ref. ‘Art museum downtown......,’ HL, oct 11, 15
For years the University of Kentucky Art Museum has been hiding under and around in back, essentially a service entrance, of a gigantic, all-brick fortress of performance, huge spaces dedicated to music and sound. Surrounded by a moat of ‘no parking available’ two or three blocks deep, with arbitrary hours, they weren’t trying to be friendly. So one day I stroll in, probably to see the Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington, a brilliant little painting even if you didn’t know who Washington was, and the person behind the desk calls out as I walk by. She says,”Who are you?”, just like that. I’m feeling wary at the impertinence so I offer that I’m a citizen of the fine state of Kentucky. She says that’s insufficient, and if I’m not student or faculty that’ll be eight dollars to walk around and see our stuff. I declined.
There was almost never anyone in there, anyway. I’ve heard they’d sometimes count janitors and even themselves coming back from lunch just to pretend someone was utilizing the real estate, and at eight bucks a head the true costs of the white elephant on campus must have been revealed. Well, suddenly there’s a new kid in town, in fact, there’s lots of them. The hotel is going to assume your function, the one you were too shy, too insular, to self-satisfied to fulfill. They’ll present an array of art you can’t match, set standards for achievement and currency in a profession space you’ll never get our citizens to provide for you, not now. All around the hotel the city has engineered a pedestrian friendly area in anticipation of private galleries popping up in store rooms, over bars, in any empty space with walls, all seeking a niche in the spectrum of interests and tastes of a suddenly engaged public, as well as those of world travelers passing through.
Losing the admittance fee could be seen as a friendly gesture, although rather meek and inconsequential, an ego adjustment decidedly late, but you won’t see crowds because of it. Your space in neither user or art friendly, and your commitment to a contemporary sensibility which only a tax-adjusting foundation could love makes a move downtown into your own stainless-steel, squashed-can architectural icon just something to think about while a fly buzzes somewhere in your tall empty space. Where were you?
2 comments:
Your experience was very much like mine when I last visited there--winter of 1987. I was an employee at the time. Everything you described was the same way then. Since UK is really a professional sports franchise disguised as a university I don't have any hope that the museum will be anything more than a token they can point at when they pretend to be interested in something other than sports.
I doubt they still have it, but when I was with the Art League, there was a copy done in the late 20's/early 30's of a proposal for a city art museum that was quite an impressive booklet. Had they succeeded, it would have altered the course of the arts in Lexington forever. It will take another eighty plus years to see anything like it come to fruition.
There was vague talk a few years ago of the UK Art Museum sharing space with the Lexington History Museum at the old courthouse. It was hard to take it seriously considering what the old structure needed to be an actual museum. The UK Art Museum's only hope to something more than the barely surviving mousehole that it is at present, is to get out of that building and get off campus in a new structure accessible to all. Having worked at UK and having friends who work there still, I already know it would take a true miracle for that to ever happen. The core culture never changes.
Out of the way location, lack of parking, odd hours - all true. I guess I haven't been in a while - not since they added an admission fee. I do remember several times I attempted to go and found it closed.
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