one month later

After free spirited toddlers trampled Marco Maggi's Hotbed two weeks ago the Hirshhorn's Anselm Kiefer retrospective Heaven and Earth has hit its own terrible twos:

Curator Valerie Fletcher has near wholly abandoned the messy (lead, 1-ton crates, cracked floors) job of curating the neo expressionist's Hirshhorn retrospective. She took off for a day and a half in the eleventh hour for illness. Kiefer's assistant and, bizarrely, his wife, have stepped in. His wife reworked the last two galleries of the show to push late work that "they're looking to move."

Kiefer won't be present to confront the mess or Heaven and Earth's opening. He's protesting the United States role in the war. Not by pulling the art at the three US shows in Dalles, SF Moma, and DC -- but by forgoing the foie gras and edamame at Tuesday's opening.

On the nice side:
-Maggi's DC installation of Hotbed is being rehabilitated in conservation.
-Olga Viso spent Friday night at the Irvine opening of Animalia
-And a renovation proposal places a large glass spiral ramp on the outside of the Hirshhorn as well as a completely glassed in lower level to make a real first floor. Take a look at the model in the Artlab entrance in the sculpture garden. A pipe dream with ambition.