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Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Curatorial Matters

Schimmel, Part 2: MOCA Tries Damage Control And Fails Miserably

Late Friday, the Museum of Contemporary Art issued a press release – not in its press room, but posted on its blog, which is appropriately (in this case) named “The Curve,” about the abrupt and worrying departure of Paul Schimmel, their chief curator, last week.  You can tell how guilty the board and the administration is feeling by how they couched it.

First, they insisted it was a resignation, not a firing — despite the fact the Schimmel was called to the office of Eli Broad (right), the financier who gave MOCA a lifeline in Decemberm, 2008, to learn of his fate. Wouldn’t you have liked to be a fly on the wall to hear that conversation?

Second, they said the press release was drafted with Schimmel.

Third, they said he would work for MOCA as an independent curator in the future, finishing at least one of this current exhibition projects, Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949-1962, which opens in September.

Fourth, they named a gallery in the Geffen Contemporary after him.

The release did not disclose his departing pay package, however, which I would guess could be substantial (for a museum) and probably includes hush money aka a nondisparagement clause. So we may never really know what happened.

Nor did the release say what will happen to the Richard Hamilton retrospective that Schimmel has been co-curating with partners at the Tate Modern in London and Reina Sofia in Madrid.

If you have the stomach or want a good laugh, you can read the release here.  Or you can read Jori Finkel in the LATimes here.

There is no conceivable way to construe the week’s events as anything less than dysfunction at MOCA. There is an obvious dichotomy of vision between director Jeffrey Deitch and Schimmel, and a board that seems to have taken over when those two couldn’t work it out. Given the choice between the commercial gallerist they hired and the guy who has been there, mostly as chief curator and the producer of some of its most well-received shows,  in the last 25 years, they went — naturally — with their hire.

Trustees are not fooling anyone.  As of this writing, for example, the Curve post has elicited 24 comments from MOCA followers: 23 back Schimmel (several say fire Deitch), and one says let’s move on. None agree with the “resignation.”

Worse, this all proves Deitch is either a puppet or a coward, and possibly both. If he’s the boss, he should have dealt with his own chief curator — whether or not they were still speaking.

If the board thought they were insulating Deitch from this decision, they made a mistake. It will take MOCA a long time to recover from this.

 

 

The Panoramic Star In St. Louis, Now Undergoing Work

The iffy economic environment, as we all know, is causing many museums to be creative, and one good result from that is the recent trend toward turning conservation work into an exhibition. In one way, at least, the St. Louis Art Museum has the biggest example — “Restoring an American Treasure: The Panorama Of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley.” Last summer and again now, since June 8, it has been restoring the work in its special exhibition galleries.

The panorama is a huge thing — 90 inches tall and 348 feet long; that is nearly the same length as the great Gettysburg Cyclorama and more than double the length of the Metropolitan Museum’s “Panoramic View of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles,” by John Vanderlyn, which occupies its own gallery in the American wing.

I explain more about the St. Louis panorama’s history, how it was damaged, and the nature of the conservation work in an article in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Sadly, many of these relics of 19th century visual culture — once extremely popular – have been lost. The St. Louis’s museum’s in the only survivor of six known Mississippi River valley panoramas, for example. And it might have been lost, too.

Its owner was the eccentric amateur archaeologist. Montroville W. Dickeson, who commissioned it and who, starting in 1851, took it on the road as a prop to accompany his speeches, charging 25 cents. He gave it to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, which gave it to the University of Pennsylvania’s University Museum around 1899, along with his archaeological finds and notes. The museum didn’t want it, though, and deaccessioned it in 1953 – fortunately to the St. Louis museum, which had shown it in 1949.

The museum exhibition website has more details and images for each of the scenes.

These artifacts are often fascinating things, and those who’d like to learn more can take a look at a book called The Painted Panorama, or even just check out the Wikipedia page on panoramas, which has some good references and links — e.g. to something  called International Panorama Council. It holds an annual meeting, this year in Pleven, Bulgaria from Sept. 9 to 13th.

The things one learns as a reporter, happily.

Photo credit: Scene 2, Courtesy of the St. Louis Art Museum

Appalling Situation in Berlin: You Can Help – UPDATED WITH PETITION

UPDATE: Please help by signing the petition here; it asks for disclosure of the impact on the Old Masters and a concrete plan for their display in a different building. It does not oppose expanded galleries for modern art.

You may recall that in late 2010, the German collectors, Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch (pictured below in 2009, at an exhibition of some of their collection), signed an agreement with the state of Berlin to bequeath their internationally renowned collection of modern art to the city. It now appears, however, that the conditions were too stringent — and will result in the emptying of the great Berlin Gemaeldegalerie, which houses the State Museums’ world-class old master paintings collection, and its conversion into a museum that would showcase the Pietzsch collection and related works. The Old Masters, mainly, would go into storage — paintings by Durer, Titian, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Rembrandt, on and on.

Everyone should be appalled by this development — and many in Germany are. They need international support, however, and Jeffrey F. Hamburger, the Kuno Francke Professor of German Art & Culture at Harvard University, is helping to galvanize dissent here. He is seeking signatures from American art historians and museum curators to a protest letter. More on this later.

It is true that the Pietzsch Collection is outstanding. It comprises Surrealist works from Paris and Abstract Expressionist works by the New York School – paintings by Max Ernst, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux and Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell and Barnett Newmann, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. among others. At the time of the agreement, it consisted of about 150 paintings, drawings and sculptures, with an estimated value of €120 million. Announcing the deal, Hermann Parzinger, President of the Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage, said: 

Today’s agreement is a decisive step towards integrating the Pietzsch Collection into the National Gallery’s collection at the National Museums in Berlin. I am convinced that the Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage will find the space to exhibit the works in the way Heiner and Ulla Pietzsch see fit. [Boldface mine.]

The couple wanted their treasure to go to “the National Gallery in particular,” Heiner Pietzsch said at the time. The announcement referenced above also said this:

The agreement will only come into effect under the condition that Berlin city council places the collection, in its entirety, in the hands of the Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage as a permanent loan, and that the Foundation guarantees that parts of the collection are placed on permanent display within its own collection of modern art. [Again, boldface mine.]

On June 12, the German government allocated €10 million to renovate the Gemaeldegalerie to accommodate the Pietzsch collection. But the Old Master collection would have to go – some will be moved to the Bode Museum for display amongst sculpture of the same eras, but much more will, under this plan, go into storage until at least 2018, and probably longer, when it is hoped that a new museum space would be built alongside the Bode.

Many fear that, given the financial outlook, such an expansion will not occur by 2018, and all those wonderful pictures would be locked away in storage for a long, long time.

This plan should not stand. I’ll have more information on how to protest it soon.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Getty Images via Zimbio

MIA Seeks The Under-45 Set, Part II

Close readers of yesterday’s RCA post (do close readers exist anymore?), which was about a few attempts by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to attract younger audiences, will note that I allowed one intriguing passage in the remarks of director Kaywin Feldman (pictured at right) to go unremarked by me.

That would be “pecha kucha,” as in: “We recently tried a pecha kucha [Japanese for “chit chat”], where our curators showed 20 images in 20 seconds. It was a way to deliver content but keep it very short and lively.”

We all know that curators and museum directors worry about how little time people spend looking at a work of art — when I first heard a number, the average time was 7 seconds. More recently, I’ve heard people say that has dropped to 2 or 3 seconds.

So why would a museum want to encourage the trend?

Here is a video of the session Feldman referred to, which the MIA embedded in its annual report: Link. It isn’t exactly what I imagined – the video lasts nearly three minutes.

And here’s another, related to an exhibit called In Pursuit of A Masterpiece (which I wrote about in 2009); it’s about 2 1/2 minutes — on YouTube. I especially don’t get the end of this one.

I suppose that these presentations, live and in person, provoke conversation and perhaps questions. That may work for some people. Me? I’d rather just go stand in front of a work on my own, trying to figure it out, even if I miss a lot. Then again, maybe you have to be there to decide.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the MIA

 

Richard Amstrong Gets A Chair — At His Old Museum

To my mind, the creation of an endowed curatorial position at a museum doesn’t make news. But here’s an exception: on Friday, the Carnegie Museum of Art announced that an endowment had been created for the position of curator of contemporary art. Lynn Zelevansky also announced the appointment of the museum’s Associate Curator of Contemporary Art Dan Byers (below left), who is co-curating the 2013 Carnegie International, to this new position.

Then came the twist: the chair has been named in honor of another museum’s director — Richard Armstrong (below right), director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation and previous head of the Carnegie.

It’s a hearty compliment to Armstrong, who left Pittsburgh for his current post in 2008 after 12 years as director of the museum and four as a curator there. When he left, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazettequoted museum board Chairman William E. Hunt saying “Physically and financially, it’s in as good a shape as it has been in a very long time,” praised his expansion of the museum as well as his people skills, and added, “We have a world class group of curators. He’s done a tremendous job with his management group as well as his educators. He has also made strategic and intelligent acquisitions.”

The Carnegie didn’t say how much money has been raised for the chair or from whom. But there’s one clue on the website: Announcing the fourth annual Art in Bloom — “a four-day celebration of timeless art and fresh flowers, presented by the Women’s Committee of the Carnegie Museum of Art” — it said that proceeds from it will “benefit the Women’s Committee dedicated gift for the Richard Armstrong Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Endowed Chair.” That gift has been disclosed as $500,000, though it’s unclear if all has been raised or not. Or where else money for this endowment is coming from.

In any case, I can’t think of a similar gesture toward a living former director. (Let me know if there are others.)

Armstrong’s tenure at the Guggenheim has had its ups and downs, it compliments and criticisms, which is to be expected. Here’s hoping that it ends, whenever that is, with as good a feeling in New York as Pittsburgh has for his tenure there.  

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Post-Gazette (top)