One day after Thanksgiving, Rainey Knudson and I met at the Old Jail Art Center in Albany, Texas, to shoot a segment for an upcoming Glasstire video about our favorite regional museums in the state. But now we’re hung up on the term “regional,” and know we need to rename the video something like “Our Favorite Out-Of-The-Way Museums in Texas” or “Small-Town Texas Museums To See Before You Die,” because, as the Old Jail’s curator Patrick Kelly pointed out to us as we were taping, the word “regional” could easily be construed as what Rainey and I and you the readers would more likely call “provincial.”
In other words, The Old Jail, which exhibits curated shows of historic and contemporary artists from all over the state and beyond, and has an impressive permanent collection, is decidedly not provincial, and therefore perhaps not regional either, though originally we were using the term to delineate regions of Texas (i.e. the panhandle, the valley, etc).
If going by programming and collecting, the Old Jail is no more provincial/regional than, say, the Amon Carter in Fort Worth, which has a permanent Western art collection but a rotating exhibition program we understand to be international.
We’ll figure out a good name for the video. But to get technical about language, every museum and exhibition-based art space in the world, no matter their content, could be deemed provincial and regional because they have to come at their programming from their own starting place, which is where they actually are on the map both culturally and geographically. Even if they’re something of a tourist destination or favorite stop on an art pilgrimage, there’s no denying the local community that the space is expected to serve and speak to directly—especially museums with the educational programming they maintain to qualify for non-profit status—and their board members and directors are usually a part of that immediate community (at least part time).
The Old Jail could get stuck with the term regional not because of its program, but because it’s two hours from any larger place that has a recognizable art scene. But we expect big cities to cultivate art scenes and art; we expect non-cities to import that art if they want their museum or gallery to avoid provincialism. (Every town could have a community center where the weekend watercolorists gather and pin their stuff to walls. None of that leaves town.)
But we know, for instance, that the New York City art scene is often accused (more than others) of being provincial, in that it historically has tended to glorify art being made there more than in other cities in the US and abroad, and plenty of globetrotting art lovers love to call out NYC’s cultural provincialism. Actually, people outside of NYC just generally like calling out NYC’s provincialism, period. But I’d also insist that the world fully expects art to come out of New York the same way the world expects wine to come out of France. The cultivation is in place.
Texas is in the unusual position of not only being vast, but having concentrations of real wealth in areas well outside its major cities. I’m referring to old (for Texas) money based on industries that helped build Texas’ economy in the first place, like cattle ranching, the oil and gas industry, the building of the railroads, etc. Albany is one of those areas where a families built huge ranches but traveled and studied and collected well outside of the state. The Old Jail exemplifies worldliness despite being nowhere near a major university or art-based institution or arts colony (Black Mountain College → Asheville, NC) or artist estate (Donald Judd → Marfa).
Here’s another ball of “regional” label wax: We label artists, too, as regional, or local, or international. But these labels are often meaningless. If an artist from Dallas who has just started showing is asked to send a piece to Zurich for a group show in a gallery, is that artist really, suddenly, international? The people who write press releases would have you believe it. I know artists in Texas who make the kind of work that would do well in many contexts in many countries, but maybe they haven’t exported their work. We can’t call them international. On the other hand, I know artists who make work that makes more sense closer to home and would baffle the Swiss. They are proudly regional in their outlook and output. But we mark the artist as local verses international not based on the work, but rather where the work has been. I’ve likely been guilty of falling for or perpetuating the label “international” when what I really mean is: the work was shipped across a border.
But back to institutions. My question I suppose is: what should the word “regional” mean when applied to Texas, given its size and oddly distributed wealth? Can we call Texas’ smattering of outward-looking, wealth-built institutions in semi-rural and rural places “regional,” and if not, what should we call them? Yes, we can refer to the Old Jail Art Center as an accredited museum that rightfully lands on a lot of people’s “to visit” list, but is there any one term or phrase that can stretch to help define it to Texans and non-Texans who might not be aware of the state’s “regional” non-regionalist art spaces? I’m not asking this as critic so much as I’m asking as a person fascinated by language.
11 comments
CR,
The first generic label that came to me for museums such as the Old Jail House Art Center was “non-urban-center museums”. It would cover most of the outlying institutions in communities like Albany, but also suburban museums like the Pearl Fincher Museum in Spring, TX (a Houston suburb for readers from other areas of the state). Often these smaller cultural institutions have wonderful permanent collections as well as active “exterior exhibitions”, the Old Jail and the Fincher certainly do.
A categorization as “provincial” would speak to the mindset of the viewers or administrators of these institutions. That can apply to “major” population centers as well as ‘non-urban” as witnessed by the current turmoil here in Houston over the Houston Art Alliance’s rejection of “local” artist Ed Wilson, who has exhibited in Europe, most of Texas and across state lines within the US, allegedly because he was not of “blue chip” status. Provincial thinking can occur anywhere and about almost anything.
I would call them “aregional” as it doesn’t really matter where they are physically within a global art world.
I agree with your thinking, Meredith, but your term is grammatically awkward, defines the thing by what it is not and maintains an inside/outside hierarchy. It may be possible to side-step the unfortunate connotations of “regional” by characterizing museums in other, more precise terms. Square-footage, value of permanent collection, operating budget, a survey of rotating exhibitions (international, national, regional, local), etc., could all be used but each has its own issues. I might vote for a population-based definition. The US census uses rural (under 2500, which means the Old Jail House Art Center is Christina and Rainey’s favorite rural museum?), urban cluster (2500-50,000), urban (over 50,000) and metropolitan (urban of 50,000 plus at least 10,000 in surrounding area), making no further distinctions for larger populations, which seems odd and not very helpful. That would mean we wouldn’t differentiate between the Victoria-Port Lavaca area and Houston, Dallas or San Antonio. Adding the term “megalopolis”, a term first used by cultural theorists in the Interwar period, might help. It’s come to mean a city of at least 10 or even 25 million, depending on who’s doing the defining, but its literal meaning is a “great city” of one million. Still, “megalopolitan” is a mouthful and these things have to work in everyday conversation, right?
Maybe this is a matter for the next meeting of the American Alliance of Museums. It would probably be a lot of fun to watch a roomful of museum directors from “rural” to “megalopolitan” areas try to agree on official designations. Might want to beef up security.
Bryan, You’re absolutely correct it is an awkward nomenclature, but it is accurately descriptive. What we need is a snappy acronym. NUM’s doesn’t work very well either.
Eh, they’re just words. They don’t carve anything at the joints.
To paraphrase Steve martin, I believe it’s derogatory to refer to small rural museums as “regional” or “provincial”… and that you should only refer to them as “country-ass”.
I would hesitate to assign the terms “regional” and “provincial” any equality or association beyond those few who think that way (as Meredith pointed out above). Instead I’d be for spreading the term regional as a positive attribute — regionalism is what makes a museum in West Texas a museum in West Texas. I would hate to see museums being pressured to collect one of every blue chip and/or internationally acclaimed somebody just to avoid being sidelined, or avoid collecting artists from their own particular region who, for whatever reason, never exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, yet are nonetheless fascinating and contribute to the cultural conversation.
As a Texas-born, Louisiana-transplanted artist, this is a subject upon which I often fret. I was born in Angleton, a very small town just south of Houston, but I’ve lived in Shreveport, LA, since 1990. For those who don’t know the town (which I presume is almost everyone), we’re in the far northwest corner of the state, where Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma meet.
What do we call our region? The “ArkLaTex” (yes, that leaves out our neighbors in Oklahoma). Anyway, the region is pretty darn huge, is centered on Shreveport, and reaches from Tyler, to Lufkin, to Texarkana, to Natchitoches, LA, and more to the East in Louisiana. Shreveport’s 200,000+ population makes it the largest city in the region, which has an overall population of about one million.
Despite the large region and population, the term “ArkLaTex” is not one that I’ve heard artists use to describe their work or their careers. I don’t use the term for myself. At least that’s been my observation. So that may be what we call the region, but it’s not what we call ourselves. Weird.
Furthermore, the term “regional artist” seems, at least in this region, to indicate a style or idiom, that being realistic nature and landscape art, rather than to describe where an artist is exhibited. Since I create abstract paintings, and sometimes cartoon illustrations, I never call myself a regional artist, out of fear that someone will misunderstand, and wonder why I don’t do the nature art thing.
Artists in town, regardless of their idiom, are “local” artists, if they live and work in Shreveport or Bossier (our sister city across the Red River). I’m a local artist, meaning Shreveport specifically. But “local” is too specific a word for countless other artists living in outlying towns and cities, for whom there is no adequate label. They’re not local, and if they produce art that falls outside the nature genre, they most likely won’t be called “regional.”
Any artist from the edges of the region receives a more precise distinction. For example, someone from Tyler would be designated an “East Texas artist” if he or she exhibited at the Shreveport Regional Arts Council’s space downtown, even though Tyler is supposed to be part of our region. I can’t recall the word “regional” ever being applied in those situations.
Which brings us to the Shreveport Regional Arts Council (SRAC), and the museums, non-profits, and other exhibition venues in the area. As far as I’ve seen, they do not mind one bit calling themselves regional. In fact, I think they take pride in it. In the case of these institutions, the designation seems to be concerned with geographic borderlines, and not the art that’s exhibited. For example, SRAC brings in artists from afar on a constant basis, and exhibits local work at the same time, and they’re not the only ones.
None of this answers any of your questions, does it, Christina?
I guess my reply is an effort to shine a light on the added complication of crossing state lines when trying to grow an art career in Texas. I’ve exhibited in Louisiana, and have snuck across the border a couple of times for group shows at the Kettle Gallery in Deep Ellum, and the Longview Museum of Fine Arts, but if I’m to take my career to the next level, I need to make my gallery presence more permanent in Texas. I have to ask myself, “Will regional Texas galleries and museums even consider me and my work?” The answer is, “Some of them will.” The challenge for me is finding them, and as you point out, at this moment, I can’t rely on terminology like “regional” to describe those venues – it doesn’t do the job. I have to research them on a case-by-case basis, and see if they work with artists from outside the state.
MRM Meta Regional Museums!
I am reading Glasstire and writing from Albany, New York, a place that is naturally considered provincial from the NYC point of view, but from where I have also many times delighted in “calling out” NYC as provincial in its own way (as your post acknowledges). Here are a few thoughts on the subject of regionalism from an independent art critic, former exhibiting artist, and person who has visited Texas several times (primarily to rural spots) since 1977 and always enjoyed it quite a bit:
Like some other commenters, I feel the regional label is OK, often positive and not necessarily tainted by the idea of provincialism. During my own 30-year exhibiting career, I was probably thought of as regional, and I didn’t mind – first, my work drew directly from the local geography (even if it was also shown internationally); second, I was really only well-known within the region, so the label seems apt; and, finally, I was proud to be NOT a NYC-scene artist but, rather, an independent from upstate and therefore regional.
I write about shows that are within a limited geography for practical purposes, but my coverage “region” includes everything from public libraries to major museums (e.g. MASS MoCA), and you truly never know which is going to have the more impressive or important art in it (though I’ll admit the museums usually have the edge there!). So I am also a regional art critic, but often cover international art shown within that region.
Responding to the various suggestions, I like the labels that relate to location and scale (such as rural and megalopolitan). And, by the way, as a reader from very far away, I do perceive Glasstire’s coverage and discussions as distinctly regional (being about issues in Texas) and, almost by definition, yep, provincial.
Thanks for providing a stimulating forum for discussion!
As an Illinois-born, Wisconsin raised, Kentucky, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas resident who sometimes makes art, sometimes writes about art, curates exhibitions, showed Bill Viola’s, Steina’s, Woody Vasulka’s and Mike Smith’s (yes, “This is Mike’s Place; it’s such a great place), work in 1980 or 81 (I am getting a bit foggy but, hey, I’ve been there and done it if you know what I mean), builds unrivaled art collections, gives discerning talks about little known art and artists, goes to a lot of art exhibitions, visits museums and galleries on a regular basis, has not yet been to Marfa (I am a sinner), loves Sonoran green corn tamales and carne seca, lived in Honduras, lived in Utah, studied pre-Columbian art that has nothing to do with the Maya or Aztecs, gets closer to death each day, has grown to like air conditioning though despising it as an invention, drives old cars and older trucks, is overweight and balding, uses Tumblr and hashtags, thinks New York is peachy but expensive, loves wood-fired ceramics, likes everyone he has met in Houston (the coastal region of Texas’ largest city) just started rereading Norman Mailer, has a dog and a cat, is married to the greatest living artist in the lower 48, thinks that Louis Grachos left a substantive legacy for SITE Santa Fe and looks forward to the same in Austin, went on numerous backcountry canoe trips in Minnesota and Canada, wishes for a garden of many types of tomatoes, ran a bus service in Italy, helped “raise” the Pentagon and shared some space with Abbie Hoffman in Chicago, and now lives in Lubbock, Texas, I think I have earned a right, a god-given right recognized (I think) by UNESCO, and have a combination of “lived experience” to ring in my obviously well-informed opinions about the use and relevance of the word “regional” and, as the conversation disrobed, “provincial”…too! You bet, as they say in Utah. May I suggest, based on this unimpeachable resume above, that systematics–classification schemes–have inherent problems that accompany generalizations (in general). Knowledge often advances on the edges where generalizations fall short (in general). Perhaps, a classification scheme is (or is not) appropriate to apply to an issue(s) being examined or discussed (in general). But the relevance of these schemes or systems is (generally) contingent on the nature of the problem and how they (the classification schemes generally) help advance understanding of it (in general). Their success does not depend on their absolute efficacy (generally). They (fortunately) do not have some sort of Platonic certainty. Maybe what Bruno, he’s a pretty good thinker, has to say about “globalization” might be analogous: “’globalization,’” an empty term that is unable to define from which localities, and through which connections, the “global” is assumed to act. Most people who enjoy speaking of the ‘global world’ live in narrow, provincial confines with few connections to other equally provincial abodes in far away places. Academia is one case. So is Wall Street. One thing is certain: the globalized world has no ‘globe’ inside which it could reside.” Here is the source: Bruno Latour in e-flux 23 (2011); http://www.e-flux.com/journal/some-experiments-in-art-and-politics/
Thanks for sharing. Hope to see you in Marfa, the West Texas region’s minimalist capital.