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Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Archives for November 2010

A Raspberry To The Grand Rapids Museum — This Isn’t Art

The city of Grand Rapids, which has opened up to art through the ArtPrize competition, has just been disgraced by the Grand Rapids Museum of Art.

Thumbnail image for raspberry.jpgYesterday, the so-called museum opened its newest exhibition Diana: A Celebration. You guessed right — it’s about the late Princess Di. The museum’s home page is completely devoted ot the “exhibition,” described as “award-winning.” It was assembled by Arts and Exhibitions International and “commemorates the life of one of the 20th century’s most remarkable figures.”

The display includes her wedding gown, her tiaras, 28 designer dresses, personal momentos and “rare home movies.”

Worse, the museum is selling timed tickets costing $20 for adults and $15 for children 6 to 17; younger children are free, thank goodness. Ordinarily, by the way, admission is $8 for adults; $5 for youth.

GrandRapidsMuseum.pngThis “exhibition” has nothing to do with art; it is all pandering. In fact, the museum is sending the wrong signal by valuing it at a higher price tag than its art.

The website about the show — for that is what it is — says nothing about what awards it has supposedly won. The other venues are the National Constitution Center and the Atlanta Civic Center. No other mentions of art museums.

And here’s another irony: the sponsors of Diana are the Daniel and Pamela de Vos Foundation. The De Vos family also sponsors ArtPrize.

I wish other museums would get as exercised about this kind of exhibition, and what it does to tarnish the whole sector, as they do about things like deaccessioning. There ought to be standards.

So to the GRAM — as it calls itself — a raspberry. And for my own little protest, I decline to link to the exhibition details or to show any items that will be on view. I’m showing the museum’s exterior instead.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Grand Rapids Art Museum 

Cai Guo-Qiang Vs. Ai Weiwei On Art And Politics

Cai-guo-qiang.jpgWatching provacateur par excellence Ai Weiwei take a gigantic stand for freedom of expression in China — calling on Western nations for support and, in the process, “threatening to become a cultural figure of serious global importance in the mould of Vaclav Havel and Alexander Solzhenitsyn,” in the words of The Guardian’s critic Jonathan Jones — I was reminded of an interview recently published in the Wall Street Journal’s October-November issue of WSJ. magazine with his colleague Cai Guo-Qiang.

Here’s one excerpt:

In any country, art doesn’t have that much influence to shape things. Sometimes what artists create helps people see other possibilities, which gives them hope. But art is not a tool for social transformation–otherwise it would be the same as how communists used art for propaganda.

And another:

I was using “Peasant Da Vincis” [a 2010 show at Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum] to say that China should put more focus on individual creativity of the common people and allow them more freedom of expression. One way of helping Chinese society is allowing people to be able to create freely, not just for China to organize large-scale events like the Olympics or World Expo.

And another:

My main intent behind “Rent Collection Courtyard” [a piece staged in Venice in 1999 in which a 1965 Socialist Realist sculpture was re-created] was how the fate of the artist was controlled or manipulated by politics and its time. At the time of the original work, when the sculptors were making this piece, they were very happy to do so, because they were critiquing the corrupt past and glorifying the new present. But for present-day viewers to look back at this time, you sense this tragedy. You see how gullible the artists were.

Cai clearly has a more nuanced, and somewhat conflicted, view of art and politics.

But Cai makes valid points, worth keeping in mind as Ai plays his dangerous cat-and-mouse game with Chinese authorities. Is Ai too big an art-world presence internationally for him to be arrested for good or seriously harmed (again)? No one really knows.

Photo Credit: Courtesy The Wall Street Journal

 

Sally Mann Show Confronts The Dangers Of Early Fame

How do you change the image of an artist?

 

John Ravenal, the the curator of modern and contemporary art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, set that goal for his next exhibition — “Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit,” which opens on Saturday, in the museum’s new wing. I did a short item on the show for the November issue of The Art Newspaper, but let me elaborate here.

 

SMannS-P.jpg“I want people to take a new look at Sally’s photography, and think of her as one of our foremost contemporary artists, not just one of our foremost photographers,” Ravenal told me.

 

Mann has had something of a problem since she burst onto the global art scene in the early 1990s with her “Immediate Family” photographs. They revealed her children, often naked, in provocative poses – and they shocked the world.  “People, when they hear ‘Sally Mann,’ ” Ravenal says, “they immediately think of ‘Immediate Family,’ and they think they know her work, and they have already formed an opinion of her and her work.”

 

SMannPonderHeart.jpgPerhaps that’s why, when Ravenal approached her with the idea of doing a retrospective, Mann said no (she said it would constrain her creativity). Instead, Ravenal’s exhibition, which contains about 100 works, includes nothing from “Immediate Family.” It displays newer work, including her first foray into self-portraits and photographs that focus on her husband, who suffers from a degenerative muscle disease. It takes the body, often portrayed naked and in close-up, abstract images, as its theme. The works address aging, mortality and decay, literally and metaphorically.  Ravenal also included never-before-shown still lifes that have a fleshy quality and landscapes of Civil War battlefields, sites of massive human deaths. 

 

SMann-.jpgThe bulk of the show is more literal, though. Ever fearless, for her “Body Farm” series, Mann traveled to the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center, famed for its advanced methods of identifying skeletal, badly decomposed, or otherwise unidentified human remains. In other works, she explores her own face, neck and naked chest (samples here). Two self-portrait pieces line up multiple unique photographs printed on black glass–a format known as ambrotypes– to form monumental grids of her likeness. And to expose an area of Mann’s work most people are unaware of – color photography – Ravenal has drawn works from three color series, including “Family Color,” images of her children akin to those that made Mann famous.

 

“It will be eye-opening,” Ravenal says.

But will it be enough to lift Mann’s reputation? Hard to say, as the show — which is quite expensive — will not travel. There is an exhibition catalogue, however, published by Aperture, which includes some works that are not on display. 

 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of VMFA 

Back On Its Feet: A New Ohr O’Keefe Museum Opens — UPDATED

More than five years after hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the new museum for the area’s self-styled mad potter, which was 15 months away from opening at the time, has opened — with a mad architect in charge.

Ohr-O'Keefe.jpgJust kidding, but listen to Frank Gehry talk about his plans for the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, which commissioned him to design a $35 million five-structure complex.

In his design, Gehry envisioned the structures dancing with the trees….”It’s a cluster of modest museum buildings that are dancing well with each other and the oak trees which was always my intent,” Gehry says in a news release. “It looks like it’s working and I’m very pleased.”

That’s according to the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger.

The campus’s new other stuctures — the Center for Ceramics and the George Ohr Gallery — have not been completed. The target for their debut is 2012.

What’s open now? The Welcome Center (pictured above), with cafe, museum store and exhibits by Mississippi ceramic artists; the IP Casino Resort Spa Exhibitions Gallery, which will show work by contemporary artists; and the Gallery of African American Art, which features works by African Americans and the Gulf Coast’s ethnic diversity. (The Pleasant Reed Interpretive Center, also part of the museum campus, is already open to the public.)

It’s a good bet that the museum chose Gehry hoping for the Bilbao effect. Listen to the executive director of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau, Richard Forester: “The cultural and heritage tourist stays longer and spends more money” (quoted in the Clarion-Ledger). The museum is expecting on the order of 100,000 visitors a year.

But take a look at the gallery of photos of the new buildings — here — they look great, and together with Ohr’s works (below), maybe they can draw crowds from the nearby casinos.

george-ohr-banner.jpg

UPDATED — 11/7 Evening: The Los Angeles Times has an article today about the Ohr-O’Keefe, describing — among other things — the precautions being taken for the next big hurricane:

Executive director Denny Mecham said the museum’s insurance company insisted that the art be moved at least 25 miles from the coast in the event of a hurricane.

Each piece of pottery has been fitted with a custom-cut foam packing mold. Boxes and crates stand at the ready, in storage a few miles away, for Mecham’s signal to haul the collection out of harm’s way….

…Since Katrina, there have been some modifications to the original building plan. FEMA forced one gallery to be raised by about two feet.

Photo Credit: Courtesy Clarion-Ledger (top)

 

A Win For Contemporary Art In Cleveland

Just over a month ago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland faced a tough deadline. Eager to expand, it had  raised $22.8 million for a $32 million building project. In late September, the Cleveland Foundation added $500,000 to that.

Cleveland Moca.jpgBut the museum, a kunsthalle led since 1996 by Jill Snyder, had to get that total to $26.3 million by Oct. 29 if it wanted to qualify for federal and State of Ohio tax credits. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, that would have added another $4.5 million to the campaign, specifically for MOCA’s endowment.

On Monday, the newspaper said the museum was expected to get those tax credits, and on Tuesday, the museum’s board gave the official green light to the project. Groundbreaking is expected to take place next month, with the opening expected in about two years.

The museum’s new home is the first major building in the U.S. to be designed by Foreign Office Architects in London, according to the MOCA Cleveland’s website. It’s a four-story, 34,000-sq.ft. structure, made of glass and black stainless steel. It will have flexible gallery spaces. And:

The lobby is designed as an urban living room, a place for visitors to mingle, eat, shop, attend events, over the course of hours, or for brief interludes in a busy day. There will be no admission charge to the first floor space. It is a place to engage at no cost before proceeding on to view our exhibitions for a modest fee.

That sounds like a good idea to me, though it has its downsides — as Starbucks recently learned, when it made its shops less user-friendly, sometimes people simply occupy space for hours.

According to Tuesday’s Plain Dealer,

The new MOCA is expected to attract 65,000 visitors a year, a big leap from the 18,000 to 20,000 is now attracts in its rented space on the second level of the Cleveland Play House complex at 8501 Carnegie Ave., which it has occupied since 1990.
Too ambitious? That might depend on how visitors are counted: are lobby visitors as “valuable” as other visitors, especially if they’re not doing anything related to art?
 
Whatever the case, this is still good news for Cleveland. I love the Cleveland Art Museum, but the city needs a vibrant complement in contemporary art.
 
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Foreign Office Architects
 

 
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About Judith H. Dobrzynski

Now an independent journalist, I've worked as a reporter in the culture and business sections of The New York Times, and been the editor of the Sunday business section and deputy business editor there as well as a senior editor of Business Week and the managing editor of CNBC, the cable TV

About Real Clear Arts

This blog is about culture in America as seen through my lens, which is informed and colored by years of reporting not only on the arts and humanities, but also on business, philanthropy, science, government and other subjects. I may break news, but more likely I will comment, provide

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