Archives for September 2009

You have to have mixed feelings about web exhibits: seeing art face-to-face is essential. So when a photo editor at Newsweek.com recently alerted me to just-posted exhibition of vintage photographs from turn-of-the-century Russia on its site, I was a tad skeptical that it was worthy of comment. 

(
Like all print properties struggling to make their way in the web world, Newsweek is trying new things, and posting arts and photo galleries on its site is one. Good for Newsweek.com.) 

When I looked at the site, I changed my mind.

The photos belong to the Library of Congress, which also has an online exhibit about them. The photographs were taken by Sergei Mikhailovich
Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944), photographer to the last czar, who fled Russia, with his crates of glass plates. The LOC purchased them from his family in 1948. Prokudin-Gorskii took three consecutive photos of his subjects using three color filters and combined them into beautiful color images — they look as if they were taken yesterday.

The two web exhibits do different things and will appeal to different audiences. Newsweek’s slide show is more polished: editors chose some of the best images and added some context. It’s more likely to appeal to the general public. The LOC’s is more scholarly. You may want so spend some time at both.

Photo Credits: Peasant women offer berries to visitors to their izba, a traditional wooden house, near the small town of Kirillov, 1909 (top); Monastery of St. Nil’ on Stolobnyi Island in Lake Seliger in Tver’ Province, northwest of Moscow, 1910 (bottom), Courtesy Library of Congress.

 

The sample is small, so use the salt, but a new report about corporate giving does not bode well for arts organizations. As Donna Devaul, executive director of LBG Research Institute, wrote when I asked, “I’m afraid the news is not great for the arts–many corporations that have supported the arts have cut their funding.”

Well, we knew that, but LBG has put some new numbers on it, based on a survey of 440 corporations, of which 79 responded — about the same rate as LBG’s similar survey last November. Then, LBG projected that philanthropy budgets overall would drop by 3 to 5%; now, the numbers suggest overall corporate giving will fall this year by 7 to 9%. By comparison, the study says, after 9/11, corporate giving fell by 12.1%, according to Giving USA. (In 2008, Giving USA said in June, corporate giving fell by 8%.)

Only 4% of those that give to arts and culture are increasing those gifts in 2009 vs. 50% that are cutting back support to arts and culture.

LBG’s new report, called “Making the Most of What We Have: Corporate Giving in the New Economy” (press release is here; full report is for sale).

Even in good times, corporations provide only a sliver of support for the arts, really, but this is a moment when arts groups can use all the support they can get. Every dollar matters.

San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum sure has a problem. Last June 12,
 it opened an exhibition
called Lords of the Samurai, which runs until Sept. 20. It’s the only U.S. venue for a show described in the museum’s press release as:

Through more than 160 objects–armor, weaponry, paintings, lacquer ware, ceramics, costumes, and more–this special exhibition explores the principles that governed the culture of the samurai lords. Nearly all of the objects in the exhibition are from the collection of one of the most distinguished warrior clans, the Hosokawa family. This collection is housed in Japan’s renowned Eisei-Bunko Museum in Tokyo and in the family’s former home, Kumamoto Castle on Kyushu island, Japan. Seven of the artworks on view have been designated Important Cultural Properties, the highest cultural distinction awarded by the Japanese government. Three of the artworks are designated Important Art Objects, another prestigious distinction awarded only to the works of notable artistic and historical significance.

As I understand it, everything was going along well — nice reviews, etc. — until very recently, when someone(s) started a blog parodying the museum’s website. Calling the show “Lord, It’s the Samurai” and labeling the museum “orientalist,” the website — Asians Art Museum — is very clever.

[Read more…] about Samurai Get The Asian Art Museum “Mired In Muck”

Is this what art museums want? Now that virtually all of them have expanded, many far beyond what their constituency would want, some will do anything to get people in the door. Even if it’s not about art at all.

So I wasn’t all that surprised when I read a report about Untitled 24 at the Denver Art Museum, published on Sept. 1, on Examiner.com. (Examiner.com, in case you have not come across it, is a site owned by Philip Anschutz for local news written by anyone who wants to write for it, free. It has a presence in 109 cities at the moment.)

Here’s how it described the event:

If you ever wondered what Denver Art Museum is like after dark, the monthly Untitled events may just be your ticket to find out. In addition to cash bar and finger-lickin’ good complimentary appetizer buffet, the museum brings in DJs, live bands, and hosts a variety of entertaining activities.

…this Friday people were treated to dark art, ghost stories, paranormal research presentations and even a seance where they could attempt to contact dead artists and ask them questions….Bad Luck City and Legendary River Drifters played at the Duncan Pavilion, while DJ The Postman played some music to set the mood at the Hamilton Building Atrium. Meanwhile, you could decorate plastic bones, run into Denver’s own Ghostbusters, or check out a presentation by Colorado X Case Files, where paranormal research experts talked about some of the most haunted places in the Denver area.

The article (here) also included a slide show.

As I understand Examiner.com, there’s little or no editing, or checking on veracity. So I went to the DAM’s website for its description of Untitled events, and found this:

On final Fridays through September, the Denver Art Museum feels less like a field trip and more like a night out.

A field trip? Is that how museums feel about their regular offerings?

If art museum directors and curators aren’t enthusiastic about the art they show, how they possibly expect others to be? 

[Read more…] about Museums Gone Wild: What Message Are Some Sending?

Everyone loves a mystery, and this one began when Grant Holcomb, director of the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, purchased a painting called The Printseller’s Window at Sotheby’s in 1998. Holcomb didn’t know much about the artist, Walter Goodman, or the 1883 work, but as he recently told the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle:

 I was struck by the power of it….I thought it could be the finest example of trompe l’oeil art in 19th century America.

Chief curator Majorie Searl continued:

The specificity of every object in the painting suggested a message — a mystery we had to unravel. Perhaps we should have hired Sherlock Holmes, who lived on Baker Street at the same time as Goodman.

Turns out that wasn’t necessary. Researchers, led by a Rochester lawyer named Peter Brown, who is head of the museum’s art committee, followed clues to London, and elsewhere, but — incredibly — the museum discovered that the best sources, Goodman’s descendants, lived in Rochester. They provided the museum, which has organized an exhibition about the painting, with background, documentation and a 1882 self-portrait of the artist, when he was 42. You can read more in the D&C’s article here.

What is the painting about?  

[Read more…] about An Art Mystery: What Is The Printseller’s Window Trying To Tell Us?