Archives for October 2010

We have a new art museum — almost.

The Bellarmine Museum of Art opens to the public on Oct. 25 on the grounds of Fairfield University in Fairfield, Ct.

Now Connecticut is hardly art-poor, and given its proximity to the riches of museums in New York, Boston and the Berkshires, I can think of places in America that could use a new art museum more than Fairfield. The town, home to General Electric and situated on Connecticut’s Gold Coast, is just 20 miles from Greenwich, home of the Bruce Museum, and about 50 miles from New York City.

But, we’ll take new art venues where we can, as long as they are suffiently funded.

The Bellarmine is making its home in galleries lining the basement of the mansion that serves as the university’s administration building, which is not as bad as it sounds. They were completely remodeled to accommodate 20 objects of Celtic, Byzantine, Romanesque and Medieval periods on loan from the Metropolitan Museum’s Cloisters, ten Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings gifted by the Kress Foundation (originally to what is now the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport), a collection of Asian art, and a plaster cast collection, many from the Met.

The initial exhibition schedule, two shows drawn from the Met loans and a contemporary show of work by Norman Gorbaty, can be seen here. The museum has other ambitious plans, outlined here, and is eager to pursue collaborations.

Earlier this month, the Danbury Times published an article on the opening, to which I am giving the last word. It quotes museum director Jill Deupi saying the museum fulfills the university’s mission of “educating the whole person — body, mind and soul.”

 

One of the top ten most-emailed articles on yesterday’s and today’s New York Times is a web-only column by Stanley Fish (below) titled “The Crisis of the Humanities Officially Arrives.”

Bad headline: the humanities have been in something of a crisis for years, and to use, as Fish did, an act by the president of SUNY-Albany — the axing of programs there in French, Italian, classics, Russian and theater — is rather like saying that newspapers are in trouble because of a closure in Reading, Pa.

But nevermind. The act at SUNY got Fish all wound up, and his comments are relevant to the arts — which, as I’ve written before, regretfully remain outside day-to-day life and conversation for most people.

Talking about the humanities in the academy, Fish made some valid points, among them:

…if your criteria are productivity, efficiency and consumer satisfaction, it makes perfect sense to withdraw funds and material support from the humanities — which do not earn their keep and often draw the ire of a public suspicious of what humanities teachers do in the classroom — and leave standing programs that have a more obvious relationship to a state’s economic prosperity and produce results the man or woman in the street can recognize and appreciate. (What can you say to the tax-payer who asks, “What good does a program in Byzantine art do me?” Nothing.)

…keeping something you value alive by artificial, and even coercive, means (and [educational] distribution requirements are a form of coercion) is better than allowing them to die, if only because you may now die (get fired) with them, a fate that some visionary faculty members may now be suffering…

After listing the things that won’t do to help (worth reading), he says:

The only thing that might fly — and I’m hardly optimistic — is politics, by which I mean the political efforts of senior academic administrators to explain and defend the core enterprise to those constituencies — legislatures, boards of trustees, alumni, parents and others — that have either let bad educational things happen or have actively connived in them….

…it is the job of presidents and chancellors to proclaim the value of liberal arts education loudly and often and at least try to make the powers that be understand what is being lost when traditions of culture and art that have been vital for hundreds and even thousands of years disappear from the academic scene. President Philip [of SUNY-Albany] cries crocodile tears. Real tears are in order.

I agree with Fish — up to a point. I’d say that it’s our duty to proclaim the value of the humanities — and likewise the arts — far beyond college/academia. Goodness, many of us don’t appreciate them in our own lives until long after those young-and-foolish years. Fish makes it sound as if humanities are something to pass through and emerge from. 

I happened to read Fish’s column last night, hours after I had written and published my post on museum trustees. But the parallels are obvious. It’s the duty of museum directors and enlightened museum trustees to proclaim, promote and preserve real art loudly and often, and not to give in to what will only draw crowds.

Museums should offer a mix of exhibitions and programs that includes scholarly, focused shows that will never have broad appeal. If everything a museum does is a crowd-pleaser, it’s doing something wrong.

Fish’s column is also relevant to another recent RCA post, about the hostility some people have towards the arts as somewhat “undesirable.” Just take a look at the comments left under Fish’s column — and they’re from readers of the liberal-leaning NYT. Imagine what many other Americans would say.

 

 

Sometimes outtakes are very interesting.

Last Friday, I went out to the Brooklyn Museum to have lunch with Arnold Lehman, and I commiserated with him as probably being the museum director in both the toughest position and on the receiving end of more advice than any other in the nation. (Can’t be proved, but … can you name other contenders for both issues?)

I thought the “advice” offered by various “experts” in The New York Times several weeks ago was useless. They were pep talks, at best. Lehman then mentioned that David Ross, formerly head of the Whitney, etc., had sent him his complete response to the Times, which was more useful than the tiny excerpt in print.

Eager to see what Ross said — I had shared a few ideas of my own with Lehman, then and in the past (a change in museum hours, hurray!) — I emailed Ross for a copy, which he forwarded.

I’d have to say that most of the email was observation rather than advice. But in one part Ross homed in on a general problem we know exists, but have done little about: The Trustee Problem, which I have written about before.

Here’s that part of Ross’s email:

Trustees of all museums, including Brooklyn’s, have to find the strength and resolve to play their role as hard-nosed fiduciaries, thoughtful patrons and as sensitive representatives of the communities the museum exists to serve. That is not as much fun as it may have seemed when the economy was strong, and corporations were competing for ways to show their love.

The fact that some trustees walk away from that responsibility can actually be a sign of a healthy museum. These are not lifetime honorific appointments, but rather represent an opportunity to serve, and hopefully a chance to bring their best problem-solving abilities to work on behalf of institutions that remain essential to healthy communities. Hopefully — as in the past — new trustees will come up through the museum volunteer ranks more slowly, having developed a real understanding of (and love for) the idea and reality of the museum before they are offered the honor of trusteeship.

Ross is correct: some board turnover can be good, especially if they are acknowledging that they can not meet the financial commitment they made when they joined the board.

Second, some museums now have too many trustees that were invited solely for their wealth — museum boards themselves should be reevaluating that strategy. I asked Ross when that balance had changed:

…as the competition for big money trustees increased, the standards for trusteeship shifted from long-time devoted museum volunteer to those with available cash-flow, and the process was shortened. It’s not that there are not still some trustees at most major museums who are there to represent non-monied constituencies, but that the balance (and the balance of power) shifted noticeably in the 90’s and will probably never shift back to the way it was…

None of this is to suggest that all rich people are on boards for the wrong reasons; it is to suggest that sometimes everyone needs to be reminded why they’re on a board and that board members themselves should take more care about whom they invite to join them.

 

If you opened the Travel section of Sunday’s New York Times, you saw the best work of art in the paper that day on its page 3: Bronzino’s Portrait of Eleonara of Toledo With Her Son Giovanni (below). It’s the signature image of Bronzino, Artist and Poet at the Court of the Medici, which runs from Sept. 24 through January 23 at the Palazzo Strozzi. And how I wish I could travel to Florence to see it.

According to the Palazzo, this is the first monogaphic exhibition ever devoted to the paintings of Agnolo di Cosimo, known as Bronzino, though he was born in 1503 and died in 1572 — kind of like Jan Gossart, who’s getting his first solo show in the U.S. at the Met right now (and btw it’s gorgeous. Congratulations to curator Maryan Ainsworth). Gossart, though, had an exhibition of his own in Europe 45 years ago.

Earlier this year, the Metropolitan Museum staged an exhibit of Bronzino’s drawings — to widespread acclaim. It also offered visitors to it a taste of his paintings — with a side-show explaining the recent discovery, via infrared reflectography, of underdrawings in its magnificent Portrait of a Young Man.

So appetite whetted, I was eager to pour through the Palazzo Strozzi’s Bronzino catalogue. It doesn’t disappoint. Bronzino was a star in Florence, and was probably outdone as a portraitist in Italy of the time only by Titian (1490-1576). Bronzino’s pictures are both stagey and realistic, icy and magical. They are secular and religious, composed simply and complexly. His colorings are magnificent. Three works on view were restored specifically for the exhibit, and three hitherto unknown works by Bronzino, “discovered” and now attributed to Bronzino, are on display.

All told, the exhibit boasts 63 paintings by Bronzino, 10 by him and his workshop, plus others by Pontormo, his teacher, and sculptures by his contemporaries, like Cellini.

Alas, it will not travel.

The Palazzo Strozzi has again gone the extra mile to add excitement beyond the show itself. For one, it commissioned a new “contemporary mannierist” musical piece by composer Bruce Adolphe called Of Art and Onions: Homage to Bronzino, based partly on Bronzino’s poems. The piece premiered at the Met (podcast w/ the composer here) — linking the two exhibitions — last March, and made its European debut on Oct. 6. The work, in seven movements, is scored for madrigal choir, harpsicord, viola da gamba and vibraphone.

The Palazzo also published a brochure providing a route through Bronzino’s Florence, so visitors can view his frescoes and other works in churches. And it published a children’s book, Hide and Seek (in Italian and English), and a book about conservation called Bronzino Revealed: The Hidden Secrets of Three Masterpieces. 

Not bad for a self-educated son of a butcher.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Uffizi (top) and the Louvre (bottom) 

It’s never too late to pay a compliment, so let me give a shout-out to the New Museum, not for one of its exhibitions, but for a different initiative: The Bowery Artist Tribute.

The issue that arrived in my mail the other day was Vol. 2 — but if I received the first volume, last year, it got lost in the avalanche of press materials I receive.

The New Museum started this tribute, which will document the artists who have called the Bowery neighborhood home, soon after it opened its new home there in late 2007. Along with a full-sized magazine of articles and interviews with Bowery artists (Vol. 2 includes Roddy Bogawa, John Giorno, Mary Heilmann, Kellie Jones, Adam Purple, Arleen Schloss, Billy Sullivan and Dash Snow [no interview]), plus a long list of artists and their past or current address, the Tribute has its own webpages, with an interactive map. 

The New Museum says that more than 100 artists have lived or worked in the neighborhood in the last 50 years alone, so oral histories can go on for some time. This is an important project.

The New Museum this month is opening two exhibits, The Last Newspaper, which explores changes in the publication and distribution of information and Free, which explores artistic strategies made possible by the Internet. And sometime this fall it will unveil a new facade sculpture, Rose II, by German artist Isa Genzken.

And in case you missed it, last week the New Museum announced the “Festival of Ideas for a New City,” set for May 7-8, 2011, which will panels, roundtables, symposia, and workshops; an outdoor street fair; and dozens of projects, performances, and events, opening simultaneously at multiple downtown venues. The Bowery is the spine of the event, anchored by Cooper Union on the north and the New Museum on the south. More information is here.  

I can’t say I love everything the New Museum is doing, but it sounds as if it’s fitting right in down on the Bowery.

UPDATE, Oct. 29: Work to install Genzken’s Rose II, which is 28 feet tall, begins tomorrow. It will go on the second-floor ledge, which was designed for a rotating program of sculptural installations. It will replace Ugo Rondinone’s Hell, Yes! (2001), which has been there since the New Museum opened in its current location in 2007. Rondinone’s work will be installed somewhere else “soon,” the museum says.