I have held my reactions to Assembly: Eight Emerging Photographers from Southern California (curated by “the curatorial team of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art”) until last in my Fotofest posts because it is a show that troubles me on quite a few levels and I wanted time to think about it. I came to realize that it was not the work included in the show that bothered me, but the show as an extension of what is now termed “curatorial practice.”

I may as well get the title out of the way first by simply asking, “’Emerging’ from what?” This is a picky beginning, I know, but from a curatorial perspective it is important since the use of the term implies the curators are touting their ability to foretell the future. It is a sensibility born more from a marketing than an institutional perspective. The museum imprimatur and curatorial gravitas attached to this show advances the work of these eight artists as embodying the fully realized expressions of the direction(s) of photography in Southern California. Because of who they are, and where they work, the curatorial team cannot run away from the implication that their selections explicitly annoint these artists and the work they are creating as both important and worthy of watching as it matures. My most troubling question, therefore, is that as museum curators, at what point is the “team” blatantly contributing to the directions of artistic production instead of thoughtfully commenting upon them?

Next, I am troubled by the exhibition’s curatorial strategy that seems to stem from the “team’s” contention that the most intellectually challenging debates surrounding the making of art in Southern California are being held in the graduate art programs that ring the region. While their supposition may be true to the extent that this is where one might easily access such conversations, the LACMA curators make the fatal assumption that those between whom these discussions are being held (i.e. the recent graduate students who populate this show) have sufficient maturity, visual confidence, and intellectual prowess to make work that embodies and extends these ideas. Unfortunately, the curatorial selections for the exhibition prove this not to be the case. The exhibition is riddled with a student sensibility…even to the point of including thesis show work. Glimmers of insight seem too quickly doused by inclusions that at some turns are pedantic and at others merely petulant.

By putting this work forward in the context of an internationally attended festival showcasing contemporary U.S. photowork, the curators have rendered no service to their audience…or to their artists. As a baby museum curator I was rightly counseled that graduate work was not to be mined for collection or exhibition since there are just too many variables that enter into the creative mix. A graduate student’s creative process is one that is bolstered by artificial supports and shaped by the constant interjections of a resident creative community. I have learned that an artist’s true voice and work will only begin to coalesce after the scaffolding of a graduate program have been kicked away and a few projects have come and gone. It is then that the real work of being an artist begins. As “Team LACMA’s” efforts at Fotofest attest, a curator forgets this at his/her peril.

Earlier this week, the LA Times ran a story under the headline: “Did David Burdeny copy Sze Tsung Leong’s photographs?” After reading the article, not only did I not care…but I was convinced that the REAL headline should have read: “New York Dealer Protects Artist’s Brand.”

I diligently read the article which trotted out all the Journalism 101 tropes of setting up adversarial diatribes and sprinkling a few well-placed contextual and historical markers. I had hopes of ultimately encountering an objective point of view….and I am still hoping for that. Given the prominent space devoted to the article one might wonder why there was never any revelation, at the very least, of who had what to gain in all of the exchanges that were cited. Additionally, at what point does the writer and publisher of the article owe it to the reader to reveal whatever relationships they may have with the principals; in other words, how did they know there was a “story,” at all?

We may never know the answer to the latter. But, please, allow me to shed some light on the former:

What does the gallerist in Vancouver have to gain by Mr. Burdeny’s “show?” Sales come to mind…and this article in which she bulldoggedly stands up for her artist’s aesthetic integrity will do nothing if not bring a show that should have passed without notice more notoriety than it deserves, and thereby, perhaps, drive sales. Though it could certainly backfire: her clientele may catch on that she is pushing them to buy “art” that may be little more than technically proficient imagemaking. Did anyone check out the gallery website to see what her exhibition schedule looked like and who was being shown besides Mr. Burdeny? Enough said.

How about Mr. Burdeny? What did he have to gain? Well, he got the show, didn’t he? Again the backfire: Did anyone go on his website to see what else he has been making? YIKES! Mr. Burdeny may be a very competent technician making very nice images…but his work seems clearly about the view and not about IDEAS (from whomever they may come).

And Mr. Leong? Interestingly enough, as the aggrieved party he may come out of this looking the best and may also have the most to gain…if one were to quantify the punitive damages he may reap through the legal efforts of his Canadian attorney and the investigative research provided by Mr. Milo, or, more likely, an assistant.

So of the major players, this leaves only Mr. Milo. What could he possibly have to gain from the publication of an article on the front page of the Sunday Arts section in a major U.S. market that presents his artist as the supposed wronged party whose ideas have been usurped, his livelihood threatened…and his institutional affiliations and pedigree highlighted . Can you say advertising? Does anyone really think that the sale of pretty pictures in British Columbia will adversely impact Mr. Leong’s market as the writer teasingly suggests?  Sure, Mr. Milo may lose a “decorator” sale, but let’s be serious: those sales would never have been realized on the basis of a serious collecting decision, anyway. Mr. Milo has been successful in hawking Mr. Leong’s work to a few big collections and alot of little ones…how big are Mr. Leong’s editions, anyway? From the “evidence” cited by the writer, sounds like what really is at stake is a pissing contest between dealers with Mr. Milo (who is winning, by the way) more interested in protecting his income than his artist’s intellectual integrity.

All that said (and I feel so much better for having gotten it all off my chest), I guess the true reason this rant has kept my fingers moving is that the article, which is passing as Arts Coverage is more like a petulant first half of what may be a new television series: “Law & Order: SBA (selling bad art).” Shame on you, Ms. Arts Editor!

Stay tuned for my take on the real issues of this soap-opera, and what their implications may be.