From SFMOMA's Open Space Blog

This is a text I wrote and posted to SFMOMA’s Open Space Blog. The text was written in response to a series of discussion that erupted in regards to an article by art historian Julian Myers, titled New Langton Arts in Crisis, on the fate of the wonderful San Francisco non-profit gallery New Langton Arts, Though the fate of Langton is a very sad and lamentable one, many in the SF arts community were given some consolation by the energetic discussions that erupted due to it’s fate. We realized that despite opinions otherwise, we do actually have a vibrant, concerned and active art world in this often criticized city.

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You say we’re on the brink of destruction and you’re right. But it’s only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve.

- John Cleese to Keanu Reeves, in “The Day the Earth Stood Still”,

It is very difficult for any institution to change. And there is usually a period of discord and in the worst cases, total collapse before any change is possible. This is not a novel idea, we all know this, it constantly reoccurring theme. From our climate, to Obama, to the economy, to our banks, to the auto industry, we are surrounded by the word change. You could say change is the theme of the late 2000’s and to mollify the uncertainty of it we are told change is good. But this knowledge doesn’t lessen the sting and it doesn’t make it any easier to change. In fact, the hardest thing is knowing when to change, what to change, who to change and how. What does change mean if you can’t see it until it is too late?

Having worked at the non-proft gallery, Art in General (1), in New York City, a space that was also going through similar (though perhaps not quite so grave) challenges as Langton (not to mention being married to someone who is also dealing with the closing of another important bay area non-profit arts institution), I can somewhat contemplate the difficulties of keeping a non-profit institution, not only open and running, but germane and vital in a shifting art world. It was hard enough in New York I can only imagine the difficulties of running a non-profit now and here, in the elusive and under-supported San Francisco Art World.

The most important question for me that has been asked here, and the one that requires the most change, was asked way before this blog exchange started, in Julian Myers’ Tercerunquinto article. And that million-dollar question was to ask Langton why they should survive? Which is actually a very existential question. I think Myers is basically asking Langton, if you want to live then explain why you are alive. What is your reason for being? And why should we the San Francisco Art world support that.

In Sartre’s essay “Existentialism is a Humanism” he explains that existentialism means mainly that existence precedes essence. Furthermore Sartre says, and here I paraphrase, that the most important charge of Existentialism is to make everyone aware of what they are and to understand that the full responsibility of their existence rests on them. But as he continues we learn that it doesn’t stop here. Responsibility is not simply about an individual’s singular existence but about everyone else. Or as Sartre says “And when we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men.”

If we, as Sartre suggests, have a responsibility to each other perhaps we should use the condition of Langton as a mirror for the sustainability of the entire bay area art world. If Langton is flailing, then our art world is flailing and we need a new model or models to sustain ourselves. So perhaps we should not simply be asking Langton why they should survive or in my existential translation, what is their reason for being, but we should be asking ourselves (as of course many of us have, if Julian’s blog is any indication) what do we want Langton to be and beyond that, what do we want the Bay Area art world to be and how do we get there?

This Langton situation is bittersweet. It has been horrible for the difficulties it has caused the staff, artists, and curators not to mention the audiences, who depend on Langton for support, both financial and inspirational. However I am quite excited by the dialog it has created within the arts community here. It gives me hope for the future.

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(1) At Art in General we (given direction by the then curator Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy) realized that things had shifted drastically from the 70’s and 80’s when most of the NYC non-profits began (as many of the non-profits elsewhere have also realized and changed to try and meet the shifting demand). The need for non-profits to simply grant exposure to underrepresented and emerging artists had changed. Artists in New York needed more than exposure to survive, they needed financial and administrative backing. So we reduced the numbers of shows produced each year and subsequently the numbers of artists supported, and shifted to a commissioning institution, providing artists both a production budget and a separate honorarium to create new and complex projects that otherwise might not get made. This was not an easy change to make. It was difficult for our audience, the board, the funders and the granting organizations to understand the reduction in the number shows presented each year and numbers of artists shown, even though our support could help sustain an artist’s practice and thereby the New York art world, much more than our previous model.