Archives for January 2010

Feeling a little low? Ill even? Today Americans for the Arts announced and released its new National Arts Index, and you can see, the latest number isn’t good:

I have several times called on the arts community to produce better statistics — actual, accurate, relevant and up-to-date data (here, here, here and here, for example).

So I’m glad Americans for the Arts is trying something. It devised the National Arts Index by taking into account 76 “equal-weighted, national-level indicators of arts activity.” And the group says that makes it “one of the largest data sets about the arts industries ever assembled.” Americans for the Art intends to make this an annual measure; the first report covers the 11 years from 1998 to 2008.

Along with the index came a 21-page executive summary (here) and a 146-page full report (here). I haven’t had time to read them, but I do intend to look at, at least, the short version. What numbers, their source, and how they are used are important, obviously, and I’d like to know the answers.

Meantime, here are a few conclusions, verbatim:

[Read more…] about How Are The Arts Doing? Not So Well, A New National Arts Index Says

Ukranian billionaire Victor Pinchuk has placed an enormous burden on a Japanese curator name Yuko Hasegawa.

When he announced his $100,000 Pinchuk Prize — aka the Future Generation Art Prize — last month, I complained here that Pinchuk had managed to virtually ignore half the world’s population, namely women. Among the many board members and artist-mentors, he named only one woman, fashion designer/collector Miuccia Prada.

This week, Pinchuk announced the prize’s jury. Among the seven members, again, just one woman — Hasegawa (at right), Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT); former Chief Curator of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.

That mix is hardly representative of the art world, and it’s a snub to the talented female curators, museum directors, critics, academics, dealers and collectors that populate the art world. Not to mention female artists.

Let’s hope Hasegawa has a strong voice. She’ll need it among these other jurors:

• Daniel Birnbaum (Sweden) – Director of the Städelschule Art Academy, Frankfurt am Main; Director of the Venice Biennale 2009
• Okwui Enwezor (Nigeria) – Director of Documenta XI; former Dean of Academic Affairs and Senior Vice President at San Francisco Art Institute
• Ivo Mesquita (Brazil) – Chief Curator at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; Curator of the 2008 São Paolo Biennial 
• Eckhard Schneider (Germany) – General Director of the PinchukArtCentre       
• Robert Storr (USA) – Dean of the Yale University School of Art; Director of the Venice Biennale 2007
• Ai Weiwei (China) – artist

Artists can apply here until April 18; the winner will be announced in December.

 

If Montclair Art Museum really thought it was taking a big risk to mount Cezanne And American Modernism, the most ambitious, most expensive exhibit in its history, it may develop a taste for gambling.

The show, which ran from Sept. 13 through Jan. 3 (a little less than four months), “far exceeded” the museum’s projections and expectations. Some 30,000 people attended, plus 10,000 in school and adult groups, for a grand total of about 40,000. That was about 360 people per day, on average, vs. a pre-show “push” goal of 190 per day.

The museum’s previous record for an exhibition was 12,000 visitors, plus 5,400 in groups, for Reflecting Culture: The Evolution of American Comic Book Superheroes, which ran for six months in 2007-08.

The Cezanne crowd was geographically diverse, says museum director Lora Urbanelli. About halfway through the show, the museum had already clocked people from “900 different zip codes,” from states including Connecticut and Maryland.  

Better yet, Montclair’s membership grew 15% during the Cezanne show. Enrollment in the museum’s classes also climbed, and “we set shop records every week,” Urbanelli said.

In fact, she continued, “Cezanne did so well that we brought everyone back to a five-day work week early, in December.” The museum had put staff on a four-day work-week to save money last spring, and at the time Urbanelli warned them that the cutback might last until June of this year. We can all thank Cezanne.

The show (which I reviewed favorably for the Wall Street Journal here) may yet add more to Montclair’s coffers: It is traveling to much bigger Baltimore, where it opens at the Baltimore Museum of Art on Feb. 14, and later to the Phoenix Art Museum, also bigger.

It’s great that Montclair residents — and many others — proved they will turn out for good art, and maybe that they prefer good art to pop culture exhibits. Yes, Cezanne was the draw, but the exhibit contained many more pictures by Americans (like Morgan Russell’s Three Apples, left) than paintings by Cezanne (his Five Apples is on the right), of which there were eighteen.

Urbanelli acknowledges that it is now her challenge to capitalize on the new interest. “We have a responsibility to keep as much energy going, not with blockbuster exhibits necessarily but by creating excitement and interest. We got people in the door to see Cezanne and they learned about Hartley — so we can surprise them. I am thoroughly convinced that we have to think big if we want to survive — and to think differently.”

Amen.

I’ve written about this exhibit here twice before, once a Five Questions for curator Gail Stavitsky (here), and once elaborating on the WSJ review (here).

 

For 50 years, the Toledo Museum of Art has coveted a painting by Bolognese master Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Guercino (“the squinter”). Not just any work, because it had to both fill a gap and rise to the level of the rest of the museum’s 17th Century painting collection. In fact, Toledo hasn’t purchased an Italian baroque painting since 1983, when it purchased Lot and His Daughters by Artemisia Gentileschi.

But in 2009, by coincidence, the museum learned of a beautiful Guercino of — Lot and His Daughters. In October, it bought the work (above), and at 7 p.m. this Friday, Jan. 22, it will unveil it to the public in a special ceremony. The museum has rehung the gallery, and for now is putting the Guercino in the spot of honor, normally occupied by Rubens’s Crowning of Saint Catherine. 

How did this stroke of luck occur? It is one of the Five Questions I posed to Lawrence W. Nichols, curator of pre-1900 European and American Art at the Toledo Museum:

1) How did this painting, perfect for the collection, come to be offered to the museum?

In January 2009, two dealers scheduled an appointment to see me and the collection. The New York dealer had been to Toledo in the past, but his Florentine partner had not. The dealers asked me what I was looking for, and I gave my standard answer — “show me the best you have.”

We discussed gaps in the collection, including our need for a Guercino with the size, presence and quality to hold its place in the Great Gallery. As coincidence had it, very shortly thereafter they came to represent a private Italian collector who wanted to sell his Guercino, Lot and His Daughters. In early March, they sent me an email with a picture of the work.

I was very excited by the image. I went to New York to see the painting, and after months of research, I received the go-ahead to bring the painting to Toledo on loan. We acquired it on Oct. 1.    

2) Briefly, can you say what this purchase does to lift your collection?

The TMA has a painting by Guido Reni and now we have the other major 17th-century Bolognese painter represented in a major way. The condition of the canvas is remarkable, and in our Baroque gallery it immediately comes to rival our great Rubens, Preti, Poussin, and Valentin. I was holding out for scale, condition, and proverbial “wall power.” This does this, and then some.

3) What should viewers look at, as they compare the two works?  

[Read more…] about Toledo Scores The Perfect Guercino: Five Questions For The Curator

Remember the old line about the Soviet Union’s two main newspapers — Pravda (which means “the truth”) and Izvestia (which means “the news”)? Pre-glasnost, Russian wags used to say “there’s no truth in Pravda and there’s no news in Izvestia.” (More cynical Russians rendered a harsher verdict: “There’s no news in the Truth, and there’s no truth in the News.”)

Not to be a wag, but I couldn’t help but think of the second half of the milder version when a press release from the Association of Art Museum Directors landed in my email box on Friday afternoon: there’s no news in this.

For the record, the release led with the “news” that 123 directors, of 197, attended the meeting in Sarasota, FL, then restated AAMD’s mission of maximizing the appreciation of art, and said members talked about their strategic plan. It also reaffirmed AAMD’s deaccessioning policy, stating that proceeds from art sales may not be used for operating funds or capital budgets. All true, of course.

But surely more interesting things that that were going on…I think so. Maybe it was in the committee meetings.

For one thing, deaccessioning discussions were not cut-and-dried unanimous, I’ve been told. Some members — I do not know how many — believe, as I do, there should be a review process for museums in extremis that ask to sell art to raise money to remain in business (see here and here). They’d open the process just a crack to very selective deaccessioning. Perhaps, as I’ve laid out, there would be onerous requirements and high hurdles to do it. I envision any sales as part of a package of remedial measures, not the entire package — though, in my proposal, arbitrators would have oversight of that. AAMD could set rules requiring that, however.

For another, AAMD continued with its efforts to reach diversity by enlarging its membership. And while the goal is noble, the means are causing some grousing among the larger museums. AAMD is three people short of its current ceiling of 200 members; that ceiling was 150 in 1990, according to press reports of the time. In 1999, membership was 170.

Last year at this time, when the meeting was held in San Diego, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that qualifying institutions must have “a budget of $2.5 million for two years running.” Now, according to AAMD’s website, members must run institutions with an “annual operating budget equivalent to or exceeding $2 million for two consecutive years.” (It’s true that many budgets have declined in this recesssion: that may be a reason for this drop, though as I understand membership, once you’re in, you stay in as long as you keep your job and remain in good standing.)

Trouble is, as the group grows, the major museums find AAMD less relevant. The big guys skip meetings — understandably. At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for example, Malcolm Rogers oversees a budget close to $100 million. He is one of several who rarely attend, I’m told — no criticism on my part intended.

AAMD is a trade association, and doesn’t have to publish anything after its meetings. The emailed release is something. Unfortunately for me, it raised my expectations. Maybe next time it will fulfill them — the group’s strategic plan and deaccessioning policy review are supposed to be finished later this year.