Calls for Klaus Biesenbach to Resign from MoMA

Calls for Klaus Biesenbach to Resign from MoMA

Postby CAP » Thu Mar 26, 2015 3:38 am

Interesting development being fanned by Village Voice’s Christian Viveros-Fauné here on artnet.com, over the predictable slagging of the Björk retrospective at MoMA – mainly for its poor staging, which rests squarely with the curator and bottle blonde show-pony, Klaus Biesenbach. The crits have been overwhelmingly negative. The man is not liked within the institution and calls within the press for his removal now conveniently appear. Ah where would we be without those mysterious leaks to the press? Jerry Saltz has also been agitating for director Glenn Lowry to be moved on into the bargain, again clearly at the behest of insiders. So there’s been a few issues simmering away within MoMA...

Personally, I’d have called for Kathy Halbreich’s resignation following her shoddy Polke retrospective – or at least an assurance that she would not curate another show and Laura Hoptman’s The Forever Now is nothing short of a disgrace. If it were up to me she’d have got her cards at the opening. I can understand the dissatisfaction. CVF draws us a picture of the hierarchy within MoMA and how Biesenbach usurps the authority and budget allocations of others – Ann Temkin, head of the Painting and Sculpture department, in particular. That might explain why Ann was looking distinctly unhappy when glimpsed in James Kalm’s video of the press preview to The Forever Now... Maybe some of the difficulties with that show were budgetary? Then again maybe Ann was just appalled at Hoptman’s choice and hang.

Anyway Howard Halle – critic for Time Out NYC - comes to Biesenbum’s defence (or defense) on Hyperallergic and apparently Hrag Vartanian, the Hyperallergic CEO slammed CVF on Twitter. But Halle’s defence is so skewed he thinks the complaint is against Klaus’s populism – not that Björk is exactly Top 40 in any case – and skates around the fact that the show is a dud, excusing Klaus because of his charity Post-Sandy. But using your position for occasional good works counts for nothing if you’re not doing the job – and Klaus has plainly not come up with a show that does Björk or the museum justice. He might be a nice guy, if you like that kind of thing, but the fact is he plainly is not a team player at MoMA – ironic given the emphasis on co-operation and collaboration to his aesthetic. But then, like so many of his charmed circle of floating Curati, hypocrisy and indulgence are the real taste there. :P
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Re: Calls for Klaus Biesenbach to Resign from MoMA

Postby CAP » Thu Apr 02, 2015 8:06 am

Here's ArtFCity's dime's worth.
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