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New York Times: "We're not sorry we smeared your gallery, but please accept this tacked-on correction."
A couple of weeks ago Ken Johnson of the Times imputed dark motives to Harlem's Triple Candie gallery for its show of Cady Noland "approximations." These are his lead sentences:
When the artist David Hammons recently rejected an invitation to do a show at the nonprofit exhibition space Triple Candie, the gallery's directors, Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett, did one anyway. They mounted an unauthorized retrospective in the form of photocopies of Mr. Hammons's works taken from books, catalogs and magazines.This "rejection" and "rebuffing" by the respective artists never happened; Hammons didn't respond to a request for a show and Noland was never contacted. I mentioned it here , and NEWSgrist did a good story. By way of follow-up, I just learned that on May 24 the Times added a correction to the end of the article, which amends the basic facts but falls short of an apology for the slur on the gallery's intentions by the "paper of record":
Now, similarly rebuffed by Cady Noland, the influential sculptor known for refusing to cooperate with commercial galleries, Ms. Bancroft and Mr. Nesbett have simulated a Cady Noland exhibition.
Correction: May 24, 2006, Wednesday A brief art review in Weekend on May 12 about ''Cady Noland Approximately'' at the Triple Candie gallery in Harlem referred incorrectly to the genesis of that exhibition and of an earlier one, ''David Hammons: The Unauthorized Retrospective,'' both of which exhibited copies instead of original artworks. Mr. Hammons did not respond to the gallery's efforts to contact him about exhibiting there, and no effort was made to contact Ms. Noland; neither artist rejected an invitation to exhibit at the gallery.So, with the ad hominem argument dissolved in a vitriolic puff of smoke, now the Times will actually review the show and consider the issues of appropriating, "approximating," and doing "photocopy retrospectives" of artists' work, right? Ri-i-ight. And for sure the Village Voice will now apologize for also saying the gallery went "around the artists' wishes" and re-evaluate its slam of the exhibit. R-i-i-ight. Another critic who trashed the show, Brian Sholis (who didn't first see it), took great comfort in the fact that the Times and the Voice validated his judgment. (See his updated "I told you so" post.) Now that those journos' arguments have been revealed as factually tainted, Sholis will be doing a mea culpa, too, right? Ri-i-i-ght.