Archives for November 2011

I got scooped! I’ve been gathering string, as we say in the journalism business, to write about the search for a director at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. And I’d heard from one very good source that it was down to two, with names attached.

But I had not yet found a second source — and today’s Houston Chronicle beat me to it.

Gary Tinterow, chairman of the 19th-century, modern and contemporary art department at the Metropolitan Museum, and Kimerly Rorschach (at ledt), director of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, N.C. are the two finalists.

As the Chronicle notes, both have Houston roots — having grown up there — and both went to Brandeis University, where they are both on the advisory committee advising the search for a new director for the Rose.

But they have different experiences, as the Chronicle outlines.

Tinterow has a higher profile in some circles — here’s a link to a “day in his life” — and Rorschach has much more executive experience, but at small university museums. This piece on her in the Charlotte News &Observer gives a good feel for her personality. With MFAH planning a new building, her expertise in the Nasher construction could prove useful. Tinterow has deeper connections to the curatorial world — and could be expected to use them to borrow big pieces for exhibitions, assuming there’s a budget for them. On the other hand, he’s not known as a good fundraiser, but others dispute that. Someone close to Tinterow strongly dsiagreed, and pointed to several successes, including the money he raised to purchase van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Cypresses.

I could argue this either way. The search committee has a very fundamental decision to make.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the News & Observer

Now this is what I call help in getting attendance: The U.S. State Department is publicizing the new Islamic Art galleries at the Metropolitan Museum — all over the world.

I found that out when I looked to see what kind of press the Islamic galleries were getting around the world, particularly in the Islamic world. I was curious, because it seems to me that we do care about how “they” perceive us.

Many publications in the Mideast that have English-language versions online seemed to have ignored the galleries. I found almost nothing in the Egyptian press, just this preview in Al-Ahram. The Turkish Press used an AFP wire story and All-Africa.com also did a straight story, pretty much a rewrite of the press release. The Voice of America also covered the new galleries, rather perfunctorily.  

It was only a Pakistani newspaper, The Nation, that turned up something new. It published a short article on the galleries in Tuesday’s paper. Mostly, it was straight reporting, describing the size, cost, and items in the new galleries, and saying they will “ultimately lead to better understanding of Islamic art and culture.”

But then it contained this paragraph:

Acting Under Secretary for Public Affairs Ann Stock termed it once-in-a-generation event in history of Islamic art that mark a new era in the Metropolitan museum’s global reach. She said 271 embassies and consulates, 25 of them in the Arab world, will display posters of exhibit highlights in their public spaces and online. The 14.5 million visitors to U.S consular and social spaces every year will see video tours of the galleries and interviews with the curators and conservators. 

Boldface mine.

Good for the Pakistanis. I’m not against this, but I do think it’s an interesting move on the part of State. It’s certainly a win for the Met (which, you’ll remember, also received for its Alexander McQueen exhibition earlier this year — from airline pilots landing at JFK, who touted the show to passengers.)

And, Stock (@AnnatState) tweeted about them on Oct. 28: “A Cosmopolitan Trove of Exotic Beauty, @MetMuseum‘s Islamic Galleries Open 11/1. Saw them on Monday- a true treat: http://ow.ly/7c2cf”

It might make some people uncomfortable to see museums “used” this way. But think of the way The Economist put it in its article on the galleries, which ended on this happy note:

The Met’s Islamic galleries offer a grand voyage to faraway times and places, and an eye-opening display of art. If these rooms do anything to replace fear and suspicion about Islam with a sense of wonder and curiosity, then there is all the more reason to celebrate.

That’s rather the way I feel.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of The New York Times

 
 

Two noteworthy items from the Cleveland Museum of Art: today, it announced the acquisition of what it calls “an outstanding American neoclassical work by the renowned 19th century sculptor Edmonia Lewis” — Indian Combat — which it says “ranks among the most ambitious of all free-standing American neoclassical sculptures.”

Adding to the attraction, the piece is a “rediscovery.” It had been in the collection of a Massachusetts family since the 1950s, the museum said, and “remained unknown to the art world until it surfaced late last year.” And:

Indian Combat depicts three Native American men engaged in spirited–yet graceful and balletic–combat with each other. Very few examples of neoclassical sculpture feature more than two figures, and virtually no other work exhibits such a complex integration of multiple protagonists. Conceived fully in the round, Indian Combat’s dynamic composition encourages the viewer to circumnavigate the piece in order to discover the details of the action. Having carved the marble herself–without the use of assistants that was the custom at the time–Lewis rendered a wide variety of complex textures, which can be seen in the  moccasins, animal hides and loin cloths worn by the figures.

Who is Edmonia Lewis? Born circa July 4, 1845, to parents of Haitian, Ojibwa and African descent, she somehow managed to study at Oberlin College, apprenticed in Boston, and then spent the bulk of her career in Rome. “Her studio became an important destination for wealthy Americans and Europeans on their Grand Tours, several of whom became patrons,” the museum says. She died in September, 1907. You can find other examples of her work in the Newark Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

When I first met David Franklin, director of the Cleveland Museum, shortly after he took the job last fall, he told me that he would only acquire objects that would displace something already on view. Or, as chief curator Griffith Mann said in the press release for this purchase, an acquisition that “builds on the museum’s commitment to collect works of art that are both seminal to the careers of individual artists and also significant benchmarks in the history of art.” Especially for a museum like Cleveland, which has a sterling collection, this makes sense.  

The other announcement from Cleveland came to me last week, and was recently posted on its website. The museum plans to deaccession 24 European sculptures at Christie’s on Nov. 22.

This is also progress. It’s a sign, if a small one, that more museums are disclosing, in advance, their deaccessions. Often, in the past, people found out by reading the small print of auction catalogues. Or, in other cases, when a gallery was used as the seller — never really found out at all. Earlier this year, I chastised some museums — including Cleveland — for being sneaky about deaccessions. If there’s nothing to hide, and this is good museum practice, why hide it?

I won’t presume to judge the wisdom of selling these sculptures. But here’s a sign: I added up the high estimates for all 24 pieces: $389,300 — all told. The biggest lot is a Madonna and Child, “after Benedetto da Maiano,” circa 1442-1497, estimated at $60,000 to $90,000.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art