Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

Fashion Attracts Record Visitors Everywhere

Winterthur, the great palace of American decorative Arts in Delaware, is suddenly the belle of the ball thanks to British fashion. And television.

DowntonAbbeySince the March 1 opening of its Costumes of Downton Abbey exhibit, some 550 visitors per day, on average, have been arriving, “exceeding all attendance records maintained since Winterthur opened in 1951,” Liz Farrell, the museum spokeswoman says. Last year at this time, Winterthur was presenting a wonderful exhibit that I wrote about for The Wall Street Journal, Common Destinations: Maps in the American Experience, but stellar as it was, maps drew an average of 100 visitors per day.

Says Farrell: “The month of March 2014’s 12,233 visitors to Costumes of Downton Abbey surpasses the previous record set following the June 17, 2001, dedication of Enchanted Woods (7,594 visitors).” Winterthur’s previous record exhibition was Fashion in Film in 2006 – 2007, which drew 307 visitors per day. Also, “lectures are selling out of the 300-seat Copeland Lecture Hall.”

I didn’t ask, but I would bet that Winterthur’s visitors are mostly women, who’ve always been the most ardent fans of decorative arts. So costumes are a natural.

And they are thrilled, naturally — it isn’t easy for a museum that’s even slightly off the beaten path to go beyond its natural, local constituency.

Winterthur’s experience also follows patterns elsewhere — exhibits of clothes by Alexander McQueen, Yves St. Laurent, and other fashion stars also set records at various museums. Last year’s PUNK: Chaos to Couture at the Metropolitan Museum was No. 10 on The Art Newspaper‘s annual list of most-attended museum exhibitions.

So I don’t see this trend to fashion shows ending; the challenge for art museums is to keep them grounded with a thesis, even when they are monographic. The apogee on that score, at least recently, would have to be Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, which was originated by Gloria Groom at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Winterthur

 

AAMD Tries To Get Tough Re: Delaware Deaccession

Timothy Rub (pictured), current president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, has just penned a tough letter to Delaware officials — Governor Jack Markell, Attorney General Beau Biden and Wilmington Mayor Dennis P. Williams. It breaks no new ground, but it does make a decent point on the museum’s current strategy of non-disclosure:

timothy-rub…we are also deeply concerned that the Delaware Art Museum has refused to disclose publicly the works of art that it is considering selling. Given the importance of this decision and its potential impact, we believe that such information should be shared with the Museum’s members and the community as a whole so that they can understand what is at stake and be reassured that the action taken by the Board of Trustees does not violate donor intent or other strictures.

AAMD does intend, as it has said in the past, to impose sanctions on the Delaware Art Museum if it goes ahead with its plans to sell $30 million worth of art to pay its bills.

You can read the whole letter here.

But I have another non-disclosure quibble. Rub repeated what he has said before — the AAMD wants to help:

We also reaffirm our offer to help the Museum explore alternatives to this course of action.

Yet he has not, to my knowledge, even hinted at what alternatives he might be able to suggest than the museum hasn’t already explored on its own.

I realize that negotiating in the press is not a good strategy, so I’m not expecting details. But how about a few general hints? I for one would take the letter more seriously if he were more specific.

 

Now Hirshhorn Loses Interim Director

The job of Richard Kurin, Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture of the Smithsonian Institution, just got a little harder. Kurin has been responsible for the search for a director of the Hirshhorn Museum since last spring. You’ll recall that former director Richard Koshalek stepped down after his seasonal inflatable bubble idea was killed by the Smithsonian amid board turmoil at the Hirshhorn and questions about who’d pay for it.

kerry_brougherKurin appointed Kerry Brougher, the Hirshhorn’s deputy director and chief curator, to be interim director. Kurin, about the same time as the scathing resignation of trustee Constance Caplan, said he’d convene a search committee and begin the search toward the end of last July.

Strangely, director searches take a year or more to settle on the right person. But now Brougher is leaving to be head of the museum of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news last week, saying:

Landing the seasoned museum executive is a coup for the high-profile $300 million project, which is slated to break ground at the end of the year under the aegis of architect Renzo Piano in the renovated May Co. building at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art campus. The museum, a top priority of Academy CEO Dawn Hudson, has been the source of some concern in recent months over how it will balance the populist appeal of Hollywood with the strong intellectual rigor of a top-notch museum.

It makes sense for Brougher, who has a masters in the history of film and television from UCLA,  but clearly he is not leaving controversy behind.

THR went on to say:

It is unclear what title Brougher will be given at the museum. In an interview Friday, the AMPAS museum’s managing director, Bill Kramer, told THR that the museum committee had recently chosen the institution’s “creative leader,” noting “the announcement will take place very, very soon” but declining to identify the selected individual or specify whether the person would be named an executive director or chief curator or some combined role. He explained that the hold-up is, at this point, merely “an HR issue.”

“An HR issue”? That’s more than a little odd. I hope Brougher can quell the disagreements there. I also wish Kurin good luck with a search — fast. Nothing worse that a museum adrift and a board in turmoil.

Meantime, THR recently provided a look inside the fledgling museum in this gallery.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Washington Post

 

Mikwaukee Expanding Again?

I’m often skeptical of museum expansions; often, they’re really not needed, and they’re not paid for in advance. Boards often overestimate the expected visitorship (which often falls to pre-expansion levels after the first year) and underestimate the additional costs of maintaining a larger space.

MAM-expansionSo when I heard some months ago that the Milwaukee Art Museum planned to expand — it seems like only a few years ago that it opened its signature Quadracci Pavilion, designed by Santiago Calatrava (which doesn’t leak, management there tells me; other parts of the museum leak) — I was surprised.

But the QP actually opened in 2001, and when I visited Milwaukee at the beginning of this year (to review its wonderful folk art exhibition), I ta;led about it with MAM director Dan Keegan. He made a good case, and the design announced this week, by Milwaukee architect Jim Shields, of HGA Architects and Engineers, has persuaded me.

It’s not flashy. It will never compete with the Calatrava design, and wasn’t intended to. It was, in fact, intended to blend in with another MAM wing, the 1972 David Kahler addition. Plus, the cost — part of a $15 million project, of which $13 million has been raised — won’t break the bank. And it does two good things: adds an entrance on the building’s waterfront side and expands gallery space by 8,000 sq. ft.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has the story, including this part:

Initially conceived of as a soaring atrium with a cafe, seating areas and a transparent ceramic silkscreen on the exterior, the new plan calls for more functional exhibition space for art, including a 5,000-square-foot gallery for feature exhibitions and a dramatic sculpture gallery that will be visible to passers-by. The shift in design buys the museum about 8,000 square feet of additional gallery space and expands the footprint by about 1,000 square feet….

The museum’s new building will also provide a new entrance where the museum’s front door once was before the opening of the Santiago Calatrava-designed addition in 2001. Since the Calatrava opened, the old entrance has become an unused and deadened space, with cracking concrete and weeds outside.

As it stands now, museum visitors have to walk the length of about four football fields to reach the museum’s galleries from the largest parking lot on the north side. The new lakeside entrance will give visitors a second and much closer point of entry — and places to sit by the lake as well.

 

Keegan is also using this occasion to rethink the permanent collection galleries, and bring together the American collection for the first time, among other things.

More details here, from the museum’s website, and from the JS.

Work starts in the fall.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Milwaukee Art Museum

The Allure Of The New

The Miami art museum, now known as the Perez Art Museum Miami, released attendance figures for its first four months of existence the other day — they’re great. But they raise two questions.

Perez-Art-MuseumFirst the numbers: Since its December opening, the museum has welcomed 150,000 visitors. Massachusetts-based ConsultEcon had estimated 200,000 visitors for the entire first full year, according to Miami Today. One caveat: the projection was made in 2008, partly based on attendance in the old building. Nonetheless, congratulations are in order, and I agree with this quote from the article: “It’s fantastic. We’re very happy… and exhausted,” said Leann Standish, deputy director of external affairs. She also said that social media was spreading the word, and “I have never seen so much community ownership as there is here.” Also,  “the visitors love to shop,” Miami Today said, “PAMM’s retail shop has had to restock multiple times.” The museum is adding some staff to accommodate the crowds, as it probably must.

The two questions:

It would be prudent to question whether the current rate of attendance in sustainable — will the number really be 450,000 for the year? Or are people going to be one-time visitors, to see the building, take a look, and and that’s it? That is the pattern at most museum expansions; attendance often drops to previous levels. I wish the article had provided a membership number, in context with past numbers at the old building — individual membership costs just $55 a year, a reasonable number.

From afar, the upcoming exhibition schedule looks strong, so we’ll soon see if art is the draw or if the building/events are the draw.

Speaking of events: the article said “The museum fields 100 calls a day to reserve space for private events…” That is amazing, and obviously they are not all booking an event. So how many private events have there been? Is private event attendance included in that 150,000 total? Are attendees looking at art? Or spending all their time on the “sprawling outdoor plazas with lush vegetation”?

Event popularity can be good, too — I’m not complaining about it, just asking for clarification.