Yesterday I got to see Tacoma Art Museum's 2009 Northwest Biennial and my first impression is that it's a braver version of the regional experiment than we've seen in the past at TAM. With 24 artists, down from 2007's 43 and 77 the time before that, this exhibition is a distillation and an idealization. Instead of a show that pleases everyone by including them, it's a statement about what the curators believe it means to be Northwestern in the world right now. That is what a biennial should do: It should find a way to be significant without being fat.

It should also inspire a fight about art and identity.

And this one does. Here's my basic take (I'll explain more in a review): The exhibition is obsessed with abstraction, old-fashioned, and includes some works that never should have been allowed through the front door of the museum (ten Michael Kennas???). It also has strengths, like its insistence on works that delve into social realities (racial, economic, environmental) and its insistence on deviating from the usual suspects to present locally underappreciated gems (Victor Maldonado, whose beautiful monochrome glitter painting is made to the dimensions of a Cadillac Escalade and has mandala-like wheel shapes made by stamping paint on with a "Support Our Troops" sticker; Linda Hutchins, whose mesmerizing waves are drawn directly on the wall with her grandmother's silver spoon; Stephanie Robison, at right).

The show is also far too small and too crowded. It is limited to a single room—granted, the largest room—at TAM, when it should effectively take over the museum. This would allow much more ambitious installations: video, digital, etc.: things that need their own spaces. It would also acknowledge that this biennial may be the most important thing this museum does. Instead, in addition to the biennial right now the museum has two separate small collections shows and a huge exhibition devoted to the man who wrote The Way Things Work (??). The biennial is treated like a side project when in fact it is the only show of its kind in the region.

Installation shots on the jump.