Archives for April 2011

More turnover at the top of a yet another Texas museum: Earlier this week, Ned Rifkin resigned as director of the Blanton Museum at the University of Texas at Austin, less than two years after he arrived. The university’s provost, Steven W. Leslie, immediately promoted the deputy director for external affairs and operations, Simone Wicha, to the top slot.

Rifkin stays on at the university to do research and teach, but his quick replacement probably reflects unhappiness with within the Blanton/university. The exact nature of Rifkin’s difficulties — or disagreements with the powers that be — are unclear, but his departure has been rumored for weeks. 

Rifkin came to the Blanton from the post of Undersecretary for Art at the Smithsonian. Before that, at the job he held until 2001, he was director of the Menil Collection in Houston, where he faced a board divided by his leadership and performance, a situation recounted here on 29-95.com. Rifkin also once headed both the High Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum.

In the press release announcing Rifkin’s resignation from the Blanton, Leslie said the university appreciated his knowledge, and noted that Rifkin had improved student involvement with the museum, but not much else.

It was Rifkin, who reorganized the Blanton’s staff last April, who had promoted Wicha from director of development to deputy director.

Like the Blanton — Austin’s largest art museum — both Houston’s biggest, the Museum of Fine Arts, and Dallas’s, the Dallas Museum of Art, are experiencing leadership change. The MFA’s beloved director, Peter C. Marzio, died last December, and Bonnie Pittman, the DMA’s much-loved director, recently announced that she would step down because of health reasons. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Austin360.com

 

The National Endowment for the Arts is out with another statistical study, an attempt to state the value Americans place on the arts by looking at the time and money they spend consuming the arts and based on numerous federal studies by the U.S. Economic Census, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

While the information about the perforrming arts is more plentiful, there is some data about “museums” — though since there is no definition for “museums,” we have to assume that all museums, not just art museums, are in these numbers.

With those caveats, here are a few interesting numbers:

• In 2009, the most recent year for which estimates were available, U.S. consumers spent $6 billion on admissions to museums and libraries. That compares to $14.5 billion on tickets to performing arts events, $10.5 billion on tickets to movie theaters, and $20.5 billion on sports admissions. 
• On an average day, museums draw more than 500,000 people. On an average weekend day or holiday, this figure climbs to 885,000 people. By comparison, 1.5 million (age 15 and older) attend the performing arts, 3.4 million go to movie theaters, and 2.7 million attend sporting events. 
• The survey shows that on average visitors spend 2 hours and 24 minutes at museums.
• Not surprisingly, while peak attendance for performing arts activities and sports events occurs in the evenings – between 8 and 9 p.m. for performing arts and 7 p.m. for sports events – for museums, peak attendance occurs between noon and 1 p.m.: lunch hour.

How to interpret this, aside from the fact that museums seem to be a good value — which is an obvious selling point nowadays.

Two, versus the alternatives here, museums are punching below their weight in attendance.

Three, intuitively, given these attendance patterns, museums would do better if they were open in the evenings. People are going during lunch hour because that’s the only time they can on a weekday.

On that score (see my earlier pleadings on the subject, starting here), I am pleased to record here that the Museum of Modern Art recently initiated summer evening hours: between July 1 and Sept. 3, MoMA will be open until 8:30 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Currrently, MoMA is open until 8 p.m. on Fridays, and 5:30 p.m. on other days.

And the Frick Collection will stay open, with free admission, from 6 to 9 p.m. on May 13 — and promises  to have these special evening hours (with music, sketching, curator talks) once for each special exhibition it mounts (this one is connected to the current Rembrandt show). It’s a start (though the Frick said it tried staying open one evening a week, at full price, back around 2002 — but charged full price and had no special offerings).

Here’s a link to the NEA report and another to the NEA press release.

Is the fact that nearly 1,000 visual artists applied for a program that will select 15 of them a positive or a negative?

Let’s take it as a positive (and not a sign that they can not survive in this economy), because the program is called the smARTpower initiative, and it was developed by the U.S. State Deparment with the Bronx Museum of the Arts — a new effort in cultural diplomacy.

In late January, the BMA put out an open call for applications from artists who would agree to travel to 15 countries, including China, Ecuador, Egypt, Ghana, India, Kosovo, Lebanon, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Venezuela, and work with communities in each place, collaborating on works of art that will address social issues, like women’s empowerment, health, the environment, civic engagement, education, etc., on either a local or global level.

They’ll be envoys and partners, according to the museum’s statement when it was selected by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs last October. They’ll stay up to 45 days.

The winners will be announced at the end of May, selected by a panel that consists of

• Tomie Arai – Visual Artist
• Sandra D. Jackson-DuMont – Deputy Director of Education and Public Programs and Adjunct Curator at the Seattle Art Museum
• Carin Kuoni – Vera List Center Director, Curator and Critic
• Tumelo Mosaka – Curator of Contemporary Art at the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Holly Block – Executive Director at the Bronx Museum of the Arts

Despite a tight deadline — applications were due Feb. 28 — artists from nearly 50 states responded and Block (pictured above) said that, despite high expections, the museum received far more applications than it had predicted.

So the panel has its work cut out.

I like the program, but I do have a quibble: why must the works of art address social issues? What’s wrong with art that is simply aesthetically pleasing — or not — or art that addresses personal issues? Or art that references history? Does it smack of cultural imperialism to insist that our artists go to a country and push for an examination of social issues? I wonder.  

 

If polling the public is one way museums are trying to engage people, can another trendy method be far behind? I’m speaking of gamification, also known by techies as “funware.”

The practice, which turns non-game activities into games, is rampant on sites like Facebook and in the commercial world. In these games, participant rack up points, or achieve levels, or earn fake money, or compete against themselves or others, and so on. (Think “Farmville.”)

I am not much of a game-player (and never online), but I confess that a few years ago, when I was invited to participate in solving a mystery at the Metropolitan Museum, for which the more you knew about art, the better you’d be at finding the culprit, I said yes. In the end, the friend who invited me could not round up the minimum number of people required, and the evening fell through. (Whether the problem was the Met, the lack of art knowledge, or something else (cost?), I do not know.)

Some years ago, the late Thomas Hoving published a book of art games, Master Pieces: The Curator’s Game, which has now been turned into an app for the iPhone and iPad.

The point: gamification of museums is starting to happen: even current non-gamers might fall for gamification, and that might help museums win new audiences.

This isn’t a museum, but there’s a game coming up soon at the New York Public Library. Called “Find the Future: The Game,” it is being directed by acclaimed game expert and author Jane McGonical, author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, pictured above. The game was created with Kiyash Monsef, and designed and developed by Playmatics and Natron Baxter Applied Gaming.

It starts on May 20, and involves staying overnight in the main library on Fifth Avenue. In it, 500 people aged 18 and up “will spend the night exploring the Library and its world-renowned collections as they write a book together,” the member newsletter says. Here’s the description:

During the May 20 “Write All Night” event, from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., 500 prequalified players (18 and older) will explore the building’s 70 miles of stacks, and, using laptops and smartphones, follow clues to such treasures as the Library’s copy of the Declaration of Independence in Thomas Jefferson’s hand. After finding each object, players will write short, personal essays inspired by their quest — for example, how would they write the Declaration? Winning the game means writing a collaborative book based on these personal stories about the future, and this volume will be added to the Library’s collections.

Sign me up. But that won’t happen. When I went online to see details, I discovered that the game is meant for “young people.” See here.

Last summer, nine Smithsonian Institution museums (including the Hirshhorn and the Freer-Sackler) cooperated in a game called goSmithsonian Trek, which could be played from any iPhone or Android phone. It received some good press.

Are there other examples? Please comment if you know of any.

I’m calling attention to gamification now for a couple of reasons:

1. It seems bound to happen at museums, but I hope art museums don’t spend too many resources on it, for now. 
2. There’s a lot to learn about gamification before that. 
3. Let’s hope that museum games truly center on the art, and are a learning experience as well as rewarding fun. 
4. If possible, museums ought to share what they’re learning about gamification.

Competing with big games, developed by big developers, is bound to be expensive.

 

 

In a country whose populace has a reputation for not voting as diligently as it can — and should — it strikes me as a little odd that so many institutions are using voting contests to attract interest and involvement.

But here’s another one,  a new experiment in “visitor engagement” at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and it raises an issue: Since Mar. 31, the MIA has been asking people to vote on the conservation destiny of a painting in its collection. I wonder if that is a choice that should be left “to the people.”  

It’s a little more complicated than that, of course. Here’s the short version of the story: For years, MIA curators have suspected that the red sportsman in the foreground of a painting called Landscape with a Watermill (above right)  by Meindert Hobbema was not painted by the artist, but rather was added at a later date. Recently, they confirmed their suspicions: he was added in the 19th century. The question is, should the figure be left there, as is, or removed?

MIA has posted this story on its blog “The Bubbler,” is asking the public to vote on the question. 

Hobbema has earned his reputation as a great landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age, so this is not some throwaway painting by an unknown. As curators did their research, they discovered from auction records that the sportsman was added between 1810 and 1828. A 1809 record leaves him out of the description, while the 1828 and later records put him in it.

Why would the painting have been altered? Here’s what MIA says:

It’s impossible to know the exact reason, but we do know that in the early 19th century, sporting subjects were extremely popular, particularly in England. Perhaps it was added at the request of the owner, or to make the work more desirable (therefore commanding a higher price) at auction.

Yet, as the MIA also writes on the blog, the addition of the huntsman shifts the mood of the painting. Take a look at the painting without the huntsman, above left.

What to do? The MIA is asking blog visitors: “Does the painting benefit from the removal of the sportsman? Should a paintings conservator mask the 19th century addition of the sportsman (this process is completely reversible)? Or is the figure now part of the painting’s history?”

Nowhere does the MIA state its strong opinion or whether it will be bound by the vote (and that’s a good thing).

At the moment, votes are running nearly 60% to 40% against removing the sportsman, even though the process would be reversible.

Yet I side — and I suspect most art experts side — with those who want to take him out, and return to the painting to Hobbema’s original  vision. He’s the artist, afterall.

So what does MIA do if the public strongly feels otherwise? To return to my question, is this the kind of question that should be put to the public? If MIA can manage expectations, and disappointments, it’s ok. It is a great learning experience. But if the public thinks the vote will determine the outcome, then it’s not ok.  

Voting ends May 31.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts