November 2004 Archives

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Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Bootleg billions

Here comes that sales tax meme again. But whereas last year New York was losing $500 million a year in tax revenues due to trafficking of counterfeit trademark goods, this year that number seems to have doubled, to $1 billion a year. The New York Times reported the New York comptroller's office uncritically, but as far as I'm concerned it still fails the smell test. So I downloaded the full report to see how they got at their numbers.

The first thing I noticed was that the report said that "New Yorkers paid $23 billion for counterfeit goods during 2003", thereby depriving the city of $380 million in unpaid sales tax revenue. These two numbers alone don't seem to add up: $380 million is a mere 1.65% of $23 billion, while New York City's sales taxes are over 8%.

So where is the comptroller getting his numbers? He starts off by estimating global trade in counterfeit goods at $456 billion, or 6% of gross world trade. For that number, he cites an estimate of 5-7% from the International Chamber of Commerce. Then, he estimates the size of the US counterfeit trade at $287 billion, leaving us to assume that somehow he's using the same estimate. He's not. In 2003, US imports were $256 billion, while exports were $307 billion. Add those two numbers together and you have US trade totalling $563 billion; 6% of that is a mere $34 billion. (It's worth noting that the comptroller is actually saying that the size of the US market in counterfeit and bootleg goods is -- rather improbably, one has to say -- greater than all of the USA's imports put together.)

Alternatively, let's say that the $456 billion figure is correct, and the US accounts for its proportional share of that amount weighted not by foreign trade (for the US is not a particularly open economy in that respect) but rather by GDP. In 2003, US GDP was $10.9 trillion, while world GDP was $36.4 trillion. On that basis, the US share of global trade in counterfeit goods would be $136 billion, still less than half of the number the comptroller actually uses.

So where does the $287 billion figure – the basis for all the comptroller's subsequent calculations – come from? All the report says is that "this estimate is based upon an update of a 1996 estimate of US losses," footnoting a 1996 article in that well-respected statistsical digest, Fortune magazine.

When you go to the article, it says only that "federal and industry surveys indicate that America's annual losses from the problem have quadrupled over the past decade to a staggering $200 billion", without getting any more specific than that. The comptroller's "update" clearly consisted of adding $87 billion to that figure to make it seem like less of a rond number. But even assuming that the $200 billion number was accurate and not exaggerated, there's a huge difference between losses and sales. If I sell a bootleg copy of Adobe's Creative Suite for $20, Adobe's loss is $1,200, while my sales are, well, $20.

Nevertheless, the comptroller clearly says that New Yorkers are shelling out $23 billion in cash for counterfeit and bootlegged goods, based not on sales estimates but on loss estimates. He's clearly comparing apples with oranges, and he equally clearly knows that he's doing it: the way that he buries the numbers in his report shows that he's rather embarrassed about their source.

Once he comes up with his spurious $287 billion number, of course, his deductions are easy. New York City accounts for 4% of US GDP, counterfeiting is twice as prevalent in New York as it is in the economy as a whole, therefore New York City's trade in counterfeit goods is 8% of $287 billion, or $23 billion. (In fact, he even refers to it at one point as $22.9 billion, making the estimate seem more accurate still.)

Nowhere does the comptroller explain why he's using a multiplier of 2 on New York's share of trade in counterfeit goods, rather than 1.5, say, or even 3 or 4 or 10. There's simply a bald statement: "The Comptroller’s Office estimates that New York City’s share of the US counterfeit goods trade is twice its share of gross product". Not even a footnote, this time. In general, absolutely none of the comptroller's estimates come from hard facts on the ground: all of them take broader extrapolations from the country or even the world as a whole, and then work out what New York's share of that might be.

That, of course, is pretty stupid. Estimates of the global trade in counterfeit goods are only as good as their underlying data, which necessarily must come from component states and municipalities. If the best that New York can do is to work down from the global estimates, rather than producing its own bottom-up analyses, then the main lesson that we can learn from the whole exercise is that none of these numbers really means anything at all.

If the comptroller had stopped to think, he might have realised that his numbers seemed unrealistically large. His own report says that "the City’s sales tax revenue per resident totaled $440 in 2000", which implies total taxed spending per resident of about $5,300, at a sales tax rate of 8.25%. With 8 million residents, that in turn means about $42.7 billion in total legal spending. If spending on counterfeit goods indeed is now $23 billion, then it would account for more than half of legal spending, and more than a third of total spending. No one, surely, spends more than a third of their total spent income on fake goods. If the comptroller's estimates are right, then for every dollar you spent on hotels and restaurants, in bodegas and department stores, in wine shops and music shops, on cars or bicycles or skateboards, you would, on average, spend 54 cents on counterfeit and bootlegged goods. Which is clearly ridiculous.

As ever, however, if an official agency throws lots of official numbers at the press corps, the journalists will lap them up and not ask any questions. The correct response to the New York comptroller's press release would have been to ask him why we should believe anything he says, given the obvious garbage that he is spouting here. Instead, the press simply repeated his numbers, without any indication that they might be suspect. In the end, both the comptroller and the press end up looking stupid.

Posted by Felix at 22:09 EST | Comments (3)

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Contact!

Yes, its true, it's true, it really is. And you had to hear about it from someone elses web diary! Apologies. The winter is officially over; we've had our first visitors. It's true. Bizarre, odd, quite nice to see friendly faces and wonderful to see mail... strangely normal, just right, and then they left.

Two Dornier planes arrived at 18:32 and 18:40 zulu last Saturday each carrying two pilots and an engineer on their way to the German station, Neumayer. We knew they were meant to be coming but didn't really expect to see them as the weather was pretty rotten here all day. Truth be told, I don't think British planes would have come in similar conditions, especially considering what great weather we've been having lately.

Anyway, they flew from Punta Arenas to Rothera on Friday (6 hours?), Rothera to Halley on Saturday (5 hours) and then left us an hour later to reach Neumayer about three hours later. Suddenly made me feel very close to the rest of the world, very accessible, not at all isolated. And I missed the comfort of isolation. It is over. Have we been this accessible the whole time? Was the darkness just on our imaginations? No, I reminded myself, no, we were inaccessible, it is remote, in the winter Antarctica is twice the size it is now and the sea ice, darkness and temperatures would make it nigh on impossible to visit. Phew. I don't know why I was glad to know that but it seems I'm not quite ready for the reality of reality quite yet. Soon, but not yet.

Where was I? The Dorniers. Ah yes. Yes, it was exciting. We all bundled off to the skiway, the skiway that has been created in the past few weeks. Drums have been laid as a runway, a caboose fired up for the air mechs and poor old Gareth has been lovingly grooming that patch of snow to make it nice and flat for weeks it seems. And then someone pointed to the sky. There it was, just like a toy plane. It was a toy plane! Low contrast and lots of whiteness around us meant it really looked like you could reach out and pick it up. No perspective, remember? Then we heard the buzz just before it dropped out of the sky and stopped. At the second drum. Gareth was not amused! Plane number one tootled off to refuel and plane number two eventually appeared. This one seemed to confuse which drumline was the skiway to start with and we thought he might land on the Laws by mistake. But no, around he came, lower and lower, a beautiful descent and long cruise past 10 drums before turning off. Much better. My favourite part is when the pilots or passengers wave to you while still in the air. It's all so close!

After the whirring stopped they all climbed out, smiling and friendly. A box of bits, a bag of post, stories of the other world (nothing has changed) and then huddle off to phone Neumayer and discuss matters of import. We had flown the flag, made the beds, prepared for a party.. but no, they were going to try and continue on to Neumayer that night. Fair enough, it was great to see them for the hour or two they were here and they'll be popping by on their way back anyway.

By the time they left, I was cold. I hadn't dressed right for standing outside not doing much. I was cold, but I was also happy to be cold – it's been so warm lately I feared I would never be cold again! I wear the same clothes as I did the last two summers but am literally dripping, melting. T-shirts under overalls are now all you need outside. It's funny to notice yourself change – last year I didn't understand these people who wore only two layers at -10 or -20C, I thought they were showing off but must be cold really. Now really, I am melting on my way back from the lab in the clothes I wore last year. Funny.

We came back, we warmed up and ate some dinner. And then to the post. I received letters sent last January, letters sent a few weeks ago, birthday cards, christmas cards, hello cards... lots of smiles, a few happy tears, everyone was a bit nostalgic that night. And it's true, when the planes come in, the summer starts, you know it all will be coming to an end soon... it does change things. In some ways for the better: there have been more social evenings, more time spent really talking, more time spent actively enjoying our current peace. In some ways worse: we all become that bit lazier, a few more home-truths come out, that extra effort exerted early on is gone... but it's ok, it's comfortable, thankfully we have a very solid team of winterers this year. Still, the time is coming, I feel it and to my surprise, I'm ready for it. I'm ready to leave now.

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

PS Thanks for all the great cards from all around the world!

Posted by Rhian at 23:36 EST | Comments (4)

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Credit cards

The reason there was barely a recession at all following the US stock-market meltdown of 2000-2001 is usually explained by talk of "consumer spending". It would probably, however, it would be more accurate to thank credit cards instead. Most consumer spending is on credit cards in the US; what's more, all credit-card spending is considered consumer spending, even when the cards are used for business purposes.

The credit boom in the US – according to an eye-opening New York Times article today, credit-card charges increased from $338 billion in 1990 to $1.525 trillion in 2003 – has certainly helped to fuel the expansion of not only the US but also the global economy. It has also, however, destroyed most of the trust that Americans have in their lenders.

When your lender is your local bank, you know the manager, the bank knows you personally, and everybody is very clear on what your credit line and interest rate is. When you borrow on a credit card, you might not even be sure what company is issuing the card, you almost certainly have never talked to anybody at the company, and both your credit line and interest rate can be altered at the sole discretion of the card issuer. The New York Times has egregious examples, like Ed Schwebel, whose interest rate went from 9.2% to 18% overnight, despite the fact that he always paid his credit-card bill on time. Steve Strachan, meanwhile, had his interest rate hiked from 5.25% to 20.21%, again without him ever making a late payment. The new rate was so high that if he paid the minimum amount each month, his total debt would go up even if he didn't spend any money on his credit card at all – and since the credit card company was steadily reducing his credit limit to just above his balance, paying the minimum would mean exceeding the limit and incurring penalty fees.

Probably smartly, most of the major credit-card companies refused to comment for the New York Times story. They did find one chap, however, willing to put his foot in his mouth:

Andrew Kahr, a financial services consultant who devised some widely used consumer-lending strategies, including the zero-percent teaser rates, said consumers should be able to recognize that the business is a "game of chance."

Lending, I think it's fair to say, should never be a "game of chance", especially when credit-card companies, in a search for growth, are pushing the envelope of creditworthiness when it comes to their cardholders, both by issuing cards to riskier credits and by increasing credit limits more or less across the board.

The broader problem, however, is that credit cards are now performing a role they were never designed for in the first place. For those of us who pay off our balance in full every month, they're very useful things. For many individuals and small business owners, however, they're much more than that: they're their primary source of financing. You know the cliché about the independent film which the director financed by maxing out his credit cards? It's now a reality across thousands of industries.

The weird fact is that even as credit has been expanding rapidly across the US economy, individuals and small business owners are finding it as hard as ever – if not actually more difficult – to get a loan from the bank. Banks are not actively telling their customers that if they want more credit they should sign up for a Visa card, of course, but they don't need to. For millions of Americans, credit cards are the only credit they can get.

We're not talking small sums of money here, either. Many small business owners carry six-figure revolving sums on their various cards; Steve Strachan, meanwhile, was being charged $1,500 a month in finance charges alone, on a balance of $77,000. In today's low interest rate environment, such interest rates can reasonably be considered usurious: the bank's cost of funds for that $77,000 is maybe $130 a month, which means they're charging a markup of somewhere over 1,000%.

Many small business owners are hard-working, talented individuals who, like most people, don't like thinking about money very much. The genius of the American economy is that the main criterion for becoming a successful landscape gardener, say, is being a good landscape gardener, rather than being someone with a head for figures. But the explosion in credit-card debt in the US is essentially a tax on financial ignorance. Fee revenue on credit cards alone has now exceeded $20 billion a year – that's revenue from charging cardholders $15 for paying their bill by phone, or $35 for getting their payment in just a few hours late. If 144 million Americans have credit cards, that means the average cardholder is paying over $140 a year in fees, and, assuming that the 40% of cardholders who pay their cards off in full every month don't get anywhere near that figure, the fee burden for the typical "revolver" – someone who never really pays down his balance – will be substantially higher.

More invidious still are the interest charges. Here's an example of some calculations which I have to do and which no bank will help you with: the situation, in which I do sometimes find myself, where I have say a $2000 credit card bill coming due, $1000 in the bank, and a big paycheque coming in one week. The credit card interest rate is quite a lot lower than the bank's overdraft facility: in the region of 9% as opposed to 18%. But if I pay only $1000 of my credit card bill, the remaining balance of $1000 will start accruing interest not from the day the bill was due, but from the day the initial charges were incurred. So it's actually cheaper for me to pay the credit card in full and borrow $1000 from the bank for a week than it is to pay $1000 of the credit card balance off now, and the rest when I get paid.

I'm a financial journalist, however: I think that way. Most people, in contrast, faced with exactly the same situation, simply pay the minimum due on the credit card – maybe $50 – and keep a reasonable cushion of cash in their chequing accounts. There's some kind of internal stigma associated with a bank overdraft, you see, which is not associated with a credit card balance, and people would generally much rather have the latter than the former. It's the age-old paradox of consumer finance: someone who has $2000 in their savings account and a $5000 credit-card balance thinks they're saving money. And thousands of small business owners, I'm afraid, make a less egregious but more costly mistake: rather than go to the effort of finding a loan, they simply run up the balance on their credit cards.

A few years ago, I realised that I wasn't going to be able to pay off my credit card balance that month – or the next month, either. It wasn't a huge amount of money, but if I'd done nothing and simply let it acccumulate as I continued to spend more on my credit card, I would rapidly have found my debts spiralling. Instead, I found a friendly credit union who lent me enough money to pay off the credit card balance, and paid them back on an installment loan over the course of a year. The most difficult thing about the whole process was getting a mere one-year loan: everybody was trying to point me to more expensive two-year, three-year or even five-year options. But I knew exactly what I wanted, and eventually I found it.

US card issuers now make $30 billion a year in pretax profit on their credit card operations. That number is so large that banks have no incentive to aggressively sell their loan products instead: their credit cards are much more profitable. The fewer customers they have taking out formal loans, the more customers they will have taking out informal loans in the form of credit card debt, and the more money they will make.

Credit cards are magnificent engines of economic growth: many economists believe that one of the main reasons that China cannot sustain its present levels of GDP growth much longer is precisely because consumer credit has never taken off in the country. In the US, however, they have become an untameable monster which actually reduces the kind of well-constructed small business finance which could power the economy much more sustainably. Bad money drives out good, they say, and the same is true for credit. US borrowers have become addicted to expensive and easy debt; the banks, of course, are the willing pushers. And there's no rehab program in sight.

Posted by Felix at 11:57 EST | Comments (9)

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Richter at Dia

I went back to Dia:Beacon on Sunday, one of those wonderfully clear and bright winter days which New York seems to specialise in. The light was streaming through the huge windows, and the John Chamberlain sculptures literally glowed. All great art benefits from repeated viewing, of course, but there's something which makes revisiting Dia especially rich for me – maybe its something to do with the sheer simplicity of the works on show there, that you almost can't believe how much you missed the first few times round.

It's also weird which works grow on you and which works don't, so much. Everybody I know who's been to Dia has been blown away by the Sandbacks the first time they see them. It's a bit counterintuitive, perhaps: they're much more subtle than, say, the Heizers or the Serras, but they more than hold their own in comparison. On repeated revisits, however, I've found myself spending less time with the Sandbacks, as though they've done pretty much all they're going to do for me. It's amazing what you can do with little more than a piece of string, but maybe ultimately it's limiting as well.

This time around, it was the Richters which I really discovered for the first time. There's definitely a sense of art overload when you go to Dia the first couple of times, and it's hard to give the Richters the time and the concentration they deserve. If they were displayed on their own in a little chapel somewhere, you would be forced to sit down and really engage with them; as it is, they're almost a corridor, something you pass through on your way from Donald Judd to Sol LeWitt.

It was the light which did it. Richter's work is profoundly genuine, subtle and beautiful: he's carefully angled a set of six pairs of gray mirror paintings so that they reflect each other, and the clerestory windows above, in different ways. On Sunday, with sharp, direct light creating reflections in reflections in reflections, it was hard not to be awed by the depth and richness of these ostensibly utterly featureless works. When I next go back to Dia, I'll have a much better idea of what to look for, even if the light isn't as bright.

In fact, it seems to me now that Richter, more than any other artist at Dia except, perhaps, for Robert Irwin, has really engaged with the space and created something unique and site-specific. On Monday, the day after my trip to Dia, I went along to their Chelsea location to hear the excellent Anglo-American artist and teacher Michael Craig-Martin give a talk on the subject of Donald Judd. Judd's greatest work is permanently installed in Marfa, Texas, and Craig-Martin made a compelling case that it really engages with the landscape in much the same way as Greek temples did thousands of years ago. Judd's work is not land art, either in the Richard Long or in the Robert Smithson sense of the word: he's not making art out of nature. (Quite the contrary: he's making art out of cast concrete.) Rather, Judd is siting his work very specifically in relation to the Chinati mountains outside Marfa, and setting up a tension and a dialogue in that otherwise featureless landscape.

At Dia:Beacon, which was put together long after Judd's death, the curators basically had to fit pre-existing works into a brand new space. They did a reasonably good job, but necessarily the work doesn't articulate and reveal the space in the way that it would had Judd been able to make something specifically for it. The Sandbacks do a better job: they force you to feel yourself walking in and around them and the room in general, and draw the eye up to the intersection between the wall and the ceiling, or down to the small cracks in the poured concrete floor, making you notice architectural features which you'd otherwise ignore. That's really what this kind of art is all about – creating a heightened awareness of your own surroundings – and I finally realised, on Sunday, how deeply Gerhard Richter really understands the Dia mission.

Most Richters, after all, are relatively conventional paintings – objects to be admired in and of themselves, rather than as a site-specific installation. At Dia, however, Richter places himself much more in the tradition of artists like Robert Irwin and, to a lesser extent, Robert Ryman, by presenting a piece which deals much more with the room itself than with any incident on the surface of the work. The single most important part of the Richter installation, indeed, is the clerestory windows at the top of the gallery space. In contrast, most of the rest of the work at Beacon could quite easily be moved to another museum elsewhere, without losing much if any of its effect. The Sol LeWitt piece is marvellous, of course, and remains my favourite work at Dia, but it certainly doesn't need to be there as opposed to anywhere else.

At the end of his speech, Craig-Martin talked for a little bit during the Q&A period about the way in which his own work addresses the same sort of questions. If he paints a wall green, he said, all he's doing is creating a green wall. But if he then puts an image on it, you see the wall better. Craig-Martin's recent work, he said, is an exercise in trying to replicate the experience of a Judd – directly experiencing the art object in space and time – while at the same time introducing something Judd religiously shunned – the pictorial element. Craig-Martin's work oscillates between object and picture, in much the same way, I suppose, as Ed Ruscha's oscillates between painting and word.

Both Craig-Martin and Ruscha, however, can easily be exhibited pretty much anywhere. Give Craig-Martin a gallery space, any gallery space, and he'll start painting on the walls; his art, once exhibited at Gagosian, can then be sold to a collector and recreated in the buyer's own home. The work is site-specific, but not uniquely so. Irwin, Judd (at Marfa), and Richter, on the other hand, have created work which really needs to be exactly where it is, otherwise it simply will not work. Marfa's hard to get to, but Dia isn't: next time you're up there, spend a bit of time with the Richters. You might be surprised how good they really are.

Posted by Felix at 12:30 EST | Comments (4)

Sunday, November 14, 2004

Sunburn

I got fried today. Toasted, roasted and turned on a spit. Or at least my face did. For a team of caucasians who haven't seen the sun for six months, and, when they have, have had every inch of flesh covered, I didn't think we were that pasty. Before today. Now, as I glance in the mirror on my way to the shower, I see black hair (freshly dyed, it was faded orange yesterday) above a bright red face outlining dazzling white panda eyes. From my chin down again, luminous yellow-white. Another example of how few comparisons and benchmarks we have here. There is no perspective.

I visited the penguins again today, thousands of them cooing and trilling, so many that an entire ice cliff was grey with their shadow. The same feeling though: I have no perspective. The first time I saw an Emperor I was over-awed by its majesty. Now, as my friend so succinctly put it, visiting them is like going to the park to feed the ducks. Very pleasant – but surely there's something not right?!

Perspective did however visit us on our return to the cliffs, in the form of a rogue Adelie. Scurrying about the ice, he was a mucky scruffy little thing but I love Adelies cos they make me laugh. I can't look at one without hearing the clown theme-tune in my head. And next to this little buddy, the Emperors stood tall and proud again, magestic. I guess we all serve our purpose on this planet.

Another thing that made me laugh was the queue that formed behind our backpacks while we walked among them. The abseil access point is perhaps 800m from the main gaggle of penguins but there is always a small welcoming party that comes to meet us. Usually a handful of adolescents sliding on their bellies. Once we've reached the sea ice, they then often wander back to the crowd with us. Last time, I remember just one stayed behind near the bottom of the rope. He had obviously led the group out there and not realised that the rest had lost interest and wandered back. Not to worrry; they picked him up again when they escorted us back an hour or two later. [In this aspect I feel a strong affinity with penguins,- my attention span is now so short and distraction by shiny things so compelling that it has pretty much become part of my persona here. Hmm, I must tell you about melt-tank someday.]

Anyway, you can see for yourself the line that had formed by the time we returned. They really are sheep. Metaphorically... though I do like the idea of furry penguins that bleat. The reason why they find Halley every year is because they follow our 18km drum-line from the coast thinking each next drum might be a relative. I believe this entirely now.

All in all, we had a lovely day at the sea-side. There was unfortunately no candy floss or pub to warm up in but I did at least pick up some colour. And before you chastise me too much for being a fool, yes, we did take sunscreen but it fell on the floor of the sno-cat while driving there and was frozen solid upon arrival.

Oh, and here's a map for Stefan:

Posted by Rhian at 10:54 EST | Comments (5)

Thursday, November 11, 2004

MoMA's $20 admission

Greg Allen has thrown down the gauntlet. Give him a "well-argued explanation of the damage incurred by $20 tickets and what MoMA could/should realistically do to remedy it," he says, and he'll give you a pair of free passes to MoMA, good anytime through 2005.

So, given that I can never resist a freebie, I'm going to give it a go. After all, the free passes are worth a good $40, which means that if I get them, I'll have been earning an effective rate of more than two cents a word. Wahey!

First of all, MoMA is a public organisation. It might not get much in the way of direct public subsidy (although it does get some), but it only retains its non-profit status because it provides a service to the general public. Its purpose, you might say, is (1) to show great art (2) to "the widest possible audience" (3) as effectively as possible.

Now spending somewhere north of $850 million on a major renovation basically addresses the third part of that purpose. I haven't seen it yet, but I have all faith that the renovation is just as wonderful as everybody says it is. (I was going to say "spectacular" before I realised that was almost exactly the wrong word.) I'm very pleased that MoMA now has extensive gallery space for contemporary art and that all our old favourites will look even better than they did before, hanging in the perfectly-formed new spaces designed for them.

Furthermore, the "great art" part of the equation is a no-brainer: for all that MoMA has been selling off masterpieces of late, it still has easily the greatest collection of modern art on the planet. Show the Demoiselles on its own anywhere else in the world, and I'm sure you'd have lines round the block of people waiting to spend $10 or $15 just to see that one painting.

It's also a no-brainer, however, that charging $20 to get in will put a lot of people off, and that one of the best ways of attracting the widest possible audience is to charge the lowest possible admission fee. Greg asks for specific examples, so I'll give him some.

The artists of the future. It's not clear how much admission for children will be to MoMA, but in any case there are lots of artists of the future who are no longer schoolkids. Great art is not something you see once, ingest, and move on: it's something you return to time and time again, learning something new each time. A high cost of entry minimises the number of people who will return to their favourite works.
The art-lovers of the future. Not everyone, Greg, is already as keen on art as you are. One of the great revelations of Tate Modern is that if a modern art museum is free, enormous numbers of people will turn out to enjoy it. Barriers to entry are bad things, and $20 is the highest barrier to entry in the museum world. What's more, there's a very strong feeling that once you've paid your $20, you should get your money's worth. So you traipse around every single gallery, spend more time reading wall panels than looking at art, and leave drained, exhausted, and with little if any enthusiasm for ever going back. You really need to be pretty cavalier with your money to spend $20 on MoMA admission, wander over to one painting, spend some time enjoying it, leave, and repeat the process as many times as you want. But that's the way to really build up a love and appreciation for art.
The poor. Obviously. Take, for instance, a schoolteacher trying to support a family in New York City. Where is that person going to find $20 to visit MoMA?
People who aren't (yet) interested in modern art. A $20 admission fee basically means you're preaching to the converted. People who know what lies on the other side of the turnstiles might be willing to cough up; people who don't, on the other hand, will simply stay away.

Greg also gets invidious when he starts talking about how much a ticket to MoMA is "worth". In the art world, you see, things are worth whatever someone is willing to pay. And I'm sure that even if ticket prices went up to $2,000, there would still be people willing to pay that in order to be able to visit the new MoMA. Clearly, the idea of trying to put a value on a MoMA ticket is impossible.

There's also the idea, which has been lurking in the background of the debate all along, and which is implicit in the fact that the price hike coincides with the reopening, that a bigger and better museum helps to justify the $20 admission fee. Greg, in his post, goes on at some length about the insane amounts of money which have been poured into MoMA over the past couple of years, as though it's somehow the job of MoMA's visitors to amortize the costs of construction.

In fact, it's simply not true that admission to large museums can or should be more expensive than admission to small museums. We have all experienced museum fatigue: beyond a certain size, it becomes impossible or inadvisable to try to see any more art in one go. The Guggenheim might charge more money per square foot, but the fact is that a good Guggenheim show is all that one person can comfortably take in in one go. The Frick, to take another example, does not have an enormous collection, but size doesn't matter. A visitor gets just as much out of a visit to the Frick or the Guggenheim as they do out of a visit to MoMA.

There are many, many reasons, then, why MoMA should be actively encouraging repeat visits. For one thing, they're the only way it's really possible to see all the artworks on show. Moreover, if visitors come for one of the big shows, they'll probably not bother with the permanent collection at all. And if someone does spend $20 to come in and have a look around, and sees something they like, it should be as easy as possible for them to come back and really learn to appreciate it.

Greg asked for ideas about what MoMA should do, so here are some.

Make tickets valid for two days, rather than one. (If necessary, ask people to sign their ticket when they get it, and then again when they want to reuse it the following day.)
Make memberships much cheaper. $75 is a very large amount of money to spend up front on museum admission. Bring that number down a lot – to $25, say – and you'll have many more people taking advantage of membership and really using the museum as a resource.
Allow people to pay for their membership over time, either on some kind of installment basis, or through ticket purchases. Set things up so that when you visit the museum for the third or fourth time in a year, you can trade in your ticket stubs for a membership back-dated to your first visit.

Most importantly, however, MoMA should get its priorities straight. At the moment, it seems 100% about getting the architecture perfect, and 0% about making it as accessible to as many people as possible. How come the trustees were asked to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars for renovation, but nothing at all to help bring down ticket prices? The architect, Yoshio Taniguchi, famously told MoMA that if they gave him a lot of money, he would build a great museum; if they gave him even more, he would make the architecture disappear. At that point, some hard questions should have been asked about how to spend that extra couple of hundred million dollars. Was invisible architecture the way to go? Or should it have been spent instead on bringing down ticket prices?

Glen Lowry expects about two million visitors a year, paying $20 each. That's $40 million in ticket revenue. Cut the ticket price in half, and the number of visitors will increase – let's say you'd get $25 million in ticket revenue at $10 a ticket. The cost of that would be $15 million a year, or a net present value of rather less than the amount that Taniguchi's budget was increased over the course of the construction process. And you'd get more visitors, which, of course, is a good thing in itself.

But MoMA doesn't seem to think that way. Rather, it was built by billionaires so that they could look upon the greatest possible art museum they could make. The Great Unwashed are welcome to come in, but they'll have to pay whatever they'll have to pay.

Think about it this way: the last person to donate $40 million towards the costs of construction basically made sure that the mullions were that little bit thinner, the walls floated that little bit more perfectly, the wood floors were that much more expensive and perfectly polished. Alternatively, they could have put that money towards making the entire museum free to everybody for a full year. It's obvious to me which would have been the better use of money. And it should be obvious to Greg as well.

Posted by Felix at 14:43 EST | Comments (14)

Friday, November 05, 2004

Post-winter trip

Post-winter trip I: Ropes and Rumples

So, I’m back! Fully rested and relaxed, we had a great time away: a lot of playing, a bit of learning, lots of new sights and a refreshing time off base. A break for them and us! It’s difficult to know where to begin really as I have a kaleidoscope of images and memories flying around my head in antarctic technicolour (white, white and white). We started at the Rumples, big rumply ice, and spent the week gently moving around the coast. A seaside holiday indeed! Like mountains and ocean at home, I am still happiest at the sea, even if the water is all still frozen. The Rumples were bergs and blocks, cracks and slots, chaos, cubes and jumble. Smooth smooth ice flowing to the coast, pulled in towards this anchor point, CRACK! Standing on the cliff top I see ruptures, crevasses, sea ice, cliffs, boulders. Past the rumply ice is the ocean flat with steam rising off it. Next to the grey pancake ice it looks exactly like rolling waves approaching a flat sandy beach.

Down in the creek there are faces in the ice smiling gently while we explore. “Do you see the face?”, I call to my companions? “No, it’s obscured, just around the corner”, Ed replies. No, the face the face. The beautiful moonface of a woman in the icecliffs. We all see something different here I’m sure. I thank her for allowing us to visit and pay my respects to the canyon people.

This is the place where the photos I sent last week were from. The faces and ice cubes, the lovely long abseil down a cliff. In the sky you see black and white: dark water-sky reflecting open water over the ocean, white reflecting the ice. Even at Halley we are aware of our peninsula position and read the changing coastline in the sky. On the ground, white, white, flat and dull. There are crevasses between this point and the tent but you can’t see them. It is amzing, the loss of contrast comes in so quickly, within minutes, and suddenly you realise how dangerous this place could potentially be.

What I learn at the Rumples, however, wasn’t a fear of crevasses and ice, but rather a delight in them, confidence in and respect for the the safety techniques used. Walking gently, roping up, being ever ready to catch your fall with an ice axe. Proudly, I found more cracks than anyone else. Notably, this wasn’t the purpose of the walk!

So our first day at the Rumples we explored a newly forming creek. On our second day we went for a walk. The contrast was poor again so we couldn’t go as far as we’d hoped but it was still an adventure for me since I hadn’t needed to walk linked by a rope before. Until now, it had only been a rehearsal. Experienced mountaineers reading this might laugh at my naivety but it’s the new things you learn which are filled with wonder and for me, this was knots and ropes, crampons, ice axes and crevasses… and the places these things can then take you to.

Now is the time to record that newness since from now on, a figure of eight will be a useful knot for me rather than an amusing snake coiling around itself before eating its own tail. And I’ll tell you something else though it’ll start up more arguments, a half hitch is just an overhand but back upon itself... and two half hitches is a clove hitch. It’s true, whatever they might tell you. The alternative way of tying a clove hitch, if conditions allow, is loop, loop, behind… whereas an Italian hitch, useful for descending and belaying, is loop, loop and fold. An Italian Prussik, now, is through and through again but a French Prussik is round and round. Ok? An alpine butterfly is used for shortening, or putting a loop in, a long bit of rope without reducing its strength. That’s three loops around your hand, alpha over beta and charlie, beta over charlie and alpha and then under both, all the way back to the beginning again. A dolly hitch looks like a butterfly but is used for putting a loop that can slip in the middle of a rope and is easily undone. A truckers hitch does the same job but is apparrantly “much more crude”. It’s easy though: bite, twist, twist, twist and pull the dead end through the loop. (For a dolly hitch you lay the bite across the live end to create a butterfly, twist one side of the left wing around the right wing a couple of times, twist the left wing and pull some dead rope through it. Takes a bit of practice but useful when lashing sledges.) Descenders are used for going down a rope with a French Prussik below, jumars are used for coming up the rope and an Italian Prussik is tied to the rope in front of you when walking linked up.

If your buddy falls down a hole, you (obviously!) stop the fall by throwing your weight, and an ice axe, in the other direction and hook said prussik over the axe. Naturally confident that this will at least temporarily hold your dangling friend, you stamp two ice stakes in the ground (tricky when you’re lying down), connect them with a sling, clamp a jumar on the rope and, using a caribener, clip it into the slings. All these janglies, along with four pullies and a few ice screws, are hanging off your belt in an apparently obvious and unentangled easy-access way. While your increased heart-rate is melting a new hole in the ice shelf. Tightening the jumar ‘takes you out of the system’ and voila, your friend is safe(r). If he (or she) can’t get himself out, you set up a Z-pulley with the rest of your jingles and pull him out. And you wonder why I was nervous before setting out?!

So anyway, as a joke after enquiring if you roped up any differently if you were leading or following (ALL of this stuff is new to me), I said “alright then boys, follow me” to which Ed, tied to me, said “ok, off you go, mind those first two crevasses and then navigate us around to the view.” ?>!***!!!~~???!

What he called a crevasse, I call a canyon, or at least a huge gaping slot, and had no intention of crossing. It thankfully narrowed and we eventually jumped it, and the next, and the ones after that. The initial adrenalin rush, and pride in myself, was regularly tempered by my foot slipping through yet another crack. ‘Ankle-biters’ he calls them. “I’ve found one”, I’d call with a huge grin on my face. Simon, Craig and I would knock away the edges and peer inside at the blue, blue ice.

Ed, it seemed, had other ideas about what crossing a crevassed slab of ice was all about. You mean we’re not actually meant to find them, rather avoid them?!! Ridiclious! After 20 minutes of leading, the fear of the unknown had been replaced by excitement of the unknown. It was like a challenge in the crystal maze: you never really knew which bit was going to give way beneath you. But fun! Not scary. We never really fell far as the slots were either fairly narrow (well, the width of my bum as I found out when two legs went in the same slot) or heavily bridged by snow.

Wandering along the top of the ice cliff, staring at the open sea in the distance with steam coming off it and dark clouds above, hearing the ice beneath us moan and shift... all that practicing at last had a purpose and I was seeing this stuff with my own eyes. It was a very special day.

It was still fairly early when we returned but the weather was closing in so while Ed made tea in the tent, the three of us played in a thin crevasse about 20m from the campsite. What an odd place to camp,- certainly not a place for playing frisbee or kicking around the football we had brought! The photos is of this slot, narrow and blue, two ropes so we could take photos of each other and explore together. Poor old Simon ended up having to go down and up three times. It was a safe slot to play in, we could almost climb out without a rope by pushing with our back on one wall and feet on the other. But it was gorgeous too, blue cobwebs of ice at the top, globules down the walls, and my confidence soared. When you finally feel you have mastered the techniques, that’s when you can truly enjoy the scenery!

Post-winter trip II: Creek Two and Beyond

As you know, we decided to head for the Hinge Zone but never made it. The weather Wednesday morning was flat and misty so we continued our holiday at the coast instead. More than anything, we just wanted to make sure we spent as much time off base as possible.

The McDonald Ice Rumples are a point where the continental shelf underwater meets the ice shelf and anchors the smooth ice that is slowly flowing out to sea. The result is that the cliffs are broken up into creeks and the creeks, with time, move along the coast, as new crevasses break open to form new creeks. These are called the Gin Bottle Creeks and are numbered one to five, with Creek One being the eldest and farthest from the Rumples. Beyond the Creeks lies Windy Cove, a large protected area of sea ice that the Emperor penguins make the most of as a breeding site year after year.

There are two drumlines that leave Halley: one leads to Creek Two and the other to Windy Cove. Both have a caboose at the end. The drum-line marks a well-travelled route that has been checked out for dangers such as crevasses. Once established, we can travel there by skidoo or snow-cat unlinked. This is most important during Relief when the ship arrives at one of the Gin Bottle Creeks and has to offload its cargo on us.

So, back to the holiday. We drove to Creek Two, warmed up the caboose and put up a tent. For four of us and two nights, this would be the most comfortable. Craig was keen to stay in the caboose while I, no surprise, was keen on the tent. I still love those tents, so familiar, it’s like I was never away! The warm orange glow through ventile, the comforting hiss of the tilly lamp and primus stove, the slight chill at night. Even setting up when it’s cold. There is something immensely satisfying about dipping a burning match into liquid meths and watching it fizzle out. The stingy eyes from fuel vapour when you first start up, flasks, boxes, un rolling the p-bags….and big down tent boots, I love our spaceboots! As close to being barefoot as you get here, that wonderful sensual feeling of snow munching under your feet. As soon as the fires are off, the tent cools down rapidly. It might be summer, but it’s still Antarctica.

It was funny to think I hadn’t been back to Creek Two since relief last year. That all seems so recent and vivid. This time, however, there were just four of us, there was no mission, there was no chaos. The evening we arrived we wandered down the creek just to check it out. It was so quiet and interesting to see how the coastline had changed, overhangs drooped, crumpled ice blown in and frozen. The dramatic front between perennial fast ice and areas that might have been open water only a few weeks ago. Penguins have obviously been here recently as the ice edge is covered in their shit... so we can only assume that there was water here too. Good news for the ship coming in as it hopefully shouldn’t have too much trouble reaching us. Perhaps in a few weeks some seals will come here to pup.

There is a crevasse at the edge of the ice shelf that I’ve had my eye on since February. Drove past it four times a day then and always wanted to look inside. It was out of bounds, dangerous, not even to be thought about. This time around, four of us chilling, we wondered up to it, played on the slope at its approach practicing ice axe arrests and talked about returning with crampons and ropes to explore inside. A completely different feeling: like this is where we live now, this is our piece of ice shelf and ok to explore. This is our home.

The next day was delicious. We started off roped up, Ed and Simon, Craig and me, wandering towards Creek One. A bit like some weddings I’ve been to of friends, I wasn’t sure if this was a dress-rehearsal or the real thing. The ropes seemed like overkill and therefore bureaucratic. Closer to the cliff edge, however, feet started slipping, though we never fell far. Mainly ankle-biters but it was nonetheless reassurring to be tied to someone who could break a fall if necessary.

Creek One was like rolling hills of ice. Climbing up and over, learning new ways to use the ice axe and crampons, the view obscured over the last ridge. When we got there, it stretched out in all directions. The sea cliffs, the frozen ocean. I love the coast, always have and always will. Open water was still miles away from us but you could see the dark stripe and steam rising off it on the horizon. Not so far that it would be unreachable. Summer is coming and we won’t be frozen in, locked in by ice, for much longer. It’s an honour to watch the landscape altering like this.

We abseiled down to the sea ice and went for a stroll. Ice, real ice underfoot as opposed to snow. The hard crunching of crampons on ice felt solid and good. There was also a sense of freedom and carefree-ness wandering around since we’re not roped up on sea ice (for fear of it breaking up and us having to leg it!) despite a few cracks. I was reminded of mudflats and marshland, silent and flat, though we saw only one bird the whole time. Craig said salt-flats. The feeling of walking on a sea bed, though this wasn’t, away from a long, long coastline and towards a very low tide.

I was reminded of the first time I saw Antarctica, the white cliffs, far on the horizon, and how happy it made me. Now again I was looking back at those cliffs having lived on them through all the seasons. They still hold a magical quality.

We walked further and further out, away from the protection of the cliffs, beyond the flat ice and towards the chossed up stuff. This has obviously beeen blown in from elsewhere and is now frozen in. After the next strong storm it may well be gone again. Mesmerising never-ending coastline. But so relaxed, it felt like a walk on the coast at home. It’s nice to not only notice confidence increase but also the dissappearrance of trepidation. To focus once again on place over activity.

Instead of pulling ourselves back up the cliff on a rope, we climbed out, still tied for safety, with ice axes and crampons. Another new experience, the initial learning curve with all this stuff is fast and satisfyingly steep. Back onto the shelf and off home, via crevasses which, as ever, I was still expert at discovering! We took the long way home via the coastline and Creek Two and decided to explore that alluring crevasse. What a perfect way to end the day. It was truly beautiful inside. Blue cavern, delicate icicles made of snow, crystals adorning the walls. Snow bridges, hollows, speak as quietly as the blue is gentle lest you upset the structure. Magical. And then we popped out the top! Home via more slots and back in time for tea.

On Saturday morning we packed up leisurely and moved on to Windy Cove. As an extra bonus, Ed let me drive as lead skidoo, linked up across the ice cliffs, navigating by compass bearing and distance (244°, 14.4km) instead of GPS. It is surprisingly hard to skidoo to a bearing when there is seemingly nothing to head for. Clouds move, shadows move, in the end I took approximate sightings on patches of sastrugi. When the caboose came into sight I wasn’t too far off, and maybe half a km short… but that would make all the difference in poor visibility. The driving itself though, well, what can I say? White and undriven stretching out in front of me. Driving across Antarctica.

We visited the penguins in the afternoon and then again the following day. As ever, they entertained us for hours. I cannot grasp how many there are, or how lucky I am to see them like this. For us, it was like returning to see old friends. Craig took a frisbee, we say hello to the greeting party and are dissappointed when they aren’t waiting for us immediately as we arrive. They are apparrently getting used to our visits too! There is now a steady stream of belly pushers in the distance returning from, or to, the open water. The chicks are much bigger but still fluffy and grey and their high peepsing call trills loudly. The huddle is completely broken up and penguins are now everywhere, loosley bunched.
We only had one night at Windy before our holiday was over. Putting up a tent would, I knew, take a lot of unecessary time and the boys were all happy to stay in the caboose. My last night off base, I wasn’t. Instead, I dug myself a ‘snow channel’ that night while the boys made tea and had a radio sched, climbed inside my bivvy bag and experienced the warmest night yet! All in all, a most wonderful way to end a most wonderful trip.

Posted by Rhian at 12:21 EST | Comments (6)

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Windy Bay

I'm lying on the snow, emperor penguins all around. Once you get used to the sight, the sound and then smell are probably the most noticeable things. The constant cooing, deep throttle cooing: da da da daa di da da daa di da da daa daa. A rattle and a coo, constantly starting and ending, sometimes in unison, a chorus, sometimes a chant, always in surround sound. On top of this is the sweet demanding chirrup of chicks, almost a trill. "Feed me." "Where are you?"

The chicks are now getting quite big and plump. Some of them almost up to the height of their parent's shoulders if they stretch. These ones should make it. There are little ones too, not necessarily abandoned, just later hatches. These will make it as long as the ice stays for long enough and, of course, that both parents keep returning with food. Then there are the tiny ones, occassionally fostered by chickless adults but not fed. Finally, there are the dead chicks, of all sizes, frozen into the ice.

As I stay still and write this, inquisitive adults approach. Never so close that I could touch them easily but within reaching distance. The recent warmth (~ -20C) makes an amazing difference since I can lie here and observe, writing in thinnies [glove liners]. The downside however, is the stench. Fishy ammonia, green-brown penguin poo streaks all across the ice. Not dissimilar from pigeons. Birds is birds I guess.

One is now so close I see his reptilian feet, gnarled toes, long hard nails for pulling out of the ice. He is standing very still, rounded back, dark black stripes graffitied down his neck. He moves out of the way and a parent and chick move in. The chick, fluffy grey, runs off like a toddler exploring and the parent patiently follows through the crowd. I could stay here for hours but have been told it's time to go.