Archives for November 2009

Robert M. Edsel’s second book about World War II looting, The Monuments Men, came out in September, and as someone who in years past has written much about the subject myself (here, here, and here, to name a few), I wanted to see what Edsel has to say. 

Yesterday, as I was about to start reading, I decided to look first at other coverage of the book so far. I found something more interesting than reviews.

Just last week, the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art (Edsel’s non-profit), announced that it had “found” another member of the famed art recovery squad — one of its few women, Mary Regan Quessenberry, now living in Boston.

Edsel has been on a mission on this subject for years, which he has said dates to his reading of Lynn H. Nicholas’s The Rape of Europa in the late ’90s. He went on to co-produce the documentary of the book, and to publish Rescuing da Vinci (ouch on that locution!), an illustrated book about the wartime looting and post-war aftermath.

Then he established the Monuments Men Foundation to preserve the legacy of the “group of 345 or so men and women from thirteen nations who comprised the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section during World War II.”

On the website, you can find a roster of their names — the foundation is trying to trace them, and compile biographies, photos, and other information about each one. For many, it has only a name.

Ms. Quessenberry, who is 94, was discovered when her niece saw Edsel being interviewed on the BBC.

[Read more…] about Monuments Men Foundation “Finds” A Monuments Woman

While everyone’s been getting worked up about the exhibition of art, curated by Jeff Koons, from Dakis Joannou’s collection at the New Museum, something that looks far worse is going on at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Starting today, it’s showing Dreams Come True: Art of the Classic Fairy Tales from The Walt Disney Studio.

The timing couldn’t be better — for Disney. According to NOMA, the show

also will include artwork from the upcoming Walt Disney Animation Studios musical, The Princess and The Frog, an animated comedy from the creators of The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, set in New Orleans and due for release at Christmas 2009.

The movie opens nationwide on Dec. 11. Makes you wonder who the biggest beneficiary of this exhibit is, doesn’t it?

Wait, it gets worse. According to The Times-Picayune, “Lella Smith, the creative director of Disney’s Animation Research Library…selected the art for the exhibit…”

And that was because? NOMA has no curators? (I see several listed on the website.)

Ms. Smith also wrote the catalogue. Disney animation may be a legitimate exhibit. E. John Bullard, the museum’s director, defended it to the T-P this way:

Do people still look down their noses at pop culture?…We’re going back and discovering what turned people onto art in the first place. … There can’t be anyone in America who has not seen a Disney movie, as a child, a parent or a grandparent.

But that’s the wrong question. One right is, why didn’t the museum exercise its curatorial judgment and its right to select what is in the exhibit? And other, is this the right time for the show, given the movie tie-in? And a third, did Disney contribute to the cost of the exhibit? And a fourth, whose idea was the exhibit?

This is starting to be a trend, a very bad one.  

BTW, I’ve chosen to illustrate this post with a picture of NOMA, not a “princess” cell, because why give Disney more free publicity? Turns out that choice was an easy one anyway: Disney has a always been a fierce defender of its copyright, and the picture on NOMA’s website for the exhibit is emblazoned with a large  © Disney Enterprises, Inc. that spoils the view anyway.

Photo: Courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art  

The Whitney Museum debuted its newly redesigned website today, with new technology and new features, like a background that changes from white to black as day changes to night, plus a series of commissioned internet art projects.

I’m not tech-knowledgeable enough to pronounce on those advancements, but I do like several features, including:

• Each day, the museum’s hours are posted on the home page — they change with the day, so I don’t have to click “visit” to find that basic information.
• Events of the day are on the home page.
• The permanent collection is there — with acess by artist, by decade collected, by artists’ birth decade. Only about 400 works are shown, for now — which is not enough — but the images are high quality. And you can browse them separately, too.
• The commissioned works “appear on every page of whitney.org for ten to thirty seconds at sunset and sunrise in New York City.” I didn’t catch that today, but there’s time as each will last on the site for three to four months. As Christiane Paul, the Whitney’s adjunct curator of new media, said in the press release: “What distinguishes these projects is that they use whitney.org as their habitat, disrupting, replacing, or engaging with the museum website as an information environment. This form of engagement captures the core of artistic practice on the Internet, the intervention in existing online spaces.”
• The first one is called Untitled Landscape #5, by ecoarttech, a collaborative founded in 2005 by artists Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir. It consists of “fluctuating, glowing orbs of light that disrupt the ‘digital landscape.’ The size and speed of the orbs will vary based on the number of visitors to the site since the previous sunrise (for sunset) or sunset (for sunrise); higher visitation results in larger, slower-moving orbs.”
• There’s audio and video — but the home page doesn’t take forever to load (like MoMA’s, which I avoid if possible, both because it takes so long time to appear and because it’s hard to navigate. I have heard, grapevine, that the museum knows this and is redesigning its redesign. Say it’s so, Glenn…).
• There’s the usual feature nowadays for registering, saving your own collection, etc.
• The conservation section, listed on the home page (bravo for that!), is thick with information.
• Ditto the research page.
• The navigation stays right there on the left all the time, so there’s no need to return to the home page all the time.
• There’s a “press” button on the home page! Need I tell you home many arts groups make finding press information/contacts difficult?

Kinks are bound to exist, but I haven’t found them yet. Bottom line: Adam Weinberg, the Whitney’s director, says the redesign involved nearly every department in the museum — great, because it doesn’t at all look as if it has been designed by committee.

Here’s the link to the press release, which has more information — including details on a wiki feature.  

 

 

One speech does does not a policy make, but some people are wondering about President Obama’s commitment to arts education after hearing his speech on education last week.

Delivered in Madison, Wisc., on Nov. 4, the president’s speech to Wright Middle School discussed his plans for overhauling the educational system on a national level. As one reader of Real Clear Arts pointed out to me, it contained not a single word about art or creativity.

Read it for yourself; here’s the link, from Madison.com. A key passage:

It means improving instruction in science, technology, reading, math, and ensuring that more women and people of color are doing well in those subjects. 

The Presidential lapse was all the more ironic because that very evening, Mr. Obama sat through the classical music concert at the White House, joking about his lack of knowledge about when to applaud. “If you didn’t know in advance who delivered it, you might have thought it came from a different administration,” the reader wrote of the speech.

So, is President Obama soft-pedaling his campaign commitment to arts education? Just asking.  

As it goes with art prizes, so apparently does it go with art museums: you (meaning, I) just get finished writing about one, or two, and another pops up.

Today, the New Museum, possibly trying to change the subject, announced the six finalists for its Ordway Prize, which makes two $100,000 awards — one each to an artist and a curator or arts writer. (My take on “the subject” — single-collector exhibits — is here.)

The artist finalists are Tania Bruguera, from Cuba; William Pope.L, from the United States; and Artur Zmijewski, from Poland.

The curator/writer finalists are Sabine Breitwieser, from Austria; Hou Hanru, from China; and Hamza Walker, from the United States.

Read more about them and the prize here.

And late yesterday, I Iearned that famed American Art collectors Richard and Jane Manoogian are putting their names on a new museum, in an 1830s Indian dormitory on Mackinac Island, Mich. (left). This was announced last year, hasn’t received much publicity, and just came up in another context. The museum will display both fine and decorative arts inspired by Mackinac Island, including 18th – 20th century maps, Native American baskets, hand-tinted black-and-white photographs, paintings and other art objects.

The three-story building will open next summer and will offer a studio where visitors can learn to make art. 

Mackinac Island State Park recently put out a call for artists to enter its contest for a $5,000 purchase award at the opening.