Growing up in summer

7/31/2024

In the art world, summer is the season of aestivation. That started before air conditioning when art patrons and performers retreated from sultry cities for cooler climes. It persists as a time out for symphonies, opera companies, schools and ballets. Douglas Duncan and Lawrence Ely took advantage of that a half century ago by establishing a summer opera company here that commands far-flung attention that might not be there when other companies are fully active. Des Moines Metro Opera’s recently concluded season was its best yet.

Des Moines Art Center’s (DMAC) featured summer show is more serious politically than artistically. “Hurricane Season” continues the museum’s three show investment in Caribbean themes. That was most thoughtfully tracked in their previous “States of Becoming,” which emotionally explained the diaspora of African and Caribbean genius to America as a Hegelian dialectic. The new show is blunter, screaming “climate change can be horrible” through survivalist media. Blue tarps and chicken wire are used by several artists, not as shelter from the storm, but as receptacles of their observations.

 

b. Robert Moore steals the show

DMAC’s Iowa Artist Exhibition this year is more compelling. “b. Robert Moore” reveals the celebrated Des Moines painter’s reflections on growing up black in America. No other artist has done that better. Moore immerses himself in the experience and its history with acute irony. He uses Ethiopian coffee and coffee bags as media becoming his message. His accompanying writing adds lucidity. This most powerful Iowa Artist show reveals Moore’s street genius. You have until Oct. 20 to visit and revisit. Moberg Gallery is also exhibiting some of Moore’s paintings.

 

Not on his dime

American high culture is embroiled in politics. The issue is still best represented by 1995’s fiasco in which Yale University was forced to return $20 million to Lee Bass rather than use it for its negotiated purpose of establishing elite departments of western and classical studies. Yale was bent on deemphasizing western civilization and elevating Ethnicity, Race and Migration (“ERM” now in WOKE speak) and bolstering gay and lesbian studies. Not on Bass’ dime. 

This spring’s Anti-Semitic riots and the continuing intimidations of Jewish Americans have further divorced the citadels of culture from many of their biggest patrons. Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City recently auctioned off one of western civilization’s most prized paintings — Claude Monet’s “Mill at Limetz, 1888” for $21,685,000. 

The painting was given to the museum by Ethel B. Atha, of the Folger’s Coffee family, and the decision to sell it was made soon after the death of her daughter. The museum intends to spend the money “on new acquisitions, maybe finding the next Monet.” 

 

Timely advice

“Inhale, Exhale” by Jordan Webber, newly installed on top of Mainframe Studios, is dedicated to Teree Caldwell-Johnson, longtime Des Moines school board member and CEO of Oakridge Neighborhood. A sunset dedication ceremony will be held Aug. 2 at Oakridge.

Road trips

“Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody” explores the unique visual language of the mythmaking Pop Artist. It will celebrate, in Walker Art Center’s words, “joy, solidarity, community, and hope.” It will run just from Aug. 27 till Sept. 8. Then pop goes the Pop. 

Wanderlust magazine touted “the best U.S. summer art exhibitions.” Their top choice is “Dining with the Sultan: The Fine Art of Feasting,” which comes to Detroit Institute of Arts in September.  

Also on their list is New Orleans Museum of Art’s “Rebellious Spirits: Prohibition and Resistance in the South.” New Orleans proudly flaunted Prohibition and this show looks closely at its flaunting tools — cocktail shakers, liquor jugs, cocktail glasses, plus photographs of the 14-year-long party. Through January. 

 

Forget it Jake, it’s Nvidia 

Robert Towne, a writers’ screenwriter, died in July. His script for “Chinatown,” and its meme line “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown,” mystified the unassailable power of the unseen. And that was a foreboding of contemporary times when no one knows who, or what, controls our governments, laboratories, computer chips, or urges to act. Forget it Jake, it’s Nvidia. ♦