Museums Will Not Save Us, Annotated

“The Ultimate Fight ring had not yet been erected on the White House lawn.” The first line of the survey I did for Art in America of museums’ America 250 shows already locks it into a slightly less bleak past, April, when this stupid UFC thing did not yet stand. And reading the piece for the first time in over a month, I gotta say, it goes downhill from there. The headline is, “As the Country Turns 250, Why Won’t Its Museums Meet The Moment?” My editor’s working title for the piece was “Picturing Independence”; mine was “Museums Will Not Save Us.” It started bleak, and it got bleaker, but I am grateful for the opportunity and the insights and all the folks who helped along the way. For reasons beyond me that perhaps relate to the article appearing first in print, the links I used for reference do not appear in the Art in America published version. So I’ve gathered them here, like bonus content for a DVD. [Ask your parents.] “As the Country Turns 250, Why Won’t Its Museums Meet The…