Museums

More observations from my travels this summer: Several smaller museums got together this summer to create hoopla by agreeing to present variations on a theme. I see this is as a really good thing, and I have heard anecdotally that it worked. That it, the thematic cooperation brought more attention from the media, sometimes even national media, which helps draw visitors.

One was very near: the seven institutions in the Fairfield/Westchester Museum Alliance (FWMA) each agreed to present an exhibition about one of the Seven Deadly Sins. So, the Bruce Museum got Pride, and curated a show of art and material culture “from the Renaissance into the contemporary period.” The Hudson River Museum got Envy, the Katonah Museum of Art got Gluttony, and so on. The FWMA published a brochure about the series.

The Bruce Museum in Greenwich provides all the details here. The Wall Street Journal reviewed the effort. giving the Bruce the highest marks. The exhibition included works by Saenredam, Dore, Durer, Goltzius, Daumier, among others. The star, perhaps–and cover of the catalogue–was Gabriel Schachinger’s Sweet Reflections, an elegantly dressed woman gazing at her reflection in a mirror (below left).

I got to only one–the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Ct., which got Sloth, a good one to see if you lacked time to travel around. The Aldrich approach was very clever–best viewed as conceptual art. For Sloth, the Aldrich did nothing “original,” but rather made videos of the six other exhibitions. The videos ran on six TVs at the Aldrich and visitors could watch each one from a Bob-O-Pedic recliner (at left). Outside was a signpost showing the directions and mileage to the six other museums (right).

Inside was a newspaper providing an “Exclusive Report” entitled “Curators Too Lazy,” tabloid-style, and brief “articles,” like one headlined “The Art of Loafing.” (Maybe this was too cute…)

UPDATE, 9/19: I’ve added one more Aldrich photo, with a visitor, at the end of this post.

Then I went to Santa Fe, where I visited two of the exhibits in Summer of Color, a joint effort by four museums, the botanical garden and (very broadly) the annual Native American Market.

The Museum of International Folk Art received the most attention, I think, for The Red That Colored the World—a very good show that was also reviewed in the WSJ. I thought the exhibit was well-thought out, a fresh approach and, if a bit repetitive, definitely worth seeing.

I also stopped in at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, which is presenting Blue on Blue: Indigo and Cobalt in New Spain through next April. For a small museum, I thought it did a fine job, as these pictures of the entrance and the main gallery illustrate–they’re below at the end of this post.

Perhaps galvanized by the cooperative effort or the attention, Santa Fe institutions are not letting up. They are right back in coming months with the Fall of Modernism, which will involve three exhibits celebrating the American Modernist art movement. Running from now through January, it offers: Georgia O’Keeffe in Process and An American Modernism: Painting and Photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art and From New York to New Mexico: Masterworks of American Modernism from the Vilcek Foundation Collection at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Meanwhile, some art galleries in Santa Fe will also showcase Modernist art.

To me, this effort seems a bit quick, and may end up disappointing. These collaborations generally require more planning time and more execution time than they at first seem.

Nonetheless,  when well planned–and used sparingly–I think they can draw wider than normal audiences. Why do I say that? The publicity, which so many museum directors tell me drives attendance.

ALDRICH:

I couldn’t find a press release on the museum website about this, but a couple of newspapers recently reported that the Minneapolis Institute of Arts is changing its name. And I did find, on the website, an item in “Mia Stories”— its direct to consumer communication.

From now on, there will not be an “s” on the end of arts. It is simply the Minneapolis Institute of Art. And from now on, the acronym should no longer be pronounced as M-I-A, as in “missing in action.” It should be pronounced “me-ah”–rhyming with DIA, the New York-based art foundation, and not with DIA, the Detroit Institute of Arts.

This is going to take awhile. People and publications will now have to remember that in Detroit, there’s an “s.” But in Minneapolis, no. I expect a lot of mistakes and corrections.

For MIA, this is understandable–and to a certain extent, welcome. For me, dropping the “s” suggests more attention to visual arts, and less emphasis on all the other arts, like music, dance, and theater. that sometimes find a home in art museums. Nothing wrong with the latter, but I prefer the emphasis on the visual. Still, I may be disappointed on that score. The museum recently posted on its Facebook page about a “August musician-in-residence” named Lydia Liza, the lead singer of a local band, Bomba de Luz.

And here’s what MIA said in the “Mia Stories” post:

The “Arts” in the name was deliberately and ambitiously plural, inscribing the vision of the institute as a place for performing as well as visual arts. The Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, now the Minnesota Orchestra, was to be housed alongside the museum, ballets and plays were to be performed. The original architectural designs offered plenty of space—designs that were never fully realized.

So much the better, I think.

The current change was made in consultation with Pentagram, the design firm in New York that has worked with dozens of arts organizations, including the Whitney and the Philbrook Museum. The MIA also acquired a new logo, at left, and has dumped the old one, at right. Here’s what MIA says about that as well as the pronunciation:

Mia, on the other hand, means “mine” in Spanish and other languages, and, as the new logo designed by Pentagram demonstrates, readily establishes a complete identity apart from the initials. Mia will now be the common name of the museum, while dropping the “s” in Arts simply resolves a bit of history. No one needs to worry about the vision behind this place anymore, set in stone for a hundred years now, only how to reflect it in words.

But there is one thing to resolve: the museum’s URL is www.artsmia.org.  When I plugged in www.artmia.org, I got nothing.

Sometimes these rebranding exercises are trivial pursuits, tinkering when the focus should be on more important things. They can also be very expensive.

MIA did have a bit of a problem with its nickname, so this one seems warranted. I notice, for now at least, that museum’s mission has not changed:

The Minneapolis Institute of Art enriches the community by collecting, preserving, and making accessible outstanding works of art from the world’s diverse cultures.

Well-put, as its the vision statement: “Inspiring wonder through the power of art.”

That’s a proper focus.