Here’s another example of synergy with opera (which I last wrote about here on July 1): On October 5, the National Gallery of Art in Washington will launch a “focus exhibition” called Degas’s Little Dancer, which will show off its version of the wax sculpture, set amid 11 other works by Degas, some from its collection, some borrowed.

Meanwhile, the Kennedy Center will unveil a musical by the name of Little Dancer, directed and choreographed by five-time Tony winner Susan Stroman and based on a book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens with music by Stephen Flaherty. Their show, according to the Kennedy Center, can be summarized:

Part fact, part fiction, and set in the harsh backstage world of the Paris Opera Ballet, this world premiere Kennedy Center musical is inspired by the story of Marie van Goethem, a young ballerina who posed for Edgar Degas and became, inadvertently, the most famous dancer in the world. Torn by her family’s poverty, her debt to the artist, and the lure of wealthy men, she struggles to keep her place in the corps de ballet–a girl on the verge of womanhood, caught between the conflicting demands of life and art.

It runs Oct. 25 through Nov. 30.

So the NGA smartly capitalized on the event. The exhibition will illustrate Degas’s “fascination with the practice and performance of ballet.” It will include Ballet Scene, a pastel from 1907, and a monotype from c. 1874 titled The Ballet Master.  The star painting will be The Dance Class (c. 1873) from the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. There’s more  — read it here.

The NGA is rather proud of its Dancer, which it notes is “the only one that was formed by the artist’s own hands and the only one he ever showed publicly.” Also:

The Gallery has the third largest collection of Degas works in the world, including 12 cast bronzes, one posthumously produced plaster, 19 paintings, 71 works on paper, and 52 original Degas works in wax, clay, and plaster.

The NGA also says it will highlight:

…the experimental, modern approach Degas took to his work. Degas did not carve sculpture but used an additive process. Little Dancer was modeled in wax over a metal armature, bulked with organic materials including wood, rope, and even old paintbrushes in the arms. It was then covered with clay and layers of pigmented wax. Degas further elevated the sculpture’s realism by affixing a wig of human hair to the head and outfitting his ballerina in a cotton-and-silk tutu, a real bodice, and linen slippers.

Confession: the Dancer has never been a favorite of mine. I prefer Degas’s racing scenes, though I appreciate the ballet ones. No matter: I’m in the minority, I think. I think this show will be popular, and the timing is perfect. It runs until Jan. 11.

Most art museums seem to be stretching for “relevancy” these days, whatever that really means. And so we have, at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, a “community-driven” gallery section named Portlandia to accompany a current traveling exhibit called  The Art of the Tuileries Garden. In collaboration with the Louvre and the Musée Carnavalet Histoire de Paris, Portland, the High Museum and the Toledo Museum of Art developed the exhibit. It contains, according to the press release, 

…more than 100 sculptures, paintings, photographs, and drawings by some of the most acclaimed European and American artists from the 17th to the 20th centuries, including works by Camille Pissaro, Édouard Manet, and others who have taken inspiration from the iconic Parisian landmark. Visitors will see monumental sculpture by Coysevox and Bosio for the first time in the United States. …

The exhibition features more than 50 rarely exhibited photographs, from a unique full-plate daguerreotype to modern interpretations of the Garden. Vintage French albumen prints document the aftermath of the Paris Commune and Tuileries Palace fire of 1871, while turn-of-the 20th-century views by Eugene Atget, a master photographer and chronicler of Paris’ changing environs, capture the elegant sculptures installed throughout the Garden. Additional works by renowned photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and Michael Kenna suggest the peace, beauty, and mystery to be discovered in the heart of Paris.

In Portland, however, that was not enough: The museum felt compelled to develop a local angle, Parklandia.

In partnership with Portland Parks and Recreation and the Portland Parks Foundation, the Museum is asking people to share images of their favorite Portland parks on Instagram using the hashtag #captureparklandia. The final space in the exhibition includes a monitor showing these images of Portland’s public spaces along with map detailing the 200 parks in Portland.

So, I invite you to go to that section on Instagram above and to check out the museum’s Instagram feed. Do you see anything as remotely interesting as an Atget photograph? As the Kokoschka at top or the Pissaro below?

Me neither.

So I have to ask: why are museums doing things like this, and why do they think they would get people interested in art?

 

The thunderstorms that hit the New York area last Wednesday and Thursday evening destroyed my plans for a week away, so I ended up spending the Fourth of July in town instead of about 1,500 miles away in Texas.

I decided to go to the Metropolitan Museum around mid-day on the Fourth, and it was packed then, even before it started to rain, which probably brought more visitors. First I went to Lost Kingdoms: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia, 5th to 8th Century, a beautifully installed exhibit of sculpture, and then I decided to take a look at Colors of the Universe: Chinese Hardstone Carvings. 

And therein lies more than one tale.

Colors of the Universe is an exquisite exhibit, filling just one gallery on the third floor in the Asian wing — up those stairs at left. I am betting it did not get the attention it deserved and, alas, it is closing today — so it won’t. That’s why I have a wish for it: that the Met would send it out to other museums, because the Met owns all — or most — of the pieces in the show.

Further, as I discovered when I searched the web for a review, the Met had put this show on view before. Holland Cotter reviewed it in The New York Times on Dec. 28, 2012, when it was on view through Jan. 6, 2013. Now, according to the Met’s website, it has been up since Dec. 11, 2013 and through today. Cotter wrote:

Each of the show’s 60 miniature sculptures, dating from the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), is a nugget of show-off virtuosity and doesn’t pretend to be much else, though at least a few have ostensible functions…. some of the most memorable works in the show — organized by Jason Sun, a curator in the Asian art department, in the jewel-box Chinese Decorative Arts galleries — are notable for their sheer, look-at-me strangeness. Such is the case with a little dish of peanuts and candied dates sculptured from brown chalcedony. The artist has exquisitely differentiated the surface textures of the nuts and fruits, and pulled an amazingly nuanced range of browns from the quartzlike stone. The results are more phenomenal than beautiful. All the hard work has produced a bizarre, dark, resinous-looking little thing, a consummately wrought novelty-shop item, magnetic for silly reasons. A lot of art’s like that.

Honestly, I don’t remember that piece, though I concede that a few objects in the cases are surprises. The coral Daoist Immortal and Boy was an eye-opener by virtue of its bright , candy-colored orange, to name one. I love the little jade pillow — in the shape of a baby! — also at right.

Two more beautifully carved pieces — Seated Luohan in a Grotto (in lapis lazuli) and another in malachite — are below, at the end of this post.

Finally, I discovered something else when I looked up the donor of many, if not most of these objects: Heber R. Bishop, whom Hyperallergic once described as “an incredibly wealthy businessman who was enchanted with jade in all its forms, from geological shards to the most ornate jade carvings of China.”

That article, published a year ago, revealed that these pieces were once on view in a room of their own, known as the Jade Room, “ showcased in an opulent room in the style of Louis XV, with fifteen delicate glass cases presided over by a chandelier.” [pictured at left]

But it’s vanished as if it were never there.

The author, Allison Meier, also said:

According to the museum’s 1922 Guide to the Collections, the Bishop Jade Room contained “a collection bequeathed to the museum by Herber R. Bishop with the condition that it should be exhibited in a room reproducing the owner’s ballroom. The rich and very complete collection of jades is arranged according to the different colors and kinds, and contains not only Chinese jades but different kinds found in India, New Zealand, Nebraska, Mexico, and amongst the prehistoric remains of the Swiss lake dwellers.”

She didn’t get an answer from the Met about the jade room’s demise. In a way, Colors of the Universe is a recreation of the Jade Room, but in much sparer, more Asian galleries — and not all jade. Plus, there are pieces donated by other collectors, such as Edmund C. Converse, who donated the malachite carving below.

So, should this exhibit remain on view all the time? Or, better, be shared with other museums and publics that don’t have the riches of the Met? I vote for the latter.

UPDATE, 7/8: The Met tells me that it has just extended this exhibit until March 8, 2015.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Hyperallergic (Jade Room), The New York Times (malachite carving). All others:  © Judith H. Dobrzynski