Every Old Hunk 'O Junk
I'm sorry, not every old hunk 'o junk out on the street is some priceless San Francisco heirloom, no matter how loud the local NIMBYs whine.
And I'm sure the local art scene considers this stuff priceless - it's the kind of obscure eyesore that seems right up the alley of San Francisco's self-appointed art elite. It must be extra specially politically-correct.
Having lived in Los Angeles - a city that has real museums and real art (heck, frickin' Pasadena has a better museum than anything in San Franciso) - I find San Francisco's offerings quaint, but ridiculously overrated by the laughably insular natives. You'd be hard pressed to find anybody in Los Angeles who would give two squats about this fountain. They've got better public art in their shopping malls, and Los Angeles is a cultural midget compared to New York...
Nobody outside of San Francisco takes your art scene particularly seriously, and for good reason. Even the minor museums in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York make San Francisco's finest look pretty pathetic.
I think things will get better for art in San Francisco when the MOMA expansion opens in a few years. The Fisher Collection is fairly impressive, and casts a net well outside of the insular Bay Area / Norcal scene. Hopefully it'll inspire a new generation of local artists to try harder, because San Francisco has certainly produced some world class visual artists, but they pretty much all had to leave for New York in order to really make it. The rise of Asia and the rapid growth of San Francisco - over 100,000 units are currently in the construction pipeline within city limits alone - could really transform the arts in this city, assuming the entrenched forces of provincialism don't inhibit it. Perhaps with all that new money will come some desperately-needed new blood.
I'm starting to get the impression that the software people who post here were born yesterday. I'm arguing for revering SF history. You're arguing for a glorified shoebox store.
I'm sorry, not every old hunk 'o junk out on the street is some priceless San Francisco heirloom, no matter how loud the local NIMBYs whine.
And I'm sure the local art scene considers this stuff priceless - it's the kind of obscure eyesore that seems right up the alley of San Francisco's self-appointed art elite. It must be extra specially politically-correct.
Having lived in Los Angeles - a city that has real museums and real art (heck, frickin' Pasadena has a better museum than anything in San Franciso) - I find San Francisco's offerings quaint, but ridiculously overrated by the laughably insular natives. You'd be hard pressed to find anybody in Los Angeles who would give two squats about this fountain. They've got better public art in their shopping malls, and Los Angeles is a cultural midget compared to New York...
Nobody outside of San Francisco takes your art scene particularly seriously, and for good reason. Even the minor museums in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York make San Francisco's finest look pretty pathetic.
I think things will get better for art in San Francisco when the MOMA expansion opens in a few years. The Fisher Collection is fairly impressive, and casts a net well outside of the insular Bay Area / Norcal scene. Hopefully it'll inspire a new generation of local artists to try harder, because San Francisco has certainly produced some world class visual artists, but they pretty much all had to leave for New York in order to really make it. The rise of Asia and the rapid growth of San Francisco - over 100,000 units are currently in the construction pipeline within city limits alone - could really transform the arts in this city, assuming the entrenched forces of provincialism don't inhibit it. Perhaps with all that new money will come some desperately-needed new blood.