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Florence Foster Jenkins at Cal State Long Beach

How far can the rich and talentless go to stage their own art? Recall legendary, tone deaf Florence Foster Jenkins, who paid to fill up concert venues for her hapless performances.

And now consider Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld, benefactor of CSULB’s Kleefeld Museum, and its Kleefeld Gallery, and – most recently – the Kleefeld Exhibit in the Kleefeld Gallery at the Kleefeld Museum. The LA Times art critic, having paid a visit to her show, does not hold back. Why is a public university featuring the worthless montages of its moneybags?

[T]he art is frankly terrible — by far the worst I’ve seen on display in a serious exhibition venue, public or private, for profit or nonprofit, in years… A CSULB professor, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter, said of the exhibition, “If that was a student applicant’s portfolio, they wouldn’t get admitted to the program.” … A gift deal that includes permanent maintenance of a big collection and an archive of the donor’s bad art, plus a gallery dedicated to its display, all in exchange for millions of dollars, makes it impossible not to think “pay to play.” … A permanent chunk of a public university’s tax-subsidized museum facility and artistic program has been effectively privatized to advance the personal interests of a wealthy patron.

Ahem. What now? As Lenin asked: What is to be done?

Oh, I think we can anticipate an entire tarring and feathering for the snobby sexist judgmental LA Times critic. We can anticipate some slave-scribe at the school writing an angry point by point rebuttal of this haughty disdainful pig whose blatant envy of a person who can actually create art poisons his pen. How dare he call this painting bad art?

Margaret Soltan, June 14, 2022 3:22PM
Posted in: kind of a little weird

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