Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

More on That Indy Admission Fee

The reaction in Indianapolis to the museum’s decision to go from free general admission to an $18 general admission has been very instructive. I’ve been watching local comments, and–not statistics, just my impression–the tally is overwhelming against. Again, the opposition is not necessarily against all museum admissions, it’s opposed to the gigantic jump and the way it was announced. Some commenters continue to blast Charles Venable for saying nothing since the press release was issued.

IBJAgain, I have to ask, what board dynamics is he dealing with? And who are his public relations advisors?

To get a glimpse of what I am talking about, take a look at the dialogue on the Indianapolis Business Journal website. On Sunday, it asked, “Indianapolis Museum of Art admission charge: Where do you stand?”

The comments are enlightening for all museums. Have a look.

And good for the Indianapolis Business Journal for asking for a dialogue.

 

 

Adrien de Vries Sculpture Fetches Record $27.9 Million

DeVriesA record was set at Christie’s today for an Adrien de Vries sculpture–one that was withdrawn from sale in 2011 because it lacked an export license–and the winning bidder was the Rijksmuseum.

The Mannerist sculpture, which is widely recognized as a masterpiece by the 17th century artist known as the “Dutch Michaelangelo”, was won by the museum after a tense three-way phone bidding battle that lasted four minutes and captivated the audience at Christie’s Rockefeller Center saleroom in New York.

The final price, including the premium, was $27,885,000, or £17,743,735.

Christie’s crowed in its press release: “The excellent results of the Bacchic Figure Supporting the Globe reassert the continuing momentum of the masterpiece market, which has gone from strength to strength throughout the course of 2014 at Christie’s.”

I’ll say. Here’s one measure of art-world inflation. In summer 2011, when the piece was called Mythological Figure Supporting the Globe, it was on the block in London and estimated to fetch £5-8 million, or $8- to 12.8 million. This time, in “The Exceptional Sale,” it was estimated at $15- to $25 million.

I tell the story of this sculpture, found after 300 years in a garden, here, in my piece on the Old Master sculpture market, which I wrote for Art & Auction.

More details about the piece, including provenance, are in the lot info at Christie’s. And here is  much more about the piece.

Christie’s made no reference to the sculpture’s past difficulties with export authorities, so somehow that must have been resolved.

Last month, when Christie’s was promoting the piece as a record-buster, it said:

The current world auction record for European sculpture was set in 2003 when Christie’s sold a parcel-gilt and silvered bronze roundel depicting Mars, Venus, Cupid, and Vulcan, Mantuan, circa1480-1500, for £6.9 million. Prior to that, the most valuable early European sculpture was The Dancing Fawn, the most recent work by de Vries to be auctioned, which was sold to the Getty for £6.8 million in 1989. Thought to date to circa 1615, it is smaller than the bronze offered today and was neither signed nor dated.

That £6.8 million would be about £16 million today, or about $25 million.

 Photo Credit: Courtesy of Christie’s

Menil Repurposes Sacred Space For Contemporary Art

When the Byzantine Fresco Chapel at the Menil Collection in Houston opened in 1997, it displayed a group of 13th-century Greek Orthodox frescoes. But after restoration of the works, which the Menil had rescued from looters for the Church of Cyprus, the museum returned the frescoes to Cyprus as a donation when the agreed loan expired in 2012.

ByzantineChapelMuseumSo what to do with that chapel (at right), which has now been deconsecrated? The Menil has commissioned a year-long installation from the team of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet has been a hit wherever it is installed, but especially when in 2013 it was place in the Cloisters’s 12th-century Spanish chapel, as the first work of contemporary art ever to be shown at the Met’s medieval art branch.

So perhaps this was a natural. The duo, says the Menil release:

will fill the now-deconsecrated space with a sonic and visual experience inspired by ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras’s concept of “the music of the spheres.” This theory that the movement of celestial bodies creates harmonies has recently been corroborated by scientists. Visitors will hear an audio collage including recordings collected by the NASA spacecraft Voyager when monitoring the interaction of solar winds and Earth’s ionosphere. Because the ions vibrate within the range of frequencies audible to the human ear, it has been possible to convert their resonances into sounds, which will become part of the aural experience. Among the objects suspended in the mobile will be an array of mirrors and a small player piano.

The Chapel, meant as a sacred space, will from now on house these long-term, contemporary installations, the museum said. This one, I hope, will be more like Forty-Part Motet than like Cardiff’s Murder of Crows.  We will see on Jan. 31, when it opens.

 

 

Barron’s Strange Report On Art Museums

Last weekend, Barron’s–the financial weekly–published a cover story on art museums. It’s a crazy salad of a piece, full of supposedly new thoughts that are actually old, composed with a strange tone that shifts throughout the piece, exaggerating in parts, and so on. It frequently cited net assets as a sign of wealth, which includes items like land, when it should have used endowment figures. It has a few non sequiturs (notice the paragraph below on the Met). And it bore what I think is a misleading headline, Billionaire Art Museums. (see chart below)

I don’t usually like to comment negatively on other people’s articles, but this piece, read by investors–and potential donors–is too weird to ignore. Let me pull out a few things, along with some comments and questions, in bold:

  • “Take the Philadelphia Museum of Art…During the recession, the grand old dame of Philadelphia saw its endowment—which covers some 25% of its operating expenses—plunge by nearly $100 million in just one year. According to data provided by Foundation Source, the museum’s revenue fell from $146 million in 2008 to just $60 million in 2009. In response, the museum cut staff and salaries and increased admission fees. It also postponed, for a year, a special exhibition on Spanish art, and cautiously put its plans for a Frank Gehry–designed expansion on an “as paid for” basis. Today, the Philadelphia museum appears to have put its worst financial struggles behind it. Total assets are at $733 million, up 7.8% from where they were five years ago. And in July, the museum opened an exhibition of Gehry’s architectural models built for its $350 million project, signaling that its expansion plans were back on track.” There are too many apples-and-oranges comparisons in this paragraph. Total assets up just 7.8% is worrisome to me, not a sign of strength. 
  • “”…the museum [of Fine Arts, Houston] navigated its way through the financial crisis. By June 2012, its total assets, at $1.12 billion, were just 3.8% shy of where they stood in 2008. Again, not quite a resounding comeback, on its own at least, is it? 
  •  [in FY 2013] the Met’s total reported assets clock in at $3.47 billion—2.1% below where they stood in 2008. Things are rapidly improving. In September, the Met unveiled a new outdoor plaza and fountain financed with a $65 million gift from industrialist billionaire David Koch, one of its trustees. And in a move reminiscent of the far flusher days of a not-too-distant past, the museum is currently showcasing its new gift of 78 cubist paintings, drawings, and sculptures from the philanthropist Leonard A. Lauder.” Huh?
  • “Among the strongest indicators of current financial optimism is the explosion of mammoth expansion projects, itself a harbinger of plans for greater programming, bigger crowds, and ever-more-epic shows. Last December, the Cleveland Museum of Art completed an extensive $320 million renovation and a new addition that saw its space increase by some 35%.” This project has been in the works for years, and its completion signals nothing about the future. Nor, really, does the next example–MoMA’s expansion into the site of the Folk Art Museum. 
  • At MFA-Houston: “…Since 2009, admission attendance at the museum is up 30%. Last year, revenue from ticket sales, at $2.5 million, rose 56%, over 2012. Its slate of recent blockbuster shows included last year’s “Picasso: Black and White.” In the meantime, fund-raising efforts have landed two record-breaking years in a row for the museum. In 2013, it raised $16 million, up 23% from the previous year.” That number seems very small for an institution with a budget of around $85 million, doesn’t it? 

BarronsChartAll that said, the article makes two good points–some museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art–have increased the size of their boards, at least in part to raise money. That is not a bad thing. And the final paragraph is a very good one:

For all of the glory bestowed on a trustee at one of the august museums on our list, moderately wealthy benefactors would be wise to be contrarians. Their time, money, and collection are likely to be treated better, have more impact, and serve society better when put to work at a regional or local museum.

 

Guggenheim Helsinki Finalists Announced

1The word from Helsinki is, I think, good. After reviewing 1,715 submissions, the architecture jury for the proposed Gugggenheim Helsinki museum has chosen six finalists–and even they don’t know whose design goes with which name. The names are not the usual suspects (hooray!):

  • AGPS Architecture Ltd. (Zurich, Switzerland and Los Angeles, United States of America)
  • Asif Khan Ltd. (London, United Kingdom)
  • Fake Industries Architectural Agonism (New York, United States of America; Barcelona, Spain; and Sydney, Australia)
  • Haas Cook Zemmrich STUDIO2050 (Stuttgart, Germany)
  • Moreau Kusunoki Architect (Paris, France)
  • SMAR Architecture Studio (Madrid, Spain and Western Australia)

The jury process is described here in their statement. You can go here to see the images (including interiors), one of which is at right. Another is below.

The designs are sure to  be controversial, and I don’t have a favorite (yet).

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