This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.
Our favorite architectural critic, Herbert Muschamp praises his friends Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio at the Diller + Scofidio retrospective at the Whitney. Sometimes I do not know where the crap Muschamp is coming from. Case in point in the very first paragraph:
But intelligent visitors will have to pick their way through a few unwelcome booby traps: curatorial winks and nods designed to dumb things down for the chimerical unsophisticates to whom far too many museum shows today are needlessly pitched.
What does this mean? Does Muschamp state that only himself and a small cadre of learned scholars can appreciate architecture, and by extension, the art world and life itself? Why broadening a topic for others outside our small incestuous group a bad idea, and any attempt to include those outside result in a show, which “dumb things down for the chimerical unsophisticates?” What elitist drivel. Muschamp should know better that subjects, and in this case art shows, can be read in multiple layers and texts? Architects are already seen as an elite group that is out of touch with the “common man.” Why add fuel to the fire? Diller + Scofidio have produced some very intriguing and challenging work in the last few years, work that acts to broaden architecture and bring back the tenuous connection with art and the ephemeral and temporal. I wish you would restrict your critique to the show’s content, and be less concerned with signage, the “didactic wall texts” which obviously you fine disdainful and are just now recovering from temporary blindness, and the fact the there might be common plebes in the audience trying to appreciate a profession that is so rich and rewarding that we participate in.
Please check your elitism at the door Mr. Muschamp, and let the common man into the room – if they can get around your ego.
