Part of my role at Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) is coordinating our public outreach, which encompasses publicity, tours, educational programming, and much more. A stimulating, and often fun, consequence of this aspect of my job is collaborating with my counterparts at other venues and institutions.
This collaboration takes many forms. Some of it is geographically based. Just this morning, in fact, I attended a meeting of the PR representatives of the arts organizations and other entities in the Grand Center district. We have been meeting regularly for at least six years now, an outgrowth of some ad hoc meetings among the galleries and museums of the district to plan a gallery walk. (That collaboration was in turn preceded by joint efforts surrounding the 2001 meeting of the American Association of Museums in St. Louis.) It was apparent that if Grand Center were to establish itself as the “Intersection of Art and Life” in St. Louis, we needed to pull together and coordinate our efforts and pool our resources. It’s an ongoing effort to be sure, but with a number of notable successes.
Sometimes the collaboration is based on common interests. Taking a cue from the Grand Center model, several of the not-for-profit galleries and museums in St. Louis began meeting to discuss a challenge common to us all: how to promote awareness of, and draw visitors to, our venues, when it seemed like all of our accustomed media outlets were disappearing, and a bewildering array of alternative channels were taking their place. The blog you are reading now is a product of this collaboration, which came to be known as Saint Louis Art Map.
The visual arts community in St. Louis, like those in many other markets, has been affected by the seismic shifts in the media terrain over the past five or so years. The accustomed ecosystem, in which reviews not only stimulate public interest in an exhibition (and hopefully contribute to the public discourse about art), but also lend credibility to a venue and help attract artists and lenders–this ecosystem has been disrupted, and as happens in the natural world, the viability and adaptability of the art community are not entirely certain, yet are certainly not entirely without hope.
On the downside, the sole remaining major daily newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, no longer has a full-time visual arts critic, although it does still periodically publish exhibition previews and reviews. (This observation is not an indictment of the talented staff members from other disciplines and stringers who contribute these previews and reviews when they are given the opportunity. Indeed, MOCRA’s James Rosen exhibition was recently reviewed in the Post-Dispatch.) Notably, its weekend events supplement rarely includes mention of any but the biggest of blockbuster exhibitions.
The weekly Riverfront Times, which once allotted space for full-length reviews, now limits itself to “capsule” reviews which don’t allow for much more than a quick summary of what is on display. This is a shame, since reviewer Jessica Baran is a perceptive and eloquent critic.
On the upside, there are still quarters of the St. Louis media committed to in-depth consideration of the visual arts, including independent radio station KDHX-FM’s “Arts Interview” program; St. Louis Public Radio (KWMU-FM)’s weekly “Cityscape” program, and periodic features on PBS affiliate KETC’s “Living St. Louis.” The West End Word still publishes regular exhibition reviews.
We’ve also seen some new outlets and initiatives in recent years, some from institutions and others from grassroots origins. The online-only St. Louis Beacon posts regular visual art reviews from Ivy Cooper. Two collaborative ventures include the Saint Louis Art Map blog you are reading now, and the experiment (ever to be repeated?) of bringing in a visiting art critic to produce long-form reviews of several exhibitions at various venues, sponsored jointly by the Beacon, KETC, and KWMU. Boots Contemporary Art Space has given us five issues of the biannual Boot Print (here’s hoping that we’ll see more). Art St. Louis sponsors a blog that gives special attention to local and regional artists, while Art-Patrol St. Louis keeps current on exhibition openings and events.
While it’s an “older” format by social media standards, special mention must be made of the Critical Mass listserv, which has been going strong since February 2000. It’s an outgrowth of an earlier collaborative effort that produced a print gallery guide for several years. Beyond being a place to announce exhibitions and events, Critical Mass has seen some thoughtful, sometimes heated discussion about the state of the visual arts in the St. Louis region.
Other sources, while not focused exclusively on the visual arts, have been consistent in bringing attention to the gallery and museum scene. Where Magazine – St. Louis regularly highlights exhibitions in the area for the benefit of out-of-town visitors. Sauce Magazine makes room in each monthly issue to feature at least one or two current exhibitions, while St. Louis Magazine‘s Look/Listen blog keeps tabs on the visual arts. Culture Surfer has established a niche by presenting video content, including artist interviews. A number of arts calendar sites help get the word out about exhibition openings, notably the Regional Arts Commission’s Arts Zipper.
St. Louis has a toehold in the blogosphere* as well. There are institutional blogs, such as the shared blog of Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, Kemper Art Museum News, White Flag Projects blog, and MOCRA’s own blog. On the (all-too-neglected) Illinois side of the river, the Schmidt Art Center launched a blog this past March. There are a number of individual bloggers covering the St. Louis art scene as well.
This roll call is not an exhaustive survey of the current terrain–I haven’t even tried to explore the role of Facebook, Twitter, and other entrants in the field of social media. Feel free to mention additional resources in the comments section to this post.
At present, though, I find it encouraging that many people from varied points of origin on the visual arts spectrum are venturing into the void left by the Post-Dispatch and other media heavyweights. Institutions like those who established Saint Louis Art Map wonder what will emerge as the new “measuring sticks” of (professional) critical appraisal, and whether they will help to stabilize the arts ecosystem. At the same time, the atomization of arts criticism and discussion has opened the floor to previously unheard voices and given those voices much wider reach than they ever could have had previously. Hopefully that bodes well for renewed interest and engagement in, and moral and financial support for, the visual arts in the St. Louis region.
* The term “blogosphere” is credited to a much loved and much missed member of the St. Louis arts community, the late Brad Graham. It’s a shame his other suggestion, “blogmos,” didn’t catch on instead.
(This essay was adapted from a post previously published on the MOCRA blog.)