So, in Boulder Colorado some students put together an ‘art piece’ set to go on display at the city’s downtown library.

The plan was delayed just a bit, however, since the assembly crew had to dig the whole thing out of the garbage, which is where the library’s janitor dumped it.

“I don’t know art, but I know what I’m supposed to do with crap like that” the janitor (named Ed or Tom or Jim or something down-to-earth and honest) might have commented. “I mean, Christ on a Crutch, I barely made it through high school and these damn kids are upping their college GPA by dumping a pile of crap in the entryway and putting a sign behind it. I’m in the wrong damn job, I guess — I’ve been taking trash away for the last twenty-odd years.”

“This is a slightly different kind of art,” said Karen Ripley, director of cultural programs. “It’s not meant to be beautiful.”

“You got that right, sister.” Our fictitious but brutally, stunningly honest janitor might have muttered from the back the room. “Now, do you want to pick up the coffee cups from this press conference or bronze the motherfuckers? Morons.”

Hmmm...

Now I'm going to have to see if this is for real or not.

(I have my suspicions, since this has not appeared in any of the Boulder papers)

Seems to be a direct quote off the AP, as it's also regurgitated here.

Speaking of modern art...I got an A+ in Art History from comments like this...

I have to say that this is very hard for me as a viewer and a person to comprehend. In fact, Red Square: Painterly Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions almost drives me to drink away the pain of a red square on white being called and considered anything but a red square on white.

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/malevich/sup/malevich.peasant-woman.jpg

Didn't something similar happen in the Boulder Library when a collection of Dildo's was displayed as art?

I drag my husband to modern art museums in any place we visit. Most recently it was the Pompidou in Paris. I like the challenge of modern art, but Craig just thinks it's all a bunch of crap. Your fictitious janitor's name should be Craig. *grin*

Modern art doesn't do it for me except architecture and sculpture.

I can do modern sculpture, from 1900-1960 works for me, otherwise keep the modern art.

Best modern art exhibit I've seen was at the Vatican Meseum in '94.

Janitor throwing it away was the best thing that could have happened to it... publicity is priceless.

The rule I developed while wandering around the Tate Modern was "if you need a plaque to explain the thing... not the point of it, even, but just what the hell you're doing... well, that's not art. My opinion. If you can't look at a thing and have that thing engender some kind of reaction (by this I mean awe, sorrow, wonder -- something other than the confusion of 'What the hell is this?') without reading up on it first...

You could take all your childhood remembrances and put them in a pile and it's just trash -- you can arrange them in such a way as to conjure an image of an entire childhood (you could... I doubt I could).

One is art, the other isn't.

Adam, they weren't dildoes, they were ceramic penises. Seesh. Get your loony art displays straight, er, correct, why don't you?

As always, the eternal wisdom of Judd Winick comes to mind.

Well it is all true...

the reply from the BPL (Ina Russell)

Absolutely true.
(Here's a funny aside I never thought I would pass on, but it happened so recently that it's on my mind: At a meeting here at the library only a few hours ago, the trash story came up and a woman remarked that she was amazed to see in the collected objects of the exhibit an exact match, including her rare large size, of a shoe her puppy had chewed up. The shoe in the display, unlike her damaged shoe, was in good condition. It was suggested she bring in the chewed shoe, put it in the display, and take home the good one. All in a day's recycling. Sooo, you see that sometimes if you call something art, it has a way of taking on a life of its own.......)

All of the Vatican's museum's were very impressive.

But for the most part you have to go through about 20 to 30 piece's worth of "what the" to find one piece that make's you go "that's fantastic!". I don't know if this is because with most of the old stuff, the crap has been distroyed over time.

MOMA also has a very good collection. And, one of these day's I want to go to the Guggenheim in Balboa Spain.

Sorry Dave, I find it Hard, I mean difficult, to differeniate between dildo's and ceramic penises.