The Case Against Free Public Art

Last week, I suffered through the opening of Mi Casa, Your Casa at the High Museum. I hate art openings. It all feels pretentious, people standing around wearing monocles and sipping Miller High Life out of plastic champagne flutes chortling to one another while a bunch of unemployable twenty-somethings give a modern interpretive dance performance set to a Philip Glass knockoff's piano score. This was the opening for Mi Casa but with more babies and dudes wearing Braves caps.

The artist was actually raised in a barn.

This house barely survived Hurricane Uggla and was FedEx'ed to the High Museum the night before the opening.

Following the herd to watch a really drawn out and geographically overreaching dance piece by GloATL.

Mi Casa, Your Casa @ The High Museum of Art

The exhibit is a bunch of A-frame houses bolted together and painted bright red like a weird IKEA/Target mash-up. Most of these houses have oversized but uncomfortable hammocks hung across them because the artist figured--correctly--Atlantans are oversized and like to lounge. There was a noticeable lack of A/C units.

Some of the casas that had actual art inside of them. I'm sure when the directors of the High Museum saw these being installed, they breathed a collective sigh of relief--the artists' grant hadn't been entirely wasted on heroin and American Apparel lolitas.

They may have gotten their money's worth. There was a house with a chair. I demanded a self-portrait. In a few years, J and I will sell that to the High Museum.

Then he shows you his butterfly collection, including the killing jar.

Originally, this door featured the Death Head's moth from Silence of the Lambs but someone stickered over it.

Mi Casa, Your Casa is on display in the Sifly Piazza just outside the main entrance to the High Museum of Art. I would say briefly look at the Hurricane Uggla house pictured above and then tear through the boring hammocked A-frames on your way to check out the High Museum's Dream Cars exhibit. Does the public deserve free public art? No. The artists, Hector Esrawe and Ignacio Cadena, should have bought more drugs and booze and come up with something more horrifying than a representation of American home life. If the artists ever read this blog, here's a free idea: Cthulhu at Home & The Private Lives of the Other Elder Gods. You're welcome.

NOTE: I was informed the Hurricane Uggla house is a permanent installation at the High Museum by famed pop artist Roy Lichtenstein III. I need to pay more attention and/or stop by the High Museum more often.