Seth Godin is the smartest marketer alive – and I always read his blog, most of the time commenting in Webmetricsguru.com; today my comment belongs in ArtNewYorkCity.com because Seth talks about why more people don’t go to museums.

a. the curators think the item on display is the whole thing. As a result, they slack off and do less than they should in creating an overall story

b. they assume that visitors are focused, interested and smart. They are rarely any of the three. As a result, the visit tends to be a glossed over one, not a deep one or a transcendent one

c. science museums in particular almost beg people NOT to think.

I can’t remember the last time a museum visit made my cry, made me sad or made me angry (except at the fact that they don’t try hard enough).

Besides, some people have negative associations with museums; my wife was raised in Poland where Museums were considered old, stuffy and boring!  I don’t find Museums boring, but I understand why many do – they don’t engage visitors enough (sounds like Musuems are often like bad websites that don’t work well enough).

“They asked how long it had been since he had been to a museum.  But the group that liked his books spoke up pretty quickly, and first acknowledged that he was trying to needle them, but then said – wait, he is part of our audience, and clearly he has thought this.  And if we are not listening to our audiences, then we may not be doing our jobs well at all.  This was bounced around for a while.  At the end I pulled it back towards Godin’s books and asked what, if anything, they got from the books, felt like they could take back to their museums and use, or share with their bosses.  Even a couple of the Godin-haters mentioned things they got from them.  After the book club, back at the cabin we were staying in, there was a lot of talking around the fireplace about branding and stories, so it was clear the books, and the discussion, made them think.”

Sounds like Seth Godin’s books were examined by museum directors and it got them to think.  If you stop to think, getting people to a museum and keeping them engaged is the same exact problem as getting people to a website and engageing them enough that they stay. 

The solution for a website is usually better content and better design.  In the case of museums, it’s not so much the content as the presentation and activities at the museum that encourage people to want to be there and have a positive experience.

Again, I’m not the person who has a problem with museums – I like them overall, but many don’t like museums and there’s probably a valid reason why.

Been too busy the last few days to post here – a lot of important meetings – most which belong in my Webmetricsguru.com blog.  Did not see any good openings this week till today – nothing that really attracted me to want to show up.   But that’s different today – a couple of good openings happening now in NYC, in Art in New York City.

So tonight I’ll try to make an opening of Alfred Jenson: The Number Paintings at Pace Wildenstein Gallery.  Here’s a little part of the writeup describing the work in this show: Alfred Jensen:  The Number Paintings will be on view at 545 West 22nd Street, New York from September 29 through October 28, 2006.  The public is invited to attend the opening on Thursday, September 28th from 6 to 8 p.m.

“Alfred Jensen:  The Number Paintings looks at how the artist used Pythagorean theory, the Mayan Calendar, and other numerical systems as well as Goethe’s color theory in his work.  The exhibition consists of 11 paintings and 16 works on paper spanning two decades from 1960 to 1980. 

It was in the early 1960s that Jensen read the work of J. Eric Thompson, the pre-eminent scholar of the pre-Columbian Maya Civilization and soon thereafter, Jensen earnestly began to investigate the relationship between numbers and color through his art.  In his catalogue essay, William Agee discusses how Jensen pursued this investigation and how his life and art intersected. Agee remarks in his introduction that Donald Judd and Allan Kaprow, then young artists in New York, viewed an exhibition of Jensen’s in 1963 and had the highest praise for it, although for different reasons. “In retrospect,” Agee writes, “this seems fitting, for Jensen’s world view was based on the opposing dualities that he saw as the source and substance of life – light and dark, positive and negative, male and female, life and death, among them.”

I think I’ll also attend the opening of Junko Komatsu, David Harry, Atsumi at Caelum Gallery W 26 street, 526, Suite 315.  The photographs and paintings look pretty good based on what I can see on the Caelum Gallery website.

It looks like a new gallery called MEHR is opening up with a debut exhibition (if I have it right that it’s a new gallery) located at 436 West 18th Street, again between 6-8PM. 

That’s enough for one night.  I’ll let my readers know what I thought about these openings after I attend them (and anything else that strikes on my way to or after the openings).

Had a good time at Galerie St. Etienne last night – great show of older Austrian and German prints and drawings by many well known artists, all about Cafes, Bars and such.

I also ran into a old friend Russel Nelson who I had not seen for at least 5 or 6 years, the last time was at our mutual friend, Lestor Afflick’s funeral back in early 2000.

I liked Otto Dix’s PUB watercolor and George Grosz’s Dr. Benn’s Night Cafe which was a photo lithograph.  Gustav Klimt’s Seated Woman with Hat and Veil and Woman Resting in Armchair, both from the turn of the century were small works, but really fine.  I was surprised there was so much good work at Galerie St. Etienne.

   

Go to the Galerie St. Etienne to see the rest of the works.

I thought I’d bring readers up to date with what I’m doing – painting when I can paint.

This is a nude study I did today (I’m not really a portrait painter – or a figure painter and I don’t know anatomy well – more of a colorist); I don’t think of my work as anything other than an expression of me.  Having said that – I’m happy that there is a wonderful place like Brooklyn Artists Gym that makes it affordable for people like me to have a large studio space (~4000 square feet) to paint in.  It’s shared space, but that is not a problem as far as I can see since hardly anyone is there.  

My photo, taken with a 1.3 Megapixel cell phone camara and cut down to size by Picasa2 loses some of the subtle elements – but as an image – this is a good enough snapshot – I spent about 90 minutes on this painting which is, I think, 20 x 30, but I’m not sure of the exact size.

I did this window study in Oil Pastel a couple of weeks ago – maybe 3 weeks ago (or it could have been a month ago for all I know).

 

And here’s the Brooklyn Artist Gym studio space that I paint in …when I get over there (maybe once or twice a week if I’m lucky).