Our Very Own Dictator

It now seems that our administration wants to do away with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). As much as I want to write just about the arts there are times when I feel I have to speak out regarding the most important issues of the day that affect all of us. My blog has several thousand readers a week. The great majority are not subscribers but that is the nature of the internet and the ease of surfing the web.

Like it or not, I have a platform, and I will use it.

Authoritarian leaders, I prefer the term Dictators, have much in common. Basically, they rule by fear and the power of the purse. At the ripe old age of 80, I finally understand how a country can just give up and surrender itself to a single individual.

I have heard that people do not think it is fair to compare Trump to Hitler because Hitler came up with the extermination of 6,000,000 individuals. Of course, that was 8 or 9 years after he became Chancellor (Dictator) in 1933. But there are many other dictators that have followed similar paths if not his “final solution”. Though we have heard that Trump is setting up camps from which to deport our undocumented immigrants and even citizens.

It all gets scarier and scarier!

I found an interview online from the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs from 2019. Ece Temelkuran a Turkish novelist and political commentator had written a book, “How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship”. She wanted to warn the world about people like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who has been “President” of Turkey since 2014. Temelkuran’s first point is that these individuals will say that they represent “real people” and not the elite. The takeover “takes a lot of silence, silent approval from ordinary people, and it takes a lot of normalization of absurdity and insanity before right-wing populism turns into a real fully formed authoritarian regime.”

Temelkuran also speaks of dismantling political institutions and the judiciary, and, towards the close of the interview, says, “The very end, which I hope doesn’t happen in this country or in the European countries, is criminalizing the opposition, stigmatizing them, and finally making them feel completely insecure and under attack so that they really literally leave the country.” Today we are learning of increasing numbers who have given up their government positions or been fired and former Trump appointees who have come out against him and are being “investigated”.

Viktor Mihály Orbán, who we have heard so much about from our President has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010. Did I forget to mention Trump’s closest pal, Vlademir Putin who was President of Russia from 2000 to 2008 and then again since 2012 to the present. So why shouldn’t Trump seek a third term if all his friends have stayed in office as long as they like?

So much comes down to money and fear. The billionaires often rely on government contracts or support for their projects. The newspapers hope to keep the “free press” but knuckle under to pressure fearing the loss of access. Law firms are told they will lose clients, and their lawyers will be denied entry to government buildings if they don’t stop suing the government. They have even been extorted to do pro bono work for the administration.

As I started writing Trump has declared all truck drivers must speak English. Sounds reasonable until you realize that these are grueling, and not the best paying jobs. Those willing to take them may very well be immigrants and to what level do they need English? But this Executive Order gives the government lots of leeway to make these jobs unattainable for immigrants.

Jeff Bezos, who I always thought of as one of the best of the billionaires, started to give in first when he would not allow an endorsement for President in 2024 in his newspaper, The Washington Post. Then he gave in again when Amazon was going to post how much prices would go up because of tariffs. This will harm his company more than anyone because people will just stop buying from sticker shock without a reason for the hike in prices. But Bezos has his fingers in other areas for which he will want and need government support.

Germany had the SA (Sturmabteilung) meaning 'assault division'. They were also known as the Brownshirts, infamous for their operation outside of the law and their violent intimidation of Germany’s leftists and Jewish population. Our Brownshirts include those pardoned for the assault on the Capitol when Trump came back into office. Our politicians are so fearful that they are doing the President’s bidding not just because they may be “Primaried”. Many have received threats of violence and fear for themselves and their families.

How long will we be ruled by fear if the courts and Congress continue to find excuses to sit on their hands? Let me conclude with the final speech from the 1940 film “The Great Dictator”. It starred Charlie Chaplin who also wrote, directed, and produced it. Please listen ...

Ruminations on a Museum

We have contributed various objects to museums across a number of states in the fields of European and, lately, Native American Art, but not enough to be worth even a single gallery in a museum. But one can fantasize!

I started to think about how I would go about building a museum. One would want it to be a destination place that people feel they must see. If you happen to live in France maybe there is a spare chateau you could renovate, or in Italy, a villa. In the United States, however, there are few pre-existing destination buildings available, so you start from scratch.

How does one call attention to a building? You could start with a striking exterior. A prime example is the Guggenheim Museum in New York, built in 1959 by Frank Lloyd Wright to exhibit the modern “non-objective” art collection of Solomon R. Guggenheim. A cylindrical building on a New York corner is certainly different and almost every New York resident wanted to look at it and some took a chance and looked at the art inside.

What about the Whitney Museum that opened a new building in 1966 to show their collection of American Art. It had to be quite different from the Guggenheim, so they hired Brutalist architect, Marcel Breuer, and if you liked it or not it became another destination building.

I use as examples the museums I knew and remember being shocked by when I first saw them. It took me a while to appreciate them. There are examples like these around the country if not necessarily as extreme.
Whether your museum is being built for one person’s collection or for a community, in a single field such as African art or a collection with the broader purpose of showing the history of man, there needs to be a clear concept. Once you have defined your concept, then you need to find an architect.

The Menil in Houston was built by Renzo Piano and opened to the public in 1987 to house the collection of John and Dominique de Menil . Dominique knew what she wanted so had a major role in forming their museum, which, by the way has the most unprepossessing exterior.

It is more often the case that there is a board of trustees with a committee that will go over portfolios of many architects and interview them to see if they will be compatible with what the board has in mind.
Of course, you want your public impressed when they come into the building. One device to accomplish this is by the atrium as you come into the building. A very large, high, open space which is not only impressive but has enough room for the large groups of people you are hoping to draw in, as well as for social events. The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts went through a major renovation and the architect chosen was the Studio Gang from Chicago and it opened in 2023. This architectural fact sheet will give you a great deal of detail. 

https://arkmfa.org/site/assets/files/5504/amfa_architectural_fact_sheet_-_06_03_24.pdf 
 

Here is an image of their atrium ...

There is another professional that the board and architect should introduce into the process, and that is the museum designer. Small exhibition spaces may be appropriate for some collections but will severely limit what art can be shown at the time or in the future. Decisions must be made on the variety of spaces you want based on what kind of art are you going to show. A large bright gallery, maybe even with a skylight is fine to show sculpture but would destroy a collection of works on paper. If you are showing decorative arts a gallery scaled to invoke a large size living room might be good. Galleries for temporary exhibitions will need to have flexibility, preferably with movable walls.

If you have an already established museum and are enlarging it, you must not overlook input from your museum team who have had to deal with where they have been working and what issues you and they are trying to solve beyond just creating more space. Practical considerations include more storage space if you plan to grow the collection.

Needless to say, in order to get a grip on costs, construction and engineers etc. need to be in the mix. Only in an imaginary museum can you skip the practical details😊 like temperature and humidity control and don’t forget the plumbing!

After considering everything I have mentioned above one should address the question of whether one’s collection is worthy of becoming a destination museum. With that criteria in mind my museum will have to remain a fantasy.