Real Clear Arts

The wonderful idea of a one- or two-work special exhibition continues to spread. We've seen it at the Prado (Velazquez and Sargent), at the Metropolitan Museum (Michelangelo), the Nevada Art Museum in Reno (Raphael and then the Beffi triptych altarpiece) and other museums.

Now the Portland Art Museum, which originated the showing of Raphael's La Velata that went to Reno and then to Milwaukee, has landed another big loan: It announced this week that it will borrow Thomas Moran's massive Shoshone Falls on the Snake River from the the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa.

Says the press release:

Shoshone Falls, measuring more than 12 feet in length, depicts a breathtaking view of one of nature's greatest spectacles in North America. Known as the "Niagara of the West," Shoshone Falls is the largest waterfall along the Snake River, the natural geographic divide between Oregon and Idaho.

And here it is in its glory:

Being so big, and central to the Gilcrease Collection, Shoshone Falls doesn't travel much -- I suspect this will be the first view of it for most visitors to the Portland museum.

The loan must still be approved by the Gilcrease's board, but that's considered to be in the bag; the museum owns 1,366  works by Moran, though this is probably the best. It will go on view in Portland on Oct. 23 and run through Jan. 16.

Like me, Brian Ferriso, the Portland museum's executive director, is a fan of these small shows not only because they are relatively inexpensive but more important because they draw people in to look, really look.

The museum says it will plan special programming about Moran and the painting, and that it won't charge extra to see the work (as it did for La Velata). But it will issue some timed tickets. The Portland Oregonian has a very nice article about the loan, with good background about Moran etc., here.

Thank you, Gilcrease officials.

When it comes to viewing great art, Americans face a disparity of opportunity -- a fact that has always troubled me. It may be politically incorrect, but it shouldn't be controversial to say that most of the best visual art in the United States lies east of the Mississippi, largely because the East's museums had a head start. They were richer, and more conscious of catching up with sophisticated Europe, first.

What is more troubling is the perpetuation of this pattern, partly because of money and partly because some areas are better than others at developing and/or maintaining a tradition of funding the arts.

Or so the story has always gone. Now the Foundation Center has provided some analysis -- emphasis on "some" -- to back up the thesis, and it has displayed its results in a fascinating "Focus on Arts Funding" interactive map that illustrates regional differences. 

The map has limitations: it maps not grants, but the location of grantmakers funding arts and culture, an assumption presumably being that at least some focus more on local/regional giving than national giving (in my experience, a reasonable assumption).

What you will see if you go to the Foundation Center site (link below) and click on a category (on the left, "arts, general," "humanities," "museums," "performing arts," etc.) is the distribution of grantmakers in that category. Mouse over any given chosen state, and you get the actual number of grantmakers in that state.

So, it's no surprise that New York consistently comes out on top, in every category. Is it shocking to see that South Dakota, Arkansas and Mississippi have no grantmakers in the visual arts?

Or that, only New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts have a sizable number of grantmakers interested in historical activities?

By all means take a look.

So as not to overstate the case, let me repeat what I have said before: Foundations provide a small share of arts funding.

Nevertheless, there's a problem here. My solution is more, and less equal, partnerships -- with richer arts institutions sharing more with those out of their league, which is to say below it. 

Surprisingly, some RCA readers seem to have interpreted my last post, about Mark Bauerlein's criticism of the arguments used to advocate for arts education -- which was certainly not against arts education itself -- as a lack of interest in early arts education.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm for arts education, no matter how we get it done -- and where. In fact, among the items of interest that I've saved in the last few weeks to comment on here is one about a museum pre-school.

The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA., announced this month what it calls the first pre-school in an American art museum. The parent cooperative school -- Lincoln Nursery School -- will hold class there for 4- and 5-year-olds from September 13, 2010 through June 9, 2011; it will, according to the press release, "broaden its hands-on, experiential philosophy at deCordova's campus, utilizing all the Sculpture Park and Museum have to offer."

The deCordova is building on an existing relationship with the Lincoln Nursery School, which "has taken advantage of deCordova's campus by exploring, discovering, and learning about the sculpture, art, and landscape. For example, in the fall of 2009, Lincoln Nursery School students visited the Sculpture Park for a field trip and soon after, created their own sculpture at the Lincoln Nursery School, inspired by Steven Siegel's environmentally-friendly newspaper installation, Big, with rift."

Charming, apt, and enlightened. If the picture above, from the school's website, doesn't warm your heart, I don't know what will.

Nancy Fincke, Director of Lincoln Nursery School, said in the release:

...I believe environments influence our thinking. The opportunity to experience the Sculpture Park, nature, the studio classroom, and the Museum at large on a daily basis will inspire children and adults to observe, ask questions, and express their stories through movement and materials. We (the faculty) will in turn make visible to the community the children's expressions of their experiences.

The only downside I can see about this is the 15-child limit, no doubt because of space. I'd bet there's a long waiting list. And maybe it will be an inspiration.

And speaking of inspiration, I have no idea if this is a first, but I tip my hat to David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea for hosting, last week, a one-day exhibition and reception for youngsters (aged 6 to 13) participating in New York City's Dept. of Parks & Recreation summer camps.

Yes, lots of museums do this, but I'm not so sure about commericial galleries, which created the event for the kids and their parents, but opened it to the public. Zwirner also showed a short documentary showing the children making art inspired by classic contemporary artists, like Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein. Here are the details.  

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (top); Lincoln Nursery School (bottom)

Why do we want students to learn about the arts? Is it for their social benefits? Because they "save" students who are little interested in math or English? Because they teach tolerance for other viewpoints?

Why are we all for arts education?

I'd guess that many (most?) Arts Journal readers don't even think about the why. We just know the arts are intrinsically wonderful. But are we making the best argument for arts in education?

Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University, doesn't think so. In a recent post on his blog on Brainstorm, the group blog of The Chronicle of Higher Education, he offers "How Not to Save The Arts." It refers, in turn, to an article he wrote for Education Next called "Advocating for the Arts in the Classroom."

Bauerlein once worked at the National Endowment for the Arts (2003-05), under Dana Gioia, and he criticized current chief Rocco Landesman's methods of advocacy:

[His] emphasis falls on the unusual student, the difficult kid, not on the arts as a subject for study. Landesman doesn't defend arts education as a rigorous discipline that builds concentration and requires practice, practice, practice. Nor does he say, We need arts education to keep alive the legacy of American art--Thomas Cole, Martha Graham, Duke Ellington... He doesn't highlight the provocative stuff with something like, We need arts education to train young people to comprehend innovative, boundary-breaking art. Instead, the purpose is salvation. Some students don't fit the [No Child Left Behind] regime and other subjects don't inspire them. Talented but offbeat, they sulk through algebra, act up in the cafeteria, and drop out of school. The arts "catch" them and pull them back, turning a sinking ego on the margins into a creative citizen with "a place in society."

This view, Bauerlein believes, is a mistake -- and so do I. If salvation is, for some, a byproduct of the arts, fine, but it's not the reason to study them. (Nor, btw, is audience development.) Bauerlein continues:

It doesn't insist upon the arts as a discipline, but rather sentimentalizes the arts as a salvation. (See the rendition of the hood "Carlos" in the event described in the essay.)  It doesn't make other teachers in math, science, English, and social studies respect the arts as an integral part of liberal education. It makes them regard the arts as a vacation from standards and rigor.

Well said.   

Real Clear Arts readers know that I am a fan of The Wall Street Journal's Saturday Masterpiece column, subtitled "Anatomy of a Classic."

Today's piece -- about music -- is no exception. It celebrates the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth with a column about his 24 Preludes, "tiny microcosms [through which] Chopin established the hegemony of the Romantic miniature."

The piece, by David Dubal, a professor of piano performance at the Juilliard School, also contains this statement, which astonishes and pleases me (a Chopin fan) immensely:

Probably more people have come to great music through Chopin than from any other composer.

What an achievement that is.

I've been wanting to weigh in on museum blogs for a long time now. Trouble is, there are too many, and they seem to me to be inconsistent. Frequently, museums have lowly curatorial assistants writing the posts, probably because curators don't want to. Many posts don't seem all that interesting. Maybe they're heavily edited -- or maybe they're not edited at all. 

So I put the idea aside. Now someone at Best Colleges Online has come up with a list of "50 Awesome Art Museum Blogs." I had to look.

It seems that raters at Best Colleges Online had trouble as well. They do not disclose how the blogs were chosen, or ranked. In fact, they are listed not 1 to 50; rather, 10 (or so) are listed by region. It's unclear whether they're in order or random. But here the top three listed for each area:

The Northeast: Brooklyn Museum, Fogg Art Museum, "Face to Face" of the National Portrait Gallery. 

For the South: "The Modern" of the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art, Gibbes Museum blog; Amon Carter Museum.

The Midwest: Indianapolis Museum of Art, NIU Art Museum, Blog @ the Nelson-Atkins.

The West: Asian Art Museum blog; University of Wyoming Art Museum, Hammer News + Blogs.

International: National Museums Liverpool Blog; Behind the Scenes: the East Lothian Museums Blog, the McMaster Museum of Art blog.

The rest of the list is here.

Blogs are an important part of a museum's communications strategy, but clearly, much of this is suspect. So why am I bothering you? Because I was tipped off to this list by none other than the "Other articles, essays and recent items of interest" section of the "Research Roundup" of the Center for the Future of Museums of the American Association of Museums.

Why they listed it I do not have a clue. Why they would consider a website about online universities credible regarding museums I do not know.

I expected better from the Center.  

Another art museum is in trouble: the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Va., which just opened in late 2008, announced its fourth round of layoffs in its less than two years of existence. Current staff numbers just 17, according to the Roanoke Times.

The museum, in downtown Roanoke, with roots going back to 1951, had high hopes. Read from its "about" statement:

At the heart of downtown Roanoke, the new 81,000 square foot Taubman Museum of Art proves an arresting landmark for visitors...As Roanoke's most contemporary structure, it provides an analog for the city's evolution from industrial and manufacturing town to technology-driven city....evok[ing] both the drama of the surrounding mountainous landscape of the Shenandoah Valley and the lyrically gritty industrial-era building culture of the great early 20th century railroad boom, when Roanoke came to prominence as a switchpoint city of the new South.

Its exhibition schedule seems appropriate. But it sounds as if this museum is yet another example of hubris. Again, from the Times:

Since the $66 million art museum opened in downtown Roanoke in November 2008, the institution has struggled financially. The museum underwent two rounds of layoffs in 2009, and a third in February. Mickenberg, who was hired in September, has been working to craft a $3 million annual budget. According to its most recent audit and tax forms, the museum reported $6.8 million in expenses during its first year of operation.

The website refers to a "stellar permanent collection" but gives no details, no information whatsoever about what's in it (though that press release to which I link describes it in generalities).

Roanoke sits in southwest Virginia, far from other museums. I wish its budget was in line with its expectations, or dreams. It wasn't: according to an earlier article in the Times,

The radically expanded art museum's expenses actually exceeded $6.8 million in its first fiscal year, according to a tax filing and external audit recently released by Taubman officials, far overshooting a projected $3.75 million operating budget.

The amount included one-time startup costs, but also payroll for 52 employees, likely more than the museum could have sustained even in healthy economic times.

"Reality began to set in pretty quickly after the opening," said John Williamson, who was museum board president at the time. "And it's been a struggle ever since."

Read more of the oh-so-familiar tale here. 

One could chalk this up to human nature: do we never learn?

Photo credit: Courtesy Taubman Museum of Art

Ordinarily, I would pass up this opportunity to cite yet another example of an art museum dumbing down for the sake of attracting crowds. And I almost did, until I saw who organized the exhibition.

In September, the marvelous Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, home to Raphael's Madonna of the Candelabra (below), Manet's At the Cafe, and Veronese's Portrait of Countess Livia da Porto Thiene and her Daughter Porzia (to name just a few works I picked off the website catalogue randomly), will open Walter Wick: Games, Gizmos and Toys in the Attic (sample at left).

The description: it's the "first museum retrospective of award-winning author and photographic illustrator Walter Wick. Author of Can You See What I See? and co-creator of the Walter Wick, whose I Spy book series loved by millions of children and adults around the world, Wick has a keen interest in puzzles, games, science and illusions. The exhibition will feature a selection of Wick's early photographs, which provided a foundation for the artist's interest in illusions. It will include several of the handcrafted, meticulously detailed installation models accompanied by his large-format color photographs that are the illustrations in his children's books."

Sigh.

I didn't get too worked up, though, because to me it's all about "mix." The Walters has mounted many excellent exhibitions (though the title of one on now -- Checkmate: Medieval People At Play! -- strikes me as a reach), so let it stray into pop culture now and again.

But I changed my mind when I saw that the New Britain Museum of American Art organized the exhibition. This is the very museum that recently renegged on its plan to show newly rediscovered art by women of the Hudson River school because of the costs involved. The very museum that bills itself as "the first institution in this country devoted to collecting and exhibiting American art." The very museum "dedicated to serving all people by pursuing excellence in art through collections, exhibitions, and education."

Double-sigh.

The New Britain Museum seems to have drink the "town square" kool-aid. Its website proclaims "where art meets life."

OK, I know: the cost of Wicks exhibition may already have been paid and accounted for before the reversal on the exhibition of real art was made. I can only hope that is the explanation.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Walters Art Museum 

What to make of Fernando Botero? I came back from Colombia both more and less appreciative of the painter of porky people.

Clearly, he is the best-known Colombian artist: His works are in the National Museum and he has a museum of his own, Museo Botero. There, 123 of his works are on display along with 85 by European artists like Picasso, Bonnard, Caillebotte, Soutine, Roualt, etc., etc. and a few American ones, too -- gilt by association.

The museum, which I believe is owned by the Banco de la Republica, is a handsome hacienda-style building in La Candelaria, the old part of town. Published reports say that Botero donated his and the other works to Bogota in 2004, and insisted that the museum be free, which it is.

The art is well displayed, in two wings on two floors: one wing for Botero's works, one for the other artists.

I am more appreciative of Botero because this is a great thing to do for his compatriots. I saw no other place in Bogota, or Cartagena, where Colombians can view such a variety of art by non-Latins. Botero cast his net wide in collecting -- in addition to those mentioned above, add in Max Beckmann, Max Ernst, Paul Delvaux, Lucian Freud, even Richard Estes and Neil Welliver, and many more. One piece by each, mostly.  

I also love that Botero clearly knows his art/art history -- his homages are both tender and amusing, imho -- and I've put a few here: Homage to La Tour; to the Mona Lisa, and his portrait of Cezanne. Are they satiric, too, as some believe? You decide.

But I was also dismayed by Botero's collecting. Even though he knows better, he seems to have embarked on a name-game trophy hunt. Most of the works are far from the best made by the painters in question. Some are terrible examples. If Colombians leave the Botero museum thinking they have seen Picasso, or Beckmann, or Renoir, or Monet, they will probably wonder what the excitement for those artists is all about.

Here, left, is one of the better ones, by Camille Pissaro, from 1901, of the Louvre. See what I mean?   

So I am less appreciative of his gesture than I might be. I am guessing it was a matter of money, not eye, because some of the drawings in the collection are quite good.

Should he have bought fewer, better works? That would have been my choice.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Botero Museum (top two); © Judith H. Dobrzynski (bottom two), all rights reserved  

Change usually happens gradually, but every now and then there's a big rupture. I think art museums have been gradually taking a turn in recent years that is now accelerating as a new generation of directors take over the top slots at America's big museums.

In the last several weeks, I've talked with a fair number of directors -- a few over 50, but most younger. While there's no unanimity -- on almost anything -- there is a decided movement toward rejecting the idea of museum as "cultural cathedral," a moniker directors were once proud of.

The popular new metaphor, as I write in an article that will appear in Tuesday's edition of The Wall Street Journal, is the "town square."  

As an old saying goes, "name it and frame it." What you call something matters to how it is perceived, and some museum directors want their domains to be social places, interactive, participatory. They see that as a way to draw new generations and new ethnic groups.

This trend is most pronounced at contemporary museums, and it goes way beyond the "populism" that museums like Brooklyn have been criticized for, more because it hasn't worked than because it's not right. (I was reminded of this by the Boston Globe article by Geoff Edgers in Sunday's paper on the American Repertory Theater: "To Change, Or Not To Change? Attendance Is Way Up, But Some Say ART's Artistic Director Has Gone Too Commercial.")

As you may guessed, I have my doubts about the town square metaphor. Great art requires contemplation; it reveals itself slowly, over time, not in one glance. I don't question the motives of the new directors, or their goals, just their methods. 

And I have just one question: What's wrong with a cathedral? They come in all kinds of designs. They're accessible to all. They're quiet, but not silent. If they suggest a certain mode of behavior, of respect, what's wrong with that? Doesn't art, too, deserve respect? 

Traveling, to me, usually involves looking at the art a country has made and accumulated. Of course, one knows in advance that you don't really go to Colombia, my summer vacation destination, to discover world-class art. But every country has something. 

Let's start with Colombia's bright spots: both Bogota and Cartagena (the two cities I visited) have a Museo del Oro, both owned by Colombia's central bank, Banco de la Republica. The main one, in Bogota, was remodeled in 2008, and tells an excellent tale of gold in Colombia's regions. Along with the artifact-filled vitrines are an occasional video. There's an "experience" at the end, called the Offering, where people are directed to a meeting area. A wall suddenly encloses the area, and visitors see a sound and light show.

I liked the artifacts -- like the raft above -- much better. There are also wonderful study rooms, where people can use either computers or books to learn more. Clearly, the varied experiences were designed to offer something for everyone. Late on a Tuesday afternoon, Bogota's Museo del Oro was nicely full but not crowded.

The branch in Cartagena, much smaller, contains artifacts from the area, mostly, including this funerary urn, at left.

(Apologies for the glass glare.)

Bogota has a museum of colonial art, which proved very disappointing. There's little in it, and what's there is not the best quality. I was the only person in the galleries one weekday morning.

The city also has a museum of modern art, but it is a kunsthalle, and was closed for reinstallation while I was there.

On to the National Museum, which is a combined history-portrait-art museum. The building (above), designed as a panopticon and used as a jail, looks like a fortress, but (after what guidebooks say was an extensive reconstruction) actually works well as a museum. The long hallways function as galleries for exhibits about archaeology, the colonial era, the struggle for independence, national portraits, costumes, and even mummies.

One floor is dedicated to art of the 20th century, including many works by -- guess who? Fernando Botero. Botero seems to be a beloved figure in Colombia and, based on the art I saw, the only artist there who has developed a unique style.

What I liked about seeing some of his works here, though, is that some are by Botero before he became Botero. You can see him working through other styles, other artists. Here's an example (again, apologies for the picture quality). It's called Contrapunto, from 1957. 

More about Botero, and the Bank, in another post.

Photo Credits: Courtesy Museum del Oro (top); © Judith H. Dobrzynski (bottom three, all rights reserved)  

Do you ever let magazines pile up, taking weeks to get to them? I do; I am always behind, particularly with magazines like The New Yorker, which I read most of.

That's why it has taken me until now to take note of the article headlined The Mark of A Masterpiece in the issue dated July 12 & 19. If you haven't read it, I commend it to you -- all 20 pages of it (well, minus the space for cartoons).

In it, David Grann lays out the methodology of Peter Paul Biro (left), a Canadian whose forensic art expertise has been used to authenticate, or support the authenitification of, various paintings as the works of Leonardo, Turner, and Pollock. That includes the conclusion reached last fall that La Bella Pincipessa is by Leonardo -- which some connoisseurs still dispute.

Grann strings readers along for several pages, letting you think that fingerprinting will take authentification to a new level (though if you've paid attention in recent years, you'll know that fingerprinting has been deemed wrong in some criminal cases), and then he lowers the boom: little things don't seem quite right, and Biro is revealed as a con man. Biro's website exists mainly as a shell "presently being updated."

Grann certainly did everyone a real service by unmasking the con, no doubt heartening those who think human expertise is the best way of authenticating art. Maybe it is, but I'd hate to rule out technical analysis, which has been so useful in other areas -- and in art. For a couple of examples, see this Q & A, by Nova/PBS, with Eric Posma, an artificial intelligence professor at Maastrict University.

Incidentally, Grann referred to a coming PBS documentary about Biro, but if it is still in production, there's no mention of it on the PBS site.

I am thrilled to report that the Brooklyn Museum just announced new hours: Beginning Oct. 6, it will remain open until 10 p.m. every Thursday and Friday.

Congratulations! This is something I've been harping on for a while, and it's something with which director Arnold Lehman has agreed with me privately and now publicly. Today, he said:

This important and positive change is an institutional priority that will enable us to better serve a twenty-first century audience by providing greater access for visitors who work during the day, for families, as well as for those who prefer to visit weekday evenings.

And museum board chairman Norman Feinberg said:

The Board believes that the previous hours did not appropriately address the changing needs of its community. We are delighted, through this reorganization, to far better serve our visitors.

Hallelujah.

Lehman has been in hot water lately, with critics pouncing on lagging attendance at the museum and its "populist" attempts. I've agreed -- up to a point, though I have always said Lehman has a tougher row to hoe than (almost) any other museum in the U.S. And attendance woes at other places, like the Whitney, have unfairly gone relatively uncriticized.

Under the new plan, the museum will open at 11 a.m. Wed.-Fri., instead of 10 a.m., and it will close on Wednesdays at 6 p.m. Target First Saturdays will continue as currently scheduled.

Other changes: "Existing staff hours, particularly those of the security team, have been rescheduled. The Museum Café, which is managed by Restaurant Associates, will offer dinner options as well as light snacks and beverages, including wine and beer, in the Rubin Pavilion."

This somehow seems hard to do, especially in the current environment, but it's the right thing to do -- I hope other museums follow. Closing doesn't have to be 10 p.m., btw -- it'll be different in different cities. But closing a 5 p.m., or worse 4 p.m., as many museums do, can no longer be justified.

Photo Credit: Courtesy Brooklyn Museum

The Foundation Center released a report on foundation giving the other day, and it confirmed some of the trends I've read in the tea leaves: for arts institutions, the worst impacts of the recession are probably yet to come.

For a start, the report put paid to the dire predictions by some Cassandras that the arts would suffer more than other types of grantees, which was based on the notion that arts were going to be seen as expendable compared with health, human services, etc. That may yet happen, but in the numbers we have, it is not true for foundation giving -- which, admittedly, is a small part of funding for arts groups.

According to the Center, in 2008 -- the first year of the recession -- the arts received a larger share of the pie: 12.5% of total dollars vs. 10.6% in 2007. Museums, followed by performing arts groups, received the largest portions -- 34% and 30%, respectively.

Meantime, giving to human services and to science/technology actually declined.

The bad news is that the arts are not enjoying the proportion they had ten years ago: in 1998, the arts received 14.8% of grant dollars. (Unfortunately, the chart I have goes back only to 1998, so I do not know if that's a peak.)

And, worse, the lack of an overall decline in grant dollars -- which actually grew 5.4% -- suggests that foundations, many of which use a three-year rolling average to determine their annual payouts, probably had to cut grants in 2009, 2010 and ...  

In 2008, the biggest arts funders were the Packard Humanities Institute ($173 million), the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation ($130 million) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation ($122 million). Go Kansas City!

The Architect of the Capitol received the largest 2008 award -- $156 million from the Packard -- followed by $60 million given to the Crystal Bridges Museum (at left) by guess who?

That's a segue to a consistently troubling aspect of arts in America, at least to me. The West (only 9% of grant dollars) and the South (13%) continue to lag behind the Northeast (16%) and the Midwest (14%) in giving to the arts.

The South's total was no doubt boosted by the Walton Family Foundation's gifts to Crystal Bridges -- when that's taken out, the South is behind, too.

If we who love the arts want to ensure their future, we need to make sure that all parts of the country have exposure to great art.  

You can find a press release about the study here and a highlights PDF here.  

Over the weekend, the new head of the Miami Art Museum -- Thom Collins (below, with Suzanne Delehanty, former MAM director) -- had his say in the Miami Herald. On first glance, the article makes him look good, perhaps the right choice. But a close reading throws some doubt on him and his take about art.

Among my quibbles:

• "Miami is the only major city in the U.S. that doesn't have a major art museum of its own," he said. Would that this were true. Perhaps he forgot that the Las Vegas Art Museum closed last year. Perhaps he doesn't realize that, say, Fresno, is another city with a larger population than Miami's, but no "major" art museum -- and a struggling non-major one. Mesa, AZ, has more people than Miami -- according to Wikipedia's list of the largest cities in the U.S. In other works, many Americans have little opportunity to see good art.
• " 'To engage people, they have to be able to see themselves in some aspect of what you do, whether it's their histories and issues that are important to them or just fleshing out how best to communicate with audiences, how best to serve them through education and in our various neighborhoods,' said Collins, a trim, effusive Pennsylvanian who describes himself as an 'anti-elitist' when it comes to art." I take issue with the "see themselves" argument, which is made by others as well; not only is it not universally true, but also I believe that such thinking undermines one of art's greatest virtues - its universality.
• "A public institution is committed to collection growth with an eye to putting together a more-or-less encyclopedic survey of major developments in its area . . . and to protect and preserve those collections in perpetuity. When this building opens, I trust that all of us in public and private institutions will coordinate what we are doing so we can really together make the case for Miami as one of the most significant art centers in the U.S." Well, it's a nice goal - but is it possible, in this day and age, to build an encyclopedic collection from such a small base? MAM was a kunsthalle until 1996. Nowadays, I believe that museums have to focus and build on their strengths -- unless they have unlimited resources. MAM does not; Collins still must raise more than $50 million to complete the museum's planned building.

Ok, he's an enthusiastic guy -- why cavil? Because Collins is raising expectations, and that's a dangerous game: he is bound to disappoint.