http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/arts/design/crossing-brooklyn-local-talent-at-brooklyn-museum.html 2014-10-03 01:26:47 ‘Crossing Brooklyn,’ Local Talent at Brooklyn Museum “Crossing Brooklyn,” at the Brooklyn Museum, showcases artists who live and work in the borough. === All conceivable kinds of artists live and work in Brooklyn. They come from all over the United States and the world. Many of them exhibit regularly in high-profile galleries. Tons more — veterans as well as up-and-comers — are not well known but worthy of notice. So “Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond,” an exhibition at the Disappointingly, it’s not. Organized by Eugenie Tsai, the museum’s contemporary-art curator, and Rujeko Hockley, an assistant curator, this anodyne, 35-artist show favors a particular type of artist: one who engages in the sorts of activities associated with Evidently counted out from the start were artists who toil in studios making paintings, sculptures and other sorts of objects intended just to be looked at. Only one traditional painter was picked: The curators focused mainly on artists who venture outside their workshops to try to involve other people in participatory and interactive events. What’s striking about the works selected is how mild they are. There’s little that risks offending or alienating anyone. In their introduction to the exhibition catalog, Ms. Tsai and Ms. Hockley observe that “artists today seem less interested in ambitious structures and organized movements and more interested in personal response and reaction.” They speak of an “ethos of individual impact and the powerful accretion of microresponses.” They conclude, “We are responsible for our own behavior; through our actions and interactions, we can make a difference in or neighbors’, and our own, lives.” The ideal artist, they seem to think, is a creative, benevolent teacher who helps people learn to share, care and be nicer to one another. Miguel Luciano A couple of artists are into bartering. Documented by texts, photographs and a video, Nobutaka Aozaki Dressed in seemingly official uniforms, the three members of a group called Wandering around outdoors is a subject for several artists. Seen against the historical background of nonstudio avant-gardism, from early 20th-century Dada to Happenings of the 1950s and ’60s to the guerrilla performances of There are some works that have more substance either visually or conceptually. Paul Ramírez Jonas’s life-size cork Drew Hamilton’s “Street Corner Project” William Lamson Nina Katchadourian Daniel Bejar For But these more compelling works are outnumbered by tepid, didactic, unoriginal and complacent ones. Brooklyn artists deserve better than this too-small, ideologically blinkered exhibition.