Cover:Anish Kapoor. Detail Tall Tree and the Eye (2010). Photography: Erika Ede
© FMGB Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa, 2010
Meanwhile, we are still reviewing, questioning the museums and art centers and wondering, perhaps, whether there is not certain inflation of them within our geography or whether the projects could be ‘excessively’ affected by spending cuts (the crisis) or some worse troubles ; definition and result of the project.
Miguel Fernández-Cid wrote not much time ago: “Thinking the projects in other way, opening them. It is quite hard to define a project, to find ideas acting as a connection between the same and the contemporary. And when we manage to do it, it is a pity they lose the strength. Trying to avoid it should be our first attempt”. He is right and people should pay special attention to it and ‘see’ how nowadays it is quite difficult to carry out projects when reductions affect the contents and the museums or art centers themselves. It is a moment for the analysis and the observation and who, behind the backcloth, is able to give shape and sense, content and criterion without being carried away by the spending cuts. It would be quite a good idea that our directors paid special attention to the galleries that have held in time projects and realities with the additional difficulty of having to live exclusively from their own ability to produce their income.
In France the Pompidou has been restructured; they have spent 70 million euros, and with an annual budget of 10 million euros Laurent Le Bon, a bold French curator, will try to attract visitors; trying to achieve 400.000 visitors per year, whereas in the other side of the coast, in the British Islands, the Tate Modern is celebrating its tenth anniversary as the most visited museum all over the world with almost 5 million average visitors per year, and generating 100 million pounds per year for London and almost 4.000 jobs in the Bankside area. Shouldn’t we wonder which way we should choose or simply analyze those things working well? Perhaps. The fairs go on, and among them some specialized one or ones. We could remark LOOP in Barcelona. Not much time ago MACO in Mexico, and soon Basel, Santander, later Shanghai, Berlin, and some others such as the first, new and small held in Panama at their own contemporary art museum.
How far can the sense and proliferation of fairs and events go to, when galleries and their economy (or they should be) their main economical support? It is a reflection and always a question: the answer lies in the trade, kept alive in the auctions, but is it true or only a way to keep alive an expectation before the difficulties we can see in front of us by all appearances?: cuts and more cuts, and within them, culture is always one of the fist sacrificed ones.
There we are, and look, whereas life goes on and the Enterprise tries desperately to rationalize the measures, and the governments just collaborate by extending the uncertainty phase we are undergoing: the paradigm.
