Maureen Gallace at 303 Gallery (The Armory Show 2006)

The photos accompanying this post have caused controversy. Not the art depicted in the photos, the photos themselves. After being posted as part of blogger Mark Barry's Flickr set, Mr. Barry received the following email (via Bloggy):

hello mark -

this is s***** at 303 gallery. i noticed you had an image of Maureen
Gallace's work up on your flickr page - please be aware that 303 Gallery
owns the copyright to the work and all public display of images, including
web content. if you could kindly remove this image from your page, it would
be most appreciated.
best
s*****

It is undeniable that bloggers can be self-righteous in our demands to see all and record all with no credentials whatsoever, but that doesn't mean we're wrong. What bloggers do is a form of vernacular journalism. We are covering the artifacts and actions of our culture that the print-based media cannot do given the bluntness of their instruments. The indiscriminate paranoia of the "303 Policies" do nothing more than deny the general public an opportunity to be more involved in and better informed about art. When someone asks to take photos in a public art space, the answer should always be yes, yes, and yes.


Maureen Gallace at 303 Gallery (The Armory Show 2006)

On a related note, Brooklyn Rail critic James Kalm's pirate videos of The Whitney Biennial have been in heavy rotation on my internets.

Meanwhile, on an unrelated note, check out the recent discussion at ThoughtMarker on Atlanta's spate of themed group shows and the implied crisis of weak-ass curating. I grind my usual axe...

By the way, I am displaying the photos above in order to make political commentary on them (with a soupcon of satire). That use is what we call Fair.

UPDATE: used color corrected versions of photos from Chris Ashley

303 needs to dig their head out of sand and go ahead and raise the white flag. There is no stopping the distribution of visual information.

At an opening last night I was doing my thing and a woman asked, "Is it ok to be taking pictures?" I responded "I don't see why not." She shrugged and said "oh, well, I - ok."

We live in a world where there are cameras in our effing phones - 'nuff said.

Oh yeah, this has blown up. Simon Greenberg has responded at Bloggy here:

http://bloggy.com/mt/archives/007063.html#comments

and a bunch of people, including Libby from Philly whose opinion I respect a lot, have responded to that. The underlying problem here is that these controlling types have no schema for understanding the act of reproduction outside of the concept of counterfeiting and fraud. It's all the same to them. Their fear is that these lo-fi reproductions will somehow displace the original work, when in fact all they do is stimulate demand for the original work.