Tuesday's New York Times contained a very interesting article headlined "History That's Written in Beads as Well as Words" about "deep history."  You may very well be asking, so what, what's that got to do with art and museums? I cite it because it describes what some people have told me is a parallel problem, if you will, in art history. The Times article says that too many historians are focusing on the reccent past, with "Three out of four historians...specializ[ing] in the post-industrial era or the 20th century, the … [Read more...]

Over the last few years, it has become a required museum activity: they have to make and post videos, in the galleries and on their websites. Media experts say people -- especially young people -- want it (not just from museums, but also from newspapers, magazines, and so on).  So the other day, when the Philadelphia Museum of Art emailed me with news that it had posted on its home page a time-lapse video showing the installation of its Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion exhibition -- "a unique look at a gallery's … [Read more...]

Ever since Peter C. Marzio, director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, died last December, I've been wondering what the museum would do to honor its longtime director. When Philippe de Montebello retired from the top job at the Metropolitan Museum in 2009, he was honored by an exhibition of works acquired during his tenure. When Anne d'Harnoncourt, director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, died suddenly in 2008, works acquired during her tenure were given a special label as a tribute, among other things. Marzio, … [Read more...]

The sneaky big Metropolitan Museum* changed its website over the weekend, as I just discovered by accident. (No press release was sent and none has been posted.) There is now a press release -- not yet posted online. But I've posted the guts at the end of my initial post. Now it is posted here. I went looking for information about an exhibit, and found a gigantic, beautiful picture of the Met's exterior, at night (below), at the URL, which rotates with four exhibition photos. In the right corner, on the bottom, was "Welcome to Our Newly … [Read more...]

Watching a museum die is painful. This case, while small, raises a side question, too -- about a museum's place in an award-winning city with aspirations for attracting business. When we last left the Fayetteville, NC, Museum of Art, it had closed and was seeking advice from proven community leaders on a reorganization. The museum had already torn up plans for a $15 million expansion, drafted in 2007, when times were different. The reorganization has now, it seems, been dismissed, and the museum is selling its permanent … [Read more...]

 In the middle of this horrible week for the stock market, collectors came out and put up a lot of money at the Artists for Haiti auction Thursday night. The total, $13.7 million, exceeded the presale estimate of $7.5 million to $10.5 million, and four world record prices were set! All 27 works, donated by the artists with some specifically for the auction, sold. Christie's, which conducted the auction but took no fees, sais that Artists for Haiti became the most successful charity auction it has ever held (but not the … [Read more...]

Next Friday, Sept. 30, the Frick Collection is trying something new to attract young audiences: College Night. And it's free. This outreach attempt is a pilot program developed by the Frick's Education Chief Rika Burnham. This summer, she used a college-age arts intern to research the "viability" of a College Night. They discovered that a few other museums have tried it, and liked it apparently. So, on Sept. 30, undergraduate and graduate students need only show their IDs to gain entry from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., with one catch: … [Read more...]

The Ford Foundation and some trustees have stayed the closure of the American Folk Art Museum. At a board meeting last night, according to published reports, the board decided against closing and transferring the museum's collections and voted to remain open. It also elected a new board president, Edward Blanchard, who told The New York Times: "We are confident that we're embarking on a prudent course with the facilities that we have and the staff that we have. I think we're going to do some very exciting things." There is no indication of … [Read more...]

The wonders of technology have revealed a new portrait by Goya. It's underneath his Portrait of Don Ramón Satué (below), which is owned by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. According to a press release, the new imaging technology is called scanning macro-Xray -- flourescent spectrometry and it was developed by the University of Antwerp and the Delft University of Technology. It quotes Professor Joris Dik of the Delft University as saying "We can take the new mobile scanner to a museum and examine a painting layer by layer. This enables … [Read more...]

What, ArtInfo said this morning, no visual artist geniuses? "For the first time in 15 years, there are no contemporary visual artists on the illustrious list of MacArthur Foundation fellows," read one post on the site.  Maybe the MacArthur judges were chastened by last year, when there was one: Elizabeth Turk. Turk makes very beautiful carvings that lie pretty much outside the mainstream of contemporary art, and critics (including some on my blog post) called them "boring." A sample is at right. I wondered what … [Read more...]