Art Changes

What does an art museum do when about 80 percent of its gallery space is closed for renovation? The Columbus Museum of Art, in the midst of a three-year renovation and expansion project, provides an interesting option. Curators have selected about 40 works from the permanent collection to hang in a few unaffected rooms. The choices mainly play on how artists use light in their works, peaking with a trio of Monet, George Bellows (a Columbus son), and Dan Flavin -- an impressionist, a realist and a cheeky post-modernist -- in one corner. The special exhibit is glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly, whose work is fun and intriguing. While not a pure art exhibit (though that hasn't stopped the Brooklyn Museum these days, either, where it has a splashy collection of rock and roll photography), Chihuly is an undeniable crowd-pleaser with a long connection to Columbus, which is important when the museum needs to work extra hard to bring crowds.

The curators push the crowd-friendly approach further, with neat results. Around the centerpiece sculpture of Chihuly's, a glass garden of sorts, are several current-day Etch-A-Sketches, so you can recreate it with your friends. In one of the galleries displaying the permanent collection are a few small tables so children, in size and spirit, can draw and play with blocks to learn about the creative process.

The museum's registrar told me (oh, yeah, the other crowd-friendly change: having the staff mingle with visitors) the hands-on approach is inspired the education department. Interacting with the subject matter has long been a staple of science museums, he said, and people are more likely to remember the lesson if they can mold it themselves. "We're still learning what it means," he said of how visitors and staff meld the changes with the typical museum-going experience.

Sure, the arts, particularly in a city's lead museum, are always a formal, if not chilly affair, but they shouldn't be stilted and they shouldn't be exclusive. Too often the greats are viewed as only the domain of the highbrowed few. Great artists, their champions and their presenters know how to expand the audience to everyone, and expand everyone's palette. With so much of its building closed, the Columbus Museum of Art had to think differently about how it presents its art so its crowds didn't dwindle to a damagingly small number. The purists will probably scoff at their choices, but wonderful art is only at its most powerful when as many people as possible can immerse themselves in it and have fun doing so. If these changes help achieve that, bravo.

Am I A Whole Foods Republican?

Sometimes, the Wall Street Journal's editorial pages, generally defined by an ignorance-is-bliss philosophy, are worth something. Last week, Michael J. Petrilli, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, published a provocative op-ed, arguing that the Republican Party should embrace intelligent policies and court college-educated voters if it wants to return to the political majority.

This column is heartening for several reasons: It rejects the party's populism, favored by Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, et al, in favor of respectful rationality. It wisely dissects voting trends to show college-educated voters are a growing section of the populace, disputing the idea that pandering to the hotheaded masses is good strategy (which must, in part, drive the turn toward spiteful politics, in addition to these people's general anger with the world). It recognizes the party's anti-illegal immigration and anti-gay marriage positions are racist and homophobic, sometimes covertly so and sometimes obviously so. And it realizes people don't always conform to stereotypes: Some might shop at Whole Foods, that "symbol of progressive affluence," but "lifestyle choices aside, they view big government with great suspicion." Petrilli writes, "The first step is to stop denigrating intelligence and education...It's good news that America is becoming better educated, more inclusive, and more concerned about the environment. The Republican Party can either catch this wave, or watch its historic opportunity for "resurgence" wash away with the tides."

Petrilli's essay hit close to home. While I don't shop at Whole Foods, the namesake of his new bloc (and think one can eat and shop responsibly without patronizing it), I fit all the other distinguishing characteristics he lists: appreciating diversity, living in urban walkable settings, and believing in environmental stewardship, community service and a spirit of inclusion. I don't usually have a suspicious view of big government. Then again, I tire of union politics and like charter schools, two un-Democratic positions. I also like my politicians to be fiscally responsible, and prefer compromise to the intensely partisan, often unrealistic view that the left wing of the party takes as it unsuccessfully tries to cement a Democratic majority (though, to be fair, the Republicans' right wing unsuccessfully attempted to do the same).

A crisis of confidence ensued: Am I really as true a Democrat as I've long thought I am? Maybe I should be an unenrolled voter, or vote for Republicans more often? Then, I realized, among other things: I believe health care is a right, not a privilege, and access should be extended universally; abortion should be legal, as should gay marriage; science has proven climate change is happening because of man-made activities, and must be dealt with (which has a very good chance of yielding its own economic innovation); preemptive foreign policy isn't wise and war must be considered carefully. I'll stay in the Democratic column for now, thanks, but thanks for getting me thinking, Mr. Petrilli.

Update: The New Yorker this week published a lengthy profile of Whole Foods' founding CEO, John Mackey, who gained notoriety last summer for his op-ed in the WSJ arguing against the Obama administration's health care policy. A friend's sister said in September that she has stopped shopping there as a result, though I haven't seen her since. Perhaps there aren't as many Whole Republicans as Mr. Petrilli thinks. (In the somewhat more distant past Mackey also badmouthed his former competitor Wild Oats, which Whole Foods eventually bought, on Internet chat sites under a pseudonym. Oh, the Internet.)

Though Mackey generally came across as inconsiderate if passionate, the story highlighted two important questions: The age-old punk-rock conundrum of whether a cultural phenomenon can remain true to itself and the cause once it gets big and popular, and whether capitalism can produce social good. Mackey firmly believes the answer to the latter is yes -- Whole Foods' impact on generally more responsible and healthier eating habits suggests he's correct -- and for that, I must respect him.

My Life Is "Top Chef"

When people ask me about graduate school, I often compare it, for better or worse, to "Top Chef." Really, the similarities are uncanny: A group of 30 students, slightly larger than the roughly 16 on the show, with a studio course as each semester's centerpiece. We all work in the same space, each with his own desks, like the "Top Chef Kitchen." Assignments are distributed to us all at once, after the professor calls us into a huddle. As we work on them, the professors visit our desks to ask what we're doing and to make suggestions, aka Tom Colicchio's "sniff and sneer." We have various levels of reviews and critiques, leading up to "final review," when an outside panel of professionals visit to listen to five-minutes (or longer) presentations, just like the "celebrity chefs" who make cameos. Then, they compliment and/or criticize based on what they think.

Having real life resemble reality is an interesting experience, though sometimes a disheartening one because evaluations become as arbitrary and subjective as possible. If one professional's reaction is disdainful but another's is praiseworthy, you only experience one or the other based on pure luck. (Sometimes you have both.) If one professional finds nothing to like in anyone's projects, but you avoid him and receive a glowing review, that doesn't say much about your skills beyond having a good luck of the draw. Sometimes it's hard to learn much from these reviews, except: Life depends on luck as much as it does skill, and life is tough.

After glumly thinking about this on a recent weekend, I read Peter Schjeldahl's brief review of Urs Fischer's mid-career retrospective at the New Museum in the city. Among the rabidly harsh comments, here's the conclusion: "If you spend more than twenty minutes with the three-floor extravaganza, you’re loitering. The New Museum could just as well not have done the show while saying it did. The effect would be roughly the same: expressing a practically reptilian institutional craving for a new art star." That's it. Years of work by Fischer, a complimentary profile of him in the same magazine a few weeks earlier, accolades from many other sources and, bam, one of the country's biggest art critics tears you to shreds in three sentences. That's how the worlds of art, design and the physical environment work, I suppose. Better be able to shrug it off and go at it all over again.

Two Years Running

This blog's two-year anniversary passed unnoticed earlier in this month, in the midst of finals, but I'll briefly recognize it by writing how surprised I am this is still going. Blogging is surprisingly fun, and I sure needed an outlet when I started it. In fact, I think my mid-conversation rants have shrunk considerably. Most fun (and embarrassing) is when my friends admit they actually read it, though I don't think one needs more than two hands to tally my base of regular readers.

Really, it's nice to have an outlet for twirling words, something that always deserves more practice and should never be ignored. Consider it my little homage to writers such as Messrs. Angell and R.W. Apple Jr. Also in honor of Apple, the prodigious, prolific and portly former Times reporter, whose collected articles on food I'm reading, I indulgently ordered an appetizer with my pho this afternoon, on my annual holiday trip to Pho Pasteur (or Le's). Heading to the gym shortly after may have been a mistake.

Welcome Back, Roger Angell

Catching up on old New Yorkers, I must note the return of Roger Angell, the magazine's longtime fiction editor and chronicler-extraordinaire of baseball, who had his first full story in about 15 months in the Nov. 30 edition. As usual, it recapped the postseason, which this year featured the Yankees' first World Series win since 2000.

All one needs to like Angell's writing about baseball is an appreciation of wonderful sunny days and brisk fall nights, where both seem like the perfect settings for running across a field or sitting in the stands and taking in the twilight, and an appreciation of language that never fails to describe it all delicately and effortlessly. Nothing happens and no player appears in Angell's prose without a well-chosen adjective. Some of the latest examples from this story: "the same Dorothea Lange expression"; "a soggy loss"; "Chase Utley, the classy Philadelphia second baseman"; "that almond-colored bat held still." Liking baseball is helpful but not required to enjoy Angell's work. In fact, Angell's writing might make you a baseball fan even if you think you don't like it. I easily forget his tolerance of the Yankees, though, based on the above photo, he appears to be a Mets fan too. Perhaps he just loves life.

His stories are becoming all the more precious these days because, at 89 years old, he may not be around to write them much longer. The stepson of E.B. White, raised in the New Yorker's offices and a staff writer since 1944, he is the most iconic, full-blooded (blue-blooded?) New Yorker New Yorker in my mind, and it's always a pleasure to see that he's still typing on his keys.

Maybe Those Chickens Have Hatched

Speaking of the owners of Boston's sports franchises, the Herald reports that Patriots owner Robert Kraft has successfully petitioned the Brookline Health Department to keep chickens in his manse's backyard. Apparently, he already has a few at his Cape Cod home, but his grandchildren like them so much, he wants to have the chickens around when the kids visit the urban estate.

Two very cool friends and I sometimes talk about when you know something is no longer cool. My general rule of thumb is: Once the Times has written about something, it means that thing hasn't been cool for about six months. In certain situations, I'll soften that standard to three months. That Robert Kraft keeps chickens in his backyard, a growing trend the past few years, as part of the renewed interest in food culture/politics and local farming/economies, confirms that having chickens in your backyards hasn't been cool for about three years. Also not in chicken-raising's favor: The New Yorker has published two stories this fall involving staffers' adventures in eating homegrown eggs. First, Susan Orlean gushed about it and then, Elizabeth Kolbert, perhaps jealous, followed.

I love local farms more than most and travel out of my way to compare one stand's broccoli to another's. However, the interest in raising chickens at home, especially in semi- or fully-urban settings strikes me as a poor allocation of resources and expertise, if not an overly fussy attempt at personal image-branding. Community gardens are wonderful community-uniting endeavors. Raising chickens in your backyard doesn't quite seem to qualify.

Then again, maybe it's idiotic of me to judge food habits based on whether or not they're cool. If vegetable stock is no longer in, I surely am a loser.

Pags = The Problems Of Being A Hobbyist Politician

Last month, in one of my now-completed courses, I was one of three of about 65 people to raise their hands when asked who voted in Cambridge's municipal elections. For some reason, I doubt that number will be much higher for the Dec. 8 Senate primary to replace Ted Kennedy. As a friend recently noted, the problem with the Democratic candidates in this fall's compressed campaign is it's hard to imagine any of the four as excellent senators. I was first planning to vote for Steve Pagliuca, the former Bain Capital executive, co-owner of the Celtics and exceedingly wealthy Weston resident who briefly considered buying the Globe, but now appears in its pages every day because of the campaign.

The allure of the businessman-turned-politician is never-ending. "If only government could be run as a business," we think, always forgetting that government, inherently, isn't a business. In fact, one of government's chief duties is to help those cast aside by business, but I'm susceptible to the siren's call too. "If someone was talented enough to become a wealthy, successful businessman, couldn't he apply the same skills to creating an effective, compassionate government?" Bloomberg largely helps show the answer can be yes. These days, when our country sits in a two-year-old recession largely because of financial "products" that weren't as ingenious as promised, I like the idea of electing a financial executive who understands these concepts exceedingly better than the typical politician and can devise a way to regulate them such that recent history doesn't repeat itself.

However, when much of your campaign's economic rhetoric takes on a populist edge, as Pagliuca's has, you've created your own large problem. Pagliuca can criticize Wall Street, but, as as a former private-equity executive, he's also Wall Street. That private equity is more about restructuring companies, often involving laying off lots of workers, adding lots of debt and reselling the companies for lots of profit for the private equity managers, compared to venture capital, which is more about growing companies, doesn't help. Of course, those inside an industry know its foibles the best, but he doesn't make a compelling case for building on his background to create a growing economy that benefits as many as possible. (David Bernstein, the Boston Phoenix's political writer, has noted the same.) And, of course all political advertisements are overblown, overly simple and misleading. But to have your tag line be"Pags = Jobs" is generally absurd and smacks a little too much of Tammany Hall -- i.e. "A vote for Pagliuca means we'll find a job for you in a patronage machine."

Searching for politicians who are true to themselves is an often fruitless endeavor, but Pagliuca's campaign, only a couple of months after he wasn't able to buy the Globe, seems like a wealthy guy rooting around his pockets for his next act rather than doing something out of conviction. I'll probably opt for someone with more genuine conviction, though I'm not settled yet on who that exactly is.

Update: I voted for Congressman Michael Capuano, who lost by a very wide margin. Turnout was quite low throughout the state. The polling place in my school had no more than 100 people the whole day, which is disappointing. I love to vote. Voting, wearing my "I voted" sticker, and buying a $1.00 gingerbread cookie at 8 a.m. to support a local school's field trips fund makes me proud.