So, Dan Leers is a curator at MOMA, he graduated from lawrence, and he's a normal human being. Basically Dan Leers gave a talk today at Lawrence and told us his life story (as it exists on paper), with photos to back it up, over the past 10 years. Why would I want to hear about a 30 year old's life story just because he went to the same school I did? Maybe because he knew a lot about a photographer that has a lot of images that are very thought provoking, compelling, and overall just amazing (Henri Cartier Bresson). And if Dan Leers had given a talk that focused on Cartier Bresson's work or travels (or even better, both), I would have been interested. But really, what the fuck am I supposed to respond to? He told us what he did (again i emphasize, on paper, because he didn't tell us anything else about his life than what he could put into a resume) over the past ten years, all the while praising MOMA and Lawrence University. While MOMA is one of the best, if not the best, modern/contemporary art museum, Dan Leers is not an artist, he has (seemingly(from the talk)) a very uninteresting perspective on anything, and is a curator, which I've learned from his talk is simply a combo between an "artist's bitch" and "MOMA's whore" (putting that in quotations only serves the purpose of trying to become exempt from being an accused masogynist). He hangs artwork and learns about what that artist's life is like... and he gets paid for it; he's got a cool job, but it seems like he's nothing close to an extraordinary human being. The best part of the presentation was that I learned Cartier Bresson followed "the political action" of his time. Also I saw some projected images I hadn't seen before, which I thought were really great. Overall I don't want to hear how great Lawrence is or how fun Dan Leers' job is.
I have no videos or photos that I think are relevant... except a description of how to become a curator.
Well, after reading your blog about Dan I can not lie, I did laugh to myself. I can agree with you. Dan is a regular human being. However, his goals and different stages he went through in life to get him where he is today was a bit interesting wouldn't you say? I mean sure, plenty of amazing people graduate from Lawrence, hell most of us will be graduating soon and I think we are all amazing people! Just his story, and his journey seems like something almost out of a movie.
ReplyDeleteDan covered the HCB exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago the following day in great detail explaining how the exhibition sought to provide a context for viewing the massive amount of photographs HCB made in his 50 years of travel. You are almost as cynical as he was while he was at LU!
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you say about Leers being an altogether uninteresting person, but I never took the talk to be a lecture about how amazing of an individual he is. Sure, the poster advertising it seemed a little too excited for its own good, but that is just an advertising poster. Aren't we all really just pretty normal people with life stories that are interesting to us, but that would make for shitty lectures? I thought it was nice to hear a normal person come in and talk about his normal life that, in the end, seemed very satisfying to him, and he showed how the places he passed through on his path have helped him function in the place he is right now. Certainly it was nothing to write home about (or possibly even to write on a blog about if it weren't for the assignment) but it left me with at least a little something to think about.
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