Reply #25: This hit a nerve

[Sedona]

Warning... long post

OK I’m a little wavering here between “Yay art!” to “Fuck the Walton family”.

I have spent quite a few days in the almost 50 year of my life in a few world class art museums in the US.
I live in the boonies, It’s a day’s drive to anything good.

One thing I noticed at Los Angeles County Museum of Art is more than half the tens of thousands of works from ginormous wall sized Renaissance paintings to tiny pieces of jewelry from ancient Egypt were donated by William Randolph Hurst . I laughed thinking that his collection couldn’t even fit in the stupendous castle he built for himself up the coast that I visited in 2008. He needed three stories on a whole city block in LA to contain the rest.

As an aside, if you haven’t seen the Tim Burton Exhibit at LACMA run to see it. It was so amazing I brought back my 16 year old daughter and two of her buds all the way from Sedona to see it too. It ends Oct 31st with a big Halloween party LACMA fundraiser for the 1%. I didn’t have much luck getting the girls to appreciate the rest of the masterpieces at the museum (I wasn’t a fan until my 30’s) but they were jazzed by the 3000 year old mummy and I did show them Five Car Stud. Read more below about this powerful exhibit.

http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/edward-kienholz-five-car-stud

It made the drive back to Santa Monica through Downtown Beverly Hills a little weird as we talked about it in the car.

I have yet to visit the two Getty museums in LA, but they are on my agenda for 2012.

http://www.getty.edu/visit/

So as much as I hate the big corporations and the people who run them, and think about how they’ve fucked up my health care and how my 25 year old daughter is losing the little house she put $75K down on just five years ago (she earned every penny herself), I have to say, we wouldn’t be able to see all the beautiful art and antiquities without them.

Life isn’t black and white. Some of the 1% isn’t awful. Some of them plunked down big bucks in LA for the Clinton Foundation the weekend I was in LA. Some of them gave millions to Obama last night there. Maybe this Walton woman has a few decent bones in her body. It’s not her fault she was born into a fucked up rich family. Maybe she’s just trying to do what she can to give back. I know I would. I know Hurst and Getty did some fucked up things too but they had more money than they knew what to do with so they bought all this amazing art and they are sharing it with the rest of us 100 years later. Hopefully those museums will be there forever.

I never had a reason in the world to ever visit Arkansas. If she’s picked up some decent 18th Century French Impressionists, Renaissance stuff and good antiquities (my personal favs) I just might have to go see her museum. I have yet to see my first Michelangelo.

Too bad she picked such a shitty name for it. Crystal Bridges? Really? OK. She bought it she can name it.