The signs have been there for some time, and here's more evidence: Libraries are increasing in importance in American communities: Use is not declining because we get more and more of our information from the Internet and read fewer books and magazines. Moreover, it's not just the recession that's driving people to libraries for free books, computer use, classes and advice. The trend for the last 11 years, through economic ups and downs, is rather steady growth. Libraries seem to be well on their way to … [Read more...]

Consider attendance at several arts activities: classical music concerts, jazz concerts, musical theater, non-musical plays, art museums & galleries, craft & visual arts festivals, parks & historic sites, and reading of literature. Do they seem masculine or feminine to you? What about these arts activities: playing a classical music instrument, painting, pottery, sewing, photography, creative writing, singing in a choir or chorale, and buying art? Are they masculine or feminine? According to Section 26 … [Read more...]

I think this is good news, but I'm not entirely sure: Deere & Co., the tractor maker in Moline, Il., has agreed to show its large corporate art collection at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, begining in April and lasting indefinitely. The works will be shown in their own gallery. The news came in yesterday's Quad City Times (here), which said the official announcement would be made today -- but there's nothing on the museum's or the company's website yet. Deere has been collecting art since the 1960s, and has amassed nearly 1,000 … [Read more...]

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art did a smart, simple thing for the Christmas season the other day -- small but smart and good for art.  It wasn't as brilliant as the move made by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, which as you surely know by now announced in a press release on Tuesday morning that it would open its doors, free of charge, to American and Canadian active-duty service women and service men, plus their families, starting during these holidays and lasting throughout 2010. Adult admission to the Albright-Knox is $12, … [Read more...]

This may sound harsh, and I don't mean it to be, but one has to wonder what the city fathers and mothers of Claremont, Ca. were thinking when they decided to open the Claremont Museum of Art a few years ago. That museum, we now know, is about to close for lack of funding. Claremont has a population of about 38,000 and is 13.4 square miles in area. It describes itself, on its own website, as 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles -- which has a number of museums, as we know. Did Claremont really think it needed its own? If so, it … [Read more...]

Like artists, poets send Christmas cards, too. Witness Robert Frost, who sent illustrated chapbooks of his poetry to friends as Christmas cards from 1934 through 1962. Poets House* in lower Manhattan has put its collection of these Frost chapbooks on display in an exhibition that runs through Jan. 16 This intimate exhibition features beautiful, illustrated chapbooks of Frost's poetry published by Spiral Press and sent out as holiday greetings by the revered poet as well as by his publishers, collectors and friends. Master printer Joseph … [Read more...]

Artists send Christmas cards, too. Maybe some readers of Real Clear Arts have been lucky enough to receive them. For the rest of us, there's an exhibition of examples, drawn from the Archives of American Art*; it's been on view since Nov. 20 at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture -- aka the home of the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum -- and continues through Jan. 10, 2010. Called Season's Greetings: Holiday Cards From the Archives of American Art, it includes examples by … [Read more...]

Both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities announced new rounds of grants in recent days, and both are worth a closer look. The NEH is sending $20 million to 319 projects in 45 states. Lots of the awards, as usual, are small -- $5,000 here, $6,000 there -- made to smaller institutions. But there were big ones, too. Among those winners: The Peabody Essex Museum (right), which received $750,000 to endow a curator of photography position and for "enhanced humanitites programming." Brandeis … [Read more...]

What was the first thing Thomas P. Campbell did last January when he assumed his new job as head of the Metropolitan Museum*?  That was one of the questions Campbell encountered on Wednesday night, when he addessed a forum sponsored by the Alliance for the Arts and the New York Times. Campbell spoke -- and showed slides -- for 25 minutes, give or take, and then opened the floor. I was eager to see what the public wanted to know, but truth is this public seemed to consist mainly of people from arts institutions or … [Read more...]

The Fresno Metropolitan Museum's woes -- as reported by the Fresno Bee this week -- suggest that it may not be long for this world. "Absent a miracle, The Met will have to close in the very near future," said Fresno bankruptcy lawyer Riley Walter, who has represented the museum as a financial crisis consultant for months. Like other museums, the FMM (at left) had large ambitions -- too large, probably -- and undertook an overambitious expansion. As the Bee reported last March, in an article headlined "Big Vision, … [Read more...]