Friday, June 20, 2003
ART IN THE TOILET, Sex and Lies continued... Monday, June 09, 2003
Before marrying Pete, during my undergrad years in Art school, I worked as a waitress at the M.I.T. Faculty Club. It was on the top floor of the Sloan School of Business. I enjoyed waitressing. Especially in the rarified air of that dining room. Lots of Nobel Prize winners, scientists and engineers working on the first space schuttle and lots of young entrepreneurs.
I'd mastered the art of flirting at an early age and in waitressing, that's the name of the game if you want to earn any money at all. A group of recent Sloan school grads used to meet regularly at the faculty club, for lunch or happy hour. They'd always ask for me. Among them was a funny little guy with a beard. He reminded me of Toulouse Lautrec. His name was Frank. He had a law degree from Harvard and a business degree from Sloan. He was one of the smartest men I'd ever met, and he had a dry sense of humor that I liked. After my shift was over, they'd always invite me to join them. Sometimes we'd go out partying as a group. Sometimes Frank would maneuver to get me in his car alone. He'd often try to kiss me. Problem was there was no chemistry. I'd gently reject his advances. We became good "friends".
We stayed in contact after I met Pete. I confided in him. He knew I'd been spending a lot of time painting and he told me about a new artists activist organization, the Boston Visual Artists Union (BVAU) that he thought I should join. They met regularly in a classroom at M.I.T.. One night Frank picked me up from our apartment. (This was after the shark incident.)Pete knew where we were going.
We get to the meeting, a room full of artists, animated, loosly organized, intensely discussing the future of the organization. The energy in the room filled my battered soul. This is it. This is my lifeline.
The discussion centers on the Museum of Fine Arts. A revered Boston institution with an amazing collection of Impressionists, but almost no contemporary art to speak of, no curator of contemporary art and not a single living Boston artist in it's entire collection. We decide radical tactics are necessary. We had tried meeting with Museum officials to voice our concerns. They were not moved. They gave us the usual bureaucratic yada, yada, yada...
We plan a guerrilla attack. We plan an unauthorized exhibition at the museum to be held in the basement bathrooms. We set a date. Selected artists are to enter the museum with small works that they can carry under their coats. The works are then hung on the walls in the bathrooms. We have a large mailing list of wealthy Boston collectors who have an interest in the avant garde and who are disappointed that the museum has blinders on when it comes to homegrown talent. We plan an Opening Night Event. When the elegantly dressed patrons start entering the museum and stream down to the bathrooms, the guards are in shock. The press has been alerted and there is commotion, and great energy. Everyone knows they are part of some groundbreaking event. The museum administration has been caught totally off-guard
The next day, headlines in all the Boston papers. You can imagine the trashing that the museum got for relegating living artists to the toilet. Soon after museum appointed their first ever "Curator of Contemporary Art". Today, many living, Boston artists grace the walls of the museum.
Before marrying Pete, during my undergrad years in Art school, I worked as a waitress at the M.I.T. Faculty Club. It was on the top floor of the Sloan School of Business. I enjoyed waitressing. Especially in the rarified air of that dining room. Lots of Nobel Prize winners, scientists and engineers working on the first space schuttle and lots of young entrepreneurs.
I'd mastered the art of flirting at an early age and in waitressing, that's the name of the game if you want to earn any money at all. A group of recent Sloan school grads used to meet regularly at the faculty club, for lunch or happy hour. They'd always ask for me. Among them was a funny little guy with a beard. He reminded me of Toulouse Lautrec. His name was Frank. He had a law degree from Harvard and a business degree from Sloan. He was one of the smartest men I'd ever met, and he had a dry sense of humor that I liked. After my shift was over, they'd always invite me to join them. Sometimes we'd go out partying as a group. Sometimes Frank would maneuver to get me in his car alone. He'd often try to kiss me. Problem was there was no chemistry. I'd gently reject his advances. We became good "friends".
We stayed in contact after I met Pete. I confided in him. He knew I'd been spending a lot of time painting and he told me about a new artists activist organization, the Boston Visual Artists Union (BVAU) that he thought I should join. They met regularly in a classroom at M.I.T.. One night Frank picked me up from our apartment. (This was after the shark incident.)Pete knew where we were going.
We get to the meeting, a room full of artists, animated, loosly organized, intensely discussing the future of the organization. The energy in the room filled my battered soul. This is it. This is my lifeline.
The discussion centers on the Museum of Fine Arts. A revered Boston institution with an amazing collection of Impressionists, but almost no contemporary art to speak of, no curator of contemporary art and not a single living Boston artist in it's entire collection. We decide radical tactics are necessary. We had tried meeting with Museum officials to voice our concerns. They were not moved. They gave us the usual bureaucratic yada, yada, yada...
We plan a guerrilla attack. We plan an unauthorized exhibition at the museum to be held in the basement bathrooms. We set a date. Selected artists are to enter the museum with small works that they can carry under their coats. The works are then hung on the walls in the bathrooms. We have a large mailing list of wealthy Boston collectors who have an interest in the avant garde and who are disappointed that the museum has blinders on when it comes to homegrown talent. We plan an Opening Night Event. When the elegantly dressed patrons start entering the museum and stream down to the bathrooms, the guards are in shock. The press has been alerted and there is commotion, and great energy. Everyone knows they are part of some groundbreaking event. The museum administration has been caught totally off-guard
The next day, headlines in all the Boston papers. You can imagine the trashing that the museum got for relegating living artists to the toilet. Soon after museum appointed their first ever "Curator of Contemporary Art". Today, many living, Boston artists grace the walls of the museum.
