Archives for May 2011

I haven’t been to the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, by the way — one of the museums now available on Google. I will someday. But I couldn’t bear to experience it for the first time in this way. I didn’t fall in love with art — or museums — because of “zoom levels.” 

That is David Franklin, director of the Cleveland Art Museum, speaking on the subject of the Google Art Project. (I actually have been to the Hermitage.)

Given all the praise for GAP, I was a tad surprised to hear his views, which came out at the panel I moderated for International Museum Day at the Toledo Art Museum on May 18. As it happened, one audience member asked a question about the Google Art Project (the entire discussion about “Museums and Memory” has been posted on YouTube) and Franklin, a panelist, was quick to speak out against it.

Until then, I went with the flow in favor: I rather think it’s fun to zoom in on the brush strokes and pigments in, say, Holbein’s The Merchant Georg Gisze at Berlin’s Gemaldegalerie, though I haven’t had the patience to use the technology that allows computer users to pan around galleries of each museum that are part of the GAP. (GAP’s creator, btw, has said he never intended the site to be a meta-museum, but that’s how some people are treating it.) I also thought it might draw people to visit museums, and that would obviously be a good thing.

But Franklin doesn’t think GAP is a good introduction to art. In Toledo, he mentioned that he had spoken about GAP at the recent TED conference in Cleveland, known as TEXxCLE. His talk is posted here, and I asked for and received a copy of his script (from which he says he diverted at times).

The quote above is from his talk, which begins with a slide of the Cleveland Museum’s Stargazer, a sculpture from what is now Turkey. It’s true the picture above does not do justice to this 5,000+ year-old object. Franklin showed his TED audience a slide, and then her, and said: 

When you encounter the Stargazer in the museum, she looks as though she could have been sculpted yesterday. Translucent marble, clean lines, almost an interpretation of the human form that Picasso would have envied. 5,000 years ahead of its time, but embodying a gesture still timeless — a small human figure looking hopefully to the skies.

The Stargazer tells a story of human aspiration. Her place in the story stretches back into our prehistory. But she also holds a special place in a story that stretches forward. The story of why museums matter.

Museums matter because they create the space to behold, to circle, to covet, to engage with an object so small, and feel the continuity of something so large.

I really like that description.

Franklin goes on in his speech to elaborate on four reasons why technology can’t replace going to a museum, but should instead be used to better understand the originals, and says that art must be experienced, that viewing something online is hardly the same as experiencing it. I don’t think he would get much argument on those points from RCA readers.

The question, though, is whether viewing art on GAP makes one more or less likely to visit museums — and I suspect the answer is not a universal one. Sometimes it will, and sometimes it won’t. Not much downside in that.

But one final thought, now that GAP has been around a while and publicity has died down: I’d like to know if the initial attraction of GAP has continued. Are the hits still high at participating museums?

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Cleveland Art Museum

 

While at the groundbreaking for the downtown Whitney Museum last week, I got to thinking about the uptown building. As with most change, there are risks associated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recent deal to occupy the Whitney Museum’s Madison Avenue Breuer building when it decamps for Tribeca.

But there is a huge opportunity too. So forget about the knee-jerk reactions others have expressed about how putting contemporary art into the Whitney “outpost” turns it into a stepchild, or how Met will lower its quality standards to fill those galleries.

Or even, from another point of view, how it will divide the Met’s audience — the cool kids will go to the contemporary galleries and the fuddy-duddies will go to the Fifth Avenue Met.

I have aspirations for the Met-Whitney, which are related to the third.

It isn’t always easy for museum-goers to see or understand links between old art and new art, yet many contemporary artists are inspired by pre-WW II art. I would like to see the Met organize exhibitions in the Breuer building that helps people learn about those relationships.

I am thinking out loud here, so no “ideal” model is coming to mind. But I know of two recent examples that address this issue. Both are/were overseas, however, so I haven’t seen them. I mention them for their concepts.

One is on view now through July 4 at the Rijksmuseum: Kiefer & Rembrandt. For it, Anselm Kiefer was invited to create a work inspired by The Night Watch. He did it in a roundabout way, making La Berceuse (for Van Gogh), as van Gogh greatly admired Rembrandt, and Kiefer admires them both. As described recently in a New York Times blog post,

Mr. Kiefer…reinterprets “The Night Watch” as a three-dimensional triptych, each piece approximately 5 feet wide and 13 feet tall. The center element displays a worn antique garden chair, seemingly floating in space. The two side sections showcase inverted sunflowers and cracked, dry soil — Mr. Kiefer has chosen to depict Rembrandt with objects distinctly attributed to van Gogh.

The sculpture, a detail of which is pictured above, is on display in The Night Watch gallery; the Rijksmuseum has also mounted a photography exhibition showing Kiefer at work nearby. Every weekend, the museum has a program introducing the relationship between Kiefer’s work and the Old Masters. 

The other exhibition took place in London in 2009 at Robilant + Voena: it was called Back To the Future: Young Artists Look To Old Masters, and I wrote about it here.

The trouble with both examples is that they are rather literal, and all of the new art was commissioned by the museum or the gallery. I’d like to see exhibits that do not depend on such instigation, but rather interpret contemporary works that were made, on their own, by artists, without interventions.

Perhaps readers know of such models.  

I’m not suggesting that the entire Breuer building be devoted to these shows. But it would be nice to see them come around from time to time. If done well, they could be very popular, as well as enlightening.

Photo Credit: Myra May, Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum

 

 

Now this is the difference between the way something is covered in Discovery News, and the way it’s covered in a British tabloid, the Daily Mail.

The subject is the consumption of culture — going to museums and attending concerts, etc. — and Discovery’s headline ran: Cultured People Feel Less Stress.

The Mail, on the other hand, wrote Looking for the ideal man? Try the Nearest Museum or Art Gallery, Say Health Experts.

Actually, the Mail’s story was a little more complete. So let me quote from it:

…men who regularly  indulge in cultural activities are likely to be in better shape, both mentally and physically, than those who do not, according to a study.

Going to the theatre, concerts and even the cinema results in a range of benefits for men, including less depression and anxiety.

Women also benefit, but not to the same degree, says the largest study of its kind.

The study, led by Koenraad Cuypers of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, analyzed information from 50,797 adults who live in Norway’s Nord-Trondelag County. It was published in the British Medical Association’s Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

There’s another difference between the male and female benefits, now quoting Discovery:

For men, passive activities such as taking in a concert or museum exhibition are associated with an upbeat mood and better health, it found.

For women, though, the link is active, in that they were less likely to feel anxious, depressed or feel unwell if they played music or created art.

I can imagine the difference in the way men and women are interpreting those results.

Is there a lesson in marketing here? There may be. Per Discovery:

The results indicate that the use of cultural activities in health promotion and healthcare may be justified,” they conclude.

As extensive as it is, this is just one study — and it’s not clear to me that people everywhere would feel the same as Norwegians do. There’s also a cause-and-effect question — does cultural consumption lead to happiness or does happiness cause people to seek culture?

Still, given the male gap in arts-going, this kind of thinking might be looked at as an opportunity. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy Thomas Struth, Gallerie dell Accademia, Venice

 

On Sunday, the Kimbell Art Museum opens its newest special exhibition, Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910-1912. Ho-hum, you may be thinking. What’s new about that?

The Museum of Modern Art, for one, mounted a landmark show on the duo, Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism, in 1989. It was lauded as setting the record straight on their relationship, for concluding that Braque was essential to the development of Cubism (e.g., see Michael Brenson’s review in The New York Times). What more is there to say?   

Besides, that exhibition included about 400 works; the Kimbell’s (organized with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art) has 16 paintings and 20 etchings and drypoints. Case closed.

But not so fast. The Kimbell and Santa Barbara have something up their sleeves. They focus on the two critical years, and provide new scholarship on the role of format and its representational consequences in Cubist experimentation. For example, how did the use of oval-shaped canvases play into their Cubist game? How were those compositions to be framed? The Kimbell’s oval painting was framed as a rectangle — should it have been?  

Plus — probably more exciting for non-experts — for the past year, the Santa Barbara Museum has been working with MegaVision, a local company that makes high-quality cameras for professional, scientific, cultural and medical uses. With its digital-imaging equipment, the museums have taken “spectral images” of certain works in the exhibition. Spectral imaging can reveal features invisable to the human eye. So:

The spectral imaging created by MegaVision will be incorporated into interactive software that will allow visitors and online users to manipulate and study works with a level of detail and precision never before possible for museum audiences….this cutting-edge visual technology introduces new ways to look at and understand the processes, relationships, and stylistic developments of this important movement. Hand-held, touch-screen computers will provide mobility and interactive media content to exhibition visitors. For the first time in a museum setting, every visitor will have the opportunity to sit in front of an actual painting by Picasso or Braque and independently zoom in on the smallest brush strokes and specks of color.

This is just one example of the new technology’s capability, the Kimbell says.

It’s no surprise that the technology is made available by a specially created iPad app, “affectionately called iCubist,” and designed by Reza Ali.  

From the press release, it allows users to:

View and study works with a level of detail and precision never before possible for museum audiences….to manipulate a succession of digitized spectral images that show the artworks at different light frequencies (ultraviolet and infrared), revealing the most minute details…[and to] uncover important decisions made by the artists in developing their compositions.

Deconstruct a Cubist composition and attempt to put it back together.. [and thus] learn first-hand about the intellectual and creative processes employed by Picasso and Braque in their paintings. The physical act of moving visual elements emphasizes compositional choices made by the artists to create, for example, a sense of balance or movement. It also highlights recognizable elements and describe their significance.

Compare digital reproductions of paintings by the featured artists, Picasso and Braque, by clicking on markers that pop up to explain key aspects of their individual styles. This interactive activity will help visitors exercise connoisseurship to distinguish between the artists’ hands, despite their close similarity during the Cubist years.

Explore the history of Cubism by means of an illustrated timeline that includes vintage photography of the artists and their friends and reproductions of key works of art.

I can’t exactly show you here what you’ll see on iCubist, but the top picture is a Braque painting in visible light and the bottom one shows it in infrared. You can see the tabs that you’d be able to use if this screen were really an iPad — Explore, Time Travel, Compare, etc.

So maybe the last word on Picasso-Braque was not said all those years ago. This certainly seems like exciting technology for the exploration of paintings.

Photo Credits: Courtesy ARS/Kimbell Art Museum 

Just for fun, I attended today’s groundbreaking for the Whitney downtown — ok, not really, I had other business in the neighborhood and decided to include it on my itinerary to Chelsea and below.

For one, I stopped in at the Gagosian gallery exhibition, Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L’Amour fou, which is worth the trip. I understand that some people are tired of Gagosian’s rolling out of these niche Picasso exhibits. But I’m not. I agree with Jerry Saltz’s review — which concludes, “As Walter herself said, ‘You don’t resist Picasso … a woman doesn’t resist Picasso.’ See this show; heed her words.”

But back to the Whitney ceremony, which took place in a tent on the spot near the High Line where Renzo Piano’s building will rise.

Despite the shovels hung from the ceiling (left), there was no ground breaking, per se, just a performance by Elizabeth Streb which had dancers jumping through glass panes and her standing under a shower of dirt, which was later turned over several times by the powers-that-be, including Mayor Bloomberg and Whitney director Adam Weinberg (below). 

The whole thing struck me as more of a pep rally than a groundbreaking. Several people received standing ovations for being introduced (e.g. the founder’s granddaughter, Flora Miller Biddle), and Weinberg got a lot of foot-stomping, too. Everyone mentioned that the Whitney was returning to its roots downtown, which — after a while — sounded more like people trying to convince themselves than that they believed it now.

There is, I think, a lot of wishful thinking in the Whitney’s move — and that may or may not turn out to be a good thing. One worry: the capital campaign is far from over: Of $720 million, just over $500 million has been raised.

Still, I may rue this day, but I’m going out on a limb regarding the architecture: Piano’s design, based on the drawings and sketches I’ve seen, look pretty good (though that clunky model Piano is holding at right gives me pause) for the display of art. I have disliked many of his more recent museum projects — the Morgan Library expansion, LACMA’s Resnick pavillion, etc. The Art Institute of Chicago is having problems with its Modern wing, and we still have to see about the expansion of the Isabella Stewart Gardner, which opens next year.

But the Whitney is looking better. I’m not talking about the outside; this is about how the art will look.

Interestingly, for the Whitney, Piano got to design a whole new building, like his Beyeler Foundation, his best museum, and not an expansion, like the others I’ve mentioned. It may just be that he’s at his best with a clean sheet of paper. I’m hopeful.

The Whitney opens a new exhibit, Designing the Whitney of the Future, in is lower gallery on Thursday, where we’ll see more.

And the museum’s home page, which was flashing neon about its groundbreaking when I last checked, has also embedded a video preview of the building. UPDATE: on 5/25, the Whitney home page is back to normal, but you can still access the video.

Photo Credit: © Judith H. Dobrzynski