Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Archives for February 2011

Behind The Scenes Of The Google Art Project

Yesterday, by chance, I was with someone who works at one of the Google 17 — the museums in the Google Art Project. She said visits to the museum’s website had skyrocketed since the announcement.

rijks.pngNot surprisingly, I’ve also heard that other museums are clamoring to be invited in by Google. People really think GAP is a gamechanger.

Though I am not so sure, long-term, that it will be, I decided that it makes sense to share a Q and A I read the other day with Jason Brush, executive vice president for user experience at Schematic, which was Google’s partner on GAP. Schematic, according to C-Net News, “helped integrate many of the technologies that together form Google Art Project” and “took on a lot of the heavy lifting in dealing with the various museums.”

uffizi.pngMuch of C-Net reporter Daniel Terdiman’s interview, posted here, is technical, but here are a few excerpts that reveal Brush’s sensitivity about dealing with art, about what the site is not, and :

I was awestruck by the idea itself…I could just imagine a child at a public library, somewhere in the world, who might never be able to afford airfare to travel to these museums, and who might not even have access to high-quality reproductions in books, being able to wander the halls of the great museums that the site brings together.

 

…I’ve worked on projects before that were groundbreaking, for which there was a great deal of pressure to get the experience right–the site we built to broadcast the Beijing Olympics online, for example–but this was different…Partially, it was because of the restraints. It wasn’t just a matter of putting up the artwork and making it accessible. There was also a lot of pressure to make sure that we weren’t making any explicit curatorial decisions. An interface can of course say something specific in and of itself, and we worked very hard to make sure that we weren’t imposing a point of view on the display of artwork.

…one of the first issues we had to face was making sure that the site wasn’t itself a meta-museum. The museums themselves have the cultural and civic onus to present the artworks in their collections in whatever way that’s appropriate to their mission….So, the pressure stemmed from not just making sure that the site was enjoyable and easy-to-use because of it’s [sic] cultural value, but also because we needed to create a model that drew a clear distinction between the live, in-person museum-going experience–which we hope the site will encourage people to have–and the experience you get online. We were in essence creating a whole new model for viewing art, which was a great responsibility.

I couldn’t agree more.

 

Lessons In Diversifying The Audience In Houston — And Elsewhere?

As we all know, perception is reality. I don’t really think museums, as a class, are elitist institutions. A few may be, but not most. But I think some people have been saying it for so long that many others believe it without a second thought, or first-hand knowledge. A friend of mine once overheard an adult leading a group of schoolchildren toward the Metropolitan Museum, telling them “isn’t it big and a bit scary?” And then something along the lines of “rich people go there.”

Afreud.jpgOpera companies are in the same position, only worse — they do charge upwards of $100 a ticket, sometimes way upwards of $100 a ticket. Yes, I know about subsidized tickets, but only so many people can get them, and the way they are sometimes distributed leaves out people who work and can’t stand in line.

But I am off point, which is about an initiative by the Houston Grand Opera called HGOco. It was started by Anthony Freud (at right), the British-born general director who took over there in 2006 (surprising everyone who said it’s really tough to follow a local legend, in this case David Gockley, who now runs the San Francisco Opera).

Let’s start with a big number: 600,000. That’s the number of people Freud says he has reached over the last three years with HGOco, whose most innovative initiative is called “Song of Houston.” It has so far resulted in three new operas, written in a collaboration, sort of, with Houston’s ethnic communities. (There’s a taste of “To Cross the Face of the Moon/Cruzar la Cara de la Luna,” a bilingual mariachi opera, below.)

Freud laid out his management philosophy several ways in the course of my recent interview with him, saying:

  • Every opera is a cultural services company.

  • Opera in general, the art form, is strong, but we have to be prepared to think laterally and radically.

  • We can’t exist in a hermetically sealed bubble. We have to break down barriers and engage people on their own terms, not ours.

  • HGOco is a lab and a playground, an initiative to reach a very large number of people who may not normally get involved with an opera company.

CrossMoon.jpgThere is much to be admired about those statements, and some that troubles me as well. For a start, he seems to sketch things in an us vs. them way. And the three new operas, so far, have not been fully produced on the main stage; rather, they’ve been performed in concert version or in community centers and other venues — which to me seems like a two-tier system: grand opera for the grand folks; something less for all others.

Freud disagrees, saying only a company like Houston could have produced the new works, and, “It’s not a matter of either/or, It’s both. We can do more than mainstage opera.”

Ok, I agree with that last part. I also agree with this statement: “I don’t believe in a generic approach to a generic opera company, but what we’re doing here should have relevance in every U.S. city.”

The same feeling applies to museums and other arts institutions, too. No cookie-cutter approach works, not really.  

You can read my Cultural Conversation with Freud, “Opera That Bridges the Divide,” in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal. 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Houston Grand Opera

Further Reflections On Native American Art

Back to Native American art and attribution (please see here and here, if you are new to this subject):

I was interested in this topic because I do think that attaching the name of an individual artist to an Indian “specimen” or “artifact” will elevate it squarely into “art.” As Kate C. Duncan, a professor at Arizona State University said, “if a museum says it’s art, it’s art.”

 

Part of our reluctance, over the years, to call Native American objects “art” can be explained this way: “We tend to think that if you’re a true artist, you do what no one else does,” Duncan said. “With Native Americans, the common cultural system functions differently. It’s not the individual, it’s the individual within the group. What’s important is the group’s survival.” Some contemporary Indian artists prefer to call themselves “a maker,” rather than “an artist,” Duncan added. “Artist is a European construct.”

 

 

And of course, I knew that, as a few commenters here and on The New York Times website have done, some would raise the issue of whether it is appropriate to attribute individual names to these works — whether we were simply, and wrongly, applying today’s individualism to ancient peoples.

 

Duncan, a former head of the Native American Art Studies Association who does attribution research, agreed that it is problematic: “It is trying to put a Western construct on a different culture,” she said. 

GreatLakesshirt.jpg

Yet others told me that the prevalent view that Indian culture is a collective culture, not about the individual, is overdrawn. Some tribes had artist “classes,” even artists guilds. They and their skills were valued.  

Then, too, as Valerie Verzuh, a curator at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, told me, regarding attribution, “It’s part of humanizing the collection. These are not just abstract objects; they are the work of individuals, of members of a family, of members of a pueblo.”

At the end of the day, I decided that this is the right thing to do — now.

Interestingly, I focused on museums for the article, but late Sunday I received an email from John Molloy, a dealer who advises Christie’s on Native American art.

I agree with you that identifying the artists by name is part of the process whereby the western world identifies the work as art. In the Native American auction at Christie’s two weeks ago, we made a conscious effort to identify and write about the individual artists.

 

He pointed me to the catalogue of Jan. 18 sale, and sure enough, inside are attributions to, and short items about, Wahnomkot (also known as Maggie Aida Icho), who died in 1964; Wilson Tewaquaptewa, 1871-1960; Iris Nampeyo, 1860-1942, plus several more recent Native American artists that sign their work. 

 

Molloy also provided me with an idea for the image I’ve used above. He wrote: 

[It] is currently on view in the exhibition at the DenverArt Museum. Dating to the first part of the eighteenth century, it is the only extant example of its type.It showed up about twenty years ago in a general antique auction without any history, much less any reference to its maker which highlights some of the difficulties inherent.After spending some 250 years who-knows-where in France, it now will be housed in American museums hopefully at least as long. But we will never know who made it more than a tentative tribal attribution.

2_ManTorturingWitch.jpgThe description in the catalogue is “Painted Hide Shirt, Great Lakes Region, First Half 18th Century.” The image here doesn’t do it justice, btw. Estimated at $250,000 to $300,000, it fetched $362,500, including the buyer’s premium.

 

Now is a time for throwing out another wrinkle in the story. I kept wondering why so few people have paid attention to attribution work, and why so few have done it. I know it’s tedious, but wouldn’t it be fun to discover “new” artists, to find a name to match a “master of…”?

One theory I heard was this: just as attribution research was gathering steam 30-plus years ago, along came what, for better or for worse, people call the politicization of art history. It was suddenly ok to connect art to social history, to view art through a gender lens, or through a political lens, and so on. And that was much more popular, more fun, extinguishing enthusiasm for attribution research.

True? I don’t know — I tried that out on a couple of other people and they disagreed, blaming the lack of interest more on the need for patience and years of work.

And, maybe, on subsequent corrections — as information in this area changes and revisions are required. One example: The Denver museum has owned a headdress, acquired in 1948, that was originally identified as a Tlingit or Bella Coola (now Nuxalk) piece. Twenty years later, it was relabeled as a Haida work and later still attributed to Albert Edward Edenshaw. So it changed over the course of 30 years from being attributed to the wrong tribe, to the right tribe, and finally to an artist.

Here’s another example, from the Hearst Museum at Berkeley, about Man Torturing A Witch (above):

Art historian Bill Holm has pioneered the attribution of otherwise anonymous Haida artifacts. This carving and the two masks were originally attributed by Holm to John Gwaytihl (ca. 1822-1912), but based on further information, his student Robin Wright has attributed them to Simeon Stilthda. Possibly related, the two artists lived in the same community and must have worked together.

Finally, one observation, which I believe to be true, from dealer Donald Ellis: Advances in computer technology, which allows the superimposition of images, has helped attribution research recently. 

And it will do more so in the future. I hope.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Christie’s (top); Hearst Museum (bottom).   

The Schorr Collection: Revealed And Revealing, With More To Tell

Prepare to be amazed. On Feb. 18, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, England, will reveal  64 of some 400 pictures made over five centuries and amassed by David J. Lewis over the past 40 years. They include Rubens’s Allegory of the River God Maranon and Battle of the Amazons (below, right) and Jan van Hemmessen’s Man of Sorrows, plus works by Lucas Cranach, Pissarro, Sisley, Delacroix, and others.

RubensAmazons.jpgWhat makes the collection all the more interesting, according to the British press, is that many of the pictures, cleaned and restored in preparation for the show and a catalogue, tell new art-historical tales.

Yesterday, The Independent carried an article saying that:

Among the revelations is the discovery of a sketch for two of El Greco’s most famous paintings, of the Spanish town of Toledo. The Coronation of the Virgin was thought to be, primarily, a studio painting, but when it was cleaned a sketch of the town was found in the bottom-right corner, by El Greco himself.

Another painting, thought to be a copy of the Spanish master Velazquez, was shown to be the work of Delacroix when the full signature – “Delacroix after Velazquez” – was revealed.

Xanthe Brooke, the exhibition’s curator, said: “In the case of Delacroix, we have a new painting in his oeuvre.”

The Independent calls the collection, which is known as the Schorr Collection, the largest in private hands in Britain.

Lewis is a chartered surveyor, but I could find no further information of him or the source of his wealth.

When the Liverpool Daily Post interviewed Lewis recently, he said his collecting began because he needed something to decorate his home: “When you’re faced with empty walls you decide what would be very nice to enhance them. That was when we were youn and that’s what we did and then one thing led to another.”

You may want to view the video posted on the Walker’s website, too.

A Collector’s Eye: Cranach to Pissarro closes on May 15.

Between next Friday and then, I hope we learn much more about the collection and the collector. To amass a treasure trove like this completely out of view is pretty unusual.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of David Lewis via The Liverpool Daily Press

From “Tribe” To “Artist”: More On Attributing Native American Art

So, as I said, in reporting my New York Times article about attributing Native American art to individuals, especially at the Denver Art Museum’s newly reinstalled galleries, I learned many interesting/valuable things that I could not squeeze into the article.

Thumbnail image for Cheyenne River Sioux, Pipe bag.jpgHence this post. The attribution research movement, if I may call it that, fascinates me. It began decades ago, and by now should have had a far bigger impact on museums. 

True, the vast majority of Native American works will never be attributed, but that is no excuse, as Dan Monroe, director of the Peabody Essex Museum (which has a large Native American collection), says in the article. When researchers can identify a masterly “hand,” they can use the “master of” moniker — as the pipe bag at left is attributed to the Master of the Cheyenne River Sioux.

Strangely, some Native American art experts I consulted had no knowledge of the attribution research. (It makes me wonder what else is going on in academia that should be brought to the attention of the general museum-going public. Suggestions?)

I wish I could have mentioned others doing this valuable, but complex work, so let’s start with a shout-out to some other I learned about:

  • Kate C. Duncan (who is quoted in the article, but whose research work had to be cut) has grouped – but not found artist’s names for Athapaskan floral beadwork and is working on early 19th quilled tunics of the Dena’ina.
  • Ruth B. Phillips, of CarletonUniversity, has studied the art by Great Lakes indigenous peoples.
  • Joyce M. Szabo, of the University of New Mexico; Janet Catherine Berlo, of the University of Rochester; Candace Greene, of the Smithsonian, and Barbara A. Hail, curator emerita at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology of Brown University, have all analyzed art of the Plains Indians.

  • David W. Penney, of the Detroit Institute of Arts, was a consultant to the National Museum of the American Indian and made the two new attributions quoted in my article, according to curator Ann McMullen.

  • Peter Corey, curator of collections at the ShermanJacksonMuseum in Sitka, workedFenno.jpg with Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, whom I mention, to discover the names of Tlingit artists in 19th C documents. They plan to publish their database (soon) to help speed their attribution work.

  • Steven C. Brown, a former curator at the Seattle Art Museum, worked on Northwest Coast art.

 

I know there are others doing this work — add your name, or their names, with a comment below, please.

It may help speed the use of the research. As Robin Wright, director of the Bill Holm Center at the Burke Museum, told me, “some museums just haven’t read the current literature.” And as Nancy Blomberg, the curator in Denver responsible for the reinstallation, admitted, she hasn’t yet told a couple of other museums that own work by Louis Fenno (his painting of the Ute Bear and Sun Dances is above right) that she has rediscovered him. (A commenter to the NYT article posted this link to pictures of Fenno and his wife, Ar-ruv-a-roo.)

 

Another strain of my reporting dealt with what to do when the artist’s name is unknown to signal the individual. “Anonymous” is appropriate, as is “Unknown Artist.” Curator Karen Kramer Russell at the Peabody Essex is using “Tlingit Artist” or “Osage Artist,” etc. instead of just “Tlingit” and “Osage.” 

 

Museums can also group the display of objects thought to be made by a single hand, as Denver is doing. And anonymous Native American works can also be linked to works by the same hand in other collections. Russell told me, for example, that PEM owns an 1840s Dakota cradleboard that seems to be made by the same individual who made cradleboards at the Brooklyn Museum (which will soon open a Plains Indian tipi exhibition) and the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. The Peabody Essex also owns a Haida mask, one of 14 known masks that scholars of Northwest Indian art attribute to one artist who remains anonymous — for now. If those links aren’t made on labels, they could at least be linked in the catalogues, so that scholars will know of the connections. 

 

I can almost hear some grumbling at museums — they have enough to do with fewer resources at the moment to start changing labels, let alone do their own attribution research. True, but Monroe also blames inertia: “In most instances, museums continue the practice of labeling historical Native American in relation only to tribe simply because it has long been ‘standard’ practice. Few museums have given thought to the meaning and significance of this practice though none would consider labeling Western art in the same manner,” he told me.

 

That’s enough for now. I’ll publish a few more thoughts soon. 

 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Denver Art Museum