Curatorial Matters

The euphoria at the Cleveland Museum of Art regarding its new purchase of Henry Bone’s enamel-on-copper copy of Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne for less than half a million was, alas, overshadowed today by the cancellation of its upcoming exhibition, Sicily: Art and Invention between Greece and Rome, which is currently at the Getty. It is, and was to be, a blockbuster. Take a look at the check list — some 145 antiquities, including the phiale pictured here.

Now Cleveland has a huge hole in its schedule, beginning Sept. 29 — not very far from now.

Cleveland museum Director David Franklin spoke in diplomatic understatement when he told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, “It’s very disappointing. These things don’t happen very often in the art world. This is unprecedented for me and I think unprecedented for all of us.”

Sicily had been complaining that the loan of so many ancient treasures was hurting its tourism. And in June, Mariarita Sgarlata, Sicily’s highest cultural official, had told The New York Times that the island’s government had never signed a contract for the show, which was approved instead by the Italian government. But Sicily enjoys some autonomy.

Franklin is trying to make the best of the situation. He also said in the Plain-Dealer: “In the end, we have to respect the decision Sicily made. And frankly we hope we can work with Sicily again. We don’t end with any acrimony here.”

Now what? Franklin is right to keep the temperature down. He has said he’d find something to plug the hole in the special exhibitions galleries, probably something contemporary.

I have higher hopes. Now is the time for another museum, or museums, or a collector, or Italy itself to come forward with an offer. Italy has been touting its Year of Italian Culture here, lending items such as The Boxer, a Third Century B.C. statue now on view at the Metropolitan Museum — let it step into the breech here, if not an entire exhibition, a stupendous loan from its many treasures.

Given the climate in antiquities, it would unlikely for an antiquities collector to lend his or her treasures, but — as ARTnews just revealed — there are 200 very active collectors out there, surely one or a group of them could step forward with the offer of loans.

Finally, yes, I know museums plan exhibitions years in advance. But is there no show out there that, with a little arm-twisting, might go to one more venue? Think!

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Getty

In tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal, I review an exhibition that opened at the Portland Museum of Art on Saturday: Shangaa: Art of Tanzania. It is, according to its curator, Gary van Wyk, the first exhibition in the United States devoted to Tanzanian art, and one of the few period. This material has been shown in Germany, and that’s about it. History is the culprit, as I explain in the article, headlined Objects that Amaze.

But what’s it doing in Maine? Maine is the whitest state in the country, with 96.9 percent of its population described as white in the 2010 census. So many museums nowadays are programming to their populations — a trend I have some qualms about — that it seems a lot contrarian, if not a little odd. (Ok, it’s true, I learned someway into the story that this show originated at Queensborough Community College in New York City’s most-diverse borough.)

But always there’s a reason — and in this case it is a fortuitous personal connection. The Portland museum’s director, Mark Bessire, was a Fulbright Fellow in Tanzania. He and his wife, Aimee, who now teaches courses in African art and culture, African photography, contemporary art and history of photography at Bates College in Maine, lived there for two years. As van Wyk, a transplanted Zimbabwean who at first specialized in South African art, tells the tale, in 1997 he commissioned Aimee as well as Mark to share their experiences for The Heritage Library of African Peoples, which he edited. That’s when he first encountered Tanzanian art, quickly realizing that it was understudied, underexposed, and therefore underappreciated.

Through Shangaa, he convinced me. I’m posting a couple of pictures here of items that I don’t talk about in the review — because the notables were too numerous to mention.

But there’s a larger point here, about museum programming: what if the museum director had not lived in Tanzania? Would this show ever have been seen in Maine? I hope this exhibit does so well that museums learn that they can mimimize, rather than emphasize, identity exhibitions and identity acquisitions. I wish the public shows them that if it’s great art, it doesn’t matter which tribe, which nationality, which race created it.

I also hope that there are more such serendipitous connections out there, bringing art to places it might not “logically” go.

Photo credits: Courtesy of the Portland Museum of Art