Exhibitions

As I’ve mentioned here before, the Denver Art Museum has a long historical record of paying attention to Native American art and valuing it for aesthetic rather ethnographic reasons. That’s a big plus for me because it gives museum a specialty that cannot be seen at every museum–and differentiation among museums is a big attribute. But I’m not so sure that the DAM has been recognized for its efforts in contemporary Native American Art, which goes hand-in-hand with the historical collection.

And that’s why I proposed an article on this to The New York Times; it will run in the Fine Arts & Exhibitions section to be published on Sunday. But, as is custom nowadays, some articles are being posted in advance online. My piece, headlined Denver Art Museum Strengthens Commitment to Native American Work on the web (the print headline will be different),  is there now. It outlines the museum’s programs–which include artists-in-residences, acquisitions and a lot of gallery space for this work. Here’s the nut:

At a time when many Native American artists still hold grievances against mainstream art museums, the Denver museum is proving itself to be different, winning favor from many, but not all, Indian artists and curators….

…“Our collection’s approach is to expand the recognition of contemporary art by American Indian artists; engage local, regional and national American Indian artists; and highlight the artistic mastery from the past,” said Christoph Heinrich, the museum’s director, “but always with an eye on ongoing creative tradition.”

The piece is pegged to a current exhibition, Super Indian: Fritz Scholder, 1967-1980, which will travel to the Phoenix Art Museum and to the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kansas. I didn’t love Scholder’s work on first sight, but it’s growing on me. Aside from this show, which I have seen only in jpegs and and in the catalog, I saw paintings by Scholder “in the flesh” on my recent trip to Santa Fe, in both the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts and the New Mexico Museum of Art. I did not have room to mention the museum’s recent acquisitions in this area, which include 25 Hopi and Navajo katsina figures, four Micmac quilled boxes (1825-1975), 12 contemporary ceramic works and a 2012 ink and tissue collage on paper by artist Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara, b. 1983) titled Transparency Self Portrait. Nor did I mention that I’m not the only one who has been paying attention to these efforts at the DAM: Last year, First Tribal Lending, a subsidized loan agency for Indians, named the museum among the top five Native American museums—the only one not specifically an Indian or Western museum. And CNN Travel also listed it as the only general institution among the “best places to experience Native American culture.”
The Times has posted several good photos on the link above and I’ve put a few more on my website; above is Scholder’s Indian and Rhinoceros.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Denver Art Museum

With the weather in New York still fine–and warmish–on Saturday, I ventured up to the New York Botanical Garden for FRIDA: Art, Garden, Life, one of the Garden’s hybrid exhibitions that combines plants and paintings. This one, much like the Garden’s 2012 exhibition titled Monet’s Garden, offers about a dozen works of art, exhibited in the library building. Many more specimens of the plants Kahlo grew at her home, Casa Azul, on the outskirts of Mexico City, are there in the Garden’s Conservatory. The show went on view on May 16 and remains there until Nov. 1.

The art star of the show is Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, painted in 1940, perhaps followed by her portrait of Luther Burbank and a couple of still lifes. The stars of the gardens are too many to mention. Another nice touch: a desk of Kahlo’s paints and brushes.

I like these exhibitions, in part because gardens attract a different, if overlapping, crowd than art museums. Plus, the exhibits are small enough in the art category not to threaten museums. The NYBG clearly has no cards to play in the sense of being able to lend paintings, so it borrowings depend on good will.

But the show was spoiled by, of all things, the stanchions. The Garden’s gallery has, in part, insets along the walls and the stanchions sit on the edge of the inset. I could not see the drawings in one inset. They were, say, three feet away. Drawings are meant to be viewed closely. Maybe others could see them (the galleries were, of course, dim), but I couldn’t. I simply moved on.

The NYBG is far from the only place that ruins art experiences with aggressive stanchioning. Many museums erect these barriers. Sometimes, at a special loan exhibition, you can identify the ones that insist on stanchions.

I’ve asked many museum directors and curators about this, and I’ve been told that formulate their own policies for stanchions. Some have said that insurance companies sometimes require them–which doesn’t make much sense, because then why don’t all museums have to use them? At the Met, I was told recently by a high-ranking official, whether or not to use stanchions is the call of the department head.

I can hear you saying, they’re for safety–to protect the art. But haven’t we seen people fall over the stanchions and into the art? With few exceptions, perhaps where the art work is so popular that crowds are unmanageable, I can understand their use. But I wish museums would think a little harder about the barriers to looking that they create. And banish them.

A few pictures of them, followed by more NYBG pictures from Kahlo.

I could keep going, but let’s go back to the NYBG: