Double Bogey

But one artist on the list didn't receive a visit. That was Souza, who happens to play golf with Hugh Davies, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego and one of the Biennial curators. As a piece of floating gossip, that sounds pretty damning. But the fact is, Davies alone could not get Souza into the Biennial. Nor could Fridge, whose "in" was that he worked as a security guard at the Modern, be helped solely by Auping. The committee had to be convinced. When the curators met, they scored each artist with a one, two or three, and those with the most points got into the Biennial.

"Believe me, there are a lot of people I play golf with who aren't in the show," Davies says, after mounting a passionate defense of Souza's "drop-dead beautiful objects" and pointing out that he gave Souza exhibits long before the two were friends. (Fisher, by the way, also golfs with Souza).

One interesting aspect of the Whitney selection process was that the curators chose specific work rather than artists, with the exception of a few artists who will do specific installations for the show. Souza's contribution, The Peaceful Kingdom, will take up seven by 18 feet of gallery wall, which in terms of artistic real estate is just as precious as any other square footage in Manhattan. By contrast, Auping admits, artists who didn't take up any extra space were an easier sell to the committee. Mondini-Ruiz will push a portable botanica through the streets of New York, and Fridge's video of the inside of his freezer will be shown in the video screening room (which is separate from the cinema screenings).

A major complaint by Texas artists is the glaring lack of women among the ranks of Texas artists. "I've done some soul-searching about that," says Auping. "It's not from my not presenting a number [of Texas women]Š. They didn't make it in the voting, and I don't control the voting."

The omission sends the message that there are no women here who rate with the men. While the curators insist that's not what they intended to convey, they point out that the final configuration of the show depended solely on the voting.

The Biennial was not constructed with equity in mind. Each curator brought a list of 50 artists to the table, and when it was discovered that, contrary to expectations, there was virtually no overlap among them (a hint of the many Biennials that could have been), the winnowing process began.

The six gradually warmed to the idea of curating by committee -- early plans to give each person "passion votes," which would let them include three artists of their choice regardless of the voting, were scrapped. The voting process meant that curators could only hope for a reasonable gender, ethic and geographical balance in the end. "We collectively decided to really allow ourselves a certain freedom to investigate, determine and discuss without those specific issues as being overriding," says Cassel.

While the show did turn out to be generally balanced along gender lines, it would probably have been a logistical nightmare to apply standards of diversity to each geographical region. As Cassel points out, "There are no women from Iowa."

Of course, there's one last complaint about the Texas Nine, and it's another issue of balance. Non-Texans (like we care) are saying that nine is just too many.

"The thing I say, when people tell me there's too many artists from Texas, is how do you know?" Auping says. "Are you just assuming that there's more good art in Los Angeles? How do you know?"

E-mail Shaila Dewan at shaila.dewan@houstonpress.com.