)
Nancy Shaver (born, 1946): Georgiana, Shirley, and Sharon, 2011; NGA 2020.19.1.
Rosie Lee Tompkins and Irene Bankhead; untitled (detail), 1989 pieced – 1990 quilted; NGA 2021.10.1
As you will expect, the ladies are just now collecting quilts and the artsy nick-nacks typical of summer arts fairs (seen in the five images, directly above), and the occasional picture worthy of our nation.
* * *
In my opinion, and perhaps yours, before nick-nacks and quilts the National Gallery of Art should acquire the pictuary and statuary of superior Classive artists. Yet, as you know, the masterpieces of these artists will not be collected because these artists are Classives, brilliant, male, Caucasian, persons non grata to elite, privileged, Progressive museum ladies.
