Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Exhibitions

Teaching Technique In The Galleries

SargentGalleryHaving written about the exhibition of John Singer Sargent’s watercolors at the Brooklyn Museum before it opened, I was curious to see it in the flesh. I went over the weekend, and am happy to say that it lives up to expectations. One surprise — the color of the walls behind the artworks, which was melon, verging on orange. But not the neon orange the Brooklyn Museum has used in its American art galleries. Rather, it’s a soft orange that you might find in a posh apartment on Park Ave. You can get a sense of it in my picture, at left.

SargentTech2You can also see that the exhibition was quite crowded, which I was also pleased to see. Interestingly, it was more crowded than the El Anatsui exhibition, which also got rave reviews, including one from me on this blog. I was surprised, but the only conclusion I can draw is that Sargent has bigger name recognition. (In case you missed the news last week, the Brooklyn has acquired Black Block — which I show on the link above along with Red Block, which is owned by Eli Broad).

In my March piece on Sargent, I wrote:

In Brooklyn, the museum engaged a watercolorist to demonstrate six of Sargent’s watercolor techniques, including wax resist and scraping, in videos that will be shown on small monitors in the galleries.

Those videos were another item on my list of things to check in on. Were they obtrusive? Were people watching?

The answer to the first question is no, definitely not. The videos are quite small — maybe 6 by 4 inches, but I didn’t measure –and they are embedded in the wall, next to the painting they are illuminating. The mounting stand out from the wall by just an inch or so. They are also interesting, though they do take a little patience — the artist paints in real time, without being speeded up in post-production. I think they work.

I’ve posted a couple of examples here — the first, at top right, is drybrush painting. I did not see the wax-resist video, but one was out-of-order while I was there. Or maybe I just missed it. Those below show how the videos look in the galleries.

SargentTech1

SargentTech3

Photo Credits:  © Judith H. Dobrzynski

 

The Secret Life of Maps

PJ-BN744A_maps_DV_20130416192554That’s not the real title of the exhibition that opens at Winterthur on Saturday. Martin Bruckner, the guest curator of “Common Destinations: Maps in the American Experience,” talks rather about the “social life” of maps. But the exhibit is kind of a coming out for the Winterthur collection — a few of the items in the show have been on view, but it was mostly the maps on ceramics or paintings, that were tucked into the permanent collections rooms. The big paper maps have been tucked away in the library or decorative arts collections.

Winterthur owns about 250 maps now, most purchased after it became a museum — not by the duPonts whose house Winterthur was.

With so many people now using GPS rather than looking at maps, this exhibition is very timely. I write about it and how it came about in today’s Wall Street Journal. Have a look (it’s not behind the paywall).

Meantime, I’m showing a few examples here.

From top to bottom:

1197_1973_0288_002“L’Amerique”: Jean Lattré, Paris, France; from 1779–80 — an “engraving with watercolor on paper, pasteboard, wood, brass: ‘As rare as it is unique, this adaptation of a map into a fashionable fan is only one example of the vast crossover appeal maps had in the 1700s and 1800s.’ ” It’s a cartifact.

A detail from the “Popple Map” – “The largest and perhaps most spectacular one made in the 1700s illustrates the ways in which maps entered American culture. Widely criticized in its own day for misrepresenting the continent’s geography, the Popple map was nevertheless acquired by public institutions and private citizens.”

1197_split_globeA pocket globe, by Holbrooks Apparatus Manufacturing Co. Wethersfield, CT, 1830-59.

 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Winterthur

Art Exhibitions And The Movies: Problems And Prospects

A couple of weeks ago, I had a chat with Phil Grabsky, the British filmmaker who has started “Exhibition: Great Art on Screen,” a series of what he calls “event films” that will bring some of the very best art exhibitions to the public via films analogous to the Metropolitan Opera’s simulcasts (and post-produced filmings of live opera, as La Scala, among other opera companies, does it).

manet-exhibitiononscreenGrabsky made Leonardo Live last year, and I mentioned his new effort in passing here at the end of January, while writing about the opening of Manet: Portraying Life at the Royal Academy in London. His film of the same name as the exhibition premiers this coming Thursday, Apr. 11,  on about 1,000 movie screens in 28 countries, including the U.S. (You can see a list of the countries, with links to the cinemas, here, except, oddly for the U.S., for which you should go here.)

My talk with Grabsky was for an article in The Wall Street Journal published last week. In it, I describe what he’s doing, mention his next two efforts in the series (on Munch in Oslo come Juner and Vermeer, again at the National Gallery in London, in October), and discuss why, although he corrected many of the criticisms about Leonardo Live, he still faces problems inherent to art exhibitions that operas do not have (they already have a narrative). Manet, and his upcoming efforts, however, do have a big plus: those high-definition lingerings on the paintings. As I write in the Journal, “…Mr. Grabsky often holds the camera on a painting, full screen, for as long as 30 seconds. That’s much longer than most people spend with a painting at an exhibit.”

Let me explore that, and a few other issues, here that I couldn’t get into in the Journal piece.

As museum professionals know, most people spend only a few seconds with each painting in an exhibition, and even at the Leonardo exhibition at London’s National Gallery last year (see here and here) — where the NG, trying to avoid what “gallery rage,” rationed the number of timed tickets sold to 180 per half-hour, much lower than its normal limit of 230 entrances per half-hour — officials figured that people spent, on average, just 18 seconds with Leonardo’s paintings, according to Grabsky.

Will these shows succeed, and should they? One editor I work with declined to publish an article on “Exhibition: Great Art on Screen” because, he said, he didn’t want to discourage people from going to see the real thing. Is that a worry? I asked Nicholas Penny, the director of the National Gallery, about that and about why he likes these films. Here’s what he wrote back:

The films can help people understand the work behind an exhibition which in turn promotes awareness of the special character of these events – some of their limitations as well as the unique opportunity they provide. I’m not in the least worried that viewing the films will become a substitute for going to the exhibition.

Me, neither. I think they’ll encourage people to visit museums — afterall, one reason people have switched from the real opera to the simulcasts is the cost differential. For Grabsky’s art movies, the cost is about the same. Second, there’s no way I am going to get to that Munch show this years — the 150th anniversary of his birth — I simply won’t be in Oslo. I suspect I’ll face that same travel barrier for most of Grabsky’s chosen exhibitions.

GrabskyGrabsky told me that most museums are enthusiastic. While not all of those he contacted have agreed to meet, of those that have, he
said, “None has so far said anything but ‘I think it’s a great idea and I want to be part of it.’ ” There is something it for them, aside from exposure: Grabsky plans to share a small percentage of any profits he makes with the exhibition’s museum, though it is very unlikely that dollar number will be substantial. (It will never, imho, reach the Met’s success, which last year the series generated $11 million in revenue for the Met, according to a recent article in the Journal.)

Here’s another reason people may want to watch: changing technology. Grabsky told me that digital camera technology he’s deploying for the Vermeer film is four times as good as the high-definition technology used for Leonardo and Manet.

In any case, Grabsky seems hellbent, a man on a mission. “In the beginning we have to go with big-name artists,” he said. But, he added, “We want to get to a point where people say ‘Exhibition is doing Bernini. I don’t know who Bernini is, but I love Exhibition, so I’m going.’ ”

That would be something.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Phil Grabsky

 

 

Exhibitions I Wish I Had Seen — Or Could Still See

Let’s talk positively (the news can be so negative). Among the riches at American museums at the moment, here are three innovative or unique ones I’d really like to see:

1955.1079SaucerVersoBackstories: The Other Side of Art at the Clark Art Institute – Most museums visitors, I’d wager, don’t think much about what’s on the back of the art thery’re staring at. Too bad, as this exhibition demonstrates. The backs often show how or when something was made, whose collections they’ve belong to, or which galleries/auction houses have handled them, how they have been cared for and the changes they may have undergone. The Clark went into its permanent collection and found paintings, works on paper, sculpture, silver, and porcelain with interesting backsides, and is displaying them mostly on pedestals. They span five centuries and include works by Durer, van Gogh, Sevres porcelain made for Catherine the Great (verso, shown at right), Nolde, and Memling. When the exhibition was announced last December, Michael Conforti, the Clark’s director explained its origin:

The acquisition of a two-sided painting by Giovanni Battista Cremonini spurred our interest in the backs of other objects in our collection. As the curatorial team began to think about the objects in a different way, Backstories was born.

Kudos. If you, like me, can’t get to Williamstown before the show closes on Apr. 21, you’ll get a flavor of the show at the link above — it has several pages and examples and, very handily, a checklist.

vatican2Objects of Belief from the Vatican: Art of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco — At the Vatican Museums, many of us are too busy marveling at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the Raphael rooms to get to the Ethnocological Museum there. This exhibition shows what a mistake that is. For the first time, the Vatican has sent 39 of its treasures, drawn from a collection that numbers more than 80,000 objects from indigenous cultures in Asia, Oceania, Africa, and the Americas, to the United States. Many are unique. According to the press release:

Highlights include two masks and three shrine carvings obtained in 1691 by Fray Francisco Romero in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta; three figurative sculptures representing the gods Tu [one, at left] and Tupo sent by the first missionary in Mangareva to Pope Gregory XVI in 1837; and a 15th-century stone sculpture created in Mexico of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl.

There are paintings on bark and stone from Australia, and on silk from China and Japan; wooden statues from Polynesia and stone ones from pre-Columbian civilizations; feather-works from Papa New Guinea and majolica from the Middle East. It remains on view until Sept. 8, while the Vatican museum is under renovation (reopening next year).

PiranesiOf course you know Piranesi well, why go to the San Diego Museum of Art, where Piranesi, Rome and the Arts of Design opened on Saturday? Because this Piranesi show is different. It begins with 300 original prints from the renowned collection of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, and it goes on to offer modern-day interpretations using “new technologies such as video, photography, and digital modeling.” That means that a vase or teapot or fireplace, say, drawn by Piranesi, is present in the flesh, so to speak — in three dimensions. According to the museum:

These never-before-seen and never-before-crafted objects take center stage in the exhibition and attest to the creative intellect of Piranesi’s designs. In addition, the exhibition brings to life Piranesi’s most famous works, the Carceri (Prisons), in the form of a virtual reality 3-D installation.

Somewhere a 3-D printer must be involved. Already shown in Madrid and Barcelona, the exhibition has gotten rave reviews in Europe. It’s in San Diego until July 7.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Clark, the deYoung and the San Diego museums, top to bottom.

 

 

Thursday Is The Day: Annual NYT Museum Section

In my opinion, museums do not get enough coverage in newspapers and magazines, so if a lot of it comes at once, in the annual New York Times section on museums, well, fine by me. That section should arrive in your paper tomorrow. I have three stories in it this year, and I will have more to say about each of the subjects in the coming days. Meantime, though, I will simply list them here:

Sargent watercolor1) In Denver, Exhibits Interweave Genres — that’s the headline, but it doesn’t really say what the story is about. As you may know, the Denver Art Museum has two buildings, with the older Ponti building containing more of the permanent collection and the newer Libeskind building presenting more of the special exhibitions. Visitors usually don’t go to both. So director Christophe Heinrich devised a solution — a campus-wide theme for this summer in which all, or most, curatorial departments are presenting an exhibition. This summer, it’s called SPUN.

2) Country Music Temple Stays In Financial Tune — This is about the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and its unique financial model. The Hall — which is an accredited museum, typically gets around 80% of its annual budget from earned income. Discuss: What’s the applicability to art museums? We will.

3) Examining Sargent’s Shift From Oils to Watercolors — You know some of these watercolors, but not all, and you probably don’t know the story of how the Brooklyn Museum, first, and then the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, purchased Sargent’s ground-breaking watercolors in bulk and how they came to be united for the first time in a traveling exhibition this year. Sargent is getting the illustration for this post — that’s his In a Medici Villa at left.

You can also see here a summary of the upcoming exhibitions around the country that I’ve chosen as noteworthy for NYT readers.

More soon.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum