Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Exhibitions

El Anatsui: A Joy To See

ElAWdLast night, I went to a reception at the Brooklyn Museum for El Anatsui, whose work is shown in a massive exhibition called Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui. I knew it was going to be good, because I’d seen about a quarter of it as it was being installed about a month ago; besides, I’d viewed the other traveling exhibition of Anatsui’s work at the Denver Art Museum, El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa , in early January, and liked that.

ElADvrWoodThe Denver show was billed as a retrospective, “61 works cover all phases of the artist’s career, from his early work in Ghana utilizing traditional symbols to found driftwood works made in Denmark to sculptures made using the chainsaw as a carving tool. ” And it did provide a good overview of his career.

The Brooklyn exhibit is something else indeed — do not for a minute think that because you’ve seen one you need not see the other. The Brooklyn show has just 30 works, but most are truly monumental. They take up space, and they look great in Brooklyn. Anatsui is not making small things any more (that’s what I was told by dealers and curators: many collectors have asked for small, home-sized versions of his hangings, but he has turned down those requests), though this show does include some small wood sculptures/wall hangings.

ElA-hangingsOne takeaway from seeing both shows centers on Anatsui’s career — he is best known for the multi-colored hangings made from bottle caps, can tabs, and other detritus. But many of the wood works are just as fascinating. Take a look at the one posted at right, from the Brooklyn show. And Denver had several figurative wood sculptures, above left.

I am sure you have seen the multicolored hangings that glitter gold — Brooklyn has a large gallery full of them, some suspended from the ceiling, some hung on the walls. It’s wonderful to see through them, as in my photo at right.

I also took a closeup,  and here’s a detail from it, below:

ElA-Hang

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later in Brooklyn’s exhibit, there’s a stunning wall — an undulating black piece side-by-side with a bright red one. Here they are:

Bl-Red

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the side view (profile?) for that: ElA-undulate

 

 

No disrespect to Brooklyn for the getting this exhibition, but I have to point out that it was the Akron Art Museum that organized it: Ellen Rudolph, the senior curator there (as she pointed out, Akron has just two curators), did the job and she was there last night. After Brooklyn, she said, the exhibit is traveling to the Des Moines Art Center and the Bass Art Musesum in Miami – and maybe one more, as-yet-undisclosed venue. So congratulations to her — I love that this show is circulating to several small-ish museums; their publics deserve great art too.

They’ll see what I’ve seen: people walk through the galleries with wonder on their faces.

Photo Credits:  © Judith H. Dobrzynski

 

Now At The Frick: A Show, At Last, For Piero

For a founder of the Italian Renaissance, it’s amazing that the exhibition opening tomorrow at the Frick Collection is “the first monographic exhibition in the United States on the artist.”

StAugustineThe artist is Piero della Francesca, born circa 1411 and dead the year Columbus set sail for America. Even more amazing perhaps is that the exhibit fits comfortably in the Frick’s small oval gallery — it’s just 7 works, and if memory serves four are from the Frick itself. Yet it’s an occasion, worth a visit by any serious art lover.  

Along one wall are four panels from the Sant’Agostino altarpiece; on the opposite wall is the Frick’s St. John the Evangelist and — surprise — a panel of St. Augustine borrowed from Lisbon’s Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga that has never been seen in the U.S. before.

It’s stunning. I’m posting a photo I took with my iPhone, but it doesn’t do the work justice. His staff, for example, is made of clear crystal, to perfect effect.

Clark_2000The Clark Art Institute then graciously lent its Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels, Piero’s only intact altarpiece in this country. It’s a good thing that the Frick’s semi-circular marble step beneath the work keeps people from getting too close — for they surely would. I’ve posted it here, too, at right — a much better image taken from the Frick itself.

I was at the opening reception for this exhibition tonight, and it was thrilling to see it. More details here, in the press release.  

As I’d remarked to a few others there, several years ago I was at a conference at the Clark when the late Anne D’Harnoncourt started talking about the altarpiece nearby. She referred to the artist as “Piero” and then stopped herself, in mid-sentence, and said she hoped we could call him just “Piero” now — he was THE Piero. Everyone agreed, and for the rest of the meeting that’s what everyone said.

My hope for this exhibition is that it makes the public know who is meant when they hear the name Piero, the artist.

Photo credits: Courtesy of the Frick (bottom)

 

Things That Make Me Wince; Things That Make Me Applaud

The backlog in my email box is getting way too deep; I can’t keep them all. So, here’s a grouping of things that I might have written about at greater length, had I had the time to do more background work and think about them in depth.

Caulfield,_After_LunchIn the first category — the wince-inducing developments:

  • In late 2011 four British arts institutions renewed a sponsorship deal with BP despite protests from environmentalists — it’s worth £10 million through 2017, roughly divided equally among the four. Environmentalists had protested the deal, citing the oil company’s poor safety record and who-cares attitude toward damage to the earth. Both sides have their points. But did part of the pact with the Tate have to entail such pointed branding as calling an exhibition program “BP British Art Displays.”  That is the unfortunate description on the invitation I received the other day to preview BP British Art Displays: Looking at the View next Monday. The show, which opens to the public on Tuesday, “looks at continuities in the way artists have framed our vision of the landscape over the last 300 years.” Tacky. (That’s Patrick Caulfield’s After Lunch at left.)
  • A blog in Philadelphia is touting the position at #4 of the Philadelphia Museum of Art on a list put together by Complex called 100 Museums to See Before You Die, but it’s an odd honor. Take a look for yourself. What kind of a list would make the Hermitage #98, but the Hirshhorn #3? Or put as #1  the Simone Handbag Museum in Seoul…?  I’m not sure what Complex is, btw. But it compiles a lot of lists. A month ago, it had the 10 Most Googled Museums in 2012, drawn from Google’s annual Zeitgeist report. At the top the list: The Metropolitan, followed by the Philadelphia Museum, the National Gallery/Washington, the deYoung, and the Museum of Science in Boston, etc. That’s more like it.

Now some good things:

  • Many museum panels and programs seem bland to me, but here’s one that’s not: This coming Sunday, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts will offer a public forum on Gender and Race in Contemporary Art. A topic like that doesn’t usually interest me, but this one may be different — critic Ken Johnson is there to defend a position he took in The New York Times previewing PAFA’s exhibit The Female Gaze; it was published November 8, 2012, and said in part: “Sexism is probably a good enough explanation for inequities in the market. But might it also have something to do with the nature of the art that women tend to make?” That generated a huge blowback, and Johnson is man enough to take on the dissenters in public.
  • Mrs. William JamesTEFAF Maastricht continues to give money to American museums (it’s usually the other way around, with Americans giving heavily to European cultural institutions). TEFAF’s recently announced conservation grants, which it started last year for its 25th anniversary, this year went to the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts and to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.  Each gets €25,000. In Worcester, that will pay for the restoration of two pendant portraits by William Hogarth of William and Elizabeth James (at right) from 1774. They were acquired more than a century ago, but have never been technically assessed or comprehensively treated. Last year, the Denver Art Museum and the Rijksmuseum shared the prize.
  • RCA readers know I like single-picture exhibitions (see here, here and here, for example), and two great ones have recently been announced. For six weeks beginning Feb. 16, the Getty Museum will be showing Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, its only U.S. stop on its world tour. It’s a loan from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which has been under renovation for 10 years (that gets a wince, too). And on Feb. 19, van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles, on loan from the Musee d’Orsay, will go on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts. It stays, amidst three van Goghs owned by Detroit, until May 28.

That’s enough housecleaning for today.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Tate Britain (top) and the Worcester Museum of Art (bottom) 

 

Eye Candy From Denver, Plus A Modest Reminder

DenverNA4Last week’s announcement by the Metropolitan Museum of Art* that it had organized and sent a collection of works from the permanent collection to the National Museum of China in Beijing –  Earth, Sea, and Sky: Nature in Western Art – Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art — reminded me that I had one more item in my notebooks from my recent trip to Denver.

There, I was eager to see the installation of Native American Art at the Denver Art Museum. I wrote about it from afar two years ago for The New York Times, in an Arts & Leisure section cover story that was headlined Honoring Art, Honoring Artists — which was too bad, actually, because the headline didn’t convey what the article was about.

DenverNA5It was about the attempts there, as curator Nancy Blomberg created a new suite of galleries for Native American art there to place emphasis on the artists who created the works — even when we don’t know there names. She tried, wherever possible, to seek out attributions to individuals and, where not, to emphasize still the individual by saying “Navaho artist,” say, on the labels, rather than just “Navaho.”  (I also posted about it here and here.)

One example is in the photograph at right: It’s the vitrine dedicated to the pottery created by Nampeyo, a Hopi woman born around 1860.

DenverNA1I met Nancy, and she showed me around briefly then left me on my own to wander. The galleries looked beautiful, as the pictures here will attest. (I snapped many with my cell phone. Most were taken before and just as the museum was opening — that’s why they are devoid of people.)

The greatness of Denver’s collection was evident. Now consider that, in 2011, Blomberg said she was going to display about 700 objects from the museum’s collection of about 18.000 objects. Looking around, I blurted out to Blomberg, “you have so much great stuff — you have to get some of your collection out on tour!”

DenverNA2Blomberg hasn’t had the chance to do that, she said, but the museum’s director, Christoph Heinrich, has encouraged her (and other curators there) to do so, she said.

It’s true that museums are sending parts of their permanent collections out on tour, especially during renovations, to increase earned income. But that wasn’t behind my enthusiasm. I simply think that many more people who do not get to Denver, let alone to the Denver Art Museum, would like to see this collection. If what’s in storage includes items of similar quality — not all, but enough — there may well be a themed exhibition that could be shared.

I think that same thought when I visit other museums. Some have an embarrassment of riches that might be lent temporarily to others.

Of course, I know that many museums already do that. This is just a gentle reminder to those who don’t but could.

Photo Credits:  © Judith H. Dobrzynski

The Al-Sabah Collection Is Going Places — Not Just Houston

Al-Sabah jewelryIt was news last fall when the  Museum of Fine Arts in Houston announced a five-year partnership with Sheikh Nasser Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah and his wife, Sheikha Hussah Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah, of Kuwait — through which the al-Sabahs would send parts of their collection for long-term viewing in Houston. They want their treasures seen around the world, as a means of expanding the view people have of Muslims to include its culture. Given so many political ties in Texas (the Sheikha visited George H.W. Bush last week), and with its oil companies, it was natural for the family to choose the MFAH (though having Mahrukh Tarapor, formerly with the Metropolitan Museum and now senior adviser for international initiatives to the MFAH, must have helped).

So the other night, the MHAF unveiled its entry in the Islamic race: a gallery filled with about 70 objects on loan from the al-Sabahs. It can’t compare in volume with the Met’s newish Islamic wing, which attracted more than 1 million visitors in not much more than a year, or with the Louvre’s new wing for Islamic art — topped by that golden “flying carpet” — but still. Apparently what the Kuwaitis sent is choice. The museum’s description:

Among the highlights showcased in this display are spectacular Mughal jewelry, illuminated manuscripts, exquisite ceramics, and intricately decorated ceiling panels. More than 60 examples from the 8th to 18th centuries are on view, made in the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. The collection also includes carpets, glass and metalwork, paintings, architectural fragments, scientific instruments, and works on paper.

And there’s much more where that came from, and the Kuwaiti News Agency is out with an article that says that there will be more international sharing of the 30,000 works in the collection (which is on permanent loan to the state of Kuwait).

Al-Sabah-porcelainBut not with U.S. museums — even though its clear that the public has an appetite for art of the Muslim world.

Houston’s renewable deal is exclusive in the U.S., the KNA said. Rather, it added, “plans are underway to potentially launch exhibitions in Italy, Finland, South Korea and Singapore, where there are few Islamic art collections available to the public.” KNA did not name the institutions involved, but it provided a lot more background on Kuwaiti thinking.

Among American museums, the other good places to see respected collections of Islamic art are the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Freer-Sackler in Washington and the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art.

The current al-Sabah selection is expected to remain in Houston for about a year; then, there will be a switch-out.

Photo Credit: Two 17th century pieces from India, courtesy of the MHAF