Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Artworks

Merry Christmas…

I’ll be away celebrating Christmas for a few days. Here’s my Christmas greeting to you this year: Francesco di Giorgio Martini’s The Nativity, With God the Father Surounded by Angels and Cherubim, which is jointly owned by the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum.

Francesco_di_Giorgio_Martini_Italian_painter_1439_1502_Nativity

And there’s a story behind this joint ownership, provided to me by my friend Paul Jeromack, who also suggested the painting when I went looking for a nativity to share. It seems the painting was sawed into two pieces in the 19th century–the NGA owned the top half, of God the Father, while the Met owned the bottom half.

Per the Met: “…The upper part of this engaging composition is very inventive and was inspired by the sculptural reliefs of Donatello, while the lower part reflects Francesco’s admiration for the work of the north Italian miniaturist Girolamo da Cremona, who worked on choirbooks in Siena from 1470 to 1474. So different in character are the upper and lower parts that they were separated in the nineteenth century; they were rejoined in 1988.”

Yes, the two pieces were put back together and the two museums share ownership. The painting is on view at the Met. The NGA’s “half” looked like this:

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Better together, aren’t they?

Freer-Sackler Digitization Project: A Modest Suggestion

The other day, the Freer and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian announced that it had digitized its entire collection and was putting it all online for all to see and use–with more than 90 percent of the images in high-definition resolution and without copyright restrictions for noncommercial uses–as of Jan. 1, 2015. This is good news, and I applaud the initiative.

TextileCapture-1But another sentence in the press release stopped me: “The vast majority of the 40,000 artworks have never before been seen by the public…”

Now, I know full well that many museums own works whose quality isn’t up to par–and they should not displace better works, just to be shown. I am also fully aware that some museums keep works for study–and the Freer-Sackler is one of them. The release says there are more than 10,000 items in the Freer Stufy Collection, including multiple pages of certain manuscripts, textile fragments and the like. This collection is “used by scholars around the world for scientific research and reference.” I tend to like the open storage areas some museums are using for some collections, though I have no information about what the public thinks about them.

But I think museum should make use of some items they “never” show. Are any lendable to smaller museums? Could any be pulled into a small touring exhibition? If so, museums should do these things.

And if not, why not devote a small area–even one case or one small wall–for a rotating showing of artworks that are “never” shown? Maybe these items could be paired with something similar that is worthy of hanging in the galleries. Would that help teach the public some connoisseurship?  It might even prove enlightening about deaccessioning.

Museums have become so creative at trying new things, they seem to say to us. How about trying something with works in their storeroom? Maybe they would even turn up some wonderful. There’ve been a lot of cases like that in recent years.

Photo Credit: Hutomo Wicaksono /Freer and Sackler Galleries

Happy Thanksgiving, Courtesy of The Bruce

The Bruce Museum sent a seasonal greeting yesterday that I’d like to share. It’s Frans Snyder’s Still Life with Fruit, Dead Game, Vegetables, a live Monkey, Squirrel and Cat (c. 1635). It’s on view now there, as part of Northern Baroque Splendor: The HOHENBUCHAU COLLECTION from: LIECHTENSTEIN. The Princely Collections, Vienna.  Well, part of it is, anyway, through Apr. 12, 2015. Thereafter, the exhibit will travel to the Cincinnati Art Museum.

FSnyders

Here’s the BG, drawn from the press release:

The Hohenbuchau Collection was gathered by Otto Christian and Renate Fassbender and has been on long-term loan to the Collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein in Vienna, where it was exhibited in its entirety in the former LIECHTENSTEIN MUSEUM in 2011. A selection of some 80 paintings from The Hohenbuchau Collection was recently shown at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in Germany (11/08/2013 – 02/23/2014), and paintings from The Collection are regularly being displayed alongside The Princely Collections, in the permanent exhibition in Vienna as well as on touring exhibitions worldwide.

Primarily comprised of Dutch and Flemish seventeenth-century paintings, the collection exhibits all the naturalism, visual probity and technical brilliance for which those schools are famous. While many modern collections of Old Masters specialize in a single style or subject matter, the Hohenbuchau Collection is admirable for offering examples of virtually all the genres produced by Lowland artists – history painting, portraiture, genre, landscapes, seascapes, still lifes and flower pieces, animal paintings and hunting scenes.

I thought it was perfect to share on Thanksgiving.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Bruce Museum

 

Two “Transformative” Gifts That Actually Are

ManetTwo lucky museums made big announcements this week–“transformative” gifts of art. And these do seem to fit that bill, no exaggeration.

In Los Angeles, a reclusive billionaire named A. Jerrold Perenchio said he would bequest “the most significant works of his collection to LACMA’s planned new building for its permanent collection.” The trove includes “at least” 47 art works, including some by Degas, Monet, Bonnard, Manet (at left), Picasso and Pissarro. They would go into the new buildings, designed by Peter Zumthor, planned by LACMA director Michael Govan–Perenchio made his gift contingent on that, as some of the museum’s current buildings need extensive work.

Just yesterday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a$125 million bond issue to help finance that $600 million-plus project, but Govan has to raise hundreds of millions before it will be built.

Here are the details of the gift. The Los Angeles Times has the backstory.

I was in LA last week (to see this), and made a stop at LACMA. The museum undoubtedly has some strengths–it’s young, remember, celebrating its 50th anniversary next year–but this gift is sorely need. Perenchio’s collection is valued at an estimated $500 million, obviously not affordable to LACMA, whose collecting priorities seem to be in contemporary anyway.

So I can only say thank you to Perenchio, whose previous gifts have generally be anonymous.

Peale-GWMeantime, the St. Louis Art Museum just accepted the bequest of 225 works of art given by the late C.C. Johnson Spink and Edith “Edie” Spink. It consists of many American works, by the likes of  John Singleton Copley, Rembrandt Peale, Norman Rockwell and Andrew and Jamie Wyeth, and some 200 Asian works of art “that range from
Chinese ceramics of the Neolithic period to works from Meiji-era Japan.”

The Spinks’ Asian art collection was developed with the intent of filling major gaps in the Art Museum’s collection and with a specific goal of allowing the museum to present a complete history of Chinese ceramics from prehistoric times to the end of the imperial system.

The museum says the collection is worth at least $50 million. Some of them are listed in this release. Peale’s George Washington is posted here.

It’s interesting that both announcements were made in this week of the big auctions in New York, where many works are selling for such high prices. These two benefactors say they bought with giving to the museums in mind. I wonder how many buyers this November are thinking the same way.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of LACMA (top) and the St. Louis Art Museum (bottom)

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s A Masterpiece!

Yes, I wrote another Masterpiece column for The Wall Street Journal, which published in Saturday’s paper, headlined Folding Culture and Politics Into Art. Can you guess what it is? I’ve already mentioned it here, in 2012.

Mexican Screen-battleI was enamored of the object, a folding screen made in Mexico at the turn of the 18th century, from the first I heard of it, when it was acquired by the Brooklyn Museum.* And when I saw it last year in Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home, 1492–1898 there, I wasn’t disappointed. What’s more, the screen has a great backstory. So, Saturday’s piece.

Here’s an excerpt:

…Stretching some 18 feet in length and 7 1/2 feet tall, this biombo enconchado blended Asian, European and American influences: It borrowed the traditional Japanese folding-screen form known asbyobu; bore images inspired by Dutch news prints and French and Italian tapestries; and was inlaid with concha, which means shell in Spanish, using a technique invented in Mexico by local artists.

Very rare, possibly unique, in its day, this multicultural hybrid—now split in half, alas—is the only surviving specimen of the genre…

MexicanScreen-Hunt-detailThe backstory is very complicated, and I won’t attempt to summarize it here. It involves a splitting in two of the original screen, its “disappearance” for centuries, it resurfacing at auction years ago when only a Mexican dealer recognized it and got it for a steal, and the Brooklyn Museum’s digging to discover its true subject.

One comment on the WSJ website is on point.  John Beauregard wrote:

Lovely story, tx.

The next logical step would be to (temporarily) reunite the two halves either in Brooklyn or in Tepotzotlán, or have them displayed successive in each city.

Good idea.

Photo Credits: Battle scene (top); hunt scene detail (bottom), Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Brooklyn Museum