Archives for December 2010

In late November, I noted here that the Norton Museum of Art had gone exhibition-hunting during the week Miami Beach turns into an art fair. Curators Cheryl Brutvan and Charlie Stainback set out to visit booths at all of the fairs surround Art Basel Miami Beach and come home with an exhibition — curated in five days and hung in about ten days.

The exhibit was opened on Wednesday, with the intention of providing a “snapshot” of “contemporary artistic practice without the pretext of a biennial survey” and showcasing “some of the most engaging work being made today.”

Today’s Art Daily brings us up to date on what seemed a bit like Mission Impossible:

Within just a few hours, an exhibition theme emerged. The show will turn on the concept of information exchange and how we communicate with one another – especially relevant within the current news cycle which is focused on the dramatic actions of the website WikiLeaks….

The artists represented include well-known names such as Roxy Paine and Liza Lou, as well as emerging artists Luke Butler and Allyson Strafella.

…To illustrate the theme, The Norton selected artwork that plays on the subject of information exchange, such as Julian Montague’s faux series of books made from digital prints and old books entitled Volumes from an Imagined Intellectual History of Animals, Architecture and Man. Artist Kim Rugg obscures information in the highly detailed, reconfigured paper piece entitled The Story is One Sign, where she carefully papers over a specific front page of The New York Times creating 30 examples of the same page, yet each one reveals only a single letter, or punctuation.

The revelation of information can be seen in its extreme with David Shapiro’s 24-foot long September 2010,Receipts, created by his skillful, trompe l’oeil renderings of his personal expenses – for each month. Without a political statement, but focusing on a world in turmoil, Liza Lou’s remarkable Offensive/Defensive, 2008, is made of thousands of glass beads in brilliant colors evoking the composition of a prayer rug….

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Norton Museum of Art 

Today was a big day for the 21st century museum, in case you didn’t notice. The Walter Art Center in Minneapolis opened an exhibit called 50/50: Audience and Experts Curate the Collection.

It might be the first true is one of the first true crowdsourced exhibits at a U.S. museum. at least neither I nor other experts could think of any previous such shows. Other museums have asked the public to upload pictures or make other art for shows. But for 50/50, the Walker dropped the once-sacred professional boundary between curators and the public, and asked the public to vote for the works they would like to see in an exhibition.

UPDATE: Please see comments below — the Brooklyn Museum mounted a crowdsourced exhibit two years ago.

The Walker specifically chose about 200 works on paper from its permanent collection — works that are not often on view — from which the public could choose.

They had six weeks last summer to vote, either in person or online. In all, 137,844 votes were cast. The public chose only 50% of the show, though — the rest of the works were selected by Darsie Alexander, the Walker’s chief curator. She said that the rankings were transparent throughout so that everyone could see which works were “popular.” “Seeing and knowing the results was an important premise of this entire effort, both for the ‘public’ side and ‘mine,’ ” Alexander says.

The choices are arrayed on opposite walls at the Walker, hung salon-style (though not too far up the wall; they have to be seen). The public’s choices have generally been hung in order of the number of votes they received; Alexander hung her side a bit more thematically/traditionally, with an eye on identifying key works in the collection and works by artists the Walker has collected in depth. Among them are works by Kiki Smith, Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha and Kara Walker.

Still, the public provided some surprises — Walker experts expected voters to lean toward figurative works and narrative works, and they did, except for the most popular work of all: Break Point by Fiona Banner (above, left).

The public’s other top selections, in order, were Edgar Arceneaux’s House Turned Upside Down; Chuck Close’s Self-Portrait; Frank Big Bear’s Chemical Man in Toxic World and Charles Sheeler’s Buildings at Lebanon (above, right).

 

Some artists appear on both sides, of course, including Smith, Sigmar Polke and Robert Gober.

 

The Walker says it decided to experiment with crowdsourced curation in an effort to engage its audience more deeply. “Our culture now is more about higher participation, more user-driven content,” Alexander told me, for a short article in the December Art Newspaper.

 

I’m keeping an open mind about experiments like this: I like some aspects of it, such as comparing the two results in a face-off. The Walker has a more engaged, perhaps more sophisticated constituency than many other museums, too, and that makes the experiment more acceptable.

 

Once in a while, efforts like this could be ok; but I would hate to see the public come to expect a voice in curatorial matters.

 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Walker Art Center

 

Just about when I was writing an item on the promised return of the Maud Morgan Prize for women artists in Massachusetts — little did I know — in Pennsylvania another female artist was going one Morgan better.

On Monday, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts announced that Linda Lee Alter — a Philadelphia-based artist and philanthropist — had donated 400 works of art by women to the Academy.

But it got little attention: I wonder why. 

Lee’s collection includes works by Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, Joan Brown, Viola Frey, Ana Mendieta, Christina Ramberg, and Beatrice Wood (none of which is represented in PAFA’s collection now) as well as works by Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, Gertrude Abercrombie, Edna Andrade, Sue Coe, Janet Fish, Sarah McEneaney, Gladys Nilsson, Elizabeth Osborne, Betye Saar and Nancy Spero (who are). They range in date of execution from the 1910s to the present, and they include ceramics, photography, painting, sculpture, assemblage, and works on paper. 

Alter began collecting these works in the 1980s. “My hope was to find a museum emphasizing inclusion and diversity; one working toward greater representation of art by women and artists of color in its permanent collection, exhibitions and outreach programs,” said in the press release, “where the art by women would be fully accessible to students, teachers, scholars and the general public; and where my collection would be enthusiastically welcomed because it embodied the institution’s vision.”

PAFA promises that works from the collection will be on view by spring, and that it will produce a comprehensive catalogue of the collection.

Alter, who is 71, founded the Leeway Foundation in 1993, to support women artists, particularly those who live in the region — according to a short item in the Inquirer.

Looking for images for works in Alter’s gift, I instead discovered that Alter had an exhibition of her own works at the Allentown Art Museum in 2008. As the press release said at the time:

Her work has ranged from vibrant fabric wall hangings and appliqués with lively allegorical depictions of fables and Old Testament stories to paintings that serve as metaphors for life events. Many of her works, which have been widely exhibited and collected, have served as inspiration for children’s book illustrations and greeting cards.

Two of her works are reproduced here. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Allentown Art Museum

Late today, the Metropolitan Museum* put out a press release about its summer with some pretty impressive numbers, starting with a really big one: its three key summer exhibitions generated $784 million in economic activity by regional, national, and international tourists to New York, according to the museum’s visitor survey. 

I had to read the release twice to make sure the decimal point wasn’t misplaced. It made more sense when you hear attendance:

Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, on view from April 27 through August 15, 2010, drew 703,256 visitors. (Au Lapin Agile is at left.)

Doug + Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambú, shown from April 27 through October 31, 2010, attracted 631,064.

American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity, on view from May 5 through August 15, 2010, drew 335,759 visitors.

All told, “using the industry standard for calculating tax revenue impact, the study noted that the direct tax benefit to the City and State from out-of-town visitors to the Museum totaled some $78.4 million,” the Met said.

A few more tidbits from the study:

• 72% of the Met’s summer visitors traveled from outside the five boroughs of New York.
• Of them, 46% were international visitors.
• 79% of travelers reported staying overnight in NYC, and 72% of these visitors stayed in a hotel or motel. The median length of stay was five nights.
• These visitors reported spending an average $1,050 per person ($696 for lodging, dining, sightseeing, entertainment, and admission to museums, and another $354 for shopping) during their stay in New York.
• 47% of travelers cited visiting the Met as a key motivating factor in visiting New York.
• On a scale of 1 to 10, 28% of visitors surveyed said that, in their decision to visit NYC, seeing one or more of the three exhibitions was an 8 or higher.
• 47% gave a rating of 8 or higher to visiting the Metropolitan Museum in general.
• During their stay, 73% visited other museums, 46% saw a Broadway show, and 16% attended an opera, ballet or a concert.
• The median age for visitors surveyed was 48, with 39% over 55. More than half (53%) held a master’s degree or higher.
• The median reported income was $79,000; 37% had income over $100,000.

The museum did not provide comparable figures from the past, because its studies in the past covered only one or two exhibitions. In 2007, for example, its study assessed the economic impact of Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde and Americans in Paris, 1860-1900, which ran concurrently, and came up with the number of $377 million for economic impact.

This summer was obviously stronger in exhibits. Interestingly, two of the three were completely or mostly drawn from the museum’s collections and Big Bambu was a site-specific commission. They therefore presumably cost less (no added insurance, shipping, etc.).

I commend the Met for sharing this information. Of course, it had a point to make, which is that the museum contributes more to the city’s economy than it gets in aid. Good point — one that many people don’t know.

Another little flaw: the survey sample is quite small: 618. And the museum didn’t share its methodology. 

Nonetheless, it’s something — as I have said many times, the art world needs more and better statistics.  

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met.