every previous holder of this job has been chewed up and spit out, without making any observable difference.

but in this economic climate, its a job. and Ms Barnett is great, and deserves to be paid.

just dont hold your breath that they will be buying lots of edgy, local art...

What in god's name is the point in hiring a curator if you aren't going to show your collection to anyone outside the company? Hell, you might as well just get an interior designer or something to just figure out what matches the furniture.

as I understand it, the real job is "purchasing agent".
but curator sounds better on your resume after you quit in disgust.

The art is spread throughout the campus. It is on display to folks walking around the building or waiting in a lobby. Its actually a pretty laudable touch to patronize the arts and not have shitty wall filler crap hanging. To be fair it would be a huge pain to actually walk someone thru all the campuses. Go walk into all the lobbies yourself and see what you can.

The easiest way to see this is to get a job at Microsoft and take a tour of all the buildings during your lunch break. I"m not working there now but I've seen enough of it to know that some is good but a lot is just plain mediocre or bad. I used to walk out of the elevator first thing in the morning to a painting of the sinking Titanic about to be devoured by a giant shark.

Actually they used to offer monthly tours that I and a few others enjoyed very much. Then all of the sudden "poof" no more tours. It would be very exciting to see this program brought back online.

social networking to the rescue

http://www.facebook.com/MicrosoftArtColl…

i'm not sure why they even keep it, given that they took the opp to lay-off tons of people under the guise of the economy, they should just sell, sell, sell before anyone realizes they don't have much of value