Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

A Participatory Exhibit I Can Applaud (I Think)

WPhillipsContrary to some belief out there, I’m not against all participatory, experiential activities in art museums. (I don’t believe museums should be as quiet as cathedrals, either, but that’s another post.) Here’s a participartory program that sounds, in advance, without my being there, like a good one.

It’s at the Freer-Sackler Galleries* in Washington: in conjunction with the opening on Saturday of Unearthing Arabia: The Archaeological Adventures of Wendell Phillips and “International Archaeology Day” on Oct. 18, the museum has scheduled a slew of special events running from Oct. 12-18.

For example, on the 18th, in a family-day activity, visitors can:

…discover what it’s like to work on an archaeological dig in the remote deserts of Arabia. At 1:15 pm, join docents in the exhibition to read original records and see treasures from an actual expedition in the 1950s. At 2 pm, families are invited to explore the exhibition and then participate in a hands-on learning project in the ImaginAsia classroom. At 3:15 pm, meet archaeologist Zaydoon Zaid, who has led expeditions in Yemen and was an advisor for Unearthing Arabia.

I love that they are looking at original handwritten notebooks, photographs,  and film clips from these excavations in Yemen, where Phillips (pictured at right) dug during a massive expedition in the 1950s.

Outside the museum–try envisioning this–the Freer-Sackler has created:

…Washington’s first interactive scratch-off billboards, featuring images of Yemeni sand dunes that can be “excavated” to reveal treasures and images from the exhibition…[thus giving]…Washington commuters a chance to play the archaeologist in everyday life. The advertisements will go up Oct. 13 in bus shelters at 11th and E streets N.W. and Seventh and H streets N.W. and will remain on view during the initial weeks of the exhibition. A limited edition of postcard-sized versions will be available at the Sackler for budding expedition leaders to take home as a complimentary memento.

Lion=TimnaThat’s an experiment–and I’m not sure it’ll work, but hey, why not? At least it is about the excavated artifacts.

Unearthing Arabia is showing some wonderful artifacts from the dig, of course. There will be “a pair of striding Hellenistic bronze lions surmounted by a boyish rider… known as the ‘Lions of Timna,’” (at left) as well as an alabaster head of a young woman whose eyebrows are made of lapis lazuli, a gold necklace, carved incense burners, funerary sculpture and so on.

In an email to the press, the Freer calls the exhibit “multisensory,” and so I asked what that meant. I learned from the press office that it meant they were going beyond traditional wall labels:

…we wanted to rely more on video and sound [to] recreate the dramatic mood of Wendell’s memoirs and some of the sights/sounds of the expedition. (Lots of video is very unusual for us, we’re normally highly object-based).  The walls in the galleries are used for large-scale, almost floor-to-ceiling projections that combine quotes, original video, soundtrack, animated lines from his field diaries and telegrams, and B&W and color photographs in a moving, shifting cinematic video.

On the programming side, our educational team will set up an occasional station with sand and sherds from the museum’s study collections,  so that visitors can use real archaeological tools and get their hands a little dirty.

Wendell’s dime-store novel, Sheba’s Buried City, is also part of the mix.

What makes this better than some so-called experiential or participatory exhibits? The art, it seems to me, is at the center here; the rest is designed to engage people with the art.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Freer-Sackler

* I consult to a foundation that supports the Freer-Sackler

 

 

Clyfford Still Museum Revisited

PH-613, 1942Life is constricted, to some extent, for all single-artist museums–and more than most at the Clyfford Still Museum. As decreed by the artist, it can never exhibit works by any other artist and it can’t have a restaurant or auditorium, among other things. Yet almost about three years ago, in November, 2011, it opened in Denver.

When I received a press release a while back announcing its tenth special exhibition, opening this coming Friday–The War Begins: Clyfford Still’s Paths to Abstraction–I thought it was time to check in and see how it is doing. The answer is pretty well, thanks.

As I report for an article published yesterday on The Art Newspaper website:

…the museum has received 38,562 visitors in 2014—already close to the 40,000 the museum originally projected for an entire year and likely to surpass last year’s total of 42,685. In 2012, its first full year, the museum attracted 61,204 visitors.

More impressive, to me, are those 10 shows, all but one curated by director Dean Sobel, consulting curator David Anfam, or the two of them together. The lone exception was organized by the chief conservator,  James Squires. They include, aside from two inaugural survey exhibitions:

…“Vincent/Clyfford”, featuring paintings and works on paper created during Still’s early years, when his subjects and palette echoed van Gogh’s (timed to coincide with the Denver Art Museum’s “Becoming van Gogh”; “Memory, Myth & Magic”, which exhibited Still’s works that allude to ancient cultures, artistic traditions and his memories; “The Art of Conservation: Understanding Clyfford Still”, which explained Still’s materials and working methods plus the ways conservators are striving to preserve his works; and “1959: The Albright-Knox Art Gallery Exhibition Recreated”, which mimicked one of the few museum exhibitions of his work in his lifetime.

More details at the above link, including some of Sobel’s plans for next year. He has plenty to work, as about half of the 825 paintings the museum owns haven’t yet been unrolled since their shipment from art storage in Maryland. And very few people are familiar with Still’s drawings–many didn’t even know they existed–which number about 2,350.

PH-620, 1942The exhibit opening Friday, the museum said in a press release, “highlights the previously unknown dialogue between Still’s work in war industries and his early breakthrough into abstraction.” I’ve provided two paintings from it here (both from 1942), and here’s the museum’s web description.

In fact, because Still’s work remains largely unknown, Sobel has had to change tactics for his special shows: He had learned that he shouldn’t clear out all nine of the museum’s galleries, but rather that special shows are best implanted in the chronology the museum presents. Visitors want to learn Still’s narrative.

The permanent collection narrative changes anyway: in a rotation that starts this month, 53 works on paper will be hung, 40 of which have never been exhibited publicly.

If there has been a disappointment, Sobel says, it’s the lack of national critical review, except perhaps for its opening. Granted, not many critics are traveling beyond the coasts  very often, but it would be great if they weighed in on these special exhibits. As for the museum world, Sobel said, “a lot of my colleagues have only been visiting recently.”

His neighbor, director Christoph Heinrich of the Denver Art Museum, says the Still museum is “part of the conversation here in town,” and not least because of the special exhibits. But also, he said, because “it’s an incredibly in-depth look at the work of one really influential artist. Every artist knew him, but the public didn’t because he exerted so much control.”

Photo Credits: © City and County of Denver

Albright-Knox: Making The Case For Expansion

LegerWalkingFlowerMore than one museum has gotten into big trouble by expanding. But I’d bet the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo has a better case than most of them. And last week, the museum said it plans to go ahead with a major expansion.

A little background first: I met Janne Siren, who was hired to replace Louis Grachos as the gallery’s director in January, 2013, on a visit he made to New York last week. I had last visited the museum about three years ago–though I wish I had not missed several of its recent exhibitions. And that streak seems to be continuing. Today was the last day for what looked like an excellent Anselm Kiefer exhibit, and I would very much like to get to Buffalo to see the coming Helen Frankenthaler show, which opens on Nov. 9 (Siren also showed me slides from the contemporaneous Paul Feeley retrospective, whose work I had not been familiar with).

So after a while in the doldrums, the AKG seems to have its exhibition program in gear. (Siren also showed me some recent acquisitions–have a look.)

But Siren reminded me how little of the AKG’s permanent collection is on view–and of the difficulties caused by the building’s design. The AKAG, Siren told me, is the sixth-oldest art museum in the United States. It predates the Met. Having started during the Civil War–and still officially known as Buffalo Fine Arts Academy–it has always focused on contemporary art and is renowned for the paintings acquired by A. Conger Goodyear, an early director, and Seymour H. Knox, Jr., a benefactor responsible for the AKAG’s renowned collection of Modern art (Leger’s Walking Flower and Jackson Pollock’s Convergence, both shown here, came from Knox.

Siren told me that only about 2% to 3% of the museum’s permanent collection, which consists of about 6,740 works of art, can be shown at any one time in its 19,000 sq. fett of exhibition space. At the museum’s annual meeting, last week, where the AKAG said it was going forward with an expansion, the Academy’s chair, Thomas R. Hyde, said, “Campus development is no longer an option; it is a necessity. We are, in many ways, a middleweight museum with a heavyweight collection,” according to The Buffalo News. 

Siren reminded me of another problem: when the AKAG was last expanded, in 1962, it mainly built an auditorium. The long halls around it are used to show art, but they are not idea. Furthermore, many contemporary art works today don’t fit through the museum’s doors.

Here is the museum’s full statement on the expansion.

ConvergenceBack in 2012, under Grachos, the Albright-Knox had hired Snohetta to develop a master plan for growth.

But the question is money. The AKAG made not insubstantial cutbacks during the 2008-09 recession. The Buffalo unemployment rate is a little less than the national average, but average wages are also lower. The city is said to be experiencing something of an economic rival, but as the News said last January, “In a region that has heard more than its share of grand plans over the past quarter century that ended up going nowhere – from a factory outlet mega-mall in Niagara Falls to Bass Pro and the Pataki administration’s plan to create a bioinformatics hub here – seeing is believing.”

That article went on to say that there is now an economic plan, with state investment funds behind it, and “challenges aside, the change is astounding by Buffalo standards, where for the past 60 years, economic growth has pretty much been something that happens someplace else.”

I really hope that message has affected potential donors, inspiring them to open their wallets. If real money is in place, the AKAG collection really does deserve more space.

Photo Credits: © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris (top); © 2010 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (bottom),  both courtesy of the AKG

Art First: A New Start in Cincinnati

CKitchinI’ve never met Cameron Kitchin, who began his job as director of the Cincinnati Art Museum today. He is making an interesting start: today, in the museum’s Great Hall, he met the public from 4 to 6 p.m., over light appetizers and a cash bar. Presumably, he walked the museum and met staff earlier in the day. Those are the right gestures to make.

Kitchin, you’ll recall, isn’t a first-time director (He came from the director’s post at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, and has other interesting experience, which you can read about here), and it shows. His meet-and-greet, inside and outside the museum, is especially important because the Cincinnati museum was roiled by its last director.

There’s another reason I am hopeful about him, and it came in a piece by him that the Cincinnati Enquirer published on Sunday. The headline was not particularly promising: New director sees you at museum’s center. But it was not quite on target, thankfully–he said the beneficiary of museum activities was you, the public, and that’s different. Here is more (boldface mine) from his article:

Among the traditional fundamental responsibilities of an art museum, collecting and preserving the community’s cultural heritage is most certainly at the forefront; the 60,000 objects in CAM’s collection make it one of our nation’s most important museum collections. This work will continue with vigor and energy. As we look forward, the work of the art museum has grown in exciting ways, always mindful of our practice, scholarship and purpose. We now have the opportunity and call to integrate more deeply the strength of our collection, exhibitions, staff and the sublime power of great art with the city’s advancement and well-being.

Art first, in other words. And he sees the purpose of the museum as bringing people and art together, which is in fact in the mission statement (or used to be, I think–I can’t find it on the website), and that’s fine. He didn’t say bringing people to the museum, or making the museum serve the community, or any of those other popular mantras. Those goals are fine, but they be predicated on art at the center of initiatives, as the driver of attendance, education, conservation, etc.

So I’m hopeful about Cincinnati. No more, I hope, shows about things like wedding dresses. Or at least a preponderance of more serious, more art-centered scholarly exhibits.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Cincinnati Art Museum

My Verdict On The Met’s New Fountains

I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints about the new fountains at the Metropolitan Museum of Art*; sadly, most are about their funding–with money from conservative David Koch, whose name, naturally (if belately) enough, is on them.

MetFountainsI wish that was the real problem, because that can be batted away as foolish talk. Who cares who paid for them? Koch is a Met trustee. If there was a mistake here, it was the museum’s promise at the outset that the plaza was not going to be named.

But the real problem is that the fountains are ungainly, at best.

I reached that conclusion after two visits, the second only reaffirming my initial impressions.

  • For a start, they are out-of-proportion–too big for the space they occupy.
  • Second, they are misplaced–too close to the steps and too close to the street. The should have been smaller and set back a bit further, closer to the museum building.
  • Third, their minimalist style clashes with the architecture of the Met. I wasn’t expecting a Trevi fountain, but couldn’t they have nodded somehow to the Met’s Beaux-Arts facade?
  • Fourth, the water spouts are underwhelming, even pedestrian. There’s no grandeur and they aren’t entertaining either. They were supposed to dance, in a “variety of water patterns,” but that doesn’t seem to have materialized; if it has, the patterns are fairly indistinct.

Met director Tom Campbell, announcing the project in early 2012, said the project would produce “majestic” plazas. That, they certainly are not. And we are stuck with them for decades.

How could this have happened?

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met