Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

A New American Home for Italian Contemporary Art

There’s a new kid on the art block in the Hudson River Valley–Magazzino, in Cold Spring, about an hour and 45 minutes north of New York City. I went up to attend its opening on Saturday and made a trip, too, to Jack Shainman Gallery’s The School, further up the Hudson Valley in Kinderhook. The School just began its fourth season, more about which later.

Magazzino features postwar and contemporary Italian art; this private warehouse space, which is free and open to the public by appointment capable of being booked on its website, is the creation of collectors Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu. It was built with a disused dairy distribution center, then computer factory, as a base, then expanded by architect Miguel Quismondo. It’s a quite a handsome building from the outside, as you can see in the picture at left, and the spaces inside are very good for art. As Spanu said at the opening, “the protagonist was the art. We wanted a container to contain the art, and not the opposite.” Bravo for those sentiments!

The first exhibition, drawn from the couple’s collection, pays homage to Margherita Stein, whose gallery in Turin helped launch the Arte Povera movement. Among the artists whose work is on display are Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto (that’s one of his sculptures in the foreground of top picture) and Jannis Kounellis.  This is an area that I, and I suspect many other potential visitors, are not totally familiar with–and Magazzino has helpfully provided a booklet illustrating each work on display and an explanation that would be a wall label–if the gallery had labels, which it does not. This, much like  then one I was given, and which I praised, at the National Gallery’s Michelangelo/Sebastiano exhibit, is better.

Magazzino will also have a library, with 4,000 to 5,000 books about Italian art, open to scholars and researchers. Eventually, they’ll all be digitized for online access.

Che meraviglia!

A few more pictures, including–in the top one–three of the artists (L to R), Domenico Bianchi, Spanu, Marco Bagnoli, Remo Salvatori, his wife, Olnick (and other guests).

 

 

 

Too Much Contemporary? Too Little What Came Before?

That is a prospect we–American consumers of art exhibitions–face, and it is that subject and its consequences for our culture that I take up in an opinion piece published this morning on Aeon, the digital magazine that covers science, philosophy and society as well as the arts.

The headline is Why does contemporary art make for wildly popular blockbusters? but it is equally about the consequences of the art imbalance that is already occurring and is likely to get worse. Important note: I am not against contemporary art–I love a lot of it–but I think it must be viewed, overall, in the context of art that came  before it–not in every exhibition, obviously, but art in context.

My Aeon article is an essay, an idea piece, and therefore lacks a nut graf that I can copy here, but here are a few excerpts:

…with museum directors under pressure to boost attendance, Holbein loses out to Damien Hirst, Manet to Christian Marclay, Braque to Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Klee to Jeff Koons. Even museums whose collections extend back to the ancients are stressing contemporary art. In the past few years, some museum directors and fundraisers have told me that it has become difficult to find money for exhibitions displaying what some are now calling ‘pre-contemporary art’. Sponsors, be they corporations, foundations or individuals, are simply uninterested….

…in the visual arts…curators and directors struggle to make ‘old art’ seem ‘relevant’…but contemporary art gets a pass on that score because it is made in the present…

…when these factors combine to crowd out attention to some of the world’s greatest works of art, our knowledge of past civilisations is diminished. Knowing less about different times and places means our knowledge of human nature grows thinner, narrower. We become, in short, less sophisticated….

That’s bad, no matter what you feel about museum exhibitions these days.

 

Dan Weiss Announced As Met’s CEO: Initial Thoughts

My initial reaction to this morning’s announcement from the Metropolitan Museum*–that Daniel H. Weiss is now President and Chief Executive Officer, with the TBD director reporting to him–is skepticism.

I’ve got nothing against Weiss. I don’t know him. But as a long-time student of corporate governance and museum governance, I don’t think this particular arrangement is best at the Met. Sometimes it works at other museums, sometimes not. It usually depends on the personalities involved.

But for me, the Met’s director, should be the paramount leader (that’s sounds ominously North Korean, and I don’t mean it that way!). It’s the Country’s best museum; it should have the best director and to get that person must be able to offer the job as CEO.

The Met’s press release says this:

…the Board concluded that Weiss’s background as a distinguished scholar with a doctorate in art history and college president, as well as his outstanding tenure for the past two years as President of The Met, make him an exceptional fit to lead the Museum. The Board’s decision follows a comprehensive review of the Museum’s organizational structure, roles, and leadership titles, followed by extensive discussions in a series of Executive Committee and Board meetings over the past three months….

The release also said that “…the Museum will lead a search to appoint a Director of the Museum, who will report to Mr. Weiss. The President and CEO will be responsible for the overall leadership of the Museum, and the Director will lead the core mission functions.”

Interestingly, the Met noted that the director reported to the CEO in the past–but that is not what they said in 1999. Here’s the release:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has had both single- and dual-leadership models in the last four decades of its 147-year history. In the single-leadership model, the Director has previously reported to the President, as Philippe de Montebello did upon becoming Director in 1977. More recently the President has reported to the Director and CEO, which began in 1999 when Mr. de Montebello was appointed to assume the role of Director and CEO.

But when I was a culture reporter for The New York Times, and wrote in January, 1999 an article about the departure of William H. Luers as President, the Met insisted on a correction. Here was my lede:

In more than a dozen years as president and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, William H. Luers never really spoke out about the nation’s biggest art museum or his tenure there. That was the deal he cut with the museum’s director, Philippe de Montebello.

Mr. de Montebello, though technically his subordinate, rules over the Met’s art, and has always aspired to hold both jobs one day, as most museum directors do.

Here is what the Met insisted upon:

An article yesterday about William H. Luers, the departing president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, misstated the relationship between his position and that of Philippe de Montebello, the museum’s director. The two have been equal, both reporting to the chairman; the director is not subordinate to the president.

For me, this only points out the sensitivity of the subject. And it raises the prospect that some excellent candidates for director will not want the job if they cannot be the CEO.

Watch, though: this will be the time when the Met decides to have a woman as director, but not CEO.

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met.

If This Can Happen at the Met and the British Museum…We Have A Big Problem

Two completely unrelated news items have prompted this post.

It has become pretty clear of late that many people do not know how to behave (gosh, is that too old-fashioned a term, even?) in art museums.

On May 4, the New York Post reported that celebs at the Met’s* recent Costume Institute gala had smoked cigarettes, vaped and in general misbehaved, blocking access to the stalls and upsetting trustees and other donors. It quotes one source saying:

“As a donor to the Met, I was so insulted to see all these ‘celebrities’ smoking and taking selfies of themselves in the bathroom. Mostly, it’s disrespectful to the art collection, which needs to be kept 100% smoke-free. I would honestly like to see these people fined by the city.”

And another said:

…that one buttoned-up female board member was horrified when she went into the ladies’ loo and found a host of celebs cavorting around inside, including Sean “Diddy” Combs, Kylie Jenner, Paris Jackson, Kim Kardashian, and Kendall and Kylie Jenner, who took an epic selfie.

Time to rethink Anna Wintour’s concept for the gala?

Add to that this, which The Art Newspaper recently reported:

The British Museum has more than 50 incidents a year of pencil graffiti on its ancient sculptures. The London museum uses the term “graffiti” to refer to any marks drawn by visitors (not just written letters), and in most cases they are accidentally applied, usually by schoolchildren. Pencil is removable, but with one case a week, this raises serious concerns about the protection of the collection and the way the galleries are monitored.

…Pencil is removable, but with one case a week, this raises serious concerns about the protection of the collection and the way the galleries are monitored.

Last year, the UK’s Telegraph discovered that nearly 1,000 “precious” items in British museums had been damaged over the last decade.

I’ve increasingly noticed the posting of Don’ts, and sometimes Dos, at museums. They do not seems to be enough.

*I consult to a museum that supports the Met.

At The Met, A Most Timely Acquisition

Maybe I should not admit this, but I never heard of Luisa Ignacia Roldán until a few weeks ago, when I learned that the Metropolitan Museum of Art* had recently purchased a polychrome terracotta sculpture by her. Dated 1700-1701, The Entombment of Christ takes up a very common theme in Spanish art of the period. Her interpretation adds some nice touches; it’s a beautiful, accomplished sculpture by “the first woman sculptor documented in Spain.”

Have a look:

The Met describes the work, which is on view and certainly worth a visit, this being Holy Week, this way:

The Entombment is one of the two “jewel-like sculptures” Luisa Roldán gave to the newly installed King Philip V of Spain in 1701, petitioning him to appoint her sculptor to the royal court. In the previous decade she had pioneered a genre of sculpture—powerfully conceived and exquisitely modelled and painted figural groups, made on a deliberately intimate scale—of which this is perhaps the finest. The emotive expressions of the six figures surrounding the body of Christ as he is laid to rest run the gamut from angry disbelief and empty grief, to tender love and sympathy. The Entombment may have been placed in a convent or monastery affiliated with the royal family, or in the family’s private rooms or chapels. In whichever context, it would have inspired meditative devotion, encouraging the viewer to identify with the witnesses to Christ’s Passion.

She did become the King’s sculptor.

The Met features this work in the third episode of its Met Collects online series, where you can see 27 photos of the work (many details, like the one at right) along with a short essay by curator Peter Bell (who is leaving shortly to take a post at the Cincinnati Art Museum).

The Met owns one other sculpture “probably” by Roldan (not on view), who was the daughter of sculptor Pedro Roldán, but this acquisition seems to be in line with the museum’s goal of adding to its Spanish collections. It has nicely amplified her presence by borrowing two other works by her, on view in the same gallery, from the Hispanic Society Museum, which is closed for renovations.

The Getty owns a work by her as well, and added this interesting tidbit in its online feature:

At nineteen, she married a sculptor from the shop and became her family’s primary source of income, working independently with her husband as polychromist. Roldán’s figures are characterized by clearly delineated profiles, thick locks of hair, billowing draperies, and mystical faces with delicate eyes, knitting brows, rosy cheeks, and slightly parted lips.

Learn more about the Roldan family workshop here.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Met

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met.