Friday, January 20, 2017

F*ck the National Gallery

I cannot believe how good my writing is going. I’m not on any drugs. It could be delusion.
But I am not surprised. I love the subject material I’m dealing with: Art gallery policies.  I’m saying things I’ve long wanted to see in public discourse. For twenty-seven years I wrote about the visual arts within corporate constraints; the public art galleries were significant customers of my client, however, so I couldn’t be critical of public exhibition policies. Yet for most of my life I have been going to galleries and been critical of the exhibition policies of several local museums. Now the gloves are off.
For example: It has always really REALLY bothered me that the National Gallery of Canada paid enough in legal fees to take their case to not pay exhibition fees to the visual artists they all the way to the Supreme Court—and lost. And this was when most other Canadian public galleries were paying the fees. I mean, come on, artists are the notoriously most famously underpaid professionals in the workforce. I put this disgusting fact in my script and it felt really good.  
It’s a mention in the script. It’s not a big deal, and yes, it’s therapeutic, but it fits in and it can come out on editing if need be, but it’s a perfect example of the point I am trying to make in the script: Administrative needs shouldn’t trump aesthetic objectives in public art galleries. It’s just wrong!
This afternoon I have my meeting with Western Gold and then I am going for drinks with friends at the end of the afternoon. But first: A walk. It’s a beautiful sunny day.





















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