Last weekend Verna needed to blow the dust off so she hitchhiked to the MCASD in La Jolla. After talking her way past the guard station at the entrance to La Jolla that keeps out the non-wealthy and non-tourists, she arrived at the museum entrance. What follows is her recounting of the experience to me (with the expletives and profanity somewhat reduced). Also, there are some links to the current exhibition, but they may move or be broken in time.
“I hadn’t been there for a long time, but it was a nice afternoon and the exhibits they had there sounded intriguing.
“Literally ‘sounded’, as one of them was “Soundwaves: the art of sampling.” This had some cool things, and one very impressive installation, but the curating was pathetic.
“The first thing you see is a big room with strange noises coming out of it. This is Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s, Untitled (series #3). It’s described as : set of 3 inflatable plastic pools, 3 pumps, water, 93 assorted bowls, water, 21 stem glasses, 3 immersion heaters, Clorox.
“Basically, she floated a bunch of ceramic bowls and glass stemware in the wading pools, put in a pump, and tuned the pump speed, level of the water, number and type of bowls and glasses, and even the water temperature to create a neat aleatoric installation that sounds somewhat like wind chimes. Only two of the pools were working. I don’t know if one pump failed or it was driving the museum workers crazy. This was a clever and sort of beautiful piece and I have to salute the artist for creating it.
“Unfortunately, due to the timbres and levels it created, you could hear it in all the other rooms. Some of the other installations were turned down extremely low, and others appeared to be making no sound at all. Some installations had headphones, and, without wanting to sound like too obsessive a germophone, it didn’t really appeal to me to want to put on headphones worn by who knows how many other hundreds of people.
“When you think about it, a museum is probably the worst sort of place for something like this. The walls are smooth plaster, the floor is hard and shiny and there is no acoustic treatment whatsoever. It’s sort of disappointing since some of the other pieces were intriguing. So much for that.
“The only other exhibit in the museum, really, was “Matrix II” by Erwin Redl. This is a pretty cool installation thing. In a large darkened room, he’s suspended a few hundred tiny green LEDs in a cubical grid. The size of each cube is around 18 inches. Each vertical line of LEDs is suspended by two black wires suspended between the floor and ceiling. The effect is very pleasing and a little disorienting. Not to carp but it sure would have made a lot of difference if the room was painted black instead of white. The exit sign and door across the room is sort of jarring, but I guess safety is important.
“After viewing the exhibits, one thing came to mind that I would love to know: what did the museum pay for the Redl piece and some of the Soundwaves pieces? As an artist, and conscious of the fact that 99% of artists can’t make a living from their art but do it for the love, how much did those artists make?
“I think there’s a perception amongst ‘civilians’ that art just sort of floats around in the ether and money is involved in no way, except when there’s a headline about a collector paying $50 million for an Andy Warhol piece. Maybe it would be better if it were brought back down to earth just a skosh.”
linda fetch 
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