Springing Forward: Bits & Pieces

In case you missed the previously announced April 17 Zoom session — you actually didn’t miss anything. Technical difficulties at the host’s end forced its cancellation. We’ve rescheduled. Here’s the info again:

A. D. Coleman/ATOA Zoom Session May 8

On the evening of this coming Monday, May 8, Douglas I. Sheer, president of the critically acclaimed series Artists Talk On Art, will conduct a virtual interview with me, hosted via Zoom.

I invite all readers of this blog to join me for this event, which is free and open to the public. As a result of the recent hacking of an ATOA session, they now require pre-registration via their homepage for participation. Click here and scroll down to pre-register. Then they will email you the Zoom link and passcode for the session. Just use those to login, shortly before 7 p.m. EST.

The host will grant you access to the Zoom Room promptly at 7:00 p.m.

Artists Talk on Art was founded in 1974 and is the art world’s longest running, most prolific forum. January marked its 49th year. I serve on ATOA’s advisory board, and have collaborated with the organization on numerous occasions over the years, appearing on and moderating panels and also offering solo presentations of various curatorial projects of my own. This is the first ATOA panel devoted to an overview of my professional activities.

A short q&a period will follow the interview, which will be recorded. Subsequently the video will get posted at the ATOA channel on YouTube, and eventually it will become part of the ATOA archive, which resides in the prestigious Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC. I’ll post a link to the video, so if you miss the live session you can watch it at your leisure.

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CMP at 50

The California Museum of Photography (CMP), which resides within the University of California, Riverside (UCR), has mounted “CMP at 50,” which will run from March 18, 2023 to August 6, 2023. Here’s a description by curator Leigh Gleason, Interim Executive Director and Director of Collections at UCR ARTS:

CMP at 50 is a showcase of history and wonder, an exhibition that celebrates the first 50 years of the California Museum of Photography. From its inception, the CMP has dedicated itself to collecting and exhibiting photography not only as an art form, but as a cultural and technological phenomenon. The exhibition celebrates this legacy, and the countless supporters, staff, faculty, donors, collectors, members, and students who have enabled the museum to thrive. CMP at 50 draws on the world-class collection of 500,000 images and objects to present an exhibition of gems and marvels connected to the museum’s evolution and to the dramatically shifting course of photo history.

Here’s a view of its street-level frontage:

Here’s its entryway, with the exhibition visible:

Here’s the front door:

And a closer view of the door:

This is just … cool.

(Note: It reads, “We’ve spent now about 150 years trying to convince ourselves that photographs are reliable evidence, some unimpeachable slice of the real world. That was a myth from the very beginning.” I actually can’t place this exact quote, which circulates on the internet — the source, I suspect, from which the exhibition curator derived it. It doesn’t appear in my published writings or formal speeches; I assume it comes from a video of a panel discussion. I certainly own it — it sounds like me, and I’ve expressed this idea in print and in public presentations, in roughly the same words, for decades. Whatever its origin, it tickles me to find it put to good use here. My thanks to photographer and educator Harris Fogel for alerting me to its presence and providing these photos.)

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They’re Slept

The debate over the concept of “woke” suffers from a serious vocabulary deficiency. What all sides in this situation clearly and desperately need is a term that, immediately and easily, identifies the opposite pole. “Not woke” or “anti-woke” just don’t cut it.

As my contribution, I hereby propose slept. It’s the precise antonym. Grammatically, as the past tense of the verb form of sleep, it matches perfectly. It’s a comparable single syllable, easy to pronounce, easy to remember. Sample usages: “Pudding Fingers” DeSantis is so slept. We need to reverse the sleptness of the DeSantis administration.

You’re welcome.

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You’re Not Alone …

If your digital misery loves company, I recommend “2 in 3 Americans Say Digital Files Lead To Stress or Anxiety: Americans’ cyber hoarding habits in 2022” by Alex Kerai, published at highspeedinternet.com on November 16, 2022. From the article:

• • 20% of Americans have more than 100 items on their desktop.
  • Over two-fifths of our respondents (42%) reported keeping documents they may no longer need.
  • Only 52% of respondents delete emails on a regular basis.
  • On average, people only read or open 52% of the emails they receive.
  • Less than 24% of Americans change their passwords on a regular basis.
  • Over a third of Americans rarely or never review active accounts or subscriptions.
  • 45% do not regularly update apps installed on their phone or computer.
  • Over 1 in 4 Americans rarely or never clear the cache or cookies from their browser.

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… and Neither Am I

Should my periodic laments about the state of photo criticism strike you as a mere personal peeve, I direct your attention to “Why the loss of newspaper cultural critics hurts us as citizens” by Christine Ledbetter, published in the Chicago Tribune on May 1, 2023.

Ledbetter is a former senior arts editor at The Washington Post, where her emphasis, as here, was primarily on the performing arts, dance in particular. However, what she has to say pertains no less to the visual arts:

… The theater, music, movie, fashion, book, dance and architectural critics who once populated the nation’s media have been systematically eliminated at our beleaguered newspapers. As print circulation and advertising have declined, journalism’s new business model has prized clicks over culture. …

… Without informed, interrogative critics who champion the art form, we are left with the endless navel-gazing of TikTok dancers.

We’ve never had a plethora of photo critics, or of visual-arts critics as knowledgeable about photography as we expect them to be about painting and sculpture. Not even a plenitude thereof. Even in the best of times — say, 1985-1995 — a mere handful, scattered around the country. I gave up keeping tabs some years back, but it seems to me that we have no working critic of photography nowadays covering the contemporary scene. That’s just sad. And, as I’ve said many times, while we can point our fingers at a number of contributing causes, some of the fault is ours.

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The Return of Mrs. Malaprop

The character Mrs. Malaprop is a bumbling, pretentious aunt who gets mixed up in the schemes and dreams of young lovers in The Rivals, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 comedy of manners. Her fame derives from her tendency to misunderstand and misuse words, from which we derive the term malapropism.

Down the years, others have acquired that skill, with several today prominently featured at the top of the MAGA batting order. Were they not literally dangerous — they prominently sport lethal hardware and spout vile and ignorant ideas — we’d find them purely entertaining. As it is, we must temper our derision with loathing.

Nonetheless, their garbling of their native tongue does sometimes light a fire in my imagination. Take Colorado’s GOP Congresswoman Lauren “Bobo” Boebert. Her riff on a biblical passage involving wanton killing, which she understands as “wonton” killing, went viral:

“I don’t know what a wonton killing is. I’m going to have to look that one up, but it sounds interesting. I don’t think I want to be a part of it,” she elaborated perkily. Clearly she’s intent on giving Marjorie Taylor Greene a run for her “gazpacho police” money.

Given the “six degrees of separation” theory, it’s possible that someone reading this has connection to Ms. Boebert. If so, pass the following along:

“Wonton Killing” is the Cantonese version of the notorious “Death of A Thousand Cuts” favored by Mandarin Chinese emperors. It combines the action of stoning with the exquisitely agonizing “Chinese water torture.” In this version, usually inflicted on women, the hapless victim gets pelted alternately with dry, crispy fried wontons and the softer, heavier, wet soup dumplings — but in no particular timing or pattern. Forced to guess which comes next, as they accumulate around and adhere to one, those subjected to it often go mad before the heap gets high enough to smother them, as it does inexorably and inevitably.

Since my wife Anna comes from mainland China, you can trust this as authoritative.

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This post supported by a donation from Carlyle T.

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