LACMA joins the ranks of museum bloggers
A few art museums have had staff-run blogs for a while now, and they've got real promise. (The two best known are probably the Walker Art Center's Off Center and the Indianapolis Museum's IMA Blog.) Anything that helps dissolve a chilly aura of August Cultural Edifice that can make an art institution feel anonymous and forbidding is probably a good thing. Bloggers are people too, and so are museum staff.
Just over a week ago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art launched Unframed. The staff-run blog has so far had an update on the proposed crane-with-train sculpture by Jeff Koons for the museum's plaza, a paean to the late Chinese filmmaker Edward Yang (a film series is scheduled) and a shout-out to the 20th anniversary of LACMA's wonderfully eccentric Pavilion for Japanese Art, at right. (Architecturally, think Frank Lloyd Wright's corkscrew Guggenheim with paper walls and the art placed out in the central void, rather than hugging the perimeter ramp.) Today there's even an item that this news junkie missed.
Friday, the Salt Lake Tribune printed what appears to be the first statement on an arts policy made by Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. (It's four sentences long.) LACMA director of press relations Allison Agsten made the catch.
What does McCain say? In a nutshell, that public schools receiving federal funds can have arts in the curriculum as a local initiative, but only as an adjunct to "basic subjects critical to ensuring students are prepared to compete and succeed in the global economy."
Sen. Barack Obama issued his formal policy statement almost a year ago.
Check out Unframed here and the presidential policy post here.
-- Christopher Knight
Photo credit: Jeremy Rosenberg / Los Angeles Times
