Two Notes: One Sort of Early, One Rather Late

Note ONE: Getting around the Gallery Ghetto

Through the wonders of hit counters, a while ago I discovered a new online guide through the maze of galleries in that jungle called Chelsea. Upon discovering chelseaartgalleries.com I was pretty amazed at the sheer quantity of data this site was accumulating and organizing in very helpful ways. Not only were they organizing the galleries by street (which mirrors the way I gallery hop), but they listed all the galleries' artists, their staff, next-door neighbors, recent and upcoming exhibitions, reviews, and even which art fairs they have been or will be in. Morever, they have this amazing "Gallery Tour" tool that you can use to chart your course for any given trip to the hood (no more illegible notes on napkins, wahoo!!). And they've done it in an extraordinarily easy-to-navigate way. I've worked on developing the information architecture for large portal-esque sites, and I can tell theirs must be very well thought out.

OK, so I've indicated before I've worked on websites with focus groups and such, and the publisher of this new site had read that on my blog and emailed me with some flattering words about the blog and an invitation to offer feedback on his site. I am truly impressed by the effort so I wrote back with some comments and suggestions, a few of which they've implemented. Long story short: if you're new to gallery hopping, this is an amazing resource. It could use more (any) images of actual art and I think their recommendations for reading and featured artists need a clear POV (i.e., who's making these choices...what are their credentials?), but they've indicated they are interested in possibly offering feeds from blogs in addition to news, which could make it a good central location to get your up-to-the-minute news and gossip, as well as gallery info. There is the potential for it to try to be too many things for too many people, but as it stands now, the site is a welcome addition to the online resources designed to help you get around the gallery ghetto.

Note TWO: Don't Read Him

Although I've made some comments on Edna's site and had a few email chats with various folks engaged in the Charlie Finch debate that's raging across the art blogosphere, I've been quiet here. I've felt my blood boil from time to time while reading Charlie's columns on artnet. He's a rather rude pundit, to put it bluntly. On a few occassions, when he peppered his prose with rather nasty anti-gay statements, I considered taking him to task, but then cooled down a bit and went back and re-read what he was writing with a more open mind. OK, so it was generally still offensive, but the exercise didn't kill me.

Now I'm sure I'm going to get myself in trouble here, because I seem to be in the minority of art bloggers in thinking it's terribly wrong to call for artnet.com to fire Charlie (I consider libel, blatant falsehoods, and open calls for violence sackable offenses, but short of those, I support freedom of expression...even for bigots and blowhards...and more than just freedom of expression, I very, very strongly believe in a dialog...an exchange of ideas, even highly emotional and politically incorrect ones...such exchanges are vital to progress IMO). I will admit that having culled through Charlie's old columns last night I can attest that it's an appalling collection of horrendously sexist text, and so I'm happy to see his public is finally beating him up over it, but there's a very simple way to avoid being offended by him...don't be his public...don't read him.

I know that sounds rather simple of me, but I mean it sincerely. Before starting this blog, I spent a great deal of my time writing for the wonderful pan-partisan political blog Obsidian Wings. With a commitement to offering a true spectrum of political thought, the site has writers on the far left, central left, middle, central right and far right. As time went on, the majority of the readership tended to be central or far left, so to balance it out we invited a controversial, stauchly right writer to join the group. In the beginning, each thread to his posts was a firestorm, and the readership consumed untold megabytes insisting that we, the moderators, kick him out. They told us they didn't appreciate coming to site (which had authors' names at the end of each post) and being surprised that any given text they were reading might be offensive to them. Eventually the moderators came to a compromise and agreed to make each author put a byline at the top of their entries so that readers could see who a post was by and just skip the ones by those writers they knew would upset them. It worked. That rightwing writer still gets plenty of angry comments, but at least the readers have only themselves to blame if they're upset. More importantly, many of his most vocal opponents have grudingly admitted over time that they have learned from him.

Now it's totally possible that there's nothing Charlie Finch can teach that's worth learning. I'm not suggesting anyone should subject themselves to his repugnant laspes in taste or manners just to glean some nugget of insight. Quite the contrary...Don't like Charlie Finch? Don't read him. But I do feel strongly that a spectrum of opinion is important in all fields. More than that, I feel very strongly that even the offensive have a right to their voice. Suggesting that artnet.com shouldn't have such a voice, ever, is backdoor censorship to me. Write blistering critiques of his abusive prose...email and complain to the editor...email and complain to the advertisers on the site, but stop short of insisting he be fired...that's a very serious slippery slope. Especially when it's so easy to just not read him.

UPDATE: A fellow blogger has emailed a group of art bloggers to point out that in addition to how objectionable Charlie's article on Natalie Frank is, another issue he deserves to be taken to task over (and artnet.com as well) is that Charlie owns Natalie's work. This blogger suggests that praising her work in such a context (without disclosing his ownership) is a conflict of interest. I hesitate to weigh in definitively on that (I own pieces by several of the "Artist of the Week" artists I've highlighted and haven't disclosed that each time), but I do think given the readership of artnet.com, Charlie should have noted this detail.