Your Comments Here

Comments for the multitudes: peruse our latest Rotund update or any past editions, and if you are so moved, use the comments form at the bottom of the page by hitting the pink “You Say.” If you are responding to one of our previous natterings, please be as specific as possible about what you’re referring to. “When you went on and on about the Cuenca Biennial in episode 28, we did not take kindly to your use of naughty words.” “What’s with the little demon in episode 29? Are you guys Satanists? You will surely go to Hell.”

There is a mysterious and prolonged process involved before your comments appear here, if they ever do. No anonymous comments will be posted, or even read. If you want to remain anonymous to our readers, please indicate how you wish to sign your comments. Confidentiality guaranteed. Gracias.

J. Bataille says:

I can't believe this is "Episode" 41!

Thanks for the reference to Peter Schjeldahl's New Yorker review of flimflammer Richard Prince. It's about time someone shouts the Emperor has no clothes. (11/7/07)

Carmen R. Fischler says:

I have to strongly disagree with the disrespectful comments expressed in Rotund World about the Museo de Arte de Ponce and the Luis A. Ferré Foundation and the support given by El Nuevo Día. Please remember that don Luis A. Ferre was an entrepreneur who generously founded a world class museum in Ponce that attracts visitors from around the world. Andrew Lloyd Webber visited the museum and was dazzled by its British art. As to the comments made about the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, it should be pointed out that it was the persistent and ardous effort of Dra. María Somoza that founded the MAC should her work be aplauded not denigrated. Both institutions MAP and MAC are very highly regarded by all of us in Puerto Rico, including museum professionals, corporations, the government and, of course, the general public. I think RW is out of focus. (11/14/07)

Rotund World says:

Eh? Perhaps you haven’t been following the endless Rotund embroglio with El Nuevo Día, which has far less to do with MAP—or its founder, whose name we have never once invoked —than with the newspaper’s pig-headed—and, this is our point, hypocritical—refusal to hire an art critic. In that case, we refer you to this page, and then this one. Get out the aspirin.

As for Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC), the museum hardly gets rough treatment at the hands of Rotund World. Quite the contrary, not so very long ago we forked over this mountain of prose in the service of inspecting the institution’s current installation of its permanent collection, Restos, organized by resident curator Brenda Torres Figueroa. Our analysis is generally glowing.

In fact, we’d say that in our year-and-a-half of existence, we’ve dedicated more agreeable verbiage per column inch to the Puerto Rican art scene than any comparable publication on the island. We may not be Andrew Lloyd Webber, but our friends also call us “Baron,” or sometimes, “Your lordship.” (11/14/07)

Rotund World adds:

Actually, we have invoked the name of Luis A. Ferré, very recently, too, and it was to praise his connoisseurship. Our fulsomeness is contained in this paragraph at the bottom of the page from two episodes ago. (11/15/07)

Carmen R. Fischler says:

Thank you for publishing my remarks in Rotund World. I must have read the reference to MAC in another blog, please accept my apologies. As for the Museo de Arte de Ponce and the El Nuevo Día, I still disagree with the tone of the attack on the newspaper and on Mr. Mario Alegre. I think Mr. Alegre has done a great service to the museum community in Puerto Rico reviewing many of the exhibitions presented and making the general public understand the importance of art in our life. This has resulted in a tremendous increase in museum attendance over the last fifteen years. Perhaps the newspaper should also present other critical reviews more attuned to our times, but Mr. Alegre fulfills an important role in our cultural life. However, I respect your positions and your right to express them. (11/16/07)

Rotund World says:

Not that we insist on the last word, but our argument has never really been that Alegre Barrios and El Nuevo Día should not cover MAP because of the family connection. The island is too small and the institution too important to avoid it. Extraordinary circumstances call for extreme measures, and all that. Our point is that the paper should not use conflict of interest as an excuse—a very lame one according to the way Alegre Barrios, and, by extention, the paper, have defined the term—not to hire an art critic.

But this particular tempest has blown over for the moment since the paper is suddenly availing itself of a very good writer, Mariana García Benítez, who is alert, up on things, and, to a degree that’s unusual even among veteran observers of the scene, possessed of a fine empathy for the artists she writes about. Fair is fair: however hard we’ve been on El Nuevo Día in the past, this is exactly the right move. Kudos to them. (11/16/07)

YOU SAY:

Go home here.