"Mirror," the tag.

That last post really needed the tag "mirror." How did I come so far without a tag for mirror? I made one, then had 22+ years of the blog to search to add the tag retrospectively. It was easy to search for the word "mirror," but hard to separate the posts that deserved the tag — the ones referring to the object, a mirror — from the ones that did not — the ones using "mirror" as a dying metaphor (ideas "mirror" other ideas and so forth). And then there's the drudgery of adding the tag and republishing. But in the end, there's the fun of clicking on the tag and peering into the kaleidoscope.

There was "Fun with Mirrors" in 2008:

There was, also in 2008, the convex mirror I loved and wanted to buy:

"It's expensive — over $1800 — but as I thought about possibly buying it, I realized what I wanted it for was to take pictures, and therefore what I really should buy is a fisheye lens for my Nikon D50." So I got that fisheye lens. If you're nostalgic for those days, click the tag "fisheye." 

There was this advice about dolphins, in 2014: "People, can you just leave the dolphins alone? They don't want to swim with you, despite the 'expression' you see on their faces. The love you think you are experiencing is nothing more than self-love. Stay home, save your money, and stare in a mirror until you get a deep, accurate assessment of how true your self-love is. Is there a fixed smile on your face? I hope not, but if there is, it's not because you share the spirit of the dolphin. The dolphin is 'smiling' because nature played a dirty trick on him, drawing idiot humans into his domain. Get out. Leave the dolphin alone."

There was the mystery of what a monkey sees in a mirror, back in 2005: "What's in the monkey's mind when he looks in a mirror? Higher minds -- human beings, great apes, dolphins -- figure out, when they are looking in a mirror, that they are seeing themselves. Other animals, it's long been thought, think they're seeing a stranger. But a new study shows that the monkey occupies a middle position, where it doesn't see itself, but it doesn't see a stranger either. The monkey sees a 'Puzzling Other.'"

In 2024, I had Grok outline a book for me. It was titled "Through the Glass/Exploring Mirrors as Portals to Other worlds."

I was surprised to see that, back in 2013, I'd contributed to my long-running men-in-shorts theme with this stark advice: "Take a good look at yourself in the mirror when you've got your shorts on. Ask yourself if I were a woman, would I fuck me?"

There was this good question, in 2013: "If someone holds up a mirror and you say 'I look like an idiot,' is the mirror-holder calling you an idiot?"

There was the sunset in my rear-view mirror as I drove 500 miles to see Meade in 2009:

"What was it like walking right up to the dead, dissected bodies? For me, it was not disturbing."

"The bodies were amazing -- beautiful. You can look into a real human body and see the details of the organs --not bloody and pulsating -- but perfectly preserved. You know nothing about each individual -- who he was, how he died. But there he is, more fully exposed than a nude, for you to walk right up to and inspect. See those testicles, elegantly suspended on long ligaments?"

I wrote, in May 2005, in "Among the cadavers." I'd just seen the "Body Worlds 2" exhibit at the Great Lakes Science Center, which is right next to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

I'm looking back at that post this morning because I see "Gunther von Hagens, Creator of Polarizing ‘Body Worlds’ Exhibits, Dies at 81/A German scientist, he developed a process for turning corpses into posable figures. His shows drew millions of visitors, and many detractors" (NYT gift link).

Excerpt from the obituary: "Many religious leaders objected... especially in Germany.... '"Body Worlds" is possibly the logical conclusion of Nazi crimes,' Andreas Nachama, a rabbi and civic leader in Berlin, told The Independent in 2001, 'when millions of bodies were burnt by their murderers into cinders or transformed into soap, and their skin into lampshades.' [Von Hagens] also faced accusations of accepting bodies of executed prisoners from China, though there was no evidence he knew the source...."

"Do you think that it's the goal of the Smithsonian Institution to promote white supremacy culture?"

Congressman Brandon Gill asks Smithsonian Museum director Anthea Hartig at the House Oversight Committee hearing today.

It's quite an exchange. Gill has a very well-planned set of question designed to destroy Hartig, and Hartig's defense is almost entirely restricted to long silences and diligent note-taking, as if she's endeavoring to learn from Gill:

 

GILL: "Director Hardig... would you say that that the goal of history, even if it's not properly carried out... is to be objective?... Doesn't that seem a little bit concerning? It it certainly does to me because as part of this white supremacy document that your organization has promoted, objectivity is a core and defining aspect of white supremacy culture. Do you think that it's the goal of the Smithsonian Institution to promote white supremacy culture?

"The artist Michaela Stark, who is known for binding her own flesh so that it spills over, confronting those who see it with their own idea of what is considered beautiful..."

"... and who also posed for a Met mannequin — put it... bluntly: 'It institutionalizes the idea that bodies are different.'"

From "The Met Makes a Statement With 9 New Mannequin Bodies/The latest Costume Institute exhibition expands its ideas of who, exactly, belongs in fashion. Will the gala follow suit?" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the artist's bound flesh spilling over and the quite interesting mannequins in their fashions).

"Stark [said] that the images that come out of the gala matter, especially now. 'Who’s on that red carpet and what their bodies are like is a political statement,' she said. To really inspire change, she said, the party needs at least some 'fabulous fat women wearing fabulous gowns.' 'If it is watered down to an Ozempic-fueled event of skinny girls wearing paintings on the red carpet,' she said, 'that’s an active denial of what this exhibition is really about.'"

The idea of "wearing paintings" relates to the theme of the Met Gala this year, which is something about the way fashion has channeled fine art. We'll see how literally the gala-goers take it. I hope nobody uses the idea of walking about inside a picture frame. 

AND: The Gala is tonight, so watch for the picture frame idea. It's on my bingo card. So is a "Starry Night" star on each breast.

"You can get married at the New York Marble Cemetery on Second Avenue/The Balloon Saloon in Tribeca has the best gag gifts and the biggest fake poops in town."

"Avoid trampoline parks at all costs. Throw a less chaotic kids’ party instead at Twinkle PlaySpace in Williamsburg. For $399, hire NY Teacup Piggies to bring in three piglets for the young partygoers to play with.... Call Beverly Fish at Chezzam for out-of-the-box entertainment — think actors in rat costumes serving a cheese platter.... You can hire a babysitter to walk your child (ages 4 to 15) from school to your home (or wherever they need to go) using the service Trot My Tot. You’ll pay a maximum of $25 per hour.... Cheeky tweens tend to enjoy the 'butt scavenger hunt' at the Brooklyn Museum; ask for it at admissions.... "

From "259 Things New Yorkers Should Know/The second edition of our annual handbook will help you make the most of the city" (NY Magazine).

I looked up the "butt scavenger hunt" so you don't have to:

"Think about the 250th. A lot's going to happen this summer on the Mall. But come the end of the year, what's still going to still be on the Mall? The bronze bison."

From "Smithsonian brings bison back to the National Mall with gigantic statues" (WaPo)(gift link, because this is all about the photographs).

"I don’t like introspection. There’s something not right, not in my life, not in my existence. I try to avoid it."

Said Werner Herzog, on the Freakonomics podcast, right after he denied that his childhood was traumatic, even though he went hungry in the post-WWII years. He continues:

This is why I believe that psychoanalysis is one of the great mistakes of the 20th century.... I think it is not good if you illuminate all the dark recesses of the human soul. It’s good that we can forget and that we forget traumas. We do not have to unearth them and articulate them in endless sessions with a psychiatrist. And the 20th century is full of very, very deep mistakes. Psychoanalysis is only one. But because of all these monstrous mistakes of this century, I do believe that the 20th century in its entirety was a mistake....

I was also interested in his opinion of art museums:

The news of authenticity.

1. "Museum of Authenticity Annex Closes, Exhibits Feature is Expanded in Original Location" (Ark Valley Voice): "The Museum of Authenticity has offered unique, curated exhibits of art and utilitarian artifacts in Salida for years. While the larger annex off of F Street has closed, the museum itself has not gone anywhere...." 

2. "Time To Get Serious About Workplace Authenticity" (Forbes): "Think of your favorite leaders, whether political icons, sports captains, or CEOs. How would you objectively measure their authenticity? There is no baseline. No benchmark. If you find Trump authentic you probably adhere with his values; same goes for Obama. By the same token, not many Trump fans would find Obama authentic, and vice-versa."

3. "The authenticity double standard is negatively impacting female leaders/We tell brands that humanity drives commercial success, so why do we still advise women leaders to suppress theirs?" (MarketingWeek):

"What about the recent theft from the Louvre, the 2,000 items stolen from the British Museum last year, or environmental activists pouring oil on Egyptian artefacts in Germany?"

Said Monica Hanna, dean of Egypt’s Arab Academy for Science and Technology, addressing the argument that "Western museums" offer better security.

Quoted in "Now give us back Rosetta Stone and other treasures, Egyptians demand/Campaigners say the Grand Egyptian Museum opening strengthens the country’s moves to have ancient looted artefacts returned" (London Times).

What's up with the British spelling "artefact"? The Latin root is "artēfactum," just combines "skill" and "thing" to mean "thing made," and the French word was "artefact." The American spelling — "artifact" — reflects the thinking of Noah Webster, who scorned spelling based on etymology and foreign languages — especially French.

As for the Rosetta Stone: Make 10 replicas and place them in 10 museums, including the British Museum and the Grand Egyptian Museum, and hide the real thing in a vault somewhere.

"It was cool, though, I mean, pshhwww, it's terrible...."

 Said George Clooney, making some funny faces, about the Louvre heist.

"Priceless crown of Empress Eugénie with 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds found broken in Paris."

Imagine a theft so big that you drop a thing like this in the getaway:

I'm reading "Louvre Museum Robbery: Priceless crown of Empress Eugénie with 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds found broken in Paris" (Economic Times).

Here in America, on the same day, we were disparaging royalty at our "No Kings" rallies. Many of the home-made signs relied on crown iconography....

So how do we feel about royalty these days? If you accept your little daughter in a getup like this....

... is it like letting your little son sport a swastika armband?

"But what if there was a missing layer, a lost generation of artists whose work ran hot-to-feverish in temperature and was driven by a Whitmanesque love of the human body and its longings?"

"This is the question raised with appropriate hippie optimism in 'Sixties Surreal,' an ambitiously revisionist exhibition opening on Sept. 24 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. It brings together about 150 works by 111 painters, sculptors, photographers, collagists, cartoonists, junk assemblage-ists, and at least one Kabballah-ist, most of whom were pushed to the sidelines of the ’60s art scene for various unkind reasons...."

From "Roll Over, Warhol: Taking the ’60s Beyond Pop Art/A thrillingly revisionist history of the era at the Whitney Museum uncovers a current of art that sprang from eros and the uncensored minds of R. Crumb, Martha Edelheit and others" (NYT).

"Of the 111 artists in the show, 47 are women... On a recent afternoon, I visited the studio of Martha Edelheit, a little-known, twice-widowed Manhattanite, now 94, who is about to make her Whitney debut.... She was part of a generation of proto-feminists who painted explicit nudes. In 1965, she recalled, she had a show at the Byron Gallery in Manhattan. The New York Times critic John Canaday came in to look, only to politely explain to the gallery owner that he couldn’t review 'that obscene woman.' Stretching 16 feet wide, across three panels, ['Flesh Wall With Table' (1965)']... embeds a group of female nudes in the space surrounding her drawing table. Languid bodies sprawl from edge to edge of the canvas, snoozing comfortably, their flesh graced with a rainbow of color that progresses from delicate ivories and pinks to dense ceruleans and purples."

Suggestive!

"The White House published a list of Smithsonian exhibits, programming and artwork it considered objectionable..."

"... on Thursday, one week after announcing that eight of the institution’s museums must submit their current wall text and future exhibition plans for a comprehensive review. The list borrows heavily from a recent article in The Federalist that objected to portrayals at several museums. It argued that the National Museum of American History promoted homosexuality by hanging a pride flag; overemphasized Benjamin Franklin’s relationship to slavery in its programming; and supported open borders by depicting migrants watching fireworks 'through an opening in the U.S.-Mexico border wall.'...:

I'm reading "White House Lists Smithsonian Exhibits It Finds Objectionable/The Trump administration highlighted material dealing with topics like sexuality, slavery and immigration" (NYT).

Here's that official list put out by The White House.

Most striking item on the list: "The National Museum of African Art displayed an exhibit on 'works of speculative fiction that bring to life an immersive, feminist and sacred aquatopia inspired by the legend of Drexciya,' an 'underwater kingdom populated by the children of pregnant women who had been thrown overboard or jumped into the ocean during the Middle Passage.'"

Notably out of context item on the list: "An American History Museum exhibit features a depiction of the Statue of Liberty 'holding a tomato in her right hand instead of a torch, and a basket of tomatoes in her left hand instead of a tablet.'" There's an image of it, and it looks like really bad art — amateurish junk. But here's the Smithsonian's description of the object and why it is in the collection:

"The world’s first modern art museum celebrating migration opens on Thursday in the Dutch port of Rotterdam...."

"Dominated by a giant, futuristic, silver staircase at its centre — to symbolise movement — the Fenix museum is in the eye of a political storm and a populist backlash against mass immigration in Europe and across the Atlantic in the US. The museum is housed in what was once the world’s biggest warehouse next to the port’s famous 'Holland-Amerika' pier, where millions of European migrants left Europe for America in the 19th and 20th centuries.... 'These docks witness the departures of millions, including among them iconic figures like Albert Einstein, the actor Johnny Weissmuller and artists Willem de Kooning and Max Beckmann — and welcomed just as many arrivals, shaping the vibrant, multicultural city that is Rotterdam today,' [said Anne Kremers, the museum’s director]."

From "Tornado-shaped museum invites political storm with art of migration/As Geert Wilders’ government clamps down on immigration, the Fenix museum in Rotterdam aims to show that the movement of people ‘has always been there’" (London Times).

You can see some pictures of the architecture here (at Archipanic). It's ugly from some angles, kind of cool from others, but doesn't seem to relate to the desperation of mass migration. It's coldly abstract and design-y. You may like it if you're the sort of person who wishes Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum had been built out of stainless steel.

It's kind of funny to see Johnny Weissmuller extolled alongside Albert Einstein and Willem de Kooning, but I am not the arbiter of icons, and I wandered off into the Wikipedia article on Weissmuller:

"Ex beauty pageant competitor wants to decide what is and isn’t appropriate for the Smithsonian."

"Great — if the administration is going to embrace stupid, it might as well go all the way. Just another incompetent boob doing a job they aren’t qualified for and they’ve no business doing. There are some parts of American history I don’t like — that doesn’t mean I get to pretend they didn’t happen or demand they be stricken from museums and textbooks. It’s how most of us learn. And if we actually learn the lessons our ancestors taught us, we don’t do those things again. Unless you are a Republican — then you embrace the wrongs of the past. And btw — art can make people feel uncomfortable sometimes — it’s supposed to evoke feeling!"

A comment, over at The Washington Post, on an article titled "She told Trump the Smithsonian needs changing. He’s ordered her to do it. Who is Lindsey Halligan, the attorney assigned to help remove 'improper ideology' from a major cultural institution?" (free-access link).

"Museums, monuments, and public institutions should be spaces where these stories are held with care, not suppressed for political convenience."

"When we interrogate systems of power and challenge historical narratives that center whiteness and colonial dominance, we do not divide, we restore balance."

Said Nicholas Galanin, a sculptor of "Indigenous heritage" who produced a work called "The Imaginary Indian (Totem Pole)" ("a wooden totem disappearing into floral wallpaper" (image here)).

From "Taking Aim at Smithsonian, Trump Wades Into Race and Biology/His executive order faulted an exhibit which 'promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct,' a widely held position in the scientific community'" (NYT).

What are you holding with care and not suppressing? What are you interrogating and centering?

Was sculpture disappearing into the floral wallpaper of academic jargon?

Trump seeks to excise "divisive" ideology from the Smithsonian Institution.

Read the text of his "Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Restores Truth and Sanity to American History."  Excerpts:

The Order directs the Vice President, who is a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to work to eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology from the Smithsonian and its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.

What was happening at the zoo?! 

More generally, how do you decide what is "improper, divisive, or anti-American"? I'm sure some will say that it's improper, divisive, and anti-American to sanitize race out of the presentation of our history and culture.

Does the order step down from that abstraction and get specific as it discusses enforcement of the Trumpian vision?

"It is more difficult than ever for a theoretical Van Gogh to become an actual Van Gogh, a familiar reality for collectors of star 20th-century artists."

"More than a decade ago, foundations for Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, and the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, got out of the authentication business altogether. Keeping fakes from circulating is an important task but led to lawsuits that threatened their broader work."

From "Van Gogh or Faux? Weeding Out Fakes Is Starting to Take a Toll. Attributing a work to the artist generally requires authentication by the Van Gogh Museum, but lawsuits and an influx of requests have made it reassess that role" (NYT).

I like the idea of a "theoretical Van Gogh." (It makes me want to craft a joke about a vincentretical Van Gogh.) You can imagine how many people have tried to paint like van Gogh — either to pull off a fraud or just because they love Van Gogh. And here's this guy suing over something he bought cheap that would be worth many millions if it were a real Van Gogh.

He says: "I am sure that my painting is a real Van Gogh. The entire painting radiates van Gogh. Everyone who sees it only thinks of Van Gogh." But that would be the mark of a fake Van Gogh! How would you fake Van Gogh? You'd try to make the entire painting radiate Van Gogh. The curly colorful strokes, the petals and tree trunks, the little man in the field. Everyone who sees it would only think of Van Gogh!

Proposed museum installation: Loop this clip and project it endlessly onto each of the 4 walls of a darkened room.

I watched it 10 times and felt quite mesmerized:

Defund NPR. It should survive on its own.

pic.twitter.com/dtm5qbbxix

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2025

"There’ll always be people who say, 'Why can’t the Museum of American History tell everybody’s story?'"

"But the truth of the matter is, America’s history is too big for one building. I really think that what we did with the African American museum—which has become one of the most diversely visited museums in the world—is the right model. This is a two-sided coin. One side is about a community, about identity. But the other side is 'How does that identity shape all of us?'"

Said Lonnie G. Bunch III, quoted in "How Lonnie G. Bunch III Is Renovating the 'Nation’s Attic'/The Smithsonian’s dynamic leader is dredging up slave ships, fending off culture warriors in Congress, and building two new museums on the National Mall" (The New Yorker).