Posted on 05/19/2004 3:44:06 PM PDT by swilhelm73
Notes & Comments
May 2004
A victory for memory
It is said that the first casualty of war is truth. In fact, we believe, memory—that indispensable advocate for historical truth—is the first to go. In war’s cataract, momentary crises gobble up our attention absolutely. Last week’s bombing, yesterday’s atrocity, this morning’s defection make it difficult to keep events in perspective. Add a media that is programmatically hostile to the prosecution of war—as the “mainstream media” is to the war in Iraq—and who can remember how we got where we are?
When it comes to Iraq—when it comes to the Middle East generally—one of the greatest aids to memory is Elie Kedourie’s great book The Chatham House Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies. First published in 1970, this collection of twelve essays was instantly acknowledged as a masterpiece of historical analysis and polemic. Kedourie, who died in 1992 in his middle sixties, hailed from an old and distinguished Jewish family in Baghdad. Dispossessed and exiled after the Second World War, he found refuge in England and was for many years an ornament to the faculty of the London School of Economics. His learning was formidable, his prose style crisp, dry, and disabused. Whatever he turned his attention to he illuminated with the patient light of historical fact. We were amazed—well, to be truthful, we were disappointed but not surprised—to discover last year that The Chatham House Version was no longer in print. Another symptom, we thought, of our culture’s addiction to amnesia. Kedourie’s plangent essay “The Kingdom of Iraq: A Retrospect” is worth about a thousand hours of CNN commentary plus an entire library of New York Times reporting. How could this essential volume be out of print?
It may be true, as we have speculated on more than one occasion, that things are always worse than you think. But the validity of that general principle does not mean that there are no bright spots or important recuperative sallies. The fact that the Chicago publisher Ivan R. Dee has just republished The Chatham House Version is one such bright spot and victory for memory. This new edition is all the more welcome because it carries an introduction by David Pryce-Jones. As our readers and readers of National Review have reason to know, Mr. Pryce-Jones is a writer on Middle Eastern affairs (among much else) whose incisive commentary has made him a worthy heir to Elie Kedourie. If, per impossibile, one had to reduce Kedourie’s achievement in The Chatham House Version to a single theme, a plausible candidate would be the perils, the false promises, of spurious liberation. Mr. Pryce-Jones underscores this theme in his introduction.
The British Empire had hitherto been a fixed point of reference in the world, and those who administered it had willingly accepted responsibility for the rule of law and the maintenance of order. The abrupt dismantling of this empire dislocated millions of people, leaving them at the mercy of self-appointed leaders. In one country after another, the achievements of many decades, and sometimes as long as a century or two, were undone in a flash of violence; law and order gave way to dictatorship and tyranny, and graveyards and prisons filled accordingly. And this, according to fashionable opinion-makers in Britain, was liberation, the exciting birth of the Third World.
Given his background in Iraq, Elie Kedourie understood only too well that liberation of this kind was no liberation at all.
We believe that no one can really comprehend the realities of contemporary Iraq without absorbing the admonitory history Elie Kedourie sets forth in his essay on that unfortunate refugee from the British Empire. But the importance of The Chatham House Version lies as much in Kedourie’s polemic as in his historical analysis. The opening of his essay “Minorities” articulates a sober political truth that even now, several decades into the folly of irresponsible decolonialization, has not been acknowledged by bien pensants academics and commentators. “It is the common fashion today,” Kedourie observed,
to denounce the imperialism of western powers in Asia and Africa. Charges of economic exploitation are made and the tyranny and arrogance of the European are arraigned. Yet it is a simple and obvious fact that these areas which are said to suffer from imperialism today have known nothing but alien rule throughout most of their history and that, until the coming of the western powers, their experience of government was the insolence and greed of unchecked arbitrary power.
Alas, “the insolence and greed of unchecked arbitrary power” were again the fates of colonies who rejected the West. “Self-determination” was the slogan; “self-enslavement” or “self-extermination” was often the reality.
Perhaps the greatest part of The Chatham House Version is its title essay—“the most devastating polemic,” Mr. Pryce-Jones observes, “since the Second World War.” “The Chatham House Version” is the name Kedourie gives to a sensibility, a moral orientation, “a whole intellectual style.” Kedourie took the phrase from Chatham House, the home of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in St. James’s. It was there that, for some thirty years, the historian Arnold Toynbee presided as Director of Studies. And it was from Chatham House that Toynbee promulgated his sentimental effort to enlist history in an effort “to save mankind.” It was, Kedourie shows in unsparing detail, an increasingly anti-Western effort. It was also, as the years went by, increasingly anti-Semitic. The West, Toynbee concludes in the last volume of A Study of History, “is a perpetual aggressor”—blundering, brutal, arrogant. “I trace the west’s arrogance,” Toynbee wrote, “back to the Jewish notion of a ‘Chosen people.’” It is a doctrine that, though dressed up in the impressive language of academic history, was “essentially simple and familiar.” And, Kedourie might have added, perennially popular. Behind it one hears “the shrill and clamant voice of English radicalism, thrilling with self-accusatory and joyful lamentation. Nostra culpa, Nostra maxima culpa: we have invaded, we have conquered, we have dominated, we have exploited.”
Many pages of The Chatham House Version could have been written yesterday. The book’s relevance to the current situation is twofold. First, it reminds us of an unpleasant history we have chosen to forget, and without which contemporary events in Iraq are unintelligible. It also serves as a salutary warning. The French philosopher Jean-François Revel astringently summed up this aspect of Kedourie’s message when he observed that “Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it.” The Chatham House Version encourages that orgy of self-recrimination. Elie Kedourie shows us how culpable is that indulgence in misplaced guilt.
If you pander, they won't come
When it comes to the museum world these days, we have found it prudent to adopt the policy advocated by George Orwell with respect to saints (especially those proposing themselves for sainthood). They should, Orwell wrote, be considered guilty until proven innocent. Orwell enunciated his policy at the beginning of his essay on Mahatma Gandhi, a suitably dubious candidate for sainthood. We advocate a similar attitude when encountering any proposal to expand a museum. Extra vigilance is in order whenever you discover that 1) a new museum is being proposed or 2) the phrases “performance art,” “contemporary arts center,” or “diversity” occur in the press material for the proposed project.
We were given a vivid reminder of the soundness of extending Orwell’s policy about saints when we read about the Brooklyn Museum’s $63 million “face lift and modernization” in The New York Times last month. To adapt Senator Dirksen, a million here, a million there, and pretty soon we’re talking about a real cultural folly. The Brooklyn Museum occupies a stately Beaux-Arts edifice on Prospect Park, enjoys an excellent collection, and is generally still sparsely enough attended to make looking at art there (once you manage to get to Brooklyn) an enjoyable experience. Arnold L. Lehman is determined to change all that.
Mr. Lehman is one of those museum directors who believes that any museum that doesn’t have to take lessons in crowd control is a failure. He is also one of those museum directors more interested in buzz than art. It was he who brought the benighted exhibition “Sensation” from London to the Brooklyn Museum, thus reminding us that what was repulsive could also be insupportably boring. Mr. Lehman has now progressed from curatorial frivolity to architectural vandalism. The most obvious aspect of Mr. Lehman’s $63 million boondoggle is the huge glass and metal visor he has had affixed to the museum’s entrance. True, the Brooklyn Museum has had a long tradition of architectural vandalism. In 1934, the magnificent grand staircase that welcomed visitors was removed for the sake of something far more pedestrian. But that ill-judged venture was nothing compared to the two-story, futuristic Beauborg-meets-shopping-mall contraption clamped on to the building’s front like an orthodontic appliance from the land of Brobdingnag. The Times reports that the Brooklyn Museum hired an “image consultant” as part of its makeover. It didn’t say which one, but clearly they have a nasty sense of humor.
Except for “Sensation,” which drew in the politically correct hordes from every borough and beyond, the Brooklyn Museum has had a notoriously hard time attracting visitors. Following the tried and untrue formula, Mr. Lehman kept making the museum’s program worse and worse, but still people stayed away. We remember a marvellous exhibition of Edouard Vuillard’s work there years ago. But that was long before Mr. Lehman’s tenure. Exhibitions devoted to “Star Wars” and “Hip-Hop Nation: Roots, Rhymes and Rage” are more up his street—that and pseudo-transgressive rubbish like “Sensation.” Mr. Lehman, doubtless in accordance with some advice from his “image consultant,” decided to make a virtue of a liability, ostentatiously turning his back (or pretending to do so) on Manhattan in order to concentrate on luring more of the 2.5 million residents of Brooklyn to the museum. As part of this effort, the museum’s first exhibition is a disaster called “Open House: Working in Brooklyn.” The exhibition consists of some three hundred, um, objects by two hundred Brooklyn artists. It is the usual depressing garbage: lots of “idea” art—that is, art that recycles various trendy clichés—lots of sound effects, video screens, piles of rags, etc., etc. There is even a handrail down one staircase that has sundry vacuous observations printed on it. Out of one window behind the museum is a large area enclosed by a cyclone fence. Inside the fence was piled up detritus left over from the museum’s reconstruction: old lighting fixtures, cobblestones and the like. Was it a work of art? We weren’t sure and didn’t dare ask. In some ways, we hope so, because it was more interesting to look at than anything on the walls or floors of “Open House.”
Like us, you probably know several serious artists who live and work in Brooklyn. None was represented in this silly exhibition. A bit of wall text introducing “Open House” described it as “diverse” (translation: the curators got every black, Hispanic, and female artist they could lay their hands on). In fact, though, it is a mind-numbing exercise in artistic homogeneity. It is wholesale, off-the-rack, dime-store, make-believe avant-garde kitsch: the same spirit animates every last pile of rags, every last “challenging” gesture and anti-war, save- the-whales protest. You’ve been there, done that dozens of times in dozens of museums across the country.
Mr. Lehman managed to garner an enormous amount of advance publicity for his building, his curatorial plans, his new populist insularity. Did it work? We dropped in on the first day the museum was open to the public and could count the number of visitors on the fingers of two hands. People seemed bemused by “Open House.” They barely noticed the permanent collection, which is hardly surprising since it is jumbled together without rhyme or reason like items in a flea market. The Brooklyn Museum is particularly strong in its holdings of Egyptian artifacts. But apparently Mr. Lehman did not think mummies and other exotica—including some amazing panel paintings and sculptures—could speak for themselves, for he had emblazoned on the walls irrelevant little snippets about Egypt from a hodgepodge of writers from Sigmund Freud and Mark Twain to Germaine Greer.
One bit of Mr. Lehman’s publicity announces that the museum’s new goal is to make itself “the most visitor-friendly of any New York art museum.” Who knows what Mr. Lehman’s image consultant recommended? Doubtless, however, their advice did not come cheap. We have a recommendation we can offer gratis: go back to being an art museum. People do not like being pandered to. They know the difference between a park or emporium and an art museum. They do not want the latter to imitate the former. Good art is enough of a lure for those who are interested in art. Leave the others to their own amusements.
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Goals
The goal of this project is to create a welcoming, exciting, and rewarding visitor experience by constructing a dynamic, innovative glass entrance pavilion and an inviting public plaza with a view into the building's interior. The new entrance is designed to further the Museum's visitor-centered approach -- embodying its goal of being "the most visitor-friendly of any New York art museum" -- as well as to create a new civic space for Brooklyn and New York City.
Schedule
The project is scheduled for completion in early spring 2004 and will open to the public that April.
Funding
The City of New York is the major funder of this construction project, with significant additional support from BMA Trustees and other friends of the Museum. In the fall of 2003, BMA members and other supporters of the Museum will be invited to contribute to the project.
Architects
The project's principal architects are Polshek Partnership Architects, LLP. They developed its design concept after early collaboration with Arata Isozaki & Associates. Polshek Partnership and Isozaki & Associates have been the BMA's master planning architects since 1986.
Grand Staircase
The Museum was originally built with a grand staircase, which was removed in 1934 to provide easier access into the building. That staircase, twice the height of the current entrance stairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, took visitors from ground level at Eastern Parkway all the way up to the Museum's third floor. Replicating the original staircase would have been contrary to the idea of increased accessibility, particularly in view of the need for ADA compliance.
Plaza
The new plaza area will be completely open to the public. It will provide seating for casual gathering and for public programs, from performances to educational events, as well as a view into the building. A promenade level above the new entrance pavilion will offer additional interior views as well as an exciting overview of the plaza and the surrounding neighborhood. The public plaza will also contain two water features by WET Design, the designers of the water features at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas and the Winter Olympics Torch in Salt Lake City last year.
Cherry Trees
Thirty-nine new cherry trees will replace those that had to be removed in 2002. Independent arborists, in consultation with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, had previously determined that the old trees were reaching the end of their life cycle and in dire need of replacement.
Lobby
All visitors -- whether arriving from the parking lot through the new South Entrance or coming in through the new Eastern Parkway entrance -- will enter a new, central lobby. In addition to providing a unified entrance experience for all our visitors, the central lobby will offer enhanced amenities, including additional handicapped-accessible rest rooms, family rest rooms, telephones, coat-check facilities, and admissions and information desks.
Phasing
The construction of the new entrance pavilion is the second phase of a project that began several years ago with the reclamation of unused land at the rear of the Museum. The features of the first phase included additional general and handicapped parking, the new South Entrance, and outdoor "gallery walls" for the eventual reinstallation of the BMA's collection of architectural fragments from New York City buildings.
Climate Control
Much of the work related to the new front entrance will never be seen by the public. This includes preparatory work on infrastructure for mechanical systems that will enable the Museum to eventually move forward with necessary climate-control projects in the future. Each phase of the Museum's master construction plan achieves a significant step towards improved climate control. This current phase not only provides for air-conditioning the lobby and the second-floor galleries above the lobby, but also prepares a central plant that in the future can provide climate control for additional spaces in the building.
Sorry.
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