No Empties at BAM
Changes are afoot at the Bellevue Art Museum.
Director Diane Douglas, after 10 years at the helm, is leaving. Ten years, she told In Arts News, is enough, and "It's time for a new creative challenge." The museum has hired a search firm that specializes in arts organizations to find a replacement.
BAM is also adding gallery space on all three floors of its new architectural gem, doubling the number of galleries. This move is in response to comment cards left by visitors who were disappointed at what they perceived to be too little art in too big a space--not enough art, in short, for the price of admission. Although In Arts News would like to remind the public that art is not a quantity issue, we're delighted that a show of Whidbey Island artist Mary Henry's work, originally scheduled to open next year, will instead open later this month as a result of BAM scrambling to fill the new spaces. Douglas doesn't feel that the change compromises future programming: "We don't program out as far in advance as other museums," she says. "We pulled a rabbit out of a hat to adapt to visitor comments. With the scale of this new building, we can turn on a dime." EMILY HALL
EMP's Sad Song
Word has it that Experience Music Project is celebrating the opening of its latest exhibit, Island Revolution, by laying off the entire exhibit staff that built it, as well as good-sized chunks of staff from other departments. The layoffs are intended to bring EMP closer to making a profit, as quickly as possible--a goal that would seem more appropriate to a business venture than a nonprofit corporation. After a year of operation, in fact, the organization has fallen only slightly short of its projected attendance goal of 800,000 visitors, a sizable number of them paying $20 for their visit. EMP's public relations people had not returned The Stranger's phone queries as of press time. NANCY DREW
"Joke Haiku" Ban
Boldly declaring that the proliferation of e-mailed joke haikus "threatens to permanently warp our capacity for humorous expression," Seattle technical writer Paul H. Henry has posted on his website a 2,800-word Call for the Complete Elimination of Joke Haiku Production on the Internet, asking visitors to pledge "never to write another joke haiku, and never to participate in the promotion or propagation of joke haikus on the Internet." Arguing that they are (a) too easy to write, and (b) never actually funny, he's confident that we'd all be better off without wacky five-seven-five shenanigans such as this:
Where's my other sock?
It disappeared in the wash
How did that happen?
The entire website document bears evidence of the kind of obsessive-compulsive detail that only a technical writer could produce, right down to the picky little fact that most offenders are not even haikus--which by strict definition include a reference to the season--but senryu. Henry also recommends that we all switch to limericks, which are "inherently goofy," "have no proud tradition to debase," and actually require some degree of thought. The full text is available at http://phenry.org/junkdrawer/haiku. JASON PAGANO
