Offering Ten to the New Museum

     As the rain clouds roll in over Jersey City now, eventually, those bluish-gray clouds will pass.  Perhaps it will sympolize something for someone, somewhere, but, remember, they will pass, and the sun will once again appear, shedding its light on the immediate communites around us.  So let us move forward, working together and working apart, but always doing what we can to sustain individuality and community in this long, ongoing, sometimes very challenging and difficult process.
     At Princeton University, one very wise and knowledgeable professor, a Mr. Cornel West, who's lecture I regretfully missed when he spoke not too long ago at Hudson County Community College here in Jersey City, frequently talks about such matters.  And he is so right when he suggests that democracy does matter.
     What might matters of democracy suggest in art?  Sometimes it's extremely difficult to say, though the results are always diverse, to be sure, yet, if anyone were to ask me, I'd suggest we'd have to wait calmly and see how the New Museum may respond to the January 5 suggestion by the collaborative list devised by Paddy Johnson and Jerry Saltz, two brilliant critics who devoted time and thought in offering up their own list of 10 upcoming artists to be exhibited for solo shows in that building on the Bowery.
     The New Museum, we can only hope, will be flexible enough to honor the writers' collaborative efforts.  Unless others know something I do not (and they do because I surely do not know everything), then, for now, we can only wait and see how that Manhattan museum responds.  May that cultural institution listen to their words.