Train(-Wreck?)

A little over a year ago, the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum opened on the LA County Museum of Art campus, transforming it completely. I remember at the time, that a giant crane dangling a locomotive that would actually spout steam on the hour had been planned as an in situ art piece by Jeff Koons, but there had been some delay so that piece wasn't ready for the grand opening. Frankly, I just thought it sounded sort of dangerous, but if the engineers could find a way to ensure that the train stayed suspended in the air rather than falling onto the heads of unsuspecting art lovers, well then, I guess that would be fine; as an art concept I was sort of indifferent to it.

But I just learned from Art for a Change that indeed it was engineering that caused the hold-up, for which I'm grateful. If this puppy is really going to happen, I want it to be safe! What I also learned from Art for a Change is that the price tag on this piece of art is $25 million. Wow. It would be the most expensive single piece ever commissioned by a museum. Again, wow. And especially right now. A third time, wow.

Vallen's blog post is fairly vitriolic, but his point is still taken: that's a whole lotta dough to be shelling out for one piece right now as other museums close their doors or lay off their staff. Maybe Train, as the piece is entitled, is actually the Little Engine That Shouldn't.

A Sobering Look at the Real Numbers

Mark Vallen over at Art for a Change wrote a very eloquent yet sobering post earlier this month putting the economic crisis and the President's spending plan in perspective: $50 million for national arts spending in the stimulus package and "$11 billion a month for the next year and a half despite the planned draw down of U.S. forces in Iraq."

Vallen also begins a list of museums that are laying off staff or closing their doors, similar to the list I began, but his is more detailed and mentions a couple I have not, such as the Walters Art Museum which "laid-off seven of its 150 employees, imposed a salary and hiring freeze, and cancelled [sic] a major exhibition of works by French painter Jean-Leon Gerome - an exhibit that would have been a collaborative project with the Musee d'Orsay in Paris and the Getty in Los Angeles."

When you look at the budget cuts for just the 8 institutions Vallen mentions, it becomes painfully obvious that $50 million just won't go very far. Closures will be inevitable. Guess Elizabeth Merritt of the Center for the Future of Museums is right; since it isn't a question of if but when, how many and who, maybe we need to start figuring out how to orchestrate this strategically so that the overall value of arts organizations as a whole is not diminished for the public.