Archives for May 2011

“There hasn’t been an exhibition in London for Barbara [Hepworth] since 1968, says her granddaughter, the art historian Sophie Bowness. “It’s shocking.”

And so it is. That comes from an article published in Sunday’s Telegraph that argues that Hepworth deserves better. And now that she has a new museum of her own, in Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, maybe she will. It complements her studio-garden museum at the Tate St. Ives in Cornwall.

The  £35 million Hepworth Wakefield museum (right) opened on Saturday; it was designed by the increasingly popular David Chipperfield (although, according to the BBC, some locals don’t like this one). It has ten galleries, and will show the work of other artists as well as Hepworth’s abstract sculptures.

The “Hepworth Family Gift” consists of 44 full-size working models, prototypes in plaster and aluminium made in preparation for the works in bronze Hepworth executed from the mid-1950s to the end of her career. It also includes drawings, plus a large group of lithographs and screen prints by Hepworth.

After a sneak preview, Wil Gompertz, arts editor of the BBC, said “Barbara Hepworth is one of the great artists of the 20th Century and these plaster sculptures give a particular insight into how she worked. I’m delighted they are now on public view.”

But to return to the art world’s indifference in recent decades, experts note that Hepworth felt, as did others, that she was always in the shadow of Henry Moore. Notes the Telegraph:

There are many parallels. Both came from Yorkshire, studying in Leeds, then at the Royal College of Art in London. Both were at the forefront of a generation of sculptors that emerged in the Twenties and believed in the Modernist credo of carving directly into wood or stone.

Maybe Moore is due a reevaluation, too.

Next month, the Milwaukee Art Museum opens its “Summer of China,” featuring The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City and four smaller exhibitions.

There’s also a hefty schedule of lectures, art talks, a trip to Chinatown and other programs.

So it was timely of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s art critic Mary Louise Schumacher to raise the outstanding pertinent question about all this the other day in a piece headlined Should the Milwaukee Art Museum Protest Ai Weiwei’s Detention?

This is the same show that recently left the Metropolitan Museum and previously drew crowds at the Peabody Essex Museum. But Ai Weiwei’s arrest had not yet occurred when those exhibits opened. Coming last on the tour, MAM has had ample time to consider its position — and do to something.

As Schumacher writes:

Ai’s imprisonment since April 3 has sparked statements of outrage from government officials around the world and demonstrations in places like Hong Kong. It has also spawned an unprecedented response from the international art world and debates about whether cultural institutions have a role to play when artistic expression is suppressed by foreign nations….

Should the [Milwaukee] museum join many of the world’s other cultural institutions in signing petitions and speaking publicly? Would China pull the show? And if they did, would MAM lose the exhibition fee, presumably in the millions?

If MAM is mum, however, will it run the risk of the appearance of appeasement? Does the museum have an obligation to educate its audience about the oppression of Ai Weiwei during its “Summer of China?”

Does this show provide an opportunity for dialogue or even diplomacy? And – a question for all art museums – will overt forms of protest be more effective than behind-the-scenes efforts in affecting Ai’s release?

MAM has yet to say anything about Ai, and Dan Keegan, the museum’s director, declined several requests to be interviewed by Schumacher. He did, however, “release a brief statement by e-mail”:

The political situation is extremely complex and the Museum is sensitive to the discussion that Ai Weiwei’s detention has created and we are obviously concerned for his well being. To that point, I think that our ‘Summer of China’ can play a role in expanding understanding and forwarding the dialogue between cultures.

Schumacher covers the issues beautifully in her article, giving both sides, and she is scrupulously fair, neither condemning nor condoning MAM.

In the end, she takes what I think is the proper stance: “The “Summer of China” should not pass without an airing of Ai Weiwei’s case.”

I think she is correct: MAM doesn’t have to join the protest, but it should provide some forum, some panel, some context, about dissent in China and about Ai’s case. Otherwise, the Summer of China will look like propaganda, whether it is or not.

UPDATE, 5/24: Many others have now take the same stance as Schumacher, and me, and she has summarized and gathered links to some of those comments here.

 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Milwaukee Art Museum

 

 

  

So this week James Turrell was formally inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which gives me an occasion to post some pictures I took recently at one of his skyspace installations.

Before I experienced one for myself, people suggested checking out the YouTube videos of these installations — but I did not find any that did the Turrell piece justice.

To refresh: For these pieces, Turrell creates an enclosed room with an open space through which viewers see the sky. For a period surrounding each dawn and sunset, visitors sit through his choreographed interior light projections that affect the way we see the sky through the open ocular. Outside, for example, the sky may still be light blue, but inside, surrounded by articial light, it may appear to be purple.

The effect, as these photos — taken over the course of an hour, and therefore just a sampling — show, creates a picture not unlike Rothko paintings.

Read the photos from the top left to top right, middle left, then middle right, etc.

Much occurred in-between, of course. It’s a fascinating study in perception.

Works by all the recent inductees to the Academy will be on view there through June 12. They include Malcolm Morley and Cy Twombly.

Photo Credit: © Judith H. Dobrzynski

 

 

Ian Wardropper, chairman of the department of European Art and Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum, has just been named director of the Frick Collection. He succeeds Anne Poulet.

Here’s the link to the press release.

In some ways, this is not unexpected. Wardropper lost the top job at the Met to his underling, Tom Campbell. And so he was eager to leave for his own place.

Of course, his appointment creates the same dynamic at the Frick, where Colin Bailey, associate director and chief curator, has also been seeking a directorship. Rumor has it that Bailey now wants out.

Wardropper, people who know him well say, is not much of a change agent, and so the Frick is likely to continue on the path set by Poulet and her predecessors. If he has plans, he isn’t saying much about them.

He starts in October.

 

 

Can we tell if art is made by a man or a woman? That was the question the Delaware Art Museum asked of its visitors in an exhibition called Battle of the Sexes, which I wrote about here last February.

The premise was this: Works by women artists were shown side by side with works by male artists of their chosing. Neither work was attributed on the wall labels, and viewers were asked to mark, on ballots, who they think made what — female or male. 

On Wednesday, a week before the exhibition closes on May 22, the museum announced the “votes.”

It turns out that the voters guessed that exactly half the works were thought incorrectly to be made by the opposite sex, as you can see by reading the last column in the chart above. (Percentages above 50% are correct; below 50% are incorrect.)  

The museum says that “percentages above 70 % reflect [that] the artist was working strongly within visual or material gender traditions” — that was about a quarter of the 26 artists — and that percentages between 40 and 60 % were “ambiguous.” Percentages below 40% show the artists to be “subverting gender stereotypes.”

I’m not sure what this experiment in participatory art-viewing proves. Is it curious that so view people voted? Do people care little about this subject? Are the biggest revelations to come, to the individuals who voted and would like to know how they did? Or perhaps to the artists, who may not realize whether they are turning out stereotypical works — or not?

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum