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Yelp Reviews Go Down The Toilet After Spectacular White House Dig
canada goose outlet online Why does New York City’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum suddenly have 33,000 one star reviews on Facebook? And perhaps canada goose outlet store uk more importantly, who would use Facebook to evaluate the quality of a beloved decades old art institution? canada goose outlet online
canada goose jacket outlet toronto The answer to the first question, at least is, in short: President Donald Trump. canada goose jacket outlet toronto
canada goose outlet buffalo This tale of too many bad reviews begins in September, when Trump’s White canada goose outlet online House reached out to the renowned repository of modern and contemporary art with the hope of borrowing a piece from the Guggenheim’s collection Vincent van Gogh’s 1888″Landscape With Snow,”for the personal living quarters of the president and Melania Trump. canada goose outlet buffalo
Nancy Spector, the museum’s chief curator, canada goose outlet uk sale declined the request, offering in the painting’s stead a 2016 sculpture called”America” by Italian art prankster Maurizio Cattelan. Although it sounds MAGA approved, “America” is actually a fully functioning, solid gold toilet.
canada goose outlet woodbury The White canada goose outlet toronto factory House did not respond to Spector’s suggested consolation prize. canada goose outlet woodbury
canada goose outlet jackets A summation of the White House vs. canada goose outlet jackets
There was, equally unsurprisingly, a heavy stream of backlash from Trump supporters who deemed Spector’s offer disrespectful. Fox Business host Stuart Varney demandedSpector “apologize and resign” in the wake of her act of “extreme disrespect.”
canada goose outlet locations in toronto An army of amateur art critics soon flooded social media, from Facebook to Yelp, with their grievances. canada goose outlet canada One particularly pissed canada goose outlet uk off Yelper gave the museum a one star review,the same paltry rating he bestowed upon a Connecticut Cheesecake Factory and the Art Lounge at Newark airport, commenting, “This POS institution thinks its canada goose jacket outlet funny to offer our president a toilet. GFY Guggenheim.” canada goose outlet locations in toronto
Others condemned the museum’s decision to “get political.”
canada goose parka outlet On Friday, Yelp began actively monitoring and cleaning up the Guggenheim’s page, removing www.canadagoose-sale.co.uk reviews not based on firsthand experiences. In an email to HuffPost, a Yelp spokesperson explained that it is standard practice to canada goose outlet new york city keep a close eye on institutions having a major media moment, and to weed out reviews that violate Yelp’sTerms of Service. canada goose parka outlet
canada goose outlet winnipeg One star reviews also hit the Guggenheim’s Facebook page a whopping 33,000 of them, in fact. Compare this number with the mere 236 four star reviews, humbly canada goose black friday sale submitted by users who thought the museum was pretty cool;137 three star reviews appraising the place as just OK; and 242 two star reviews by those who thought the space pretty much sucked even before ToiletGate. (Some of the early two and one star reviews take issue with a prior Guggenheim exhibition called “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World,” characterized by activists as an instance of “unmistakable cruelty against animals in the name of art.” The specific artworks that sparked controversy were removed by the museum last year.) canada goose outlet winnipeg
canada goose outlet reviews Facebook did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. canada goose outlet reviews
canada goose outlet in montreal On the other end of the spectrum, 12,000 people have awarded the museum five stars. Many of the rave reviews rolled in over the past several days, specifically praising Spector’s presidential dig. One person wrote,”Bravo for standing up to a racist dictator! Love you Guggenheim!” canada goose outlet in montreal
While some of the Guggenheim’s fresh batch of negative reviews consist of purely trolly vitriol, some others reasonably questioned whether museums should politicize their collections and alienate potential attendees in the process. In fact, compared to canada goose outlet sale previous one star attacks Trump voters have leveled against pop culture touchstones Cheap Canada Goose Uk Star Wars, What Happened? and theYA novelGirl Out of Water the Guggenheim’s angry commenters debated more serious conversation topics, such canada goose outlet in usa as whether museums should remain politically neutral.
canada goose outlet usa As one Facebook user offered: “Ms. Spector’s tasteless drivel also undermines Wendy Fisher’s goal of art as ‘social cohesion.'” canada goose outlet usa
canada goose outlet store quebec It’s true that Fisher, the president of the Guggenheim’s board of trustees,wrote in a statement earlier this year, “It has long been my belief that art is a powerful canada goose factory outlet tool for social cohesion: it brings people together, affords space for discussion and dialogue, excites the imagination, and facilitates exchange across socio economic and cultural divides.” canada goose outlet store quebec
Of course, art isn’t always that simple.
canada goose womens outlet “Contrary to popular opinion,” he wrote, “engaging in or creating art together does not by definition enhance social cohesion within a community. Making music together, for example, or setting up a theatre project, mainly serves to establish existing canada goose outlet reviews strong connections. Experiencing ‘challenging’ forms of culture, however, does seem to lower the threshold between people who would otherwise not come into contact with each other.” canada goose womens outlet
canada goose outlet seattle From the comments clogging up the Guggenheim’s web presence, at least, this appears to be true. canada goose outlet seattle
canada goose outlet nyc So thank you, Nancy Spector, canada goose outlet nyc not only for giving our commander in chief the art world alternative of a swirly, but also for demonstrating art’s ability to cut through the jumbled aura of canada goose outlet parka a cultural moment with a single and eerily insightful object. For showing how an artwork is not some static relic of the past, but rather an unstable amulet whose meaning and value depends on the context in which it is invoked canada goose outlet nyc.