Gender and Desire

I went to the Brooklyn Museum today with my brother-in-law to see the exhibit, “Gender and Desire.”

It was okay. Some enjoyable art. But this is the deal---when you lump a bunch of paintings together to make some sort of sociological point, it might be good for the museum, but is it good for the artists?

This collection, put together originally at S.U.N.Y. Buffalo, was someone’s idea. And that’s nice.

But is that idea bigger than the idea of each individual piece of work, so much so that the work is experienced in a compelling way? Were these the paintings that happened to be available and sort of “fit the bill” so they were procured?

I don’t know…