7 comments

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  Tom

  11 months ago

  I think Mr Hawk's omissions in his first post show he was willing to portray the situation dishonestly to make his point. Lets look at what he originally posted...
  
  Blint told me that "he did not care" and that he needed to "protect" his employees -- employees that might appear in my photographs. I was not shooting with a tripod. I was not shooting with a flash. I was being quiet and respectful of the area and the other patrons.
  
  Now lets look at his correction (after being called on his initial omission)
  
  One allegation that has been raised is that Blint threw me out because he felt that I was shooting down a low cut blouse of one of his employees sitting in the atrium below where I was shooting. The photo above is a photo that I snapped of Blint as he was publicly admonishing me from the floor, that's him with his arms crossed there -- he's about the size of an ant in the photo. As you will see, the female employee in question also appears in the photograph (the ticket taker next to Blint). She is not wearing a low cut blouse. In fact she's wearing some sort of a yellowish/orangish sweater or jacket sort of thing -- she's sort of hard to see as a 14mm lens makes people look super far away. Her arms, shoulders, in fact every visible area of her except her hands are completely covered in clothing.
  
  Now, don't get me wrong, I think Mr. Blint over reacted. Had he kept his calm this might not have turned into a thing. Mr. Hawk claims not to have been taking pictures of the employee in question and says he offered to let Mr. Blint review the photos which is probably what Mr Blint should have done
  
  But that said, Mr. Blint thought he caught someone trying to take elicit pictures of one of his female staff and it seems to me that he was blinded by anger which is a perfectly understandable position to take. I think this was a big misunderstanding where I suspect tempers flared on both sides (Mr. Hawk claims to have been perfectly calm but his post on the subject suggests he wasn't)
  
  Had Mr. Hawk been completely honest in his original post I think most would have seen it as the misunderstanding it was.
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  Andy

  11 months ago

  "...what other way is there to hold institutions such as this accountable when they do the wrong thing? Would not this behavior continue without drawing attention to it?"
  
  There is (first) the option of working one-on-one, directly with the offending organization or individuals. That Hawk chose to immediately make this a public conflict, instead of at least attempting to wrest any acceptable result via direct interaction (including investigating whether he might be entitled to legal relief) shows that not every reasonable avenue was explored or used before resorting to (literal) name-calling. Whether he was wronged is an open issue, since we don't have all sides. But whether he had options other than publicly defaming someone whom he believes had wronged him, that is clear: he had other options but leapt straight to the blogger's prerogative: denouncing someone with whom he could at least have tried to resolve the conflict. By his own admission he threatened to blog about it before he was even ejected from the museum.
  
  He's allowed to blog, but it shouldn't be the first resort, especially if he's naming names. You can call this a "battle over personal rights and freedoms," but you still need to ask whether he exhausted other more reasonable means before taking it public.
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  Duncan Riley

  10 months ago

  I think given the circumstances, in which he attempted to ask the person in question to contact others there or go higher up the chain constitutes at least an attempt to keep it internal. Did they not escalate it first?
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  calling bull

  10 months ago

  The SF MOMA has not had days to respond. This was posted on a Friday and it's now Sunday night. It is entirely possible that there is not an official response until the beginning of the work week.
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  Duncan Riley

  10 months ago

  Calling, last time I looked most museums are open on the weekend, indeed Sat/ Sun are usually the two busiest day. They may yet respond, but the longer they don't the more we only see one side of the story
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  Mads Jorgenson

  10 months ago

  Duncan > They may yet respond, but more likely is that they will remain silent, a typical response from an old fashioned institution that holds itself above others.
  
  Duncan, they are likely just an institution that does not have the resources to constantly monitor their brand (i.e. every blogger mentioning the word "MOMA"). Google has 30M results for "MOMA"... Yes, I understand there are some tools to bring down this number, but if I were funding MOMA, I'd object to them spending any time and effort on this. That's not their core business (and they will not get a visitor less, because of some "Thomas Hawk" speaking badly about them).
  
  You can consider not participating in the blog wars and bitch memes arrogant, but most people don't even know they exist -- much less would they find them relevant.
  
  We need to give the real world a chance to live their lives without forcing them to go virtual.
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  Sheri Fresonke Harper

  10 months ago

  How odd, even when I accidently took a photograph where they weren't allowed, I was just cautioned and nothing more. :) Sheri
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