The Reactionary Liberalism and Ethnic Envy of the Museum Complex (Thoughts on David Hammons at Hauser & Wirth)

This paper is presented within the larger framework of my in-process book of manifestos on art and power, provisionally entitled Creepy Feminism and Other Aggressions in the Contemporary “Global” Art Complex. In this paper I directly address the curatorial innovations proposed by Enwezor’s radical practice through the lens of David Hammons' recent retrospective at Hauser & Wirth commercial gallery in Los Angeles, a show the shape of which was determined by the artist himself. In examining Hammons’ museum-scale exhibition, I closely consider two elements of the collusion of the museum / gallery complex in late capitalism: what I call its "reactionary liberalism” (the appearance of furthering progressive values in the art world while maximizing profits) and the art world’s “ethnic envy” (the motivation among white-dominant institutions to subsume black and other minority artists and their works so as to “correct” previous exclusions while operating against the interests of so-called ethnic (presumptively nonwhite) communities in places such as Los Angeles). From this critical framework, the critical force of Hammons’ stunning, poetic, and politically sharp work, evident throughout the beautifully orchestrated installations throughout the interior galleries in the Hauser & Wirth show, is contradicted by the unfortunate installation of tents stamped with the phrase “this could be u” in the large courtyard leading to the galleries, a few hundred yards away from the lived-in tents on skid row—the city’s horrifying evidence of the collateral damage of late capitalist greed and individualism on society.