Archives for May 2009

The museum world gets bigger this week, with the opening next Saturday of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing, a 264,000 sq. ft. structure set to hold the museum’s 20th and 21st Century collections, and the opening this past Sunday of a rooftop sculpture garden at
 

the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Sitting on top of an parking garage, it includes an indoor glass pavilion gallery and two outdoor spaces. Among the works on view are Henry Moore’s Large Torso Arch (right). And I can just imagine the dramatic cityscape view from this fifth-floor space.

The Art Institute’s Modern wing includes the Bluhm Family Terrace, with 3,400 sq. ft. of outdoor exhibition space, though I doubt the view can compare.

I’m surprised that, during the past decade of museum expansions, there haven’t been more rooftop galleries.

[Read more…] about Every museum has a roof. Why so few galleries there?

There it was again: another example of a logical fallacy in the way arts institutions think about appealing to new audiences (translation — younger and more diverse audiences). Somewhere
along the way, reaching out to new audiences was equated with new works, as if those in a museum, or in a dance company’s or orchestra’s repertoire, couldn’t possibly attract the hip young people that seem to be the holy grail of cultural organizations. In The New York Times Arts & Leisure section this weekend, writing about the 50th anniversary of Lincoln Center, Tony Tommasini exhibited a very mild version of this affliction:

It could also be argued that the complex’s citadel-like feeling has deterred potential audiences. With its institutional appearance, Lincoln Center does not look at first glance like a place for innovative or experimental work.

We saw the same kind of “logic” earlier this year when some critics expressed disappointment that the Metropolitan Museum of Art had chosen Thomas P. Campbell — a tapestries curator, for heaven’s sake — as its new director. What could that possibly forbode, they asked, for displaying contemporary art and luring new audiences to 1000 Fifth Avenue?

To me, this is not only a fallacy…

[Read more…] about New works = new audiences? Not!

This year’s edition of the International Fine Art Fair, held at the Park Avenue Armory from May 1-5, had about a third fewer dealers than last year’s. And the organizer, Haughton International Fairs, gave away tickets — as I wrote here. (It also advertised more heavily.)

But when the fair closed on Tuesday, the Haughton organization says, the crowd had not only shown up as expected — to a number on par with its height in 2003, about 14,000 — but also the number of paid tickets climbed vs. last year. Those who attended also bought more than naysayers predicted.

Of course, dealers are private businesses, and don’t have to report anything they don’t want; all of this is taken on faith.

Among the sales:

• Adam Williams Fine Art sold a Luca Giordano oil with an asking price of $350,000.
• Hill-Stone sold eight Old Master drawings, notably Ludovico Cigolli’s drawing of a young man, circa 1612, for five figures.
• Jonathan Boos sold a Henry Moore sculpture for $375,000 and Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Barn,” 1926 (below), for $550,000.
• Waterhouse & Dodd sold a Henri Martin painting for nearly a half-million dollars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, we’ll learn more about the contemporary market this week, when the big auctions in New York take place.   

Photo Credits: Haughton International Fairs (top); Jonathan Boos (bottom). 

Well, here’s an interesting push-pull reaction. 

I often write about philanthropy, and a few weeks ago, I almost wrote a piece about a $50 million gift to Yale University to create a global affairs institute. As if we need another one, I thought. What a waste.

Then on Wednesday I was reading an entry on Stanley Katz’s blog (he is the director of the Center
 for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at Princeton). It talked about his recent trip to Miami University,
Ohio, where he gave the keynote speech at the opening of a new Humanities Center. Hurrah, I thought. (That’s part of the Miami U campus at right).

On second thought, however, I wondered why I reacted so differently to the two developments. Surely, nowadays, global affairs are on everyone’s mind. The humanities are decidedly not. With the possible exception of regular readers of this website, I wonder how many Americans would agree with me vs. the donors to Yale.

As Katz wrote on his blog a few weeks ago, in response to a New York Times article that outlined the troubles faced by humanities scholars in this recession: 

The problem for humanities faculty is much older and much more serious — it is that as universities have increasingly overvalued what they take to be useful knowledge over what they believe to be useless knowledge (the humanities being the poster child), the humanities have taken a series of hits….it will continue to be the case until our community develops a more convincing case for the crucial role we play in education — and society.

 

The same is true for the arts.

[Read more…] about The Humanities vs. Global Affairs: A Matter of Money

On assignment for The Wall Street Journal, I recently spent a day at the opera. Arriving at the Metropolitan Opera house around 9:30 a.m. in late April, I watched as sets were set up, rehearsals conducted, wigs made, costumes sewn, and so on. The resulting article is in today’s paper. You can read it here.

It was a fascinating day. In the space of 24 hours, the Met took down sets for Don Giovanni performance, put up sets for a staged rehearsal of Act III of Gotterdammerung and then “struck” them by 4 p.m., and then, in late afternoon, assembled the sets for Il Trovatore, which ran at 8 p.m. that night. And that’s just the start of what goes on inside the Met, 24/6 — and sometimes 24/7.

Under Peter Gelb, the Met has been more open, simulcasting opening night to Times Square and sometimes inviting the public in to see rehearsals. That’s to be applauded. But the experience I had watching a rehearsal of Gotterdammerung (above) — standing below/behind the Rhinemaidens as they opened Act III, for example; seeing/hearing the mist descend on the stage to keep the dust down; watching director Otto Schenk approvingly touch the cheek of soprano Margaret Jane Wray as he walked past her, just off-stage — gives an ever greater appreciation for what’s involved in making opera, logistically and in human terms. That why it’s great to be a journalist.

Photo: Courtesy Metropolitan Opera