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Tuesday, June 6, 2006

Breaking News: Tacoma Art Museum Chief Curator Leaving

Posted by on June 6 at 17:45 PM

Patricia McDonnell, who was responsible for the Great American Thing exhibition that was splashed across metro buses all winter, is leaving the Tacoma Art Museum.

“The terms of her departure are under negotiation,” museum board president Judith Nilan said, when asked when and why McDonnell is taking off.

McDonnell is a serious-minded scholar who came to the museum in 2002, shortly before it opened its Antoine Predock-designed building. I’ve enjoyed the way the museum’s identity has been forged from the tension between her more traditionalist, historically driven style and fellow curator Rock Hushka’s contemporary, regional connectedness. Occasionally, I’ve found her presentations stiff, as I did with Great American Thing, but I also appreciated her dedication to the field and often found her a knowledgeable and approachable resource.

Board president Nilan said she expects the museum will do a national search to fill the position, but that she doesn’t know for sure: that’s something director Stephanie Stebich and the board will decide together, she said.

TAM’s modern curatorial history also includes: Barbara Johns (whose work I only saw briefly when I arrived in this area and just before she left the job in 1999—but which people continue to rave about) and Greg Bell (an ardent regionalist and an artist himself, now director of Gallery 4Culture, which has had some great shows lately).

I’ll watch with great interest to see who shows up next. TAM is a terrific regional museum: both rooted, and ambitious. It needs special curators.


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So the first thing Jen recalls about the departing curator's last show was that it was "splashed across metro buses all winter." Sigh.

I love the historical shows TAM has put on in recent years, and I hope they don't forsake them to focus on the contemporary, political (as in left-wing political) shows. What's next after the "exhibition on how visual art has shaped the dialogue about AIDS," an exhibition on how artists coped with eight oppressive years of the Bush regime?

Okay Ann Coulter, we've heard enough out of you lately.

Ann Coulter my ass.

Hey, I'm just as liberal as the next Stranger reader. It's just that I appreciate art for art's sake and don't feel obligated to view it through a red/blue lens. Moving art never has to justify itself by making some statement; indifferent art does.

Jim,

Could you in future, PLEASE keep your ass from making an ass of itself on national television? It's really embarrassing, and not very funny.

Thanks ever so.

ah yes - the breaking news - from the so trendy breaking news critic - jen

to enjoy any art - read no critics at all..... utter blather .... like commenting on one's orgasms .... from across the street

God the world is a beautiful place.

3 plus curators in 7 years? That place has got some problems.

Wow, I leave the site for a few hours and come back to asses and Ann Coulter and TAM diagnosed as ill.

First off, there's nothing systemically weird going on at TAM. The museum has had two chief curators in more than 10 years. Ideally, a chief curator is such a leader that he/she stays for longer than McDonnell has, but I don't take her departure or the history of turnover in that slot as a sign of institutional misery at all. It's a tough post to fill, and a small but ambitious regional museum is not an uncomplicated place to curate.

Cressona, you make an interesting point by conflating contemporary art with leftist politics. Anyone who doubts the logic of your assumption need only look at the Frye Art Museum, where contemporary shows do often have a liberal bent, as opposed to the more "conservative" values enshrined in the historical paintings that hang in the adjoining rooms.

But this is a larger conundrum than what I was addressing in my lukewarm review of a show that was hyped to be a blockbuster (hence the bus ads, my shorthand for linking the curator with the show for audiences who might not have gotten down to see the show). My contrasting the GAT show and the AIDS show (which, by the way, may end up falling flat on its face -- I was not giving it a seal of approval, merely pointing out that a museum giving an in-house take on a complex subject was commendable) was not intended to contrast contemporary and historical or blue and red, but academic and social approaches. The tension between the two is what I was higlighting at TAM, and I thought GAT was a particularly academic failure.

I was also simply trying to be honest about my own response to GAT, which I had really looked forward to, but which, in the end, I found bossy and unsurprising. Of course, there were some great pieces in the show, but this was a group show in which each artist had one or two pieces (and some of those very pieces had been seen at TAM in the four early modern shows of the last three years). Is it really necessary to explain again how great/important/revolutionary are Charles Demuth and Marcel Duchamp? My purpose was not to discourage historical shows, but dry, overly academic (and yet somehow condescending, as I felt GAT was) approaches.

Jen Graves wrote: "Cressona, you make an interesting point by conflating contemporary art with leftist politics."

Actually, I would be just as concerned about curators conflating historical art with conservative politics or whitewashing the works of their political context. To TAM's credit, they weren't afraid to point out Marsden Hartley's homosexuality with that historical show.

Anyway, I get enough pleasure from old-fashioned modern art that I overlook whether it's getting the "greatest hits" treatment.

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