When last we visited the Las Vegas Art Museum, Director Marianne Lorenz had left at the end of her contract and the man she had replaced, Joseph Palermo, was back as "consulting executive director." Lorenz, in her two-year tenure, had shifted the museum's focus in collections and exhibitions and oversaw the departure of Palermo's curator, James Mann.
The circle has closed and Mann is back as "curator at large," in a half-time position, but with the mission to return the museum to the track it had followed before Lorenz, namely Mann's theory of "Art After Postmodernism." Palermo has taken the role of "executive adviser" and former board member Karen Barrett is the new museum director.
"This institution had a lot of momentum going with 'Art after Postmodernism'," says Barrett. "I just think that is such a perfect fit for this museum and this community."
Mann was out of town last week and unavailable for comment. But Barrett and Palermo insist the museum is stable and poised for growth, with exhibitions planned through next year and more in the works. The institution is in good financial shape after a recent fundraiser, says Barrett. Attendance and memberships are up, and an endowment to secure the museum's future is in the works.
Barrett and Palermo say the museum was left without any upcoming shows in the wake of Lorenz's departure, which Palermo says was voluntary but related to a change in board of trustees leadership. To fill the gap, the museum first brought in Revealing Women, works by locals Susanne Forestieri and Roberta Baskin Shefrin. This show had already been at the Old Town Gallery, home of the Henderson Art Association, of which Palermo is vice-president. That was succeeded by an exhibition of neo-classical works by Walter Girotto, whom Palermo hails as "the greatest living Italian painter." He's also one of the world's most prolific erotic artists, as an Internet search quickly and voluminously reveals.
Up through February 1 is Marlene Tseng Yu: Forces of Nature III. Yu's work was shown in 1999 at the museum. The Taiwan-born artist, who earned her master of fine arts degree at the University of Colorado, also was co-curator, with Mann, of Rain Forest, a traveling show highlighting the planet's fragile rain forests, which appeared at LVAM last year.
Yu's work also appears at the newly opened Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Art, a storefront gallery at 1000 E. Sahara Ave., of which Palermo is the director. According to published reports, the new museum was founded by Jerry E. Polis, who is not on the LVAM board, but is listed in its newsletter as a contributor.
This gives pause. I tried to reach Palermo, and the Southern Nevada Museum's operations manager, over the weekend, without success. A worker there told me it is a museum, not a sales gallery, although it sells some artists' work though its museum store. If it were a sales gallery, displaying Yu's works there simultaneously would amount to using LVAM as an adjunct sales gallery. In any event, it is odd to have another organization claiming to be a regional art museum sharing shows with LVAM.
Whatever the case, it's certainly worth noting that even the most respected museums engage in incestuous back-scratching among collectors, dealers and artists. And it happens elsewhere in the Valley. French artist Michelle Auboiron, for instance, unabashedly offers her work for sale at UNLV's Marjorie Barrick Museum and the city's Charleston Heights Arts Center. As for LVAM, it needs to set up rigorous defenses against even the appearance of involvement in art sales.
But what about Yu? To be honest, her work looks spectacular in the high-ceilinged spaces of the LVAM. The only fault to find here is a tendency toward the precious. (I'll have a more detailed reveiw next week.)
I can't say if this opinion comports with Mann's doctrine of "Art After Postmodernism." As I understand it, Mann holds that art history hit a wall with minimalism and that contemporary artists worthy of interest are those who pursue time-honored ideals such as figuration. My fear for LVAM is that this means a reactionary turn, not just to realism but to the accessible and the pleasant—rejecting irony, politics and intellectual challenge.
Other museums are hardly above reproach. The casino galleries are all about pleasing crowds, and even major metropolitan museums haul in visitors and cash with heavy doses of Monet and Chagall. And let me add that I wasn't around for most of Mann's first tenure at LVAM. I've met him, talked with him, and found him bright and knowledgeable. Maybe he's on to something. When art critic Arthur C. Danto appeared at UNLV this fall, he talked about the "end" of art in postmodernism, too. But he spoke of a new period in which almost anything is possible.
When I met with Palermo and Barrett (before learning about Palermo's association with the new museum), I relayed the concern I've heard that LVAM was reverting to its roots as a local art guild. "I think we left that in Lorenzi Park," said Barrett, referring to the museum's residence there prior to moving to the West Sahara Library. "We're not that artists guild that was here even seven years ago," added Palermo.
Let's hope he's right. Las Vegas is a big city, and it deserves a real art museum. For the moment, LVAM is all we've got.
Chuck Twardy has written about art and architecture for several daily newspapers and for magazines such as Metropolis.