When A New York Writer Comes To Grand Rapids And Bashes ArtPrize, Does It Make A Sound?

Peter Moskowitz came to Grand Rapids on the DeVos family tab to give ArtPrize a whirl.

Not surprisingly, he didn't like it. Isn't that SHOCKING?

Peter seemed to have already made up his mind long before his plane touched down at Gerald R. Ford Airport.

He didn't like the right wing origins of the ArtPrize creator, he didn't like the art he was shown, and the whole thing seemed kind of banal to him. Which is his opinion and he's welcome to it. Just like I found Peter a bit banal, and not the least bit curious.

While many of the criticisms issued by Moskowitz are fair: ArtPrize can feel more like a craft fair than an art exhibit and if you look in the wrong nooks and crannies, it can seem overwhelmingly amateurish. But at many points in his bloated piece, he seems lazy and unwilling to notice anything but the preconceived notions he's already drawn about conservatism and art.

For instance, Moskowitz writes, "there’s a reason we were taken to only a few places and not given cars of our own, despite the lavish budget".

Of course there is, but wouldn't a true journalist have ventured off on his own anyway? You're going to just accept what they've shown you? Maybe you could off walked out of the Amway Grand one afternoon and found one of the small, out of the way venues that make the event special. You need a car to do that? Walk a little, dude, and breath in that fresh Michigan air. It's how most of us experience ArtPrize, anyway, if I may be so pedestrian.

Instead, he contacts a former winner who shares political beliefs more closer to his own to get him to bash the event, when he fails to, Moskovitz searches out local crank Jeff Smith, who leads the writer down the perfect road to set up a punch line to the whole Amway connection:

If ArtPrize indeed is a real estate scam, it would have to be one so complex and long-term that it could only be pulled off by people experienced in executing complex, multi-billion dollar rackets.

Well played, sir.

Like most locals, I have a love/hate relationship with the event. Yes, we in the media get a little over the top about the thing, but it's our thing, and it adds an energy to downtown that is nice to feel every fall.

As an amateur artist (I like to think I can paint a bit), I thought this year was an off year compared to my first one in 2014, which had a much more cohesive feel. But even in a down year, it's an event where you can talk to the artists about stuff like technique and what they were trying to say in their works.

You can even tell them where they failed and they can defend themselves, and you then have to defend your criticism. It's called a face to face dialogue, and it was refreshing to have that in this day of internet sniping.

The Art world with a capital 'A' is never going to accept ArtPrize as a valid event, but like one commenter to the Gawker, identified as mc789 says:

The whole city feels like a celebration for those three weeks - and people engage with art in a way that I think is really special - even if they have NO idea what they are talking about. It is kind of amazing to see a 70+ year old man standing in front of a difficult modern sculpture and saying “I dunno, I just like it”.

(By the way, it has always been the commenters that make a Gawker piece special, and these are all worth a read. GR gets well defended.)

The article reminded me of a time when I was working for a radio station in my hometown of Saginaw. We put on a Rick Springfield concert at a local high school and while the music wasn't my cup of tea, the kids who attended the show seemed to love every minute of it.

The next day, the writer in the local paper cut the show to shreds, criticizing the music for its insipid pop feel. As it happened, I worked a part time job with the author of that piece, and when arguing about the merits of the concert, I asked him the same question I pose now to Moskovitz, 'did you ever stop and think when writing your critique that you weren't the intended audience? Everyone there seemed to enjoy it.'