Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Exhibitions

Art Institute’s Architecture Experiment: Studio Gang Architects

When I worked at The New York Times, tour groups would sometimes be escorted through the newswoorm, and the members would stand there watching reporters and editors work. We simply sat at our computers or talked on the phone — and I never understood why anyone would want to take a tour of the NYT (this was after the presses were moved out of W. 43rd St.). I felt the same way when I worked in television: basically, there’s not much to watch. What we do goes on mostly in our heads.

I was reminded of this when I read about the Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects exhibition that opened this week at the Art Institute of Chicago. Jeanne Gang, founder of the firm, MacArthur “genious,” and designer of  the beautiful, undulating Aqua Tower, an 82-story highrise in Chicago (among other things), is the subject of the show, along with her team. But most of what they do goes on inside their heads, too — doesn’t it?

Maybe a lot less than at a newspaper. The Chicago exhibition — self-described as “innovative” in the press release — is not a survey or retrospective. It promises to show the practice “in an engaging workshop-like environment that reveals the practice’s creative processes as they seek to answer pressing contemporary issues through architecture” and consists of two interrelated parts:

The first functions as a gallery with projects illustrated through a range of materials from sketchbooks and models to photographs, plans, and other drawings. This space will also feature a special series of installations, also designed by SGA, dedicated to the studio’s material research and formal explorations.

The second section of the exhibition replicates a workshop, complete with a large worktable, pin-up boards, full-scale mock-ups, and material samples. This space is a key component of the presentation and will serve as the location for two Archi-Salons–public programs that will further connect and place the work in the exhibition within the larger field of architectural discourse.

They are scheduled for Oct. 6 and Nov. 7 — details at that link above.

First admission: I haven’t seen the exhibition. But architecture exhibits tend to attract good crowds, and this one sounds to me like on worth paying attention to. I haven’t yet found reviews, but here’s one local article that gives an on-the-ground report.

 

Portland Makes The Most of Winslow Homer’s Studio — UPDATED

On Tuesday, the Portland Museum of Art opens what will likely be a pride and joy: the 2,200 sq. ft. studio in Prouts Neck, Maine, of Winslow Homer, which it purchased in 2006 from Homer’s great grand-nephew, Charles Homer Willauer. The museum has raised $10.8 million in a national capital campaign to support the acquisition, preservation, interpretation, and endowment of the studio, which it has restored to its appearance during Homer’s lifetime, for $2.8 million.

In the course of the restoration, the museum learned a lot about Homer: some little, such as that he apparently ate clams and just tossed the shells (they were found under the floorboards along with some paintbrushes);, and some big, such as the fact that, instead of being a recluse, Homer and his family developed the Prouts Neck community using Easthampton as a model. As one catalogue essay says: “It is a rare hermit that who exhibits a flair for real estate, but Winslow and his brother Charles, Jr. were active developers, so much so that by the time of Homer’s death in 1910, six hotels and some sixty private cottages dotted Prouts Neck.”

The downside to this, if there is one, is that visitation is via a van from the museum to the studio twelve miles away and then by guided tour — just three a day, limited to 10 visitors each, from Sept. 25 through Dec. 2, 2012 and next spring from Apr. 2 through June 14. A bigger downside: they cost $55 each. 

Wisely, in planning this, the museum has gone beyond the studio, where Homer made some of his most iconic works. The Portland museum will be showing paintings that he created in that studio. Weatherbeaten: Winslow Homer and Maine, which runs through Dec. 30, brings together 38 major oils, watercolors and etchings — many late seascapes — from museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Art Institute of Chicago; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.  For the first time since it was painted there, Homer’s  Fox Hunt (1893) will be in Maine, a rare loan from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

And Portland is putting a contemporary spin on this as well: It has commissioned five artists to photograph the studio using techniques available in Homer’s days, and they will go on view on Oct. 6 in a display called Between Past and Present: The Homer Studio Photographic Project. A few details:

They employed both historic, large-plate cameras and modern digital cameras, and a variety of print processes. The earliest method of making images of the real world with light—the camera obscura—is the technique explored by Abelardo Morell with his unique tent camera. Alan Vlach specializes in salted paper prints, the first form of prints made from negatives, introduced in England in the 1840s. Keliy Anderson-Staley developed her collodion prints outdoors using a portable darkroom at Prouts Neck, much like 19th-century portrait photographers. And the gum bichromate and platinum prints, produced by Brenton Hamilton and Tillman Crane, represent the type of fine art photography most used during Homer’s day.

The Portland museum has a real treasure here, and should make the most of it in a way that’s respectful of the property’s limitations. I suspect it will learn during the coming year, and perhaps make changes after that.  

For more on the Homer studio, see the Maine Sunday Telegram article from last Sunday and today’s piece here, the Associated Press story as published by the Washington Post, a travel story in The New York Times and additional articles listed here.

UPDATE: The Portland museum tells me that the previous top photo on this post, which I drew from the local paper, dated to 2006. They gave me a recent interior shot, which is now at top.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Portland Museum of Art (top), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (middle), Alan Vlach via the Portland Museum of Art (bottom)

 

Tidbits: Unrelated Developments At A Few Museums

Every now and then, little bits of news come along that command attention, but not an entire post. So I’ve gathered a few into one:

  • Remember last June when I wrote here about the Worcester Art Museum’s campaign to raise $60,000 to reopen its historic doors? The money was raised lickety-split, and to celebrate the results — about $94,000 at the time — director Matthias Waschek offered free admission to the museum through August. Now the museum reports that the “Open the Door” campaign raised more than $100,000 and that attendance during July and August jumped 151% versus the same months in 2011.
  • The Dallas Museum of Art and the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth are less than 40 miles apart, but they are nonetheless collaborating and planning to show the same exhibition in 2013: Hotel Texas: An Art Exhibition for the President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy will run in Dallas from May 26 through Sept. 15 and then in Fort Worth from Oct. 12, 2013, through Jan. 12, 2014. The exhibit marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and tells a story that today would seem odd (and I doubt would happen). According to the press release (which includes details on the art that was chosen and for where):

Five days prior to the presidential couple’s arrival in Fort Worth, descriptions of the presidential suite at the Texas Hotel were released to the public. Unhappy with the couple’s accommodations, Owen Day, the art critic for the Fort Worth Press, proposed the idea of the installation to prominent art collector and leader of the Fort Worth Art Association Samuel Benton Cantey III. With the support of Ruth Carter Johnson (now Ruth Carter Stevenson), board president for the Amon Carter Museum of American Art; collector Ted Weiner; and Mitchell Wilder, the Amon Carter Director, Cantey conceived a three-part exhibition that would unfold in the parlor, master bedroom, and second bedroom of Suite 850.Drawing on local private and public art collections, each room of the suite was outfitted with works of art that befitted the tastes and interests of President Kennedy and the first lady (guess where Eakins’s Swimming {above} went).

  • Talk about collaborations (and captive audiences!): The Dulwich Picture Gallery is mounting an exhibition at the American Embassy in London this fall of the United States of America which “can be viewed by members of the public awaiting visa interviews in the Consular waiting room of the Embassy.” The show, called Across the Pond and inspired by the city of London, will display art created by young artists during a long-term programme sponsored by the Gallery at the Salmon Youth Centre – evening drop-in sessions that are part of the Gallery’s Urban Youth programme and that involves visiting artists including Erica Parrett, Liz Charlsey-Jory, Joanna Veevers and Ruth Dupre. The Dulwich Picture Gallery began its youth program a dozen years ago to offer cultural activites to at risk kids. For some silly reason, the Gallery does not allow the public to see its press releases, so I cannot link to it. (There’s a lesson there…)

 

Progress On Museum Hours — They Are Changing

Even during this recessionary non-recession (the 2007-08 recession ended in June or July 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research), people are turning out for many exhibitions in very high numbers. So while not that many museums are adding night hours, which I think would help attendance (and some, like the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, have cut them back), many are doing so for special exhibitions — perhaps not only to satisfy demand but also to create excitement.

Here are a few recent examples I’ve noticed:

  • For its fall exhibition Picasso Black and White, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum says it will remain open for about two additional hours on “select evenings for the full fifteen weeks of the exhibition,” from Oct. 5, 2012, through Jan. 23, 2013. The surprise is that, instead of the usual Thursday-Friday-Saturday nights, the extended hours will be on Sundays and Mondays, when hours will be from 10 a.m. through 8 p.m. (exception for the holidays on December 24 and 31). This is a good experiment — maybe there’s less to do, less competion on Monday nights, for example.
  • Last May, the Cleveland Museum of Art “due to popular demand,” added weekend hours for Rembrandt in America: Cleveland stayed open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on the Saturday and Sunday of its final two weekends, two hours longer than usual.  And it was open on Monday, May 28, Memorial Day, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
  • When that exhibit traveled to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, it “sold out” — 100,000 tickets, versus the anticipated 75,000 when the MIA planned the show. So, from Sept. 4 through Sept. 16th, it stayed open until 8 p.m. on the five nights a wekk whene it usually closes at 5 p.m. (It’s always open until 9 p.m. on Thursdays.)  And when I suggested to Anne-Marie Wagener, the museum’s director of public relations, that the MIA stay open 24 hours, she wrote back “We’re going to do just that for Terracotta Warriors and MORE REAL!”
  • In June, the Denver Art Museum announced that it was expanding the hours for Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective during the final 10 days of the show — 9 p.m. on most nights, instead of 5 p.m. And it was open on July 4.
  • Among the other exhibitions that got extended hours are the Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Gauguin & Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise at the Seattle Art Museum, the Colorful Realm: Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings by Itō JakuchÅ« at the National Gallery of Art, and The Steins Collect at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which also opened early for members.

As for new regular evening hours, I’ll mention a few: the Walters Art Museum (Thursdays until 9 p.m.); the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (to 7 p.m. three nights and to 9 p.m. on Thursdays); the Cincinnati Art Museum till 9 p.m. on Fridays; and the Laguna Art Museum (till 9 p.m. on Thursdays).

This is progress.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum

 

The Met’s Economic Power: A Few Puzzlers

The Metropolitan Museum* released a report on Friday stating that its three spring/summer exhibitions had generated $781 million in spending for New York City; that’s what the regional, national, and foreign tourists who visited the Met spent, according to a visitor survey, while coming to see Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations; Tomás Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City (below); and The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde. 

Then, “using the industry standard for calculating tax revenue impact,” the Met said they brought $78.1 million in direct tax benefits to the City and State from its out-of-town visitors. Pretty hefty.

The totals are a bit of a decline from 2011, when Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty; Anthony Caro on the Roof; Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective; and Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century were found to have generated $908 million — but credit the McQueen show for the bulk of that (it drew 661,509 visitors).

And the sums are up substantially from 2009 and 2008 (I couldn’t find a figure for 2010).

You can read more details — like spending in restaurants and shops — here.

I want to focus on two puzzles.

In 2011, “68% of the visitors traveled from outside the five boroughs of New York …38% were from other states, and 42% were international visitors.”

In 2012, “80% of visitors traveled to the Museum this summer from outside the five boroughs of New York…30% were from other states, and 47% were international visitors.”

Why has the percentage of foreign visitors gone up? Was it non-traditional Met visitors from the NYC fashion set who flocked to the McQueen show that made the difference in 2011? Or did, perhaps, the new Islamic galleries draw more foreign interest and also send visitors to the special exhibitions? Overall attendance at the Met was up in the last fiscal year, which ended June 30, partly because of those galleries.

The Met also disclosed that 339,838 people saw Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations; that 368,370 museumgoers visited Tomás Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City (through Aug. 31 — it will remain up through Nov. 4), and that 323,792 visitors went to The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde.

The rooftop shows always draw big; they are aided by the fact that they’re outdoors in summer on a roof with spectacular views of NYC. But that Stein number, while fine, is a disappointment for such a fabulous show — both in a scholarly way and visually.

And here’s the surprise: The Steins Collect did better at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art than it did in NYC, according to a story in Friday’s Los Angeles Times. It said SF MoMA’s total was “360,588 visitors …the fourth largest in the museum’s history, even though there was a $7 surcharge on top of the regular admission price.”

Yes, the Steins had roots in the San Francisco area, but given the population disparity between the SF metro area and NYC, it’s still hard to see why it drew more people in the West than in NYC. Better marketing? Less competition? Hard to say.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Met

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met