I am sorry. I hardly ever apologize for anything even when I know I am wrong, just ask my wife.
Last week I said that the “Present Tense” exhibition at the Dixon, if nothing else, got everyone talking about the visual arts in Memphis, and that this was a good thing. I was wrong. Hardly anyone is talking about the art that was created in Memphis over the last decade. People instead are talking about who or who was not included in the exhibition. They are talking about the selection process, how some artists knew about it, others did not. (My work is included in “Present Tense.”)
I have visited this exhibitions three times now and have been a part of, essentially, the same conversation on each visit. To paraphrase some of the comments, they were generally along the lines of, “Where is Tim Crowder? His exhibition [in 2010] was outstanding.” “Why didn’t the Brooks Museum organize this exhibition? Isn’t this the kind of thing they are supposed to do?” “What is so special about Tam Tran’s photographs and why did she get to include so many? They could have made room for at least two more artists by not showing so many of hers.”
On a side note, I believe Tam Tran deserves a whole wing at the Dixon of her work in this exhibition. How often do artists in Memphis get invited to participate in the Whitney Biennial, the preeminent contemporary art exhibition in America? I can list them all using only my two middle fingers. Tram was also the youngest participant in 2010, the year she was included in the exhibition. We should want to see more of her portraits in as many places as possible, not less.
