Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

An Art Museum For Las Vegas After All?

Here’s a switch: Las Vegas, whose art museum closed in 2009, is talking about building a new art museum — this one to focus on contemporary art. Whether this one is any more viable than the first is a matter of conjecture. Interestingly, in the information I’ve been able to find online, there’s not a mention of a collection or much about art. It’s all about a new building with 35,000 square feet of gallery space on a two-acre site downtown.

marquee1I caught wind of this on the local CBS news website. The article began:

A major campaign to raise money for The Modern Contemporary Art Museum kicked off in Las Vegas. Anna Auerbach with Moonridge Group says they need to raise $29 million in order to move forward with the project. The museum will be located in downtown Las Vegas on East Charleston Boulevard and South Arts Way. Auerbach says most cities of this size have an art museum of this scale, and it’s time Las Vegas does too….

The museum will be one of three complementary components of a progressive cultural center that will showcase art, technology, and design in addition to providing essential training and tools for a new wave of artists and designers. The campus will include three components: The Modern Contemporary Art Museum, the Center for Creativity, and Luminous Park, anoutdoor sculpture garden and community gathering space.

The Modern Contemporary Art Museum will house…an important and progressive series of rotating exhibits….and showcase the works of both established and emerging artists from the 20th century onward. The Modern will also include a retail store/gift shop, a bistro and event spaces.

So as you’ve read, the price for this is $29 million. And how much have organizers raised? Would you believe $2.5 million? So they’ve gone public before raising even a tenth of the cost. That’s unusual in itself, fundraisers will tell you. Generally, they want to amass funds or pledges for at least half before going public. In this case, the organizers are taking another strange path — they’re trying crowd-funding for $100,000. They posted their plea on Indiegogo with a campaign running through Apr. 17, according to Nevada Business. As of this posting, they have $10,155.

With the $100,000, the organizers plan to hire a project manager.

In their plea, the organizers say they can move forward only with the public’s help and they add:

  • We deserve an art museum, an education center, and beautiful and safe public park in the heart of downtown
  • This complex will generate tremendous economic impact
  • It will educate individuals of all ages and backgrounds
  • It will create a legacy for our families, friends, and children

Good goals. But before I’d contribute — assuming I lived in or near LV — I’d want to know more about the art and the organizers, not to mention their long-term plan for building and sustaining a museum in Las Vegas.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of The Modern campaign

MASS MoCA Expands, With State Funds

It seems like only yesterday that MASS MoCA opened, but it was 1999. And today, MASS MoCA announced that was moving into its “Phase III renovation.”

The Massachusetts House of Representatives has just passed an omnibus capital improvement act that allots a $25.4 million grant to MASS MoCA for the project, and the bill now goes to the State Senate for consideration. Let’s hope.

The money will fund the museum’s “final phase of its multi-decade effort to renovate its 26-building, 600,000 square foot, 16-acre factory campus….Phase III development will include the addition of some 130,000 square feet of gallery space, ultimately doubling the space currently available for exhibitions, plus significant work on its performing arts courtyards and other exterior venues.”

MASS MoCA opened with “200,000 square feet of space renovated for galleries, stages, rehearsal studios, and art fabrication facilities.” Then, in its Phase II expansion, from 2002-2008, it added another 200,000 square feet of space for more “galleries, performing arts facilities, outdoor festival fields and courtyards, and 125,000 square feet of commercial lease space.” At the end of this project, the 19th century factory space MASS MoCA began with will be completely transformed (see the pix below).

MASS MoCA is unique, I think — not just for reclaiming so much factory space for art but that plus its public-private partnership (along with state-provided money, the museum has raised $110 million in private funds) and because it has kept alive North Adams, attracting overnight tourists.

Here’s a passage from the release on the point:

MASS MoCA projects a net gain in annual attendance of 65,000 patrons associated with the Phase III project. According to the C3D study, under current visitation patterns to the Berkshires every new 10,000 patrons to MASS MoCA translates to new region-wide economic activity of approximately $1.8 million, generating $160,000 in additional local and state tax revenues, such that the total impact of Phase III development could reach over $11,000,000 per year, and over $1,000,000 per year in new tax revenues.

Art has critical mass in that part of Massachusetts, with the Williams College museum and the expanding Clark Art Institute. Together, the three make a great draw — if only they could get tourists during the winter.

MASS MoCA

Photo credit: Courtesy of MASS MoCA

Star-Power? The Detroit Institute of Arts?

Guess who’s going to be a star of the inaugural “Freep Film Festival” this month? Yes, the Detroit Institute of Arts — and along with the DIA, to a certain extent, art museums everywhere.

Detroit-Institute-ArtsThe Detroit Free Press is hosting this festival Mar. 20-23, focusing on “Detroit and Michigan-themed documentaries, along with film discussions, panels and a few other surprises.”  Great idea, just to start. Then today, it ran an article headlined DIA documentary ‘Detroit Art City’ added to Freep Film Festival lineup. 

When I went to look for a trailer of Detroit Art City, I found instead the whole doc: It was posted on YouTube, here, by Detroit Public TV.

I wasn’t sure about it at first: it shows museum people saying that art museums are having an identity crisis, and one woman insisting that “art isn’t enough” anymore, because it’s not “relevant.” Nonsense, art is enough, depending on how it is displayed, explained, marketed, etc. But soon enough, the documentary turns to the DIA’s history, its reinstallment a few years back — one that is accessible without dumbing down, from what I’ve seen on my visit there. It chronicles the millage campaign. And so on.

Much of the ground the documentary covers may be specific to the DIA, but it applies in general to many museums. It’s worth a look.

The documentary ends, unfortunately, saying that Detroit declared bankruptcy last summer and that “the DIA is prepared to fight.” So you don’t get all the strum und drang of the last few months.

And there’s another problem: the video says it’s just over an hour and 32 minutes — but that timing includes segments of Detroit Public TV’s fundraising drive. You can speed though them.

 

 

 

Breaking: Malcolm Rogers Announces Retirement

There’s a big job opening in the museum world: today Malcolm Rogers, director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, said he would retire as soon as the museum’s board identifies and appoints a successor. My guess on the timing — late this year.

02_20Malcolm20Rogers20opening20doors20(2)20small20crop_showcase_2Rogers, 65, has run the Boston museum for nearly 20 years — in May, he’ll become the MFA’s longest-serving director – and in many ways he transformed the museum, not just physically but in mindset. He’s been planning this, now that much of his vision has achieved. The museum prepared a list of his milestone accomplishments, here. And just before the Art of the Americas wing opened in fall 2010, I wrote a Cultural Conversation piece about him for the Wall Street Journal. It outlines much of his philosophy.

Even as he informed the board of trustees today of his decision, Rogers announced two big promotions: Frederick Ilchman, the Mrs. Russell W. Baker Curator of Paintings, has been promoted to Chair of Art of Europe and Benjamin Weiss, the Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Visual Culture, will become Chair of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.

The list of Rogers’ accomplishments in the press release is formidable, among them:

  • Rogers has expanded the Museum’s encyclopedic collection with nearly 68,000 acquisitions, enhancing the breadth and importance of the Museum’s holdings with major additions of 19th and 20th century photography, paintings and works on paper (Lane Collection) and West African art from the Kingdom of Benin (Robert Owen Lehman Collection).
  • Individual masterpieces acquired during Rogers’ tenure include Edgar Degas’ Duchessa di Montejasi with Her Daughters, Elena and Camilla (about 1876), Gustave Caillebotte’s Man at His Bath (1884), a monumental silver Cistern and Fountain (1708–09), Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Blue, Yellow, and Red (1927), David Hockney’s Garrowby Hill (1998) and Ellsworth Kelly’s Blue Green Yellow Orange Red (1968).
  • More than 375 exhibitions have been held, including acclaimed shows such as Degas and the Nude (2011), Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice (2009), Americans in Paris, 1869–1900 (2006), Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen (1999), Monet in the 20th Century (1998) and Tales from the Land of Dragons: 1000 Years of Chinese Painting (1997). Rogers also broke tradition by creating exhibitions that redefined “fine art” and appealed to new audiences, including Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass (2011), Speed, Style and Beauty: Cars from the Ralph Lauren Collection (2005), Dangerous Curves: The Art of the Guitar (2000), and Herb Ritts: Work (1996).
  • In addition to the Ann and Graham Gund endowment of the Museum Director’s position, 39 staff positions have been endowed during Rogers’ tenure—28 in curatorial, nine in conservation and two in education.

The museum says it will “celebrate Rogers’ 20th anniversary this fall with a series of events, including lectures, community programs and a gala event—to be held September 6.”

Although this is not a complete surprise, it’s still a little shocking. I am not sure who would best fill his shoes.

I have spoken with both Ilchman and Weiss, and approve of their promotions.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the MFA

 

 

The Sadness of the Corcoran’s Final Throes

CorcoranWhile I was gone, the Corcoran Gallery of Art issued its own obituary and — once again — managed to screw it up. It was only last April that the Corcoran formed an alliance with the University of Maryland to explore a partnership to preserve the school and gallery as one entity, but in the new release — made public last Wednesday — it doesn’t even mention that attempted “solution.”

According to Washingtonian, despite meetings between U-Md. officials and representatives of the Corcoran “as recently as two weeks ago to continue hammering out the details of an arrangement” between the two institutions, U-Md. learned of the new plan from a phone call only moments before the statement was issued. Read the president’s statement and you’ll see just how much work U-Md. put into this effort, now all a waste.

I’ve covered corporate takeovers in which the loser got more notice than that — despite market implications. The lack of basic courtesy by the Corcoran board and staff, if those reports are correct, is astounding.

Now onto the real issue: is the new deal sensible? (If you have not already read the details — the collection goes to the National Gallery of Art, the school to George Washington University, etc. — can read them in the Corcoran’s press release.)  Given the poor and often total lack of management skill at the Corcoran, I say yes, with regret. I would have liked the Corcoran to remain an independent entity, with an engaged and committed board, one that would step up with contributions — which is part of their duty. But that was not in the cards. The fact that trustees let the Corcoran deteriorate so much before going public speaks volumes.

It has been painful to watch the Corcoran’s struggles. Every museum trustee should familiarize him- or herself with the museum’s decline, and make sure that he or she is not going to let it happen at their institution. And directors everywhere, working through the board chair, should encourage discussion about it.