THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 9, 1996 TAG: 9606070069
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 93 lines
DENNIS BARRIE'S adventurous spirit has sent him to court on obscenity charges, compelled him to head a rock 'n' roll museum and hurled him headlong into at least one mosh pit.
We're talking about a highly respectable - even brilliant - American museum director.
Barrie, who in March left his post as director of Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, is headed to Virginia Beach this week. He will help judge the Virginia Beach Boardwalk Art Show, set for Thursday through Sunday on the Oceanfront.
Also, Barrie will speak Thursday night in the galleries of the Virginia Center for the Arts, where the cutting-edge show ``It's Only Rock and Roll: Rock and Roll Currents in Contemporary Art'' is on view through June.
Barrie doesn't judge outdoor art shows that often, he admitted, speaking recently from Cleveland, where he has established a museum consulting firm.
``No, I really don't,'' he said. ``And I kind of did it because the `Rock and Roll' show is there.''
It's been three years since he last judged an outdoor show. ``It's very, very hard work. I don't dislike it. I usually don't have the time for it.''
Barrie had another reason for making the trip: Jan Riley, the Beach arts center's curator, asked him. From 1986 to 1992, Riley was a curator at the Cincinnati (Ohio) Contemporary Arts Center, directed then by Barrie.
Riley and Barrie endured the sort of trauma that bonds people for life. In April 1990, Barrie and the arts center were issued indictments for exhibiting photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe. The charges, later dropped, were for pandering, obscenity and for illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented materials.
The case brought Barrie into the national spotlight, along with critical issues of arts censorship and governmental funding of the arts. Soon he was in demand as a lecturer on a subject that became his passion: freedom of expression.
But life has gone on, and he has put the case behind him - somewhat. ``I don't cease to talk about it, but it's not my emphasis,'' he said. ``That was an important part of my life. And it was significant, in terms of the impact on the cultural scene in America.
``But I've done so many things since then.''
The Beach's ``Rock and Roll'' exhibit was curated by a friend of his, David Rubin, curator of 20th century art at the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona. The show is traveling the nation, and possibly to Japan and China, through Exhibition Management Inc., run by Stacy Sims, Barrie's ``significant other.''
Coincidentally, the exhibit includes photographs by Mapplethorpe - straightforward, beautiful portraits of rock stars Deborah Harry, Iggy Pop and Patti Smith.
Rubin originally keyed the show to the September 1995 opening of the Rock and Roll Museum. The exhibit is a 40-year retrospective of art influenced by or reflecting the rock 'n' roll culture. Such major artists as Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Dennis Oppenheim are included.
``I thought it was a fabulous idea,'' Barrie said.
Barrie has a master's degree and a doctorate in American cultural history, and seems to revel in the disintegration of barriers between high and low art.
Said Riley: ``Dennis has a love of popular culture which is very engaging. When I worked at the center, I could speak to Dennis about a movie or a music video or about contemporary music. And he would be current on all of this.''
Meanwhile, he was a close follower of the art world.
``It's probably my background,'' Barrie said. ``I grew up loving museums and art. But I also consumed a lot of other things - popular music, television, film. Just the knowledge of what's happening out there in the big world. It all interests me.''
Barrie, 48, has been known to go the distance toward a better understanding. While at the helm of the Rock and Roll Museum, he flung himself into a heap of violently gyrating young men in a mosh pit during a Nine Inch Nails concert.
``They're a heavy metal group. I admire them. I think they're quite magnificent.''
At the Beach arts center, he plans to discuss the impact of rock 'n' roll on art, and the Rock and Roll Museum he directed from August 1993 until earlier this spring. (Upon his departure, The Washington Post pronounced he had done ``a spectacular job.'')
Rock 'n' roll, Barrie said, ``is the soundtrack of our times, defining our aspirations and our angst. And I think that artists are influenced by, and have long been influenced by, rock 'n' roll. It comes out in the work very dramatically.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Dennis Barrie survived the Mapplethorpe case as director of
Cincinnati's art museum.
Graphic
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