Here. See for yourself.
That's some amazing apathy. I'm sure the critic, Holland Cotter, said some provocative things. I mean, I scanned the text and looked for something. I was thinking maybe...
As the curators have emphasized in statements about the show, the idea of boundaries, and getting rid of them, were important to their thinking about this biennial, starting with questions (also addressed by the 2019 edition) of how to break down the geopolitical borders that have traditionally defined and delimited the Whitney’s version of “American art.”
The idea of boundaries, and getting rid of them....
You know what's a boundary? A museum. We're just not traditionally defined and delimited enough to care.
ADDED: The indented material is one sentence. We could diagram it. Let's see. You start with the subject and the object: idea | were — oops! That's a grammar error. I mean, I see a defense you could make but I reject it. You'd have to say that it's a plural subject consisting of "idea" and "getting," but I think it's the idea "of boundaries" and of "getting rid of them." I think I'd write: "the idea of boundaries — and getting rid of them — was important...."
When you write about doing away with boundaries, you still need punctuation and subject/verb agreement.
AND: I mean, really, the whole sentence needs rewriting. Did anyone care about any of this, including the curators, who've been making emphatic statements about boundaries since 2019? It's so ludicrously dull.
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One can't eliminate boundaries. You can place them far away so as to make them essentially steady state in response to perturbation. As they say, nature abhors a vacuum.
"Getting rid of boundaries..."
That's the problem with complicated sentences--when your singular subject is modified by a plural clause, you're faced with a choice--you can sound correct or you can be correct. But not both. One of many reasons why complicated sentences are better left to expert wordsmiths.
Notional plural
You guys are stuck on dull little grammar problems. Admittedly they will force readers to stall and slide left: even if they don’t consciously recognize a grammar problem, it will help to turn the prose into an indigestible mass.
But the big thing is not better grammar: it’s flashier concepts. Don’t talk about “getting rid of boundaries,” talk about…TRANSGRESSION.
Trans. That’s your secret sauce.
Like Twitter, and Facebook, they haven't found any comments that please them.
Maybe if they had included some of Humper Biden's art work......???
Now that is funny/sad.
(Sorry, just missed Tim B.
Does anyone get that?)
Holland Cotter? Now there's an East Coast name.
"You guys are stuck on dull little grammar problems. Admittedly they will force readers to stall and slide left: even if they don’t consciously recognize a grammar problem, it will help to turn the prose into an indigestible mass."
To me, what the grammar problem means is that no one cared enough to write/edit a well-constructed sentence. There were so many words jumbled together that the problem of getting the subject together with the object didn't stick out enough. When I find myself quoting a long messy sentence, I get the idea to diagram. The first thing you have to do is to pick out the subject and object, and when they don't agree, I have cause for outrage. Why am I reading something that no one really took the trouble to write or edit?
IOW, we need to get rid of the Americaness of American art. Because boundries.
What will be the "new boundries", after we gets rid of the "Old boundries"? Anyway, I agree with the NYT readers, who gives a Damn.
I had my worst NYC museum experience at the WHitney. It was scheduled to open, IRC, at 9 AM. Got there at 845 Am. Alreay a long line of about 60 people in front of me. At 925 AM the line FINALLY starts moving. 20 minutes later, i finally got a ticket. They had ONE person, I repeat ONE person selling the tickets.
Once I got into the whitney Museum, they had nothing of intrest. All the good paintings were somewhere else - God knows where.
There's not one comment on the review. Check the reader numberer. Althouse could be the only reader of the review to date. It has only been four days.
And we are talking NYT. Not exactly world-beaters, especially those commenters. No Althouseblog, that's for sure.
..review of the new Whitney Biennial. The review was published 4 days ago. It has a comments section. There isn't one comment.
Yawn. I couldn't begin to be interested in this Whitney thing. Well, I guess i Could;
But i just don't have any interest in being interested. For one thing; i'd have to learn what it's about; and i'm apathetic about becoming less ignorant
WAIT! i HAVE become interested enough, to create a chant!
No Boundaries!
No Walls!
No Art Museums At ALL!
The Washington Post pays editors to catch this kind of error, but they apparently don't care. I see egregious grammatical errors on local news sites (cites, sights?) all the time but they probably have unpaid interns writing the articles and headlines.
It's a contractual obligation review. No one reads, no one edits, no one comments. The unstated contract for keeping the NYT in its sainted position in steering the culture requires a review of the Whitney Biennial.
Checked. It's another 20th century artifact that just keeps hanging on.
In other news, the Bayreuth festival was back in business in 2021 after Covid restrictions. This time with its first female conductor, if gender can still be referenced in 2022. I may have missed the last update. Can't be too careful.
Guys, you weren't supposed to comment on this post.
It would have been appropriate is if nobody commented on it here either.
Venice doesn't have anything to worry about. Their Biennale starts this month (even though it was only supposed to be held in odd-numbered years -- COVID, I guess).
There are seven comments now, all posted in the last few hours. I saw "underwhelming" and "snoozefest."
Holland Cotter? Now there's an East Coast name.
I saw the name, and thought "Who was the protagonist in "Catcher in the Rye"?
Holden Caulfield.
I m huked on fonics.
To me, what the grammar problem means is that no one cared enough to write/edit a well-constructed sentence. There were so many words jumbled together that the problem of getting the subject together with the object didn't stick out enough.
....and word salad speeches from leadership!!
The NYT has boundaries aka a paywall so I can't read the article on abolishing boundaries. No comment.
There has been a fad for eliminating boundaries in academia for several years now. College administrators encourage interdisciplinary
team teaching and the blending of academic departments, for example. The museum studies field may have also embraced this fad towards eliminating boundaries. Or perhaps some museum administrator read Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” too literally: “ Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
I’ve noticed a decline in editing standards across many publications for several years, and I have theories to explain this that I won’t
address here. Annie Dillard explained in “ The Writing Life” that to really be a quality writer you have to love sentences. A student told
her that she wanted to be a writer, and Dillard replied, “Do you love sentences?” Too many authors and editors today do not love sentences.
There has been a fad for eliminating boundaries in academia for several years now. College administrators encourage interdisciplinary
team teaching and the blending of academic departments, for example. The museum studies field may have also embraced this fad towards eliminating boundaries. Or perhaps some museum administrator read Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” too literally: “ Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
I’ve noticed a decline in editing standards across many publications for several years, and I have theories to explain this that I won’t
address here. Annie Dillard explained in “ The Writing Life” that to really be a quality writer you have to love sentences. A student told
her that she wanted to be a writer, and Dillard replied, “Do you love sentences?” Too many authors and editors today do not love sentences.
I look at this stuff so that you don't have to.
Went to the Whitney website, scrolled through the images for exhibitions, and found Ryan Kuo's bumper sticker art, which includes the juxtaposition of phrases "And This Museum" "It Was Nothing."
I love it when a clear message is presented succinctly.
In High School (probably in 1984) we went on a field trip to the Whitney. I was made to write a letter of apology to the guide who took us around. I felt the "art" was so modern it was just dumb and I was vocal about it.
I probably would have been given detention for this exhibit.
Well, the Whitney Biennial is usually a blazing automobile wreck of an exhibit.
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