Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Judith H. Dobrzynski

Will Venice Sell Art to Stay Afloat?

On Jan. 1, I wasn’t paying too much attention to the news, but The Wall Street Journal posted an article that day that should not go unremarked. Headlined As Venice’s Debts Mount, Mayor Pitches Sale of Art, Other Moves to Keep Finances Afloat, it said that the city is some $65 million in the hole at the moment and added that the mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, has listed among his remedies a plan to sell art from the city’s public collections. Among those mentioned are Klimt’s Judith II (at right) and a Chagall that “don’t belong to the city’s history and tradition.”

Judith II, Salome, 1909...BFKEAH Judith II, Salome, 1909

It adds, a bit later:

Art lovers and politicians in Rome have expressed outrage, but Mr. Brugnaro says he isn’t cowed. “I’ll sell the paintings rather than sit here and admire them while rain drips onto children’s school desks and public libraries have no toilet paper.”

This raises all sorts of questions, including:

  • Is he bluffing?
  • Isn’t his criterion, about art needing to belong to a city’s history to be necessary to its attraction, stupid?

In my opinion, yes and yes. Someone should definitely refute his ideas about what art belongs in public museums, or encyclopedic museums the world over should simply empty out their galleries and storeroom. (On the other hand, some “national treasure” definitions, which sometimes apply preposterously to items that have no national connection, should also be challenged. But I digress.)

But I have not heard any refutations, at least not public ones. Which leads me to believe that art, once again, is becoming the political football it was in Detroit. We need to nip this in the bud, as it has already spread to smaller cities in Britain and Germany, which in the last two years or so have deaccessioned works (if my memory serves) to raise operating money.

Brugnaro has made other proposals–charging day-trippers to enter St. Mark’s Square, asking for donations from cruise ship lines, which annually disgorge some 2 million passengers into the city without paying a thing in taxes but which heavily use the city’s infrastructure, etc.

Those are more acceptable, and I think Brugnaro may be trying to force consensus on them by ransoming the art. But crying wolf is never a good idea. Isn’t that the morale of the fable?

Happy Birthday, and What That Means

One hundred years ago, the last emperor of China abdicated; the Saturday Evening Post published its first Norman Rockwell cover; war raged in Europe and the Near East; Gregory Peck was born; and the Cleveland Museum of Art opened its doors.

Titian_Portrait_of_Alfonso_d'AvalosThus, as 2015 turned into 2016, the Cleveland museum rang in the start of its 100th anniversary season with a party in its giant atrium, with a DJ and live performances. And, Cleveland Scene says,

In addition to a complimentary champagne toast and desserts at midnight, the party includes gallery programs, psychedelic visuals in the Atrium, curator-led tours, free admission to Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse, a cash bar and additional surprises. All of the museum’s permanent galleries and temporary exhibitions will be open during the party.

What happens in the coming months is more important. I read about the events and program so far in the museums November-December and January-February editions of Cleveland Art, its magazine. They include exhibitions, of course, such as Pharaoh: King of Ancient Egypt, opening in March; members-only events; a two-day centennial festival weekend in July that inaugurates a three-year partnership with the Cleveland Orchestra and a Centennial gala. I like three other elements best:

  • A Centennial Art Truck, which will drive to various parts of Cleveland with pop-up art exhibitions, the capacity for art-making by the public and art conversations.
  • “A Big Draw Event,” a Sunday in October when everyone will drawing in the museum galleries. Ok, not every one, but I hope many people.
  • Masterpiece Loans, from other museums, including Titian’s Portrait of Alfonso d’Avalos, Marchese del Vasto, in Armor with a Page, on loan from the Getty Museum and now on view (pictured); Kerry James Marshall’s Bang, from the Progressive Art Collection, also on view now; and Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on view in mid-April.

Cleveland has not announced all the loans yet; but this effort reminds me of what the Dulwich Picture Gallery did in 2010 for its 200th birthday–a loan of a masterpiece each month. Each of those was spectacular, and the fact that they were put on view in a monthly, very orderly way, made it easy for the public to keep the effort in mind.

Cleveland’s seems to be a little less organized, but it’s still a wonderful thing. You and I may travel to museums to see special art works, but not everyone does. And I’ve always been a fan of the focus on one picture.

So happy birthday, CMA; you’re off to a good start.

 

Expanding Our Art Horizons

GuanabaraBayIn recent years, some museums have begun a push to build their collections in Latin American art and to show more of it in special exhibitions, too. Much of the emphasis has been on modern and contemporary works and/or Spanish Colonial works.

That’s why I was pleased to learn about and exhibition that goes, shall we say, in another direction–that is, pictures of the land, from the Artic to the southern tip of South America; paintings by 19th and early 20th century artists.

Organized by the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Terra Foundation for American Art, Picturing the Americas, is currently on view at Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, AR.  I recently visited it for The Wall Street Journal, which published my review in today’s paper under the headline Mapping Beauty Across the Americas.

Here’s an important thing to know about the show:

From its start, this exhibition indicates that it intends to illustrate how artists used landscapes to make statements, rather than how they created them or their relative artistic merits. The works—more than 100 paintings and works on paper from the 19th through the early 20th centuries—are presented as tools that forged or reinforced opinion about nationhood, cultural identity and the environment, natural and (later) built. They may be aesthetically pleasing, but they all contain messages, overt or subliminal.

Nothing wrong with that, of course.

And if the aim of an exhibition is to teach something, and not just please the eye or evoke emotion, then Picturing the Americas succeeds.  The works include many by artists that are not at all known in this country–yet should be. That’s Felix Emile Taunay’s “Guanabara Bay Seen From Snake Island”(1828) posted about.

Not every artist in the show is terrific, but… that’s no criterion for looking at their work, especially, as the above paragraph indicates, the works also served another function.

This is the exhibition’s only showing in the United States, and it comes down on Jan. 18.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum

And To All A Good Night…

It’s my tradition at Christmas time to share a beautiful nativity scene with readers of Real Clear Arts. This year, I’ve chosen a painting by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi–a tondo titled Adoration of the Magi and now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, though once in the possession of the Medicis. Measuring just over 54 inches in diameter, it dates to the mid 15th century and came to the NGA courtesy of Samuel H. Kress.

Fra_Angelico,_Fra_Filippo_Lippi,_The_Adoration_of_the_Magi

Here is the NGA’s description. The Wikipedia entry on the painting is quite extensive, and though I did not check out its accuracy, I found it to be enlighteding, partly because it also contains pictures of two tondos worth knowing, one by Botticelli and the other by Domenico Veneziano, as well as details of the Angelico/Lippi work. And if you really want to inspect it, go to its place in the Google Cultural Institute trove.

Merry Christmas to all!

Museum World: Five To Applaud

It’s tough being a critic, especially a blogging one. No matter one’s natural tendencies to want to like something, you also tend to see the flaws and the disappointments, then end up coming off as a scold. So as the year ends, I thought I would mention a few of the many things going on in museum world that are worth applauding.

Here are a few I’ve noticed, in no particular order.

Let’s start at the Cincinnati Art Museum, which faced much turmoil a while back but has had a new director, Cameron Kitchin, for more than a year now (here’s a recent Q&A with him). Since October, the museum has been showing Raphael’s Portrait of a Lady with A Unicorn on loan from the Galleria Borghese in Rome, and if that’s not reason enough so celebrate, there’s also the fact revealed in a recent press release:

With the reopening of the third-floor contemporary gallery and the recent reopening of the Cincinnati Wing pre-Civil War galleries, Antiquities, and new first-floor galleries, there will be more for Art Museum visitors to see than ever before.

Second, an announcement from the Detroit Institute of Art this morning that it would grant free admission to a special exhibition called 30 Americans from Dec. 28 through Jan. 3, AND extend its hours during those days–noteworthy in itself–reminded me that I had intended to call out the museum for what is it doing to thank Michigan residents outside of Detroit for supporting the Grand Bargain. Last summer, it began a series of loan exhibitions, school programs, conservation and professional services for other museums, etc. throughout the state and it sent individual loans to a long list of museums around the state. It’s easy to forget to remember, and the DIA did not.

So many museums are offering performing arts nowadays, and I was pleased to see notice of a couple of exhibitions that combined the two–with one caveat, which is that I have not seen either one in person.

The Toledo Museum of Art‘s Degas and the Dance presents six of his dancer sculptures, plus other works (including the painting above), and since it “is presented in celebration of The Toledo Ballet’s 75th annual performance of The Nutcracker, it also includes a section of memorabilia and costumes lent by the ballet. Plus, visitors can see dance rehearsal, films and more.

The San Diego Museum of Art, meanwhile, is offering The Art of Music, which pays tribute to daily musical performances in Balboa Park, its locale. “Community” is a byword in museum talk these days, and here are two examples that connect museums to their community without losing sight of their art.

Last May, the Indianapolis Star wrote an interesting piece about an education program at the Indianapolis Museum of Art that began this past summer:

The IMA is partnering with St. Mary’s Child Center to create the nation’s first preschool at an encyclopedic art museum. The 16-student pilot program, which begins Aug. 3, invests in the idea that education focused on creative expression and material-based learning can make a lifelong change to 3- to 5-year-olds….

The museum is raising money to provide scholarships to eight students from families who rely on government assistance. Their families will also receive museum memberships.

Here’s the release with more details. It sounds promising, though the tuition is steep. I hope to learn more about how the first term worked out.

Photo Credit: The Toledo Museum of ArtÂ