![]() ![]() It shows any artist's transformation as one among many. The museum bursts the limits of its own theme. By the same token, in once again taking center stage, it comes all the more into question.Īnd then comes a further twist. It questions where the art ends and museum practices begin. It joins in the postmodern analysis of museum politics. ![]() ![]() By putting on this show, the Modern transforms itself. The exhibition exemplifies the theme, too. "The Museum Transformed" does not stop with works of art. On the other hand, he tears those neat categories to shreds. On the one hand, he creates a category beyond architecture or sculpture, what he and Rosalind Krauss called nonsite. Robert Smithson moves bits of terrain inside the museum, challenging its ability to select from and stand outside nature. A sketch by Christo asks to wrap MoMA itself, and what a shame he never got permission. Those memories of Southern California sit in a room called "The Museum Transformed." The Modern divides its show by theme, and here one meets transformations that I have admired rather more. If Ruscha had a community's alienation in mind, however, he was also a safely prominent artist having fun. Who wants to burn down the Brooklyn Museum, just because it gives its shows over to the Rubell Family Collection of one artist, Hernan Bas? With its new building, LACMA had set itself up as a hugely oversized monument to itself. Ruscha's painting dates from the 1960s, back when protests still had more anger than irony. Art has once again succeeded not by containing its subject, but by setting it free. And somehow the museum's power and presence survives it all. In a fascinating exhibition, they analyze the museum to death and take its strategies for their own. Artists, like Ed Ruscha here, may think they can outsmart the art world's institutional politics. Yet its latest show ends with the perfect image, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Fire. Okay, the Museum of Modern Art would not go that far, not even to clear ground for yet another upcoming expansion and self-definition. Like that opening chorus in Henry V, it demands to "ascend / The brightest heaven of invention." Any flashier the bravado, and it might have to go up in flames. Now it comes on stage before the principal players, the artists. It has already greeted me with the inevitable gift shop and high admission prices. But when a museum calls its exhibition "The Museum as Muse," I only half hear postmodern mind games. O for a Muse of fire! Shakespeare wrote that, not a press officer. ![]()
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