Ann Powers, music museum curator (4) - By Ann Powers

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Entry 4

Posted Thursday, April 25, 2002, at 12:27 PM ET

Ann Powers is a senior curator at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. She is the author of Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America.

I hate passing judgment. This is obviously ironic (a word I can use now! It's not allowed in the Times except when you're hitting the dictionary definition head on), given that I've spent my life as a critic, which most people think of as a thumbs-up/thumbs-down gig, and now I'm a curator, a guardian of archival gates. Yet it's true: I'm the girl who orders her sandwich with half Swiss and half Cheddar and always wants to give critically disdained artists a second chance because I can't see the sense in limitation and I dig the concept of forgiveness. Or maybe I'm just a wimp.

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Today was one of those days that Makes Me a Better Person, when I must face my fear of final decision. I like to think of them as Judgment Days. This one started with a surprisingly fun version of my nightmare: an appearance on First Impression, a radio show hosted by Michaela Majoun for WXPN in Philadelphia, in which experts offer snap evaluations of new songs without even being told the artists' names.

My fellow connoisseur was Philly writer and rocker Jonathan Valania. I thought he was much more successful at this game, with back-stories at his fingertips and the ability to recognize some songs in advance. I hemmed and hawed, instantly regretted my choices, and tried to cover up my self-doubt with self-deprecating jokes. Due to Michaela's and Jonathan's good spirits, I ended up letting go and really enjoying myself, even if I still feel bad about giving the stalwart David Baerwald a two for a song that, heck, might prove good upon more listening.

I had a little more time in which to make my next musical assessment, sitting down on my lunch hour to pen a brief review of the new Anna Waronker album for Blender. These little shorties are hard—how much can you say in 110 words?—but they're coming to dominate music journalism. Though I still long for decent space to actually figure out what's cooking within pop culture's complicated ciphers, I'm working to master the haiku model too, to squeeze some acuity into small packages.

Deciding the fate of the internsEMP-related judgments were also on offer today. Several of us sat down to choose prime candidates from the pool of summer interns, a task I know from working at several alternative weeklies. It's a weird one—you may determine some young hopeful's future, at least immediately, based on how you respond to a bunch of stats on an application and a letter written under who knows what circumstances. Dawn Haggerty, who manages our research department, proved beautifully generous in this process—she always had ideas about where applicants might fit, even beyond EMP. "You should encourage this one to really go hard after the Seattle Art Museum," was a typical comment from Dawn. Me, I had a sinus headache and just hoped I was reasonably fair.

The invite to the "Uncommon Objects" opening--with KISS bootsThe funny thing is, I'm waiting to get hit by some verdicts myself soon. "Uncommon Objects," the show I've been steering since Chris Bruce, our former curatorial director, left EMP in January, opens next weekend. I know that some critics will trash it, because some always do. Maybe the most painful day of my life was when the trade reviews of my book Weird Like Us arrived—all negative; I wept harder than I thought possible and actually wished for a psychotic break with reality. Later, better reviews helped the book and me, I suppose, but the burn marks from those early negatives remain. You'd think that, as a critic, I'd be aware that criticism only matters so much—I mean, I don't consider myself any divine oracle. But maybe bad notices hurt more for someone like me, because it's like falling on your face in front of your high-school classmates on the dance floor during prom. This is supposed to be your moment, and suddenly you find out the kids you thought accepted you hate you. Bad reviews—the writer's quickest route back to miserable adolescence.

Meg picking daffodilsI was supposed to make some more appraisals yesterday, mostly technical ones about the sound system in the temporary gallery, but luckily for me I was plunged into a world beyond any need of my judgments. My sister-in-law Cindy needed some emergency relief in the afternoon, and I played an hour's worth of hooky to take my toddler niece Meghan to the park. Meghan is on the verge of discrimination, but she's still willing to pick up dirt clods, pull out daffodils (sorry, Seattle Parks Commission!), and pet whatever big dog happens to be playing fetch nearby. It cleared my head to spend some time with her. It made me hope part of me would stay there forever.