Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Curatorial Matters

The Metropolitan Deaccessions, Ummmm, What?

What precisely did the Metropolitan Museum of Art* deaccession the other day? Apparently, a painting far more valuable than the museum had expected — and perhaps one with incorrect attribition.

NotRubensThe Met had decided to sell sixteen Old Masters paintings to benefit its acquisitions fund, and sent them to Sotheby’s, which put them in last Wednesday’s Old Master paintings auction. At the end, as Sotheby’s wrote in its press release, the Met had “achieved strong results, totalling $2.4 million.”

Everyone’s eyes were on one lot in particular, labeled “Portrait of a young girl, possibly Clara Serena Rubens by a Follower of Peter Paul Rubens.” During the sale, five or six bidder competed for the work, witnesses there told me. Against a presale estimate of $20,000 to $30,000, it sold for $626,500, including the buyer’s premium.

It’s a small painting, just 14 by 10 1/4 in., but with a long history. You can read the whole description here. It has an good exhibition history (long), figures in much literature, and has this catalogue note:

The sitter of this portrait resembles the younger subject of a similarly informal portrait by Rubens in the collections of the Princes of Liechtenstein in Vaduz. She also closely resembles the sitter in a drawing by Rubens, now in the Albertina, Vienna. The Vaduz portrait and Albertina drawing have both traditionally been thought to depict the artist’s daughter, Clara Serena, who died at the age of twelve in 1623. As Held observes (see Literature), such a repeated portrayal of apparently the same sitter does suggest a close personal contact between artist and model.

Held also, however, downgraded the painting from being a Rubens to being a Follower of. As for provenance, this is what’s listed by Sotheby’s:

Possibly Mme Camille Groult, Paris;
Possibly Sir Robert Henry Edward (Alabert?) Abdy, 5th Bart., Paris;
Mrs. Peter Cooper (Lucy Work) Hewitt, New York;
Her Estate sale, New York, American Art Association/Anderson Galleries, 6 April 1935, lot 613;
Frederick R. Bay, New York, by 1936 until at least 1939;
Charles Ulrick Bay, New York, by 1942;
His widow, Josephine Bay Paul, New York, 1955;
By whom given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1960 (Inv. no. 60.169).

In the condition report, Sotheby’s discussed some retouching, but concluded “the painting is presentable and there is no need for further work. offered in an elaborately carved and gilt wood frame.”

Is it really a Rubens? Was Held wrong? That would be a happy ending, except, of course, for the Met.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sotheby’s

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met

A Short Message About Museums And Antiquities

Hugh Eakin has it exactly right in his long piece in today’s New York Times, headlined The Great Giveback. In it, he chronicles what has been happening at American museums regarding the antiquities in their collections. While some of those objects have clearly been obtained under suspicious circumstances — and have now been returned, as they should be – many do not have proven problems. Yet museums have fallen victim to what amounts to extortion some foreign governments — sometimes voluntarily.

Ka-NeferNeferMeanwhile, the looting that these cases were supposed to stop has gone on, possibly getting worse. And many of the stolen objects are being purchased by collectors in other countries that do not care about the looting.

I normally refrain from writing about these cases lest I be accused of conflict of interest because of my consulting work. However, I don’t believe that prohibits me from citing an excellent article. He is a reasonable voice on a topic that attracts extreme positions.

Or from making another point: far too many journalists have bought the line of the “country of origin” claimants and archaeologists without examining the circumstances, the dynamics and the politics at work. The same thing happened, on occasion, in Nazi looting cases. It was far easier to buy the arguments of, and be sympathetic to, the claimants than it was to report out “the best available version of the truth,” to quote that line about the purpose of journalism.

Not all of the claimants of antiquities or World War II loot deserved that bias toward the “underdog.” Some are taking advantage of a complicated situation.

Let me close with Eakin’s final paragraph, pitch-perfect:

Looting is a terrible scourge, and museums must be held to the highest ethical standards so they don’t unwittingly abet it. But they are supposed to be in the business of collecting and preserving art from every era, not giving it away. By failing to deal with the looting problem a decade ago, museums brought a crisis upon themselves. But in zealously responding to trophy hunting from abroad, museums are doing little to protect ancient heritage while making great art ever less available to their own patrons.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the St. Louis Art Museum via the NYT

 

Ah, Manet: Blockbuster in Content, But Not As A Draw

I don’t know when I fell in love with Manet’s work. Was it when I first saw The Railway? Olympia? A Bar at the Folies-Bergère? The Balcony? In the Conservatory (below, left)? I once had a poster of The Grand Canal of Venice (Blue Venice). Or was it when I saw them all together, in 1983, when a sweeping exhibit in honor of the centenary of his death, organized by Charles Moffett and Francois Cachin (and with a catalogue to match), was on view at the Metropolitan Museum?

In_the_Conservatory_ManetAlas, being one of my favorite artists does not mean Manet is a household name. So I have watched from afar the Toledo Museum of Art’s recent Manet: Portraying Life exhibition with my fingers crossed for its success. The show was a joint production between Toledo and the Royal Academy in London, and it brought together some 40 portraits by Manet — the first show focused on his portraits. Toledo has long owned one of the best, Antonin Proust, from 1880 (see it here), and it borrowed the rest from museums around the world. When I mentioned the exhibit to a New York-based art connoisseur last spring, he told me Toledo couldn’t do it — so precious are Manet’s pictures — before I could finish the sentence saying it had. Kudos to Toledo.

After that buildup, how did it do? Measured by attendance, not as good as hoped. The Toledo Museum tells me that the exhibition drew just shy of 47,000 people, a tad below the target of 50,000, during its run from Oct. 7 through Jan. 1.  On the other hand, critics liked it and 94 percent of the 2,972 visitors who filled out the museum’s exit survey rated it “Excellent” or “Very Good.”

manet-artThe museum is undertaking a thorough evaluation of the exhibition, but in the meantime, here are some things Toledo says it has learned:

  • Because of Manet, the museum opened, for the first time, on New Year’s Day (warming my heart) and “We are most likely going to be open on New Year’s Day from now on because of the positive response from the public and good attendance.”
  • “We sold more than 1,000 Museum memberships during the run of the show, including 113 memberships at the $1000 or above level, adding to our existing base of 6,500 members.”
  • “Our retail store and café did exceptionally well, with gross revenue increases of 33 percent (retail) and 52 percent (café) respectively over the same period last year.”
  • “Nearly 20 percent of our attendance came in the last seven days of the show. Overall Museum attendance in December (37,757) was the highest since the opening of the Glass Pavilion in December 2006.”
  • About 75 percent of our visitors came from Ohio, the rest came from 38 states and several foreign countries.

The museum says it faced a headwind in the media because of the presidential election, with Ohio being perhaps the swing state at stake. “It was impossible for us to get on television and lots of potential visitors simply were overloaded with media,” the press office said.

Two more bits of context:  Color Ignited: Glass 1962–2012, which did not require tickets (Manet did) and ran for about the same time, drew 40,306 last summer. And The Egypt Experience:Secrets of the Tomb, which ran over nearly 14 months and was ticketed, drew 39,906. So Manet, less sexy than Egypt, usually, still did better.

I know this won’t discourage Toledo from organizing serious shows in the future. But I wish Manet would receive the recognition from the general public that he so deserves.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Columbus Dispatch (bottom)

 

MoMA Enthusiastically Endorses Video Games As Art. Why?

When the Smithsonian American Art Museum presented a special exhibition The Art of Video Games earlier this year, I decided — after much consideration — to ignore it, rather in hopes that it would go away. Or fade from lack of buzz. Fat chance — it was a big draw for the museum.

Now, the Museum of Modern Art is making it impossible for me to ignore this development of calling video games art. Not only has MoMA acquired “a selection of 14 video games” but the museum says they are “the seedbed for an initial wish list of about 40 to be acquired in the near future, as well as for a new category of artworks in MoMA’s collection that we hope will grow in the future.”

Call me old-fashioned, while I recognized the creativity and craft involved in making video games, I don’t believe they, as a class, belong in the Modern. Yet, now, with the MoMA’s imprimateur, the floodgates will open. Get out your old video games and take them to your nearest dealer.

MoMA responded to the potential criticism in making the announcement on Friday — calling the games both art and design:

Are video games art? They sure are, but they are also design, and a design approach is what we chose for this new foray into this universe. The games are selected as outstanding examples of interaction design—a field that MoMA has already explored and collected extensively, and one of the most important and oft-discussed expressions of contemporary design creativity. Our criteria, therefore, emphasize not only the visual quality and aesthetic experience of each game, but also the many other aspects—from the elegance of the code to the design of the player’s behavior—that pertain to interaction design.

You can read more about MoMA’s criteria for acquisition here. While I am glad to have that explanation, it does underscore MoMA’s defensive position. They don’t explain why it needs to buy a new Rauschenberg.

By next March, the museums says, it will install its initial game purchases — they are listed at the link above — “for your delight in the Museum’s Philip Johnson Galleries.” Again, the language is notable in ebullience and thus in defensiveness.

MoMA’s enthusiasm for video games as art raises a question, in my mind — why is it so enthusiastic about a genre like that, but so unenthusiastic about new forms of it would label as craft? Where are, say, new quilts in its collection? (There is one or two, I know, but an organized campaign to collect them.) Where is fabric art in general? Or other kinds of contemporary folk art?

I am not advocating for MoMA to become a craft museum; I simply wonder if its enthusiasm for electronic games might just be a sign of pandering to the popular, rather than a judgment based on artistic merit.

Photo Credit: Tetris, Courtesy of MoMA   

East Meets West In Beijing, The Art Museum Version

About ten days ago, 15 museum directors from the U.S. went to China to meet their peers from Chinese museums, in a meeting organized by the Asia Society to lauch an effort it calls the Asia Society Arts and Museum Network.

The Asia Society issued a press release in advance (which I didn’t get), but it was China Daily, a government-funded English language newspaper (whose charms I once wrote about), that wrote an after-the-fact article I noticed. It reported that China wants more exchange in contemporary art. That’s a bit of surprise, considering that contemporary art is often politcally tinged (at least) and offers the potential for creating more tension between China and the West.

But let’s return to the beginning: the Asia Society launched this five-year effort to “strengthen arts communities across Asia and encourage collaboration and exchange between art institutions and professionals in Asia and the United States” in an attempt to “advance cultural understanding between the United States and China.” The directors — heads of the Asia Society Museum, the Whitney, SFMoMA, the Peabody Essex, among them (all are listed in the aforementioned press release) — met with the heads of the Shanghai, Hubei, and Wuhan museums, among others (also listed in the release) in Beijing on Nov. 15-17. Said Melissa Chiu, head of the Asia Society galleries:

There has been an enormous increase in the number of museums in China and there is a great desire on their part to build partnerships with American museums and understand more about how museums can become larger cultural centers in their communities. The launch of the Arts and Museum Network at the U.S.-China Forum on the Arts and Culture is the beginning of a series of conversations between museum directors in the United States and in Asia.

Now to China Daily. It begins with a bit about Jay Xu, the director of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, who grew up in China but has lived in the U.S. for 22 years. “China is leading the way in the speed of building museums. Nobody is building as many museums as China is now,” he told the paper, adding “Managing these museums and personnel training is extremely important, and that’s one of the areas where U.S. museums could offer assistance and help.” But he was careful to compliment Chinese museums, saying the U.S. can learn from them, particularly in the use of “cutting-edge technology and innovative ways to connect art to life.”

I was disappointed to hear Xu cite an example from the Shanghai museum, which employs “motion detectors at exhibits of ancient Chinese scroll paintings. When someone looks at one section of the scroll, the detector will sense the movement and turn on the light, and, when one moves away, that light would dim while others turn on.” While impressive indeed, they were in operation when I first visited China in 2002. I’d have liked a more recent example. 

It was Fan Di’an, director of the National Art Museum of China, who took the bolder, contemporary stance. “Chinese and American contemporary art are very active in commercial events, such as auctions and expositions, but not so much in public museums,” he was quoted as saying. “That’s something we should pay more attention to.”

With the politically active  Ai Weiwei being the best-known contemporary Chinese artist in the United States, that’s quite interesting. I wonder what happens next.

Photo Credit: From the Fu Baoishi exhibit at the Metropolitan, Courtesy AFP via China Daily