FAQ
Getting the party started…
Photo courtesy mayotic via the Brooklyn Museum Group on Flickr. All Rights Reserved.
As Tamara noted, one of the most interesting things about putting on exhibitions for living artists is that the artists themselves often have a hand in how their work is viewed, and this is not just limited to the pieces in the exhibition. In this case, planning for the Members Preview and Reception was much more than just firing off a letter to all our Members and ordering some food from our caterer. For the © MURAKAMI Members Preview and Reception held on April 4, Murakami’s studio Kaikai Kiki helped design the invitation (seen above) and were only satisfied when the artist himself approved it.
Going into the night, there were two big unknowns: the number of people that would show up, and whether the artist was going to make an appearance. When 2,300 Members came, we were thrilled. And when the Takashi Murakami himself walked into the lobby, it was icing on the cake. He graciously shook hands, took pictures, and signed invitations (as you can see below) for over an hour, and our Members couldn’t have been happier. Maybe we should do exhibitions of living artists more often!
If you didn’t make it to the Members opening, the show is now open to the public through July 13. Come and check it out! You never know when the artist could show up…
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Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum
June 6th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
I was just chatting with a friend from New York, and he mentioned visiting the Murakami exhibit. It is often an uphill battle to recommend Japanese art with origins in pop culture, and after my friend saw the Murakami exhibit he firmly turned away from my recommendations. All I could say to him was it was probably a disappointment to the Japanese art community itself that such a mediocre Warhol wannabe received the red carpet treatment and is receiving such a large share of the pie for a lame manifesto and homages to base commercialism.
Did the exhibition committee at Brooklyn Museum make a serious attempt to understand the Japanese art community or popular culture? Or did they just see Murakami mentioned in Wired Magazine - or worse yet just remember him from some funding-schmooze party? Has the ability to self-promote truly become art?
If Brooklyn Museum is considering showing some respect to Japanese popular arts in the future, here are some free ideas for you. Why not recognize it takes multiple participants to make a genre, and exhibit a number of artists together? Why not juxtapose different genres - say film, anime, manga, and pulp crime fiction? If the classy patrons of Brooklyn Museum are demanding to celebrate a pop artist, how about choosing a real one like Naoki Urasawa or Miyazaki?
I had a lot of artsy friends in college, and it was truly sad to see how the real terms of the world ground them down, ignored and starved them as if determined to make them change their choice of career and deny the world their work. When arbiters of the art world like the exhibition committee of a major museum insist on pandering to hacks like Murakami, they are simultaneously assuring the squeeze-out of many young artists that perhaps really had something to say. It also makes it hard for the people who want to recognize them to persuade those who have been introduced to Japanese media and style through Murakami to give the Japanese art world another chance.
What a pity.