"Tomorrow" is another day

Culture Coup: How Houston won the right to host the American Association ofMuseums confab

Ford Bell
Courtney Sarofim
Photo by Michelle Watson/CatchLightGroup.com

The world's museum intelligentsia is centered on Houston as more than 5,000 curators and museum professionals from 50 nations descend upon the Bayou City for the American Association of Museums' annual conference. The confab, Sunday through Wednesday, brings the brightest minds from museums around the world to exchange ideas and expertise, showcase museum programs and address the future needs and trends in museums.

The hand behind this cultural coup belongs to the late Museum of Fine Arts, Houston director, Peter Marzio. "Houston of course is a great cultural city with great museums of art, science, history and zoos, aquariums and public art," says AAM director Ford Bell. "But it was the way that Marzio really took charge that informed our decision."

Four years ago, an AAM selection committee analyzed U.S. cities, and approached Houston professionals to make a proposal. That Houston could easily accommodate upwards of 6,000 museum professionals, and that the Bayou City had never hosted the convention made it a prime candidate.

Predictions that America's future will be decided in Houston coincided with the AAM 2011 conference theme, "The Museum of Tomorrow." Explains Bell,

Peoples' access to information is very different than it was 30 years ago. How do museums adapt to the changing demographics in the U.S.? We have a lot of people coming into the country without previous experience of going to museums. How do we reach out to these new communities? How do museums address the needs of education in an increasingly competitive world? These are all questions we'll discuss at the meeting."

To prepare for the conference, an elite Local Host Committee was cherry-picked from the Houston museum community and its patrons. Leading the pack is Menil trustee Courtney Sarofim as host committee chair.

"Peter asked me more than a year ago to serve as his civilian chair," she recounts to CultureMap, "but I haven't cared about my title all along. I'm just flattered that Peter wanted me to be involved."

Sarofim explains that the most rewarding aspect of the process has been witnessing the prolific local museum community in its pursuit of engaging AAM programming. Over the past year, she met with the litany of local committees to strategize myriad collaborations, from the Art Car Parade to a revolutionary community service initiative at the nascent Museum of African American Culture. The Art Car Parade was moved from its customary early May date to kick off the conference Sunday.

Among the 160-plus conference sessions will be a seminar on philanthropic giving conducted by Sarofim.

Despite Marzio's critical role in landing and planning the conference, he didn't apply an agenda to the entire event's realization. "He would do the very elegant, lovely, gracious thing he always does, and stop back into the shadows to let all of our institutions shine," says Sarofim. "If Peter were here to attend the conference, I think he'd be beaming with pride as he shows all of his colleagues around the country what we've built in Houston."

When Gwen Goffe assumed the role of interim museum director, she also found herself serving as the AAM meeting's general chair.

"We already had a great team working on the meeting, including Willard Holmes, the museum's education director, Victoria Ramirez and our local facilitator, Monica Rhodes," Goffe says. She agrees with Sarofim's sentiment that Marzio would be incredibly proud to witness Houston as it hosts the convention. "Peter had such a clear vision, and it gave us the impetus to do the best we could," she says.

While art museum professionals converse year-round about sharing ideas and exhibitions, Goffe is anticipating seeing all of her colleagues in the same location. She says she's excited to showcase the MFAH's projects and entertaining guests, and especially to watch the Art Car Parade alongside fellow museum professionals from around the world.

A tangible tribute to Marzio's mission of community engagement, the museum conference is opening its doors to the public for the very first time in the event's 106-year lifespan. The public session track launches on Sunday at 2:45 p.m. with "Committed to Collections" at the George R. Brown Convention Center. That talk will offer an insider's view on how museums build, organize and care for objects, with expert insight from AAM director of meetings and professional development, Dean Phelus, and curator Michele White of the Menil Collection.

Curious how your family fits into the museum scene? At the MFAH from 3:30 to 4:45 p.m. on Sunday, a panel will engage in the seminar, "Why Museums Matter: An Open Discussion for Parents and Caregivers." Back at the GRB, representatives from the Contemporary Arts Museums Houston, Houston Endowment Inc. and Houston Arts Alliance will debate "Governance Best Practices for the Museum of Tomorrow" at 4:15. A brown bag session will be held at the convention center on Tuesday at 11:45 a.m. on the topic, "Museums Need You: Partnering to Enhance and Enliven Our Community." Learn more about the public session track here.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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