Archives for September 2011

Let’s start with the premise that the works of Gustave Caillebotte are not as well known in the United States as they should be. They’re just not all that common in American museums.

So I was pleased to read that the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, at its annual meeting, announced that it was buying Caillebotte’s Man at his Bath, “regarded as one of the greatest works” of Caillebotte, MFA says in its press release.

It must be because, also according to the press release, the MFA has to sell eight works from its collection to pay for it (the amount was undisclosed). These works will be auctioned at Sotheby’s on Nov. 1 and 2:

• View from the Artist’s Window, Eragny, 1885, Camille Pissarro
• Overcast Day at Saint-Mammès, about 1880, Alfred Sisley
• Gust of Wind, 1899, Maxime Camille Louis Maufra
• Forest Interior (Sous-Bois), 1884, Paul Gauguin
• The Fort of Antibes, 1888, Claude Monet
• Bust Portrait of a Young Woman, about 1890, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Saint-Mammès: Morning (Le Matin), 1881, Alfred Sisley
• Pearl Mosque, Delhi, late 1880s, Vasily Vereshchagin

All gifted to the museum, but none on view since 2003, they’re valued at between $16.6 million and $24.3 million, all told, according to the Boston Globe. The Globe also said that the “Caillebotte painting is from a private foundation and has been on loan to the National Gallery in London since the later 1990s.”

What’s more, to purchase the painting, the MFA is using “funds by exchange and from the Charles H. Bayley Picture and Painting Fund, Edward Jackson Holmes Fund, Fanny P. Mason Fund in memory of Alice Thevin, Arthur Gordon Tompkins Fund, Gift of Mrs. Samuel Parkman Oliver–Eliza R. Oliver Fund, Sophie F. Friedman Fund, Robert M. Rosenberg Family Fund, and the Mary L. Cornille and John F. Cogan, Jr. Fund for the Art of Europe.”

This all follows the deaccessioning rules of the Association of Art Museum Directors, and it also is in line with what I’ve advocated several times (one example here) — “deaccessioning in public.” We know in advance what is being sold, when, where and, when the auction is over, we’ll know what the museum received for the deaccessioned paintings and where the money is going.

Man at His Bath has been in the MFA’s galleries since April, and will be back on view in the coming exhibition Degas and the Nude.

As George Shackelford, the curator (who’s leaving shortly), told the Globe, “There’s not a dud painting in this group [that’s being deaccessioned]. That’s why we are very sad to see them go. It’s not secondary material, it’s great stuff. It has to be to get the required sum.”

As queasy as one may feel about the deacessions here, these are curatorial decisions. We can backseat drive, or Monday-morning quarterback all we want, but at the end of the day, there are (as I’ve also written) boundaries. The public can’t be polled everytime a museum wants to upgrade its collection.

Here’s a lesson in keeping good art records, with photographs. The Art Loss Register has just announced that it was able to identify and return two 17th Colonial paintings storen from a church in Bolivia in 1997 “thanks to the good quality archival photographs taken by the church prior to the theft.”

The story began on Christmas Eve in 1997, when more than a hundred religious artifacts were stolen from the Church of San Andres de Machaca in La Paz. A Bolivian National Monument since 1962, the church had been the targeted by thieves several years before as well. In 1997, it reported the new theft to the Bolivian Ministry of Culture and Interpol, which was later relayed and recorded on the Art Loss Register’s international database of stolen, missing and looted artwork, ALR says.

Last May, a U.S. art dealer asked the ALR to search its database of stolen art for two of the Bolivian colonial works. The dealer said he received the paintings on consignment from an elderly American collector. Art historians employed by the ALR conclusively identified the portraits of ‘Saint Rose of Viterbo’ (at left) and ‘Saint Augustin’ because they had suffered damage in several unique areas — documented by those archival photographs.

The paintings were returned to Bolivia at its embassy in London last week.

ALR says that many significant paintings from the Church of San Andres de Marchaca are still missing — including those depicting St. Rose of Lima, St. Francis Protecting the Laics, The Holy Family and an Armed Arcangel.

The dealer’s name and his source have not been disclosed, but investigations must be continuing.

Excerpt from a press release I recently received:

Let’s turn the page on the National Academy Museum (below). As the art world — no, make that the museum world — will remember, it was sanctioned by the Association of Art Museum Directors a few years back for deaccessioning two Hudson River School paintings to make ends meet. A short time later — but not short enough for the NAM — the sanctions were lifted.

This weekend, after being closed for a renovations, the NAM reopens with six exhibitions, and all seems to be well.

Or does it?

In tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal, I discuss the issues with Carmine Branagan, the director. Aside from balancing the budget, which will take several years, she says, the main issues are two:

• In a city loaded with museums, what niche exists for hers?
• And, in the 21st century, what artists want to belong to an academy?

The Academy can elect up to 450 members, but it has only 320.

Recently, as the article says, the Academy has opened up its membership to go beyond painters, sculptors, graphic artists and architects — it may now admit any kind of visual artist, including those working in new media and installations.

So although many member abstained from the vote on that change, which you will see in the article, Branagan has succeeded in making a substantive change there.

The niche is a big problem. Before the renovation, the NAM was attracting 20,000 people a year — very low in NYC. Branagan has purposely set the bar low, hoping for only a 20% increase in the next three years.

It’s smart to avoid raising expectations. I reserve judgement on the current exhibitions:

• An American Collection, which provides an overview of the colletion up to 1970, about 100 paintingshung salon-style.
• A retrospective for Will Barnet, who was elected to the Academy in 1982 and turned 100 in May.
• The Artist Revealed: A Panorama of Great Artist Portraits, which should be a strength, because by tradition each member donates a work to the Academy and many gave portraits – including Thomas Eakins, whose only fully realized self-portrait will be on view.
• An architecture display highlighting post-war drawings, models and photographs by the likes of Eero Saarinen and I.M. Pei
• Recent works of five members, including Elizabeth Catlett and Malcolm Morley
• A show of works made since 2000.

I haven’t seen them. But I hope they’re good, giving the Academy a jumpstart. It’s going to need it.

Do art museums have an image problem? Many people think so —  that they’re seen as places for the upper classes. A year ago, in a Cultural Conversation with Malcolm Rogers, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for the Wall Street Journal, I quoted him explaining his decision to use a lot of glass in the museum’s new American wing with the line, “so people outside can see people inside and know you don’t have to wear black tie to come in.” As he pointed out, most people see museum directors and patrons in those society pictures taken at fund-raising galas, when they are all dressed to the nines.

As the saying goes, perception is reality. So maybe it would help if museum directors were seen in different circumstances — like how about playing baseball?

I saved this example from last July when it was recorded in an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. That’s Cleveland Museum of Art director David Franklin at left, in his  moment on the mound throwing the first pitch in a game between Cleveland Indians and the Toronto Blue Jays.

I thought of this today because of my recent post on the botched job of involving the community in Springfield, Mo., which prompted a few critics to say I’m in favor of privilege. I’m not; I want everyone to love the arts and feel comfortable going to museums. And I do think image may be a problem for some museums (though I am not equating this with the director search in that post).

When I talk with directors, some say they are already visible in the community. One told me he was out virtually every night — often courting donors. That’s a tough, important job, but it’s not their only job, and they might even like the relief of being with regular people.

Franklin’s pitch, btw, was not an outreach effort: He’s a Canadian, and a group called “Canadians Living in Cleveland” invited him to do it.

But, last December, Franklin also dropped the puck before a Cleveland Monsters hockey game, and that was set up by the museum’s marketing effort. “It was a highlight of my life,” he told the Plain Dealer then. “I loved it so much!”

And it certainly didn’t hurt for a museum director to be seen by baseball and hockey fans. Many may already be museum patrons, and might be reminded to go again. Others may think about it for the first time, now that they know the director is a regular guy. I hope Franklin hung around after pitching and dropping the puck.

So play ball! 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Plain Dealer (top) and Cleveland Museum of Art (bottom)