IS IT ALMOST OVER?

2016. I want a do-over!  

The last couple of months have been major downers. Politics - always a dirty business - reached new levels of outrage and we’re still picking the scabs off.    

Personally, I abandoned all my righteous intentions this year - diet, exercise, intellectual pursuits.   Someone posted a cartoon on Facebook: “ My new diet: eat everything I want and hope for a miracle.” That pretty much sums up my year. 

Is this the year I got old? My hair doesn’t seem to know what’s what. The same expensive haircuts don’t lead to the same chic results.

The eye doc told me I’d see better with wear-all-the-time-glasses so I bought a really cool pair.  I don’t. Whatever happened to staying up half the night doing stuff? I can’t even make it through half the day!

However….as the song says….we’re still here. So let me see if I can uncover insightful, meaningful thoughts to share.  

Beth Lyons "More Fire Glass" new space

Start with art. (Always a good plan.)

A dominant theme: if you have the bucks, you get to be boss. Not exactly a news flash.  We visited the Glenwood Museum in Potomac, Md.  - privately owned and only exhibiting pieces owned by the privates. And Crystal Bridges in Arkansas: ditto.  

Rich people have always called the art tunes whether we in the biz like to admit it or not. Somebody out there will argue that some “street artists” or “outsider artists” managed to circumvent the gallery/museum/critic world. So what! They’re paintings are not selling for over $1Million per foot (Hockney).  

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?  Or do we just face up to it and say “it is a middle class or upper class question in the first place. Who cares?  Pay the $20 admission fee.”

And speaking of art (again?), our local art museum hit an all time level of WTF!  The gallery shop is being run by volunteers and everybody knows you need a BB (big boss). Exhibits? The current one is Escher…I thought that was cool back when I was 20 but 50 years later? Really? That’s the best we can come up with? another half-baked canned art-right-off-the-truck show? However, if your target audience is 20 somethings, it’s a bullseye.  I’ve given up on MAG.  I’m taking my few $$$ and going to another playground.

Rochester discovered center-city housing options.  We lived in Center City 25 years ago and pleaded with anybody within earshot that the keys to long-range city stability was more market rate housing. (Increase property tax revenue, up the “eyes on the street” and decrease crime and grime, up levels of public pride.) Now every building includes housing in renewal plans.  Unfortunately, every building plan also includes “public funding”  often in the form of tax abatement.  Alas, the 7 to 10 year property tax abatement plan works for exactly 7 to 10 years - for the initial owners.  By the time the original owner moves on (at the same time the tax rate reverts to full value assessment), the assessed value drops like a stone because those market rates were made up in the first place and don’t hold.  Something must be done to get this one figured out; I don’t have the answer. 

Memorial Art Gallery, the City of Rochester, Town of Penfield, Rochester Civic Garden Center…nearly every entity I can think of… suffer from the same disease:  a lack of grand vision.  David Brooks in an interview with Krista Tippett said about this lack of greater goal, “we walk in shoes that are too small.”  I love that analogy.  I share a tendency to blame our restricted vision on lack of leadership and certainly, the grand vision needs a voice - a cheerleader.  But I worry that if we wait for the “right leader,” we may never move off “Go.” Or worse, we may follow a charismatic leader with subversive intentions. (I’m not pointing fingers here.)  Besides, it lets the rest of us all the hook.

The dreamers among us - SPEAK UP! PUT IT OUT THERE!  What’s the worst that can happen? O.k. Labels…derision…”there they go again”…eyes rolling…laughing behind backs…deaf ears….”we tried that once”….So you’ve been warned. Do it anyway.  I admire you if you can form coalitions to make these dreams come true.  You astound me if you can raise the money along with the awareness to reach the goal.  I envy you if you have the moxy to muscle through the GI (grand idea) into power circles and insist attention be paid.

But here’s the thing:  the dreaming part? That’s legit…that’s what separates us from … well, anybody else!  I wrote previously that this national election removed any lasting idea of American exceptualism.  

Well, we may not change the course of national politics but we can certainly break out of the shoes where we stand.  

More from Beth Lyons and her team in the lovely new gallery space. Happy New Year!