Artist and activist Blithe Riley came to our university, and she had a few interesting things to say. Her lecture delved into the artist's world and point of view concerning the Occupy movements, primarily dealing with the administration of museums and the unfair balance of monetary investment put forth by the government.
The problems she proposed with museums were that they too often sold out to the highest bidder and the common folk are kept at an arm's length to specific fine arts. This of course goes against the Occupy agenda, yet at first the people of the movement were disinterested. She had many challenges getting the Occupy Museums movement started, but persevered and succeeded in making demonstrations, such as a showing that spooked some adminstrators into retreating into the building over a non violent request to accept a cardboard image of a house.
I believe that Blithe Riley is helping do the world a solid by standing up for what she believes in, but I'm not entirely convinced that what she and the movement does will help them achieve their goal: fair involvement for all people that does not involve any cost. Money makes the world go round, and if artifacts are worth a lot of money, then they should be protected. Getting people who are knowledgable enough to handle items like that are going to require proper training, and of course those same items will need protection as well. This all can't be done for free. And even if we could, we'd still have people like this messing up all of our nice things: http://www.artfagcity.com/2012/01/05/woman-pees-on-about-or-around-clyfford-still-painting/
But, good luck to Ms Riley; she is standing up for the art world in her own way and I can fully support that.
Very interesting entry - thanks for the link. Keep this up and you'll do well.
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