Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Curatorial Matters

Brava to Two Brave Curators

My hat is off to Susan Leask, formerly curator of art at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, and to Helen Molesworth (below), new chief curator at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and formerly with the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Both had the courage to speak publicly–in fact, in Leask’s case, to act publicly–to protest what some art museum directors are doing to undermine their jobs and, more important, their institutions.

Yes, it’s the latest discussion of the way some museums are trying to “engage” or “interact” (or choose your own verb) with the “community,” and it came in an article in Friday’s Wall Street Journal  headlined Everybody’s A Curator.

No, everyone’s not a curator.

Helen web largeThe article this time was mainly about crowdsourcing, though that was a proxy, in some ways, for the wholesale abdication by some museums of their responsibility to be education institutions, to promote the care, understanding and appreciation of art, and to help people find meaning in art. Instead, they’d rather get big attendance numbers, no matter how they get them. The Santa Cruz museum, in this case, is exhibiting art related to the ocean “alongside works by local residents.” Notice the well-chosen word “works” not art–perhaps that’s because the “museum” encouraged people by soliciting “your two-year-old’s drawing of the beach” and “that awesome GoPro footage you took while surfing.” And so on.

Let me say at the outset that I am not against all crowdsourcing; occasionally it’s even thoughtful. But it often goes hand-in-hand with other measures that pander to the public, as if they could not understand great art. Leask quit the Santa Cruz institution last year because it offered a program that “invited a mix of outside professionals to live at the museum for 48 hours and build a new exhibit from the permanent collection.”

“Something about the power of art and the sanctity of the public trust had been compromised,” she told the WSJ. Later, she posted this on Facebook, as background to the comment:

I have spent my entire museum career supporting artists and their works because I believe artists are among the most important members of our society. The best of them bring insight, beauty and truth into our lives, and they all offer perspectives that may help us understand ourselves and our world better. I also support, and have included, participatory activities in exhibitions that help audiences engage with art and with each other.

As a curator, it is my responsibility to research, select and present works that have aesthetic excellence and authentic meaning, to ensure the physical integrity of those artworks, to honor the artist’s intention, and to add to scholarship that will deepen and advance the understanding of why art is crucial to all of our lives. When these responsibilities are not upheld, by the curator or by the institution, no one wins.

Amen to that.

Molesworth, meanwhile, made another point in the WSJ, in response to an exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, in which the public voted on 30 artworks, selected from 50 Impressionist paintings pre-chosen by a curator there. It was called Boston Loves Impressionism.

“You’re left with 10 paintings that may or may not make sense together, or may or may not be interesting together, or may or may not teach anything about the history of art—it’s not the stuff of knowledge or scholarship,” Ms. Molesworth said. When museum crowdsourcing is raised privately among curators, she said, the subject prompts a reaction of “silent dismay.”

I also agree with Molesworth on the last points, which I’ve said here before: Curators have told me privately that they are distressed by these moves that disregard knowledge and scholarship, but they fear speaking up to their directors. Of course, they could be playing to my well-known feelings about these issues, but I doubt that all of them are so calculating. I have nothing to offer them, after all.

A final note: I regret to say that I will not publish comments on this post, either in agreement or disagreement.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of ICA/Boston 

 

At The Philbrook: Retrospective For A No-Longer-Needed Exhibition

1954_12_PressThis Sunday, the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa opens what I think should be a fascinating show: IMPACT: The Philbrook Indian Annual. It’s a retrospective on the competition the Philbrook held for 33 years, from 1946 to 1979, open to Native American artists. The museum says that

Over the years nearly 1,000 artists from 200 Native American communities entered almost 4,000 works of art for judging, exhibition, awards, and sale. The Philbrook Indian Annual played a pivotal role in the definition of twentieth-century Native American fine art through several key aspects of the competition’s design…

It stopped before I was paying much, if any, attention to Indian art–but I can believe that the month-long Annual played an important role in the recognition of the value of Indian art. Here are some aspects of the annual that made it different, drawn from the press release:

  • The Philbrook Indian Annual focused on paintings, in a variety of styles, while other juried shows of the era emphasized traditional Native art forms like pottery and basketry.
  • It was a juried exhibition, not an outdoor festival.
  • Jurors were mostly other Native American artists reviewing the work of their peers, rather than exclusively non-Native art critics evaluating work emerging from Native American communities.
  • It sparked a significant critical dialogue surrounding the definition of Native art: what it was and what it should be,  In 1958 Philbrook became the site of a national conversation about this subject when judges rejected a painting by Yanktonai Dakota artist Oscar Howe (1915–1983). They thought it was too contemporary to be Indian art. (His Dance of the Heyoka, c.1954, is above left, while  W. Richard “Dick” West, Sr.’s Water Serpent, c, 1951, is at right, below.)

Howe, who criticized the panel for its narrow view, catalyzed the Philbrook to create a new category for Non-Traditional Painting the following year, 1959.

1951_11_PressThe Philbrook’s curator Christina E. Burke organized IMPACT, drawing from the Philbrook’s permanent collection. As the release notes:

The Annual helped shape the Philbrook collection into one of the finest surveys of twentieth century Native American art in the world. From the Museum’s announcement in 1938, Philbrook received important collections of such traditional Native objects as beadwork, pottery, textiles, and baskets from donors like, Roberta Campbell Lawson and Clark Field.

But I still wondered why the Philbrook discontinued the Annual. Here’s what they said:

By then [1979] the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe had opened in 1962; major museums had begun to include Native American art in their exhibitions and galleries; and media, collectors, and museum professionals began recognizing Native artists for their fine art over traditional art forms. Philbrook made its impact on Native American art through the Annual during those 33 years and encouragingly created its own obsolescence when the conversation surrounding Native American art began to evolve. We continue our emphasis on Native American fine art today through our exhibitions and extensive permanent collections at both Philbrook locations.

Clearly, what constitutes Native American art versus contemporary art continues today, at museums like the Peabody Essex and the Brooklyn Museum. The Annual may not have lost its relevance.

But there’s some good news: IMPACT may travel, the museum says.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Philbrook

Clyfford Still Museum Revisited

PH-613, 1942Life is constricted, to some extent, for all single-artist museums–and more than most at the Clyfford Still Museum. As decreed by the artist, it can never exhibit works by any other artist and it can’t have a restaurant or auditorium, among other things. Yet almost about three years ago, in November, 2011, it opened in Denver.

When I received a press release a while back announcing its tenth special exhibition, opening this coming Friday–The War Begins: Clyfford Still’s Paths to Abstraction–I thought it was time to check in and see how it is doing. The answer is pretty well, thanks.

As I report for an article published yesterday on The Art Newspaper website:

…the museum has received 38,562 visitors in 2014—already close to the 40,000 the museum originally projected for an entire year and likely to surpass last year’s total of 42,685. In 2012, its first full year, the museum attracted 61,204 visitors.

More impressive, to me, are those 10 shows, all but one curated by director Dean Sobel, consulting curator David Anfam, or the two of them together. The lone exception was organized by the chief conservator,  James Squires. They include, aside from two inaugural survey exhibitions:

…“Vincent/Clyfford”, featuring paintings and works on paper created during Still’s early years, when his subjects and palette echoed van Gogh’s (timed to coincide with the Denver Art Museum’s “Becoming van Gogh”; “Memory, Myth & Magic”, which exhibited Still’s works that allude to ancient cultures, artistic traditions and his memories; “The Art of Conservation: Understanding Clyfford Still”, which explained Still’s materials and working methods plus the ways conservators are striving to preserve his works; and “1959: The Albright-Knox Art Gallery Exhibition Recreated”, which mimicked one of the few museum exhibitions of his work in his lifetime.

More details at the above link, including some of Sobel’s plans for next year. He has plenty to work, as about half of the 825 paintings the museum owns haven’t yet been unrolled since their shipment from art storage in Maryland. And very few people are familiar with Still’s drawings–many didn’t even know they existed–which number about 2,350.

PH-620, 1942The exhibit opening Friday, the museum said in a press release, “highlights the previously unknown dialogue between Still’s work in war industries and his early breakthrough into abstraction.” I’ve provided two paintings from it here (both from 1942), and here’s the museum’s web description.

In fact, because Still’s work remains largely unknown, Sobel has had to change tactics for his special shows: He had learned that he shouldn’t clear out all nine of the museum’s galleries, but rather that special shows are best implanted in the chronology the museum presents. Visitors want to learn Still’s narrative.

The permanent collection narrative changes anyway: in a rotation that starts this month, 53 works on paper will be hung, 40 of which have never been exhibited publicly.

If there has been a disappointment, Sobel says, it’s the lack of national critical review, except perhaps for its opening. Granted, not many critics are traveling beyond the coasts  very often, but it would be great if they weighed in on these special exhibits. As for the museum world, Sobel said, “a lot of my colleagues have only been visiting recently.”

His neighbor, director Christoph Heinrich of the Denver Art Museum, says the Still museum is “part of the conversation here in town,” and not least because of the special exhibits. But also, he said, because “it’s an incredibly in-depth look at the work of one really influential artist. Every artist knew him, but the public didn’t because he exerted so much control.”

Photo Credits: © City and County of Denver

Another Corcoran Outrage: The Archives

If you thought everything about the future of the Corcoran Art Gallery was parsed and settled, much to the dismay of its students, faculty, curators and various formers in all three categories, think again. There’s another outrage.

Grieving Canova lion by David MordiniThe Corcoran’s archives, which relate its entire 145-year history, are slated to be broken up.

Any archivist will tell you that, more important than the possibly wonderful individual items, it’s the whole of an archive that matters most to the historical record.

Indeed, the Corcoran archives contain “all institutional records, meeting notes, photographs, exhibition files, gallery publications and catalogues, architectural records, press clippings and scrapbooks, the journal of the gallery’s first curator William MacLeod, 1876-1886, records of the Washington Gallery of Modern Art 1962-1968, and records for art works,” according to Linda Crocker Simmons, curator emerita of the Corcoran. She established these archives in 1980 with the assistance of grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

Though the issue of the archives was discussed during the breakup of the Corcoran, it hasn’t had much, if any, public exposure until I raised it yesterday with Carolyn Campbell, a former PR and Events Director of the Corcoran. “Excellent question,” she wrote me back, and told me of the breakup plan.

Known as “art related materials” in the agreement, the pact says that any papers related to art works would go with those works as they are distributed. to the National Gallery of Art or beyond, to other museums. The remainder of the items, it said, would be the turned over to an executive group of some of the new, non-profit Corcoran’s board and trustees of the NGA.

Here is the court pact.

Simmons and Campbell add, rightly:

Taken as a whole the records provide a unique picture of how private museums have operated from the 19th century to modern times. Because of the growing interest in American art history and cultural history, the Corcoran Archives was begun as a service to humanities scholars and other interested parties. Ironically, a filmmaker making a documentary on the history of Washington, DC’s art scene recently asked on the “In Memory of the Corcoran” Facebook page where they could find some documentation – since there are no more Archives, she and others like her no longer have it as a resource.

I heard another rumor, unsubstantiated at the moment, that the archives were being weeded out. By whom? Don’t know. Still, in probable good news, Marisa Bourgoin, who was the last Corcoran Archivist and now works at the Archives of American Art, is consulting on the division and distribution of records.

Simmons and Campbell believe that at the very least be digitally copied before being broken up. That could  be expensive. Perhaps they should stay together, given to the Archives of American Art, with the papers related to individual works of art copied for the new owners. (Or, Campbell suggests, to the George Washington University Gelman Library).

Photo Credit: A grieving Canova lion, outside the Corcoran, by David Mordini 

“Sculpture Victorious,” Yes, But In What Way?

DameAliceI was recently at the Yale Center for British Art, where Sculpture Victorious: Art in the Age of Invention, 1837-1901, is on view through Nov. 30. It’s a fascinating exhibition in many respects, bringing together a very diverse assemblage of objects from a very diverse group of lenders.

Looking at one piece, an idealized, imaginary portrait of the first earl of Winchester borrowed from the House of Lords, Michael Hatt, an art history professor at the University of Warwick who is one of three curators of the show, said to me: “It is a mix of history and fantasy, as almost everything in this exhibition is.”

In fact, a few sculptures–defined for this show quite broadly (to include medals and coins, for example) are so quirky they could almost be called follies. (See, for example, “A Royal Game,” an imaginary game of chess between Elizabeth I and Phillip II of Spain, by William Reynolds-Stephens from the collection of Tate Britain.)

But the point of this exhibit, as I write in a review published in today’s Wall Street Journal, was that these artworks served the British empire:

Co-organized by Tate Britain, “Sculpture Victorious” demonstrates how the British used sculpture—as public monuments, in public institutions, at exhibitions like those in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, and in coins, medals and other popular reproductions—to proclaim their political power and industrial prowess.

And so Sculpture Victorious is less about art and more about history, invention and craft.

That does not mean, however, that some of these pieces aren’t fascinating to look at. In fact, the exhibition serves as a reminder that exhibitions can, and often do, have more than one function.

That’s Dame Alice Owen (detail), 1897, by George Frampton, above.

Photo Credit: Courtesy, YCBA