My former occupation of managing bonds is rumored to be about as exciting as watching paint dry. One of its consolations was that I got paid to read the forecasts of billionaire investor Bill Gross, who was at the time the uncontested king of the bond markets. I enjoyed reading his prognostications despite the fact that they were sometimes hard to follow, and often wrong. Fortunately Gross used to leaven the minutiae of bond market arbitrage with an entertaining line in acerbic social commentary.
Our visit to the Palm Springs Art Museum brought to mind one of Gross's more trenchant observations. He decried:
"the umpteenth society gala held for the benefit of a performing arts centre or an art museum", going on to say
"A $30 million gift to a concert hall is not philanthrophy, it is a Napoleonic coronation."
Courtesy of Google Books, I was able to remind myself of this quote which is contained in Sam Pizzigati's 2018 book "
The Case for a Maximum Wage" . The book goes on to quote Warren Buffett's son Peter, to the effect that such comforting charades are no more than "
conscience laundering".
It is over forty years since I first saw a Henry Moore sculpture. It was displayed in the bleak hills of Dumfries at Glenkiln.
Neither money, nor homage to money, was a central part of the experience. Things are a little different here in Southern California.
Who was Ted Weiner? The magazine, Palm Springs Life has nothing but good things to say about the museum's benefactor:
Ted Weiner could have been a character dreamt up by Walt Disney. A wildcat oilman with less than a high school education, he and a partner drilled for black gold in west Texas in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash. Over the years, he founded Texas Crude Oil Co. and several other oil and drilling companies and emerged a leader in the petroleum and natural gas industries.
For some members of the Cargill dynasty, being known as a donor to this museum presumably provides more pleasant associations than its industrial slaughterhouse operations. Their donation got them a spot on the leader board.
In the circumstances, I felt that my donation might be a bit redundant:
Of course, the art itself is gorgeous. Here is a couple who have been rendered by Duane Hanson in painted bronze:
The accompanying caption reads:
It appears that irony is a stranger to the museum's curators.
Putting social commentary to one side, the museum is full of wonderfully inventive pieces. One of my favourites was by Sir Anthony Gormley, OBE. It is called "Mother's Pride", which is a play on the iconically awful British brand of white sliced bread.
Great Gift Shop
This has to be my favourite art museum gift shop. If you have $6,000 to burn (not me), there are worse ways of spending it.
I also liked this playful nod to the diversity of the local community.
