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Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Archives for December 2011

Sad New Year’s Eve News: John Buchanan, FAMSF Director, Has Died

I just received the news that Buchanan, at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco for the last six years, died yesterday at the age of 58.

Here’s a link to the press release.

JohnBuchanan.jpgPreviously, Buchanan had served as executive director of the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon (1994-2005), director of Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee (1986-1994) and executive director of the Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences in Peoria, Illinois (1982-1986).

Buchanan was a controversial figure in the museum world, criticized for staging too many popular exhibitions in fashion, jewelry, Impressionism, etc., at the expense of scholarly exhibits that advanced ideas.

But by the numbers, he was a success.

As the press release notes:

Under Buchanan’s six-year stewardship the Museums welcomed over 11.9 million visitors, presented over 100 special exhibitions rooted in the depth and diversity of the museums’ permanent collections, oversaw the publication of 31 exhibition catalogues and collection-based publications, and increased the museums’ membership to 122,000 households. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco have the third largest membership in the nation, are the fourth most visited art museums in North America and are the fourteenth most visited museums in the world.

In its obit for Buchanan, the San Francisco Chronicle noted that Diane B. Wilsey, president of the museums’ board of trustees, had appointed a governance committee of seven of the top administrators as soon as Buchanan took medical leave in mid-December. It is headed by the CFO Michelle Gutierrez.

I knew John, and while he did have weaknesses as a museum director, he also had strengths. He threw his life and his enthusiasm into every museum he worked at. My sympathies go to his wife, Lucy.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Final Thoughts On Crystal Bridges — For 2011, That Is

When I wrote my review of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art for the Wall Street Journal, which was published a few weeks ago, and mentioned here, I did not have the space to cover several noteworthy aspects of the project.

CBsculpture.jpgNoteworthy and, for the most part, laudable. Perhaps noting them will help counter the mostly misguided criticism of the museum’s benefactor, Alice Walton.

Let’s start with the name itself. Some people, ridiculously, in my opinion, have crticized the name Walton chose for the museum, saying it sounds more like a housing subdivision than a museum. Would they have preferred the Alice Walton Museum, a la the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum or the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh (among so many others)? Or would they prefer what is happening in Miami? Rather, Walton followed the practice of the Libbeys, in Toledo, among many others, and wisely decided against naming the museum after herself.

LibraryArea.jpgNext, the setting: Although I haven’t traversed all of the trails on the land surrounding the museum, I have on my two visits been able to walk some of them. They are lovely on their own, and while some large-scale sculptures sit on the premises (as above, Shore Lunch by Dan Ostermiller), they are sparse — so far — leaving plenty of room for nature. The building itself, which has several awkward features, does sit well in the ravine, relating to the terrain around it. Nice choice.

One little-mentioned feature of the museum is its library, which already includes more than 50,000 items (books, manuscripts and a large collection of color plates), about two-thirds of which are available for the public to use or to browse. The library area (above left) includes open stacks — contrast that with the many museums where books in stacks, if available, must be called for hours in advance. Only the rare books must be requested, and the museum promises to bring some out for display.

CBboardroom.jpgAnd forget the uncomfortable furniture found in many libraries — Crystal Bridges offers comfortable chairs, desks and computers. Books and art periodicals have also been placed between galleries, allowing visitors to rest, to take a breather, in little lounges before taking in the next tranch of art.

The furniture for the public isn’t fancy — but neither is that for the trustees. Crystal Bridges’ boardroom (right) is not a leather-chair and mahogany kind of place; it is, as you can see for yourself, rather plain.

CBstore.jpgCrystal Bridges has a museum store — and a good one, very handsomely designed by Marlon Blackwell, as the photo at left attests –but it is not placed obnoxiously in front of the exit, so that all visitors must pass through it.

In fact, the store (3,000 sq ft) sits off to the side and some visitors might even miss it. They shouldn’t: even looking is fun. See the display of Native American products at right, below.

CBStoredisplay.jpgThe museum also contains an auditorium, or, as it terms it, a “Great Hall” for lectures, concerts, films and other events — the one place I could not enter on either of my visits. It wasn’t finished last spring (there was only a hole in the ground then) and it was being set up for a concert when I visited in early December. The guard could not be persuaded to let me have a brief look.

But the photo below of its exterior shows some of its probable charms.

GreatHall.jpgThe hallway linking the main part of the museum to the Great Hall contains another admirable feature: the “community showcase.” Display cases have been inset in the walls, and area museums have been invited to place small displays drawn from their collections on view. This way, visitors to Crystal Bridges are exposed to other cultural institutions in the area, and they benefit from free publicity. Nice idea. The final photo, below, shows one of them currently on view. (Apologies for the poor picture quality. I was snapping during evening hours, which required a flash, and taking the pictures as museum visitors walked along the wall. I had to click fast.)

Display.jpgAnd did I mention the iPods? Visitors, upon surrender of a driver’s license or credit card, listen to guides about the collection on iPods, with Walton, museum director Don Bacigalupi and various curators providing commentary or dialogue for about two dozen works of art on view.

The recordings are broken into sections, a couple of minutes each, and visitors choose which and how many they’d like to hear.

I haven’t mentioned the education programs, about which I know little except that they exist, or the cafe and restaurant. I tried the latter, for dinner, and the food was fine.

Personally, I think Crystal Bridges will exceed its prediction of 150,000 to 300,000 visitors in its first year (though all the free timed tickets required for the first two months were not claimed).

That’s it on Crystal Bridges for this year. But I still haven’t emptied my notebooks on this museum, so we’ll see if what 2012 brings requires more comment.

Photo Credits: Copyright Judith H. Dobrzynski

A Discovery At The Morandi Museum In Bologna — UPDATED

Hollan_2011_003[1].jpgWhen I visited Italy in November, I spent a day in Bologna, and among the places I visited was the Museo Morandi. I am something of a Morandi fan, and I enjoyed seeing the well-rounded collection of his work, with many landscapes, for example, as well as still lifes.

Thumbnail image for hollan09.jpgBut the real revelation from my visit was not about Morandi. The museum regularly mounts temporary exhibitions for artists whose work relates to Morandi, and the exhibition I saw was for a wonderful artist I’ve never heard of: Alexandre Hollan.

He’s Hungarian, born in Budapest in 1933, but there is very little information about him online, and the press kit I was given is entirely in Italian, I am sad to say (I do not speak it). I do know that Hollan left Hungary after the 1956 revolution for Paris, and he discovered Morandi at an exhibition there in 1964. I am not sure if he is still there.

But here’s a hint about his work: the show in Bologna is called Silences in Color, and it’s very well titled. The relation to Morandi’s work seemed so uncanny to me that, while Hollan’s exhibit is situated between two wings of Morandi’s work, at first I wasn’t even sure it was a different exhibit. Yet while strongly influence by Morandi, Hollan remains original.

Thumbnail image for alexandre_hollan-trois_arbres_1186308883.jpgHollan’s colors are every bit as subtle, but somehow are also richer. Many of the works are still lifes that overflow the boundaries of the paper, edging into the abstract. Mostly, he makes watercolors, gouaches, and drawings. The works on view, until Feb. 5, were made  between 1984 and 2010.

Unfortunately, I could not copy (from the press area) any images from the exhibit; but you can see several here (click to enlarge the thumbnails). I found one on another website, and it is at left (top).

UPDATE: I have now received images from the museum. Those at the top left and bottom left are drawn from this exhibition.

Hollan_2011_010[1].jpgContinuing my search, I found a few more online: The one at right was in a show at a Parisian gallery in 2009, reviewed here, while the other two  one came (Three Trees is the name of the purply one, above) from bloggers’ sites.

These samples overrepresent his use of blue, though. I loved the wine-colored and subtle yellow ones that you can see on the museum’s website.

The exhibit’s catalogue shows that Hollan has had many solo exhibits in Europe, but none in the U.S. Likewise, his work is in the collections of many museums in France, Germany and Hungary, including the Pompidou, but none in the U.S.

Who will bring him here? 

 

A Surprising Choice For Apollo’s “Exhibition of the Year”

vanaachen.jpgIf a publication in the United States were awarding the “exhibition of the year” title, I’d bet the contenders would include the de Kooning exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, the Alexander McQueen fashion show at the Metropolitan Museum, The Steins Collect at San Francisco MoMA, and … maybe Caravaggio at the Kimbell? The whole of “Pacific Standard Time” in LA?

Which makes the choice of Apollo Magazine in the U.K. all the more interesting. In its December issue, Apollo named Hans von Aachen: A Court Artist in Europe, which was shown in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen, at the Castle Museum in Prague and at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, as the best. And there is a certain rationale for shining the spotlight on this little-known artist — today — but someone who in his day, had a different reputation. As the story begins, “Hans von Aachen (1552-1615) was famous for being famous.”  Hans von Aachen, at right in a self-portait, c. 1574) is a man for our times:

The artist magnified his station by using a new machinery of fame. He disseminated his artistic inventions to an international audience by hiring the best engravers of the day to create superb prints after his paintings. An admired portraitist, Von Aachen also made likenesses of his patrons, associates, and friends so that, by having engravings produced of their effigy, they could trumpet their own renown, as well as that of their portraitist, whose name (included in the engravings) added lustre to theirs, just as theirs illuminated his, until the artist’s illustrious circle blazed in the light of fame. 

GG_1098_BacchusCerresAmor_e673358de2.jpgBut there’s more to the artist (his Bacchus, Ceres and Amor is at left):

This master’s genre paintings, many of which include a roguish, smiling self-portrait, look forward to Adriaen Brouwer (1605-38), Rembrandt (1606-69) and Jan Steen (1626-79), while his more intimate masterpieces (for example, a portrait probably of his daughter; Fig. 2) are as moving and immediate as comparable works by Rubens.3 The trouble is, because his art varies so dramatically, because, while almost every-thing he left us is excellently made, the whole remains elusive, he has the reputation of a chameleon able to accommodate his manner to the eclectic tastes of his clientele. And for about 500 years now, from Vasari through to Clement Greenberg, eclecticism earns an artist little praise.

…Bringing together more than a hundred of the artist’s works and displaying the full range of his activities (paintings on canvas, panel, copper, slate, and alabaster; drawings for all purposes and from all phases of his career; prints by his principal engravers), the exhibition, ably curated by Thomas Fusenig, may have been Hans von Aachen’s unique moment in the sun, a once-in-a-lifetime summation of the versatility of a major master of his time…

…This memorable exhibition clarified the achievements of a pivotal and overlooked master, expanding his known oeuvre and bringing new scholarship to bear on his achievements. Through the creative use of the three exhibition venues, in Aachen, Prague and Vienna, the show brilliantly revived a forgotten geographical axis of European history. For this and more, the show richly deserves this journal’s annual exhibition award.

Given the Leonardo exhibit at the National Gallery, which is I’d hope likely to be included next year — because it didn’t even make the short list — among so many others, the choice seems eclectic. But it’s defensible. Here’s a link to the whole Apollo article.

 

 

Helen Frankenthaler, RIP — UPDATED

FRANK.jpgFrom a press release.

With profound sadness, the family of Helen Frankenthaler announces the death of Ms. Frankenthaler on December 27, at age 83, following a lengthy illness. Frankenthaler, whose career spanned six decades, has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the 20th century.

The press release contains a summary of her career.

 

At left:

Helen Frankenthaler in her New York studio at 83rd Street and Third Avenue, 1964, with Interior Landscape, 1964 (collection of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), behind her on wall (detail). Photograph by Alexander Liberman. Alexander Liberman Photography Archive, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California. (2000.R.19). Copyright © J. Paul Getty Trust.

UPDATE: More photos of Frankenthaler at work are posted on the Ernst Haas Estate website — lovely!

UPDATE 2: Eric Gibson writes a marvelous appreciation for Frankenthaler in today’s Wall Street Journal.

 

 

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About Judith H. Dobrzynski

Now an independent journalist, I've worked as a reporter in the culture and business sections of The New York Times, and been the editor of the Sunday business section and deputy business editor there as well as a senior editor of Business Week and the managing editor of CNBC, the cable TV

About Real Clear Arts

This blog is about culture in America as seen through my lens, which is informed and colored by years of reporting not only on the arts and humanities, but also on business, philanthropy, science, government and other subjects. I may break news, but more likely I will comment, provide

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