Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Archives for April 2013

A Maximum Blooper In Dallas?

I debated before posting this link to a video on the YouTube channel for the Dallas Museum of Art. Someone sent it to me. It’s a takeoff on Downton Abbey by the Dallas museum, called “Downton Artsy.” It stars museum director Max Anderson as lord of the manor, and includes curators and museum supporters in a little tale about the museum’s free admission policy and a museum gala.

imagesCAMHZR5BI shared it with a few people, without much comment of my own. Everyone of them was aghast. They used these words to describe it: “cringemaking,” “appalling,” “narcissistic,” “embarassing,” “sends mixed messages,” “OMG,” “hilarious,” “infantile,” and “unbelievable.”

As I write this, 809 people have viewed it, and four have given it a thumbs up. There are no thumbs down.

See for yourself here.

I’m pretty sure the museum would tell critics to “lighten up,” and they have a point. But I can’t understand why the museum would waste the time and effort and money (and did it seek permission from Masterpiece Classic to borrow the look, feel and music?) on this.  What are they trying to do? What kind of image does it create?

Carnegie Museum Bids To Become A “Living Laboratory”

Photography is big at museums of late — more exhibitions, more dedicated curators and so on – and today came an announcement from the Carnegie Museum of Art on the topic: With a gift from the William T. Hillman Foundation, it is launching the Hillman Photography Initiative — “a living laboratory for exploring the rapidly changing field of photography and its impact on the world.” Lynn Zelevansky (below), the museum’s director, said that “The Initiative positions the museum to be a leader in a subject area with broad appeal and profound relevance to contemporary society. We are deeply grateful for the [Foundation’s] support and partnership in this effort.”

LYNN2-235x300As a daughter of Rochester, home to Eastman Kodak and the George Eastman House, I have mixed emotions… but competition is good.

Let me quote from the press release –which admittedly is a little vague. Here goes:

For much of its history, photography has pervaded our world, but never more so than today, when non-stop technological innovations make it ever easier to take photographs and share them instantaneously. There are over eight billion pictures on the social media site Flickr; photographs on the Internet appear for seconds and then disappear, lost in a pictorial “newsfeed.” How does that affect their meaning? Our belief in their veracity? Our way of valuing them as keepsakes? And where in the midst of all these images and new technologies does art reside? What are the intellectual and aesthetic criteria by which we value photographs made with new means (for example, cell phones, computational photography) today? And how will we value those made by other means tomorrow?

the Hillman Photography Initiative is a special project within the photography department of Carnegie Museum of Art that will offer an adaptable framework for engaging with these provocative issues. Favoring an approach that is experimental and open to new perspectives, the Initiative will be driven by the collaboration of five “agents,” consisting of four external experts and Carnegie Museum of Art curator Tina Kukielski, who is also co-curator of the 2013 Carnegie International. The Initiative will follow a 12-month cycle, beginning with an intense three-month planning period during which the agents will work together with program manager Divya Rao Heffley to identify a key theme that will inspire a wide range of activities such as exhibitions, programs, collaborations, publications, commissioned works of art, artist residencies, and online experiences. Nathan Martin of the innovation/design studio Deeplocal will facilitate the process. Following the planning phase, Kukielski and Heffley will work with other museum staff to manage the implementation of the activities over the nine months that follow. Rollout of activities is expected in early 2014, although some may begin more quickly. Additionally, the Initiative will co-sponsor and/or collaborate on related projects at the museum and with other institutions.

See what I mean? A bit more:

The first group of agents includes, along with Tina Kukielski, Marvin Heiferman, independent curator and writer; Alex Klein, program curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Illah Nourbakhsh, professor of robotics and director of the CREATE Lab, Carnegie Mellon University; and Arthur Ou, assistant professor of photography and director, BFA photography, Parsons The New School for Design. The group will meet for the first time on April 21–22 to begin the development cycle.

I can’t post the press release because it’s not yet online, but the good news is that the initiative has a website with a few more details. I will be curious to see how this develops.

UPDATE, 5/3: the museum has now released a video update with more information on the project.

 

 

 

 

The Secret Life of Maps

PJ-BN744A_maps_DV_20130416192554That’s not the real title of the exhibition that opens at Winterthur on Saturday. Martin Bruckner, the guest curator of “Common Destinations: Maps in the American Experience,” talks rather about the “social life” of maps. But the exhibit is kind of a coming out for the Winterthur collection — a few of the items in the show have been on view, but it was mostly the maps on ceramics or paintings, that were tucked into the permanent collections rooms. The big paper maps have been tucked away in the library or decorative arts collections.

Winterthur owns about 250 maps now, most purchased after it became a museum — not by the duPonts whose house Winterthur was.

With so many people now using GPS rather than looking at maps, this exhibition is very timely. I write about it and how it came about in today’s Wall Street Journal. Have a look (it’s not behind the paywall).

Meantime, I’m showing a few examples here.

From top to bottom:

1197_1973_0288_002“L’Amerique”: Jean Lattré, Paris, France; from 1779–80 — an “engraving with watercolor on paper, pasteboard, wood, brass: ‘As rare as it is unique, this adaptation of a map into a fashionable fan is only one example of the vast crossover appeal maps had in the 1700s and 1800s.’ ” It’s a cartifact.

A detail from the “Popple Map” – “The largest and perhaps most spectacular one made in the 1700s illustrates the ways in which maps entered American culture. Widely criticized in its own day for misrepresenting the continent’s geography, the Popple map was nevertheless acquired by public institutions and private citizens.”

1197_split_globeA pocket globe, by Holbrooks Apparatus Manufacturing Co. Wethersfield, CT, 1830-59.

 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Winterthur

On Wisconsin! And Cincinnati And Others

It’s widely recognized now that there’s no one art world, no one art market — and that perhaps is what underpins a couple of recent developments.

Museum of Wisconsin ArtWe’ll start with the news early this month that the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, WI., — which has existed for some 20 years — has a new building that will raise it profile and provide more space for showing art by residents of the state. Art writer Mary Louise Schumacher wrote about it in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

One of the goals of the museum’s new director and CEO, Laurie Winters, is to reconsider how to think about the art of the state and the role that a museum can play. With no major contemporary art institution in the region, save the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, she’s interested in finding ways to cultivate connections with contemporary artists, among other things, and has created an advisory board of working artists, curators and critics.

The JS has a wonderful slide show at the link above, which includes the photo I’ve copied here of Graeme Reid, director of exhibitions, amid an installation by Michael Meilahn.

Today, an article caught my eye about the groundbreaking for a museum in Daytona Beach, FL., that “will house the world’s most extensive collection of Florida art.” A couple named Cici and Hyatt Brown have donated the art they’ve amassed — some 2,600 works — over the years. It’s not contemporary, apparently: The local paper, The Ledger, says the earliest work dates to 1839 — a painting of the gates of St. Augustine, Fl. The Browns gave $13 million for the design and construction of the museum and have just said they will give $2 million to kick off an $8 million endowment campaign. Read more details here.

No. 3 on this list of unrelated developments is a blog post in Houston (ArtAttack on the Houston Press site) proposing that the city needs more museums, including one it would call the The Museum of Texas Art:

You would think we’ve got art covered what with the MFAH’s ever growing campus, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Pearl Fincher Art Museum and the rest, not to mention the hundreds of galleries in the area, but on any given day, you’d be hard-pressed to find an exhibit that included anything that could be called Texas art.

We don’t mean just works by Texas artists or works created here in Texas. It takes a little bit more than that to qualify a painting or sculpture as Texas art. It takes an only-in-Texas vision and direct connection to other local painters and sculptors who either influenced or were influenced by the artist. The Texas Art Museum would have a collection of works by artists such as unique Lone Star state talents as Emma Richardson Cherry, considered one of the most forward thinking artists of her time.

Finally, the other day I received an email from the Cincinnati Art Museum noting that its Cincinnati Wing is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary. The museum says it was “one of the first art museums in the nation to dedicate permanent gallery space to a community’s art history.” It adds:

The 18,000 square feet of gallery space showcases more than 400 objects that represent art made by Cincinnati or Cincinnati trained artists, art depicting Cincinnati or Cincinnatians, or art commissioned for Cincinnati, including many works by American masters. The artists in the Cincinnati Wing include Frank Duveneck, a painter of international reputation; Hiram Powers, one of the nation’s finest sculptors; John H. Twachtman and Edward Potthast, regarded as two of the finest American Impressionists; Lilly Martin Spencer, the most celebrated female painter of her time; and decorative arts from the internationally renowned Rookwood Pottery.

I couldn’t find a link to the release online, sorry to say.

So there you have it — I align with the Houston blogger, Olivia Flores Alvarez, on this issue. Showing reginally made art is another way museums can differentiate themselves.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Journal Sentinel 

 

 

Noteworthy Acquistions

It’s spring-buying season: several museums in recent days have announced acquisitions (none as gigantic as the Met’s gift from Leonard Lauder, but noteworthy just the same). Here are some of them.

ppppThe Kimbell Art Museum has purchased two big Mayan Palenque-style ceramic censer stands — definitely museum-quality, as they were once, from 1985 to 1999, on long-term loan to the Detroit Institute of Arts. The Kimbell got them from privately: the museum said that they were imported into the U.S. from Mexico with proper documentation on August 6, 1968 and have since been in private collections in Europe and the U.S. No word on who brokered the deals. (Or the costs.)

These works — about 40 inches tall — are “typical of the Maya late Classic period (A.D. 600–900) and dated to about A.D. 690–720.” Censer Stand with the Head of the Jaguar God of the Underworld and Censer Stand with the Head of a Supernatural Being with a Kan Cross (at left) will go on view on Apr. 21. The background from the press release:

Ceramic censers were an important component of ritual paraphernalia and ceremonial life at Palenque [a major Maya city-state located in current-day Chiapas, Mexico]….used both to represent and venerate divine beings, primarily the deities of the Palenque Triad. Censers were in two parts: a stand with a tubular body that served as a support; and a brazier-bowl that was placed on top and used for burning copal incense. While the functional brazier was undecorated (and is now often missing, as is the case with both Kimbell acquisitions), the stands were elaborately embellished with a wide variety of iconographic elements. The thematic arrangement depicted on these two…[is] the “totem-pole” style and is characterized by a vertical tier of heads modeled in deep relief on the front of the cylinder. The side flanges are decorated with motifs of crossed bands, serpent-wing panels, foliation, knotted bands, stylized ear ornaments and pendant ribbons applied in low relief….Though not necessarily conceived as a pair, both censers were undoubtedly made by the same highly skilled court artist.

More details here.

LACMA-AfricanWoodToday, LACMA fired off a release of its own, announcing the most successful Collectors’ Committee fundraiser results: $3.2 million. With it, and including two additional gifts from the evening’s sponsor, the museum has added nine works of art to its collection. They include “one of the oldest surviving wood sculptures from Africa, ancient Korean and Japanese sculptures, as well as modern and contemporary pieces by Thomas Demand, Susan Hefuna, Julio Le Parc, and James Turrell.” Meanwhile, that sponsor, JP Morgan Chase, donated “a photograph by Robert Frank, St. Francis and Gas Station, and City Hall—Los Angeles, from his iconic series The Americans; and a portfolio of seventy-five mixed-media works on paper made by Ed Ruscha in 1969, Stains.”

For more details, you can read the press release or the shorter blog version, which has the benefit of pictures.

The National Gallery of Art’s Collectors Committee has been busy too. Today came word that it had “made possible the acquisition of Piano/Piano (1963–1965/2011) by Richard Artschwager, a major example of the wooden sculptures that employ Formica as a laminate, for which he is known (below left); Plaster Surrogates (1982/1989) by Allan McCollum, the last large grouping available of the artist’s signature works in this series; and Condensation Wall (1963–1966/2013) by Hans Haacke, a breakthrough kinetic work from the artist’s early career.”

The NGA also acquired a work by Rineke Dijkstra and — yes — the same Ruscha that LACMA bought, “Stains (1969) includes 75 sheets of paper stained with 75 different ingredients and represents Ruscha’s first venture in this unusual medium.”

artschwager_lrgDetails are here.

In West Palm Beach, the Norton Museum of Art just said that trustees approved the accession of nine “significant works of art” from area collectors. They include three Italian Old Master paintings: Adam and Eve with the Infant Cain and Abel (1705) by MarcAntonio Franceschini, “a rare example of this artist’s work held in a public collection in the United States;” Saint Onuphrius of Egypt (1545-1550) by Lorenzo Lotto, “a Venetian painter whose work represents an important transition stage to the first Florentine and Roman Mannerists of the 16th century;” andJacob Stealing Isaacs’s Blessings (1780s) by Gaetano Gandolfi, “a Bolognese painter known best for his fluid draftsmanship.” All are gifts from Damon Mezzacappa.

The Norton also received three 20th-century works from trustee Anne Berkley Smith: Richard Diebenkorn’s Mission Landscape, from 1962, and Landscape with Figure, from 1963, and Wayne Thiebaud’s Neapolitan Pie, from 1963. And Beth Rudin DeWoody donated…of Prosperity, from 2011, a sculpture by South African artist Mary Sibande.

The Norton’s Contemporary and Modern Art Council, meanwhile, raised money to acquire Mnemosyne I, a 2012 “monumental” charcoal drawing by Jenny Saville and Lynda Benglis’s Cocoon,  a 1971 work that blurs painting and sculpture.

Back here in New York, the Morgan Library & Museum said it’s getting a gift of 28 letters written by J.D. Salinger from the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York — bringing the total of Salinger letters on Madison Ave. to 52. The gift commemorates the 150th birthday of Swami Vivekananda, who brought Vedanta, the religious and philosophical teachings of India, to the West in 1893. The Morgan says:

J. D. Salinger was deeply influenced by Vedanta and had an enduring relationship with Swami Nikhilananda, founder and spiritual leader of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York. Salinger attended services and classes at the Center in Manhattan, and at the Vivekananda Cottage retreat in New York’s Thousand Island Park….

[Written between 1967 and 2006, the letters] pertain to Salinger’s many donations to the Center over the course of nearly forty years, while others contain reflections on spiritual and other matters.

 Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Kimbell (top), LACMA (middle) and the NGA (bottom)