Good Art is Costing America Jobs
An artist in Miami is purported to have smashed a $1M vase by dissident artist Ai Weiwei. I’ve written at this blog before about Weiwei and the profound impact his exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC had on me. The convoluted reasoning behind this act of vandalism—was that the PAMM (Perez Arts Museum Miami) didn’t exhibit local artists. Hmmm . . . okay. So you decide to destroy someone else’s work? And, I can hardly believe they haven’t once shown local art. And, what is local art? Would that be an artist from Miami, or someone from Florida, or simply an American? And, what if it were a Guatemalan, raised in Nebraska, now living in Miami—would that be good enough? Art has been a global commodity for a long time. The Vikings were always raiding other cultures and bringing back artifacts. Napoleon stole the horses from San Marco in Venice and before that the Venetians stole them from the Byzantines when they sacked Constantinople. And, before t...