“Permanent collection reinstallation” is such a dreary term. It sounds like a medical procedure one would rather skip. But with a rehang of a superb collection of American art like the Brooklyn Museum’s, it ought to be a joy. The museum has always packed a powerful curatorial punch—but this flat fifth-floor installation, driven by an identity-oriented agenda, says plenty about the status of American art in the museum.
The show begins with a whimper, with introductory wall text lacking any visual drama. Given the unfolding show, this seems deliberate: the curators don’t much like American art and don’t know what to do with it.
The text framing the show briefly evokes predicatable themes of race and privilege, but these expressions seem rote.
A quote in the introductory text from James Baldwin’s “The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American” refers to the inscrutability of “America” as a term. This is provocative, but its selection is illogical. First, in Baldwin’s famous 1959 essay, he does indeed define “America”—as an experience and culture marked by racism, homophobia, envy, and an obsession with status. Second, it immediately puts the perceptive, educated viewer in a doubting frame of mind. Baldwin’s essay celebrates French culture (he was an expatriate living in Paris when he wrote it) as lacking those cultural flaws he saw in America—which would come as news to many, including the French. The text framing the show briefly evokes predictable themes of
