Cai of Frustration

Sometimes, it seems like the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) cannot catch a break. The museum spent a good portion of 2007 mired in controversy due to its commissioning of, and subsequent legal wrangling with, artist Christoph Büchel. The museum eventually received permission from the judge presiding over the case to cut its losses, scrap Mr. Büchel’s unfinished exhibition, Training Ground for Democracy, and move on.

During the controversy, much of the reporting in major media outlets, including The New York Times and The Boston Globe sided with Mr. Büchel, if only (in the opinion of this observer) because the artist played better offense than the museum played defense.

New York magazine used the Büchel brouhaha as a negative example in an article published on October 7, 2007 issue. The piece, “Has Money Ruined Art?” by Jerry Saltz asks

Can the general public look at contemporary art without thinking about money? Will young artists having 30-month careers be able to also have 30-year careers, or are we simply eating our young? And if money is mainly what people are thinking about, does that mean art’s audience will turn cynical or hostile toward it?

One museum already seems to have crossed that line. This summer, Mass MoCA, in North Adams, Massachusetts, allowed visitors to walk through an unfinished Christoph Büchel installation—one whose incomplete status had already inflamed the artist, leading to the show’s cancellation and a lawsuit—as they made their way to another exhibit…A Massachusetts judge agreed that the museum was acting within its rights and ruled against Büchel. Really, it was as if Mass MoCA was trying to humiliate Büchel, to teach him a very public lesson…This kind of hostile attitude toward artists from general audiences is familiar; from a museum, it’s deplorable.

Deplorable. That’s it. No statement from anyone affiliated with the museum. No pretense of responsible reporting. The museum was David, and the poor artist Goliath. That was the story, from which few, if any, stories deviated.

The exhibition that replaced Mr. Büchel’s incomplete installation, Jenny Holzer’s Projections, is magnificent, and will doubtless help mend any small tears in the fabric of MASS MoCA’s reputation, at least among visitors. However, the media seems still unwilling to give credit where it is due.

In my opinion, one of the finest exhibitions at MASS MoCA was Inopportune, by the expatriate Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang. The installation opened in late 2005, and resided in the museum’s mammoth Building 5 for some ten months. MASS MoCA staff members were instrumental in helping the artist present and realize his vision.

Now, Inopportune is part of a retrospective of Cai’s work that opened at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Unfortunately, but perhaps unsurprisingly, MASS MoCA’s contribution to the exhibition goes unmentioned in the major media coverage of the show.

On Sunday, February 17, 2008, Arthur Lubow contributed a profile of Cai to The New York Times Magazine. The article, “The Pyrotechnic Imagination,” discusses Inopportune:

One of the most striking pieces in his current retrospective is “Inopportune: Stage One,” from 2004. As recreated for the Guggenheim, “Inopportune: Stage One” consists of nine white American cars suspended vertically in the rotunda. Flashing light tubes protrude from the cars like arrows.

No mention of MASS MoCA. Note, however, the way that Mr. Lubow cites the provenance of other pieces of Cai’s work included in the Guggenheim retrospective:

In 2006 Cai did a rooftop installation, Transparent Monument, at the Metropolitan Museum; in it, he erected a large sheet of glass, through which the skyline was clearly visible, and placed replicas of dead birds at its base.

Apparently, the Metropolitan Museum is more deserving of credit than MASS MoCA. So too is the Venice Biennale:

The most elaborate installation in the Guggenheim exhibition is Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard, the piece that won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and secured Cai’s international prominence.

If Mr. Lubow cites the Met and the Venice Biennale, does he not have a responsibility to be equally assiduous in presenting an accurate history of all of the Cai Guo-Qiang works he references?

Mr. Lubow and the Times are not alone in their sins of omission. The February 25, 2008, issue of Newsweek somehow manages to overlook MASS MoCA as well. In “Pop Goes the Easel”, Cathleen McGuigan writes:

The first artwork you’ll see in the Guggenheim show is Inopportune: Stage One, a spectacular stylization of a car bombing, unfolding cinematically—or like the narrative of a Chinese scroll—with nine identical white Chevy Metros tumbling down the museum’s spiral atrium, and vibrantly colored light rods projecting from each one. The impact is frankly gorgeous.

Inopportune: Stage One: called into being from raw firmament, apparently. How does Ms. McGuigan deal with another Cai work?

In the powerful installation Head On, originally created in Berlin in 2006, a pack of 99 soaring wolves race toward their annihilation into a transparent wall, like birds smashing a picture window.

No institutional reference, but at least the reader knows where Head On came from.

I recognize it is unlikely that the contemporary art commentariat will experience a collective epiphany where MASS MoCA is concerned. The people who get it, get it (and there are people who do). The people with narrow, New York centric views of the art world will avoid anything that threatens their prestige and prerogatives. Why should the art world be different from any other field of endeavor?

I don’t expect that a museum in the Berkshires will get the credit it deserves just because people stand up and demand that, in the words of Arthur Miller, attention must be paid. However, before attention can be paid properly, those responsible for presenting basic facts must be challenged to present them completely and accurately.

Cai Guo-Qiang deserves every success, and every scintilla of attention that will be paid to him through his Guggenheim retrospective. MASS MoCA is equally deserving of their share (however large or small that share may be in the grand scheme of things) of the credit for helping Cai realize his vision.