I’m quoted in today’s article in UK Sunday newspaper The Observer about the factual failings surrounding the punk clothing collection of the New York Metropolitan Museum Of Art’s Costume Institute.
These are given added urgency by the fact that the Institute will be drawing on the collection for this spring’s prestigious exhibition Punk: Chaos To Couture.
During his announcement of the show to the world’s press last week, Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton asserted that the eminent British artist Allen Jones was arrested on the grounds of obscenity for wearing Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s notorious Naked Cowboys design in public in the mid-70s. Not so, as confirmed by hundreds of readily available sources, not least Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming and my own book The Look. These make clear it was in fact SEX assistant Alan Jones, who is a regular face these days in punk documentaries.
In isolation this is an embarrassing howler, but when set in context of the multiple errors on the Met’s own website of dating, mis-attribution to the detriment of McLaren’s contribution to his partnership with Westwood and the apparent presence of fake garments, this signifies a humiliating lack of rigour when assessing an increasingly acknowledged area of significance in terms of academic and cultural interest.
This was underlined not only by Bolton’s foregrounding of key punk designs during his presentation, but also by their presence at the very core of this hugely ballyhoo-ed new show.
In the Met collection, for example, the T-shirt design bearing Vivienne Westwood’s rant against Jubilee, the punk art-movie directed by the late Derek ‘Jarmon’ (sic), is dated to 1976. This places it two years before the film came out: shooting of Jubilee did not even begin until well into 1977 and it was not released until 1978.
View examples of the Met’s punk clothing collection here.
See Andrew Bolton’s presentation here.
View Alan Jones – these days a specialist horror film writer – talking about the late Malcolm McLaren here.
Read Edward Helmore’s article on Punk: Chaos To Couture here.
CariStereo
February 17, 2013 at 8:02 pmI’m not super familiar with how an exhibit is curated, but why wouldn’t they employ some fact checkers before mounting something like this? Too bad.
Paul Gorman Author
February 18, 2013 at 9:10 amIt is, particularly if you consider that there is a finite number of key designs – many represented in the CI collection – which were created by MM + VW between summer 1974 and early 1978.
Most can be dated to month (and even day in some cases) of first production by verbal and photographic evidence as well as the creators’ own testimony.
That’s 40 months. In this context, to be 24 of those out in regard to, for example, one garment such as the Jubilee shirt (in which McLaren had zero involvement btw) is really poor, as is blanket vague dating such as “1975-77”. And this leaves aside the multiple misattributions, misspellings and clearly faked garments.
If the defence is that this is nit-picking over mere decoration, mass culture stuff so ephemera not worthy of the scrutiny accorded, say, couture, then fair enough. That is a position with validity. Just don’t spend thousands of dollars acquiring such material and placing it at the core of a multi-million dollar exhibition without subjecting it to basic provenantial and curatorial procedures.
Ian Harris
February 19, 2013 at 11:39 amWell said Paul. Why didn’t they ask YOU to advise them in the first place!
Paul Gorman Author
February 19, 2013 at 11:46 amThereby hangs a tale Ian; shall tell you when we meet next. Trust all good. PG
Paul Burgess
February 20, 2013 at 7:44 amHI Paul,
I just wanted to congratulate you on your recent post/article on the appalling mistakes being made by the Met in NY for their forthcoming ‘Punk’ show . . .
I mean, they cannot even spell Derek Jarman’s name correctly (DEREK JARMON) how sloppy is that. . . . not to mention disrespectful. Several items also appear to be obvious fakes, wrongly dated and credited. The Met really need to get their act together before this show opens to the public in May, to avoid major embarrassment. They should urgently bring in your good self as an expert and consultant right away . . . there would be no one better in my opinion.