Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture
Right before Christmas, I posted news from the Art Institute of Chicago about a new Associate Curator in the Department of Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture–Rebecca Long.
It was news largely because it was another defection from the Indianpolis Museum of Art. Then the AIC retracted.
It has all been fixed, and Long is indeed the new curator in Chicago. Here’s the AIC press release and here is my original post, which explained the significance.
In the runup to its move downtown this spring (to the building at right), the Whitney Museum just announced an expanded online database of its permanent collection. It’s grown from 700 works of art to more than 21,000 by some 3,000 artists–“spanning all mediums—painting, sculpture, film, video, photography, 
works on paper, installation, and new media.”
Along with images of the works, this searchable database also includes written text, resources for teachers, as well as audio and video files, providing a deeper insight into select pieces. The Museum will continually be adding content and new functionality to the site, enriching it with information about current works in the collection and recent acquisitions. Visitors to the site will be able to fully explore the breadth and depth of a collection that helped define what is innovative and influential in American art since the beginning of the twentieth century.
Good move. I’ve explored it a little, and IÂ like certain aspects. E.g., at the top, there’s a link to recent acquisitions. There are links to works with interpretive texts, to works with related video or audio, to works with resources for teachers. It’s easily reachable too–one click on the homepage to “Collections.”
I like that you can search by artist’s name, of course. But I would to search other ways, too. I’d like to search by donor, for example. And by year of acquisition–would it be interesting to see all the works acquired in, say, 1970 versus 2010?
When you put in Edward Hopper, you get 3,154 works–I’d like to know how many paintings, how many drawings, etc. I’d like to know if a work is on view–and where.
Also, you seem to have to get the name rendered just so. When I put in Gertrude Whitney, I got nothing. When I put in Gertrude Vanderbilt–not her full name either–I got results for Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. That means her works and works depicting her, like Robert Henri’s.
So there are some glitches to fix and definitely some hoped-for functionality.
But I’m glad that more and more museums are putting their collections online.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Whitney
It had to happen, after the last few years; Graham Beal, director of the Detroit Institute of Arts for the past 15-plus year, will retire on June 30.
Here’s what the release said:
Since joining the DIA, Beal has presided over some of the most significant accomplishments in the museum’s history, including a tremendously successful reinvention of presenting art to the public; passage of a tri-county regional millage to support museum operations; and the DIA participation in the historic and unprecedented grand bargain initiative, which secured for future generations’ the DIA’s widely acclaimed art collection while also successfully facilitating resolution of the Detroit bankruptcy.
Beal also helped raised tons of money. The release also cited his major acquisitions and exhibitions, as follows:
Major Acquisitions
Double-Cup, Hans Petzolt, 1596
Ewer, Medici Manufactory, between 1575 and 1578
Chief’s Throne, Olówè of Isè, 20th century
Departure of the Volunteers of 1792 (The Marseillaise), Francois Rude, ca. 1835
Study for Birds, Albert Joseph Moore, 1878
Officer of the Hussars, Kehinde Wiley, 2007
Seated Nude Woman Brushing Her Hair, Edgar Degas, 1885/1908
Russet Landscape, Edgar Degas, ca. 1890
Charger, Ottoman, between 1480 and 1500
Das Geviert, Anselm Kiefer, 1997
The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1634
Major Exhibitions
Van Gogh: Face to Face, 2000
Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur, 2001
Over the Line: The Life and Art of Jacob Lawrence, 2002
Degas and the Dance, 2002
Magnificenza! The Medici, Michelangelo and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence, 2003
American Attitude: Whistler and His Followers, 2003
Camille Claudel and Rodin: Fateful Encounter, 2006
Through African Eyes: The European in African Art, 1500 to Present, 2010
Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, 2011
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit, opens March 15
In the last few years, I think Beal has done yeoman’s work, so I am not surprised at all by this.
The trick will be finding a replacement.
Did you know that Thomas “Thom” Collins, was a native Philadelphian? I don’t know if that helped, but Collins–currently director of the Perez Art Museum in Miami, has just been named executive director and president of the Barnes Foundation there. He was there for five years–some of them turbulent.
But the record he posted there undoubtedly counted in Philadelphia. Here’s how it was described in the press release:
At PAMM, Mr. Collins oversaw construction of the new Herzog & de Meuron-designed building located in downtown Miami, which opened to great acclaim in December 2013. During his tenure, the museum achieved an overwhelming increase in membership, annual giving, attendance, and major gifts, published important exhibition and collection catalogs, added significant works of art to the collection, and began in-house production of critical new digital education tools.
I don’t know Collins and haven’t been following him in a while, though I tend to think of him as more of a contemporary art person than a good fit for the Barnes. so I don’t really have any comment, for now.
More than a year has passed since I visited the Worcester Art Museum and wrote Museum, Remodeled and Rethought for the Wall Street Journal, so I thought I would check in with the director, Matthias Waschek, to see what had happened since then. WAM in many ways might be a model for other art museums, especially those in cities that do not attract many tourists.
Brief recap:Â Waschek had rehung the Old Masters galleries there, medallion-style, to get people to visit the museum (a pitiful 31,435 people had visited the galleries in FY 2011, though total attendance was 78,012) and to look more carefully; had drawn new donors (including support for free admission in August); was attempting to increase his curatorial staff to six from two; and was integrating the Higgins Armory Museum into WAM. More details at that link above.
Waschek is aiming to get attendance to 200,000 by 2020, with help from the Higgins merger: In the last few years (except its final year, when people knew it was closing), the Higgins received about 32,000 to 33,000 visitors a year.
What has happened? In FY 2012 and FY 2013, WAM’s total attendance was 91,000-92,000.
Here’s what it looked like month by month in the galleries, 2014 over 2013–not including people who attend programs that take place outside the galleries, like studio classes.
| 2013 | 2014 | |
| March | 5,498 | 6,201 |
| April | 2,826 | 6,025 |
| May | 2,858 | 4,688 |
| June | 3,345 | 3,960 |
| July | 5,558 | 3,879 |
| August | 6,530 | 11,198 |
| September | 3,094 | 2,922 |
| October | 2,326 | 2,943 |
| November | 3,812 | 4,649 |
April 2014 is big because that’s when Knights! (an installation of mostly armor that it acquired in the Higgins deal) opened; August is big because that is when the museum is free.  July 2013 was also free, but not July 2014.
So on the whole, I’d say that attendance is moving in the right direction, but that the 2020 goal remains a stretch.
Waschek has a plan, though. The museum has done a zip code analysis of visitors since Knights! opened and, he said, “the data show us the way forward.” It turns out that about 45% of visitors came from central Massachusetts, including Middlesex and Norfolk counties between Worcester and Boston, and now that area is his target audience–not just the city of Worcester. That means the museum will do more outreach to schools in those counties, find trustees from those counties, etc.
Overall membership is also up and Waschek says “We will be in a great place (and break out the champagne) when we reach 5,000 members.”
FY12Â Â 3,148 Active Members
FY13Â Â 3,235 Active Members
FY14Â Â 3,564 Active Members
Waschek adds: “We aim not only to grow the total membership, but also their geographic distribution – pulling from the broader region in addition to Worcester and the surrounding towns.â€
On the curatorial front, WAM now has four curators: Jon Seydl is chief curator and in charge of European art, there’s an armor curator and a works on paper curator, and Waschek just hired Elizabeth Athens, who will arrive on March 16, as Assistant Curator of American Art. A PhD candidate at Yale, she has held positions at the Yale Center for British Art, the Williams College Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum. He is searching for an Asian art curator and the contemporary art curatorial position will soon be open.
On the excitement front, Waschek and his staff will be reinstalling other parts of the permanent collection, are keeping [reMastered] fresh with borrowed works and Knights! fresh with rotations and contemporary auxiliary shows (e.g. a show on child soldiers), are designing a museum guide for families, and are offering free nude drawing classes in the galleries, among other things.
Like so many other directors, Waschek is trying a lot of new things, and so far, it seems from here, he has mostly avoided the gimmicks that are aimed at getting people in the door but have little to do with art. I like his emphasis on attendance in the galleries, not just in the museum.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of WAMÂ