Mark's Pages

March 20, 2012:

Names, photos, and family histories of well-to-do patrons are displayed prominently, with the same emphasis as the artworks they've donated. This is the priority of this place: the donors, not the works.

We intuited it in childhood, without the vocabulary. It's the vibe here.

In adulthood we've been to real galleries. New York, London, Chicago, D.C. Where you do in fact encounter the Sackler family, the Guggenheims and their peers. Very nice of them. That word "peer" though is the operative thing. These provincials aren't in that club, so that by contrast their pretense seems both presumptuous and kitschy.