A Career Based Almost Exclusively on Bad Reviews

Anti-Illusion, Procedures, Materials, Whitney Museum, 1968:The exhibition gives one much to think about but very little to see….The essays [are] art commentaries that manage to confuse every philosophical issue they touch upon." Hilton Kramer, The New York Times

:"Keith Sonnier, Bruce Nauman and Barry LeVa seemed to me altogether inert and meaningless: indeed, there is a bleak, meager air about the whole exhibition in which the explosive gesture of Richard Serra’s piece—an irregular splatter of once-molten lead along a baseboard…--does not counterbalance." –Alfred Frankenstein, SF Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, June 1, 1969:

Bruce Nauman, Whitney Museum and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1973. "Everything in the exhibition is a kind of visual rubbish designed with the express purpose of referring us to ‘ideas’ about art." Hilton Kramer, "Avant-Garde Academician," The New York Times, April 8, 1973.

Whitney Performance series, 1976: "Dance project marred by other forms"—New York Times Headline. (Performance series at Whitney Museum included Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, Michael Smith, David Gordon and Valda Sutterfield, Connie Beckley, Adrian Piper, Mary Overlie.)

"Bad" Painting, New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1979. "Unfortunately, most of it is really bad." --Mark Stevens, Newsweek Magazine, March 13, 1978.

Not Just For Laughs: The Art of Subversion, 1983. "…this catalogue is worth looking at—but only just for laughs." –R.L., Afterimage, Spring 1983, Vol. 10, No. 10.

Language, Drama, Source and Vision, November, 1983 (reopening exhibition of the New Museum in Soho)"The problem is that Tucker’s exhibition-as-compendium is better to think about than to look at….It’s one of the ugliest installations that I’ve ever seen. …Tucker seems to think it’s fine to cram everything willy-nilly into a horrible environment. In doing so she reduces her exhibition to the level of pure information, which is ok for books and magazines, [but not for art.]" –Roberta Smith, "New Depths," The Village Voice, Nov. 22, 1983

The Decade Show, 1990: collaboration with Studio Museum in Harlem and the former MoCHA, the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art. "[It’s] the story of three small institutions that have discovered how to reach critical mass. Their directors are rightly afraid of being ghettoized: The New Museum has often been victimized by a certain political and ideological narrowness, and the Studio Museum, located on 125^th Street in the center of Harlem, is a long train ride away from the galleries… But Mutliculturalism is the buzzword among arts groups trying to position themselves for the day when whites of European derivation become a minority in America." –- "Three’s Company," New York Magazine, June 11, 1990.

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A Labor of Love, The New Museum, 1996: "The show is adorable, absolutely adorable, but for someone like me with a vested interest in discriminating between craft, outsider, fine and folk art, it is frustrating. What validity is there for the continued existence of a craft museum, after all, if there isn’t any difference between craft and other artforms?" (April Kingsley, then Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, review.)

Bad Girls* (1994) "If you approach Bad Girls…as a smorgasbord of feminist expression from various sectors of contemporary culture, you will have a good time….But disappointment awaits anyone who approaches [it] for a reasonably accurate view of the new, angrily ironic feminist art—made by women, not children or men—that has been percolating up through the galleries and alternative spaces in the last few years." "There is something liberating about this show, if you don’t look too carefully at the art. But ultimately too much of its energy, anger and insight comes from the accomplished popular artists who have been anointed ‘bad girls.’" [The show would have improved if it had the guts to] "drop its usual identity as the maverick of NY museums, include a greater percentage of better-known artists and actually help define an important, possibly "hot" trend."—Roberta Smith, The New York Times, Jan. 21, 1994

"The only thing the New Museum challenges is our already thinly worn patience with their namby-pamby response, otherwise known as ‘death by committee,’ whenever they manage to get too close to issues that count." …We can thank God the catalog doesn’t have a pink-and-black cover, or rubber parts, or strings hanging out of it." Note; Avgikos missed the bookmark for the catalog, which was a tampon string!) —Art Forum, Jan Avgikos, May 1994

The Time of Our Lives, 1999. "Alternately sappy and insightful, this exhibition ignores most aesthetic issues and instead brings together a broad array of art and artifacts—from paintings to television commercials—pertaining to a complex human and social them. The result is less an art exhibit than a multifaceted learning experience…The primary weakness here, as in most subject-driven shows, is that regardless of quality, the art n view almost inevitably functions as mere illustration of the larger theme…, subsumed within [a] mood of piousness, public service, and pedagogy." –Roberta Smith, "An Ode to Old Age, Life’s Gift, in a Curator’s Swan Song," The New York Times, July 16, 1999

Of her departure from the New Museum after 23 years: "Clearly, Tucker has overstayed her welcome." –Howard Halle, "New Is Old," Time Out, New York, April 2-9, 1998.

Of her career as a whole: "Under Ms. Tucker, the museum has made its mark by mounting group shows, often overstuffed with socially engaged art." –Howard Halle, Time Out, July 28, 1999

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