Love What I Love by Heidi M. Marston

Things I Love: The Many Collections of William I. Koch @ the MFA
And
Things We Love: Selections from the collection of Jim Smith and Rob Clifford @ Clifford Smith Gallery

The color was like the sky. It had a texture that changed from a soft brushstroke quality to a patchy more cloudlike look. It was 5’ x 5’ which at the time seemed huge. I felt like it could envelope me completely when I was in the same room with it. I loved it. I loved it so much I have it moved with me wherever I went, like one of William I. Koch’s paintings. “What was it?” You may ask, maybe I have intrigued you by the description to the object, or the love I have tried to convey. It was a blanket. When I was young I would carry it with me everywhere, it was patchy in spots where I would pull out the soft fuzz out on rub it on my face (a story for another time). Ii brought me joy and I thought it was beautiful. Would I hang it in a museum or gallery next to the sculpture I have by Deborah Giller, or the photographs by Bill Burke? No, probably not. I have a different relationship to my blanket then to my art collection.
Things I Love: The Many Collections of William I. Koch at the MFA is both intriguing and baffling to me. “How on earth did this happen?” I asked myself, “How did we end up with sailboats on the front lawn of the Museum of FINE ARTS?”. Well, we didn’t just get sailboats; we got great works of sculpture, paintings and historically significance objects. We got Fernando Botero sculptures. Where do we go from here? I wonder if my artwork became greatly desired, would my blankie end up next to my photographs or drawings in a gallery? The MFA exhibit leaves me perplexed, if we love it does that make it art?
If I happen to have an “art” collection does that include all of my collections? Should I now consider the15 stuffed animals I have won in the video game room claw machine as art? They are hard to acquire, they sometimes cost more than they should, they are rare, and I kind of love them. Part of what seems to be the trouble here might be that distinction between what we love and what we want everyone else to love with us. The boats are on the MFA lawn because the MFA loves William I. Koch’s Fernando Botero sculptures. And they are amazing. I love them. But I think this show sends the wrong message. It says that we should love everything in this collection the same way. Everything is presented in the traditional form of an exhibition from paintings on the wall to sculptures on the lawn. Mr. Koch has been given an opportunity to share what he loves and he seems to love everything in his collection the same way. If the point was to show things he loves at the Museum of Fine Arts, I end up getting the sense that he just loves things that are expensive, not necessarily that he loves great works of art. And that is a love I can’t relate to. And for me it has nothing to do with art at all. It feels like it has nothing to do with love, it is simply about value.
Now down to Boston’s South End we go to continue our journey into things people love. On view at Clifford Smith Gallery is Things We Love: Selections from the collection of Jim Smith and Rob Clifford. Normally this would just be a group exhibition with a great variety of work by their represented artists, but this exhibit has something very unique. On one wall hangs a painting done for Jim Smith by his mother. In all the things that I have seen that people are telling me to love, I understand why this is here. I can relate to that kind of love. Its personal, it has nothing to do with cost, but it does have something to do with value. Is it a Picasso or a Chagall? No, but It hangs in Clifford Smith for us all to share in. It has its place in the gallery’s list of works, and at the end of the description it says, “We love this painting”. For me, that is true love.
These two exhibits both inhabit venues where I go to find “art”, and in both places I found some things I would call art. I also found out what I think about love. I don’t love the boats, I like to sail, but just being “really into sailing” does not make a sailboat a work of art. Each piece in the collection of Jim Smith and Rob Clifford has been selected, they have a story for each piece and they love them all, and they love them all in different ways.
As a working artist, a curator, a writer and a teacher I love many things. But if I loved them all the same way in the same amount then they would all become meaningless and unrelateable. Would I like to someday have a show called Things I Love: The Many Collections of Heidi Marston, hell yes. Would it include my blue blanket? Probably not, would it include the Jim Dow photographs I have or the Andy Mowbray sculpture, yes. The things I love do have value, some monetary some personal, some both, and for me that distinction is what makes the love more true. So check out Carolyn Smiths painting at Clifford Smith, and see the things Jim Smith and Rob Clifford love. And go to the MFA and see the many Collections of William I. Koch, and you tell me what the difference is. I might have to go add my claw game animals to the installation on the MFA front lawn. Why not? I love them. Why shouldn’t everyone else?


Things I Love: The Many Collections of William I. Koch
Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - Sunday, November 13, 2005
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Avenue of the Arts
465 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5523
617-267-9300

Things We Love: Selections from the collection of Jim Smith and Rob Clifford @ Clifford Smith Gallery
450 harrison avenue, 3rd floor . boston ma 02118
tel 617.695.0255 - fax 617.695.2255
gallery hours - tuesday through saturday - 11am to 5:30 pm