Where did the art go?
It is ironic that this new TMA Facebook post boasts of having every color of the rainbow in their galleries using unidentified paintings that they don’t even have hanging on their walls! And the colored stripes they cropped out of their new acquisition of a rainbow flag (using Edward Drummond Libbey Endowment funds) — they don’t even have THAT on display! They don’t identify the art they are exploiting but they make sure to identify the politics! Where’s the art?
Not on View!
no kidding!
Why did they buy it if they are not going to hang it?
Is the museum promoting Pride or is Pride promoting the museum? If the art doesn’t hang on the gallery walls but instead is used to make derivatives of the art for institutional advertising, there is not much to be proud of at the Toledo Museum of “Art.”
Ownership of art does not come with the right to exploit the artist’s copyright for advertising or promoting a brand by incorporating it into their giant size overbearing logo. I hope the museum licensed that right from the Gilbert Baker estate as his copyright runs through 2087.
Identity politics yes but forget about the artist
As for moral rights — recently the museum has dropped the all-important information of identifying artwork they exploit on social media by omitting the name of the artist, title of the artwork and the year of creation, indicating that they view that artists are no longer individuals — that artists belong to the “collective” now. The museum presents itself as the “Artist.”
The Painter Charles Conder — who knew?
Where did the painter Charles Conder go? He went to a small but hip and exclusively gay Chicago gallery in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, the Wrightwood 659, for a show titled The First Homosexuals: Birth of a New Identity. The gallery is open only 2 days a week, but for June in celebration of Pride, it’s open 3 days a week. Be warned, it’s for adults only:
Content Advisory: The First Homosexuals contains sexually explicit content. For mature audiences only. Some portions of the exhibition contain sexual violence, violence against Indigenous peoples, and racist depictions.
Don’t plan on seeing it though even if you want to – it’s so exclusive that tickets may be impossible to get. Is this what the Toledo Museum of Art is about now? Would the Libbeys like this?