Sunday, October 24, 2010

LACMA's using Nuestro Pueblo

So, LACMA has no vision. At UCLA yesterday, they had no answers just jibber jabber. After the original engineer said no one had created any new ways or substances to repair the Watts Towers(Nuestro Pueblo), and the DCA guy just rambled on about himself and his poor departments layoffs, not a word about the site itself. The new conservation guy from LACMA came on, and had seen the Towers a whole five days before.

They announced that the DCA and LACMA had signed an agreement for LACMA to get involved starting Nov.1 He was correct in saying the best way to preserve the towers was maintenance, but where has LACMA and the Getty been for 56 years? When confronted in questioning, and about the total lack of publicity by LA for Nuestro Pueblo, the older engineer who had worked for the Getty and now LACMA got defensiviely loud, but still said nothing. He said that the Getty had done work PRO BONO. In otherwords, they did nada. He gave no time involved, no conclusions reached, and no action being taken. He said it was owned by the state and city and could do nothing on their own. Wrong. The Getty is all over the world, working on government owned and religous sites. They cant do anything here? Because they never volunteered to. You think the City wouldn't take them up on an offer? But they dont care, period. Its all just propaganda, PR.

To them, Nuestro Pueblo is just Folk art, absurd. It is the greatest work of creative art in California. It is not folk arts defining a small group, decorating useful objects. It is a cathedral of all humanity, to god. So the Sistine ceiling is folk art? According to this "reasoning" of self promoting academic drivel, it is. Mr. Rodia used his colors and forms constructively as with a brush on canvas, there is nothing haphazard here. Just because he never attended an art school does not mean he was not an artist. That Duchampian absurdist"logic' was a joke from the get go, very few great artists ever graduated from an art school, let alone attended

The first LACMA engineer when pressed about what this signing means, what intent they have after Director Govan supposedly saying he had an idea about the Watts Towers when he first took the job four years ago, said they would be "dating" for the first year or so, feeling each other out. Like gropping teenag boys I guess. And then seeing what they have in common. Pimps, date rapers, pure and simple, using Nuestro Pueblo as its whore. There is no other way to see it, no PC cover story they can come up with when real questions are asked, not academic, social party, polite chitchat. Wheres the beef? It's all tofu. It is about appearance, not responsibility.

Plus, the Getty has left Nuestro Pueblo out of 2011's mammoth Pacific Standard Time series of exhibits. It doesn't consider them either art, or worth saving. There are 15 main sites, all about Institutions that promoted art in LA from 1945 to 1980, though that is not the claim. They say it is about ART, that created in LA during that time span, yet no mention about Nuestro Pueblo at all. There are 35 additional satellite sites, one is the Noah Purifoy Gallery in the Watts Towers Art Center, which is really the Charles Mingus, the great bebop bassist from Watts as there are two art centers there. But listed in the Department of Cultural affairs heading, and underneath the Municipal Art Gallery. AND is only about the Gallery helping "new" artistes exhibit, and so being in Watts, no one will come. So, what does that have to do with the greatest work of art in California? Ignored, as is all south of Wilshire. LACMA and all its fellow institutions are about social events and mausoleums for its patrons, not art. Nt of humanity, not through nature, not to God. It does not define Us, nor explore our world, nor reached for Purpose and Meaning. It splinters, it does not bind. It is about the status quo and entertaining those in power.

Join in saving Nuestro Pueblo, Our Town. It is up to us, the powers that be have failed. They must be made to pay attention, and focus once more on what is important to all of humanity.