Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

Solidarity With Detroit

It’s just a gesture, but it is nevertheless an excellent one: Today, the Association of Art Museum Curators announced that they will hold their next annual meeting in Detroit. At least one day of programs in the three-day conference will take place at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Said Emily Ballew Neff (at right), President of the AAMC and curator of American painting and Emily-Neff-168x300sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston:

We have watched the situation in Detroit and at the DIA very closely this year. We believe that moving our conference to the DIA affirms our support of one of the most outstanding museum collections in the world.  And, we thought, what better way to show this than by bringing hundreds of curators to its doors next May?

Graham W J Beal, DIA’s Director, is obviously delighted, and said so in a statement.

Ever since this mess with the Detroit bankruptcy began last spring, art-world people have struggled with the means of showing meaningful support. We’ve liked the DIA on Facebook (go here, where its friends now total 246,434) and signed petitions; we’ve blasted officials and Christie’s, and sent letters to the Michigan governor.

At the end of the day, it’s all symbolic. But we cannot give up; the pressure must be maintained. I’m glad the AAMC added their part to this today.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of GlassTire

Dallas Museum of Art Spreads Its “Free” Influence

Last week, the Institute of Museum and Library Services announced grant to museums worth nearly $30 million, and several of them have separately been announcing their grants. Today came news that the Dallas Museum of Art received “a National Leadership Grant” of more than $450,000 that will go towards taking its innovative “Museum’s Friends membership program”  to the Denver Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Stein-Portrait220Congratulations to Max Anderson, the director of the DMA, and his team there, especially deputy director Rob Stein (pictured), who moved with Anderson from Indianapolis — they really have done something new and, I hope, rewarding to museum-goers. As the Dallas museum explains its program, which is based on free admission to the permanent collection for members:

The free membership is available to anyone who wishes to join, and includes opportunities for increased access to Museum programs and staff through an à la carte rewards system determined by active participation. Since the DMA launched its Friends initiative in January 2013, more than 27,000 visitors have enrolled in the program.

That program was announced (here) in November, 2012 and began last January. Here is a New York Times article on the program from last March.

The program isn’t simple, however, and has to be modified to each museum — DAM, LACMA and MIA all have different economic models and audiences. So, the IMLS grant:

The grant, which will be accomplished in a two-year time period, will support the creation of replicable models of visitor engagement inspired by the DMA’s Friends program in each of the partner museums. After a year of research, the teams will refine and pilot aspects of the program at each partner institution with a goal of determining what activities and tools could work broadly across the museum field. The money will also be used to improve the system for compiling and analyzing data on visitor participation—gleaned from the program—and document critical factors that have an impact on audience engagement at museums. The research, which will be led by Rob Stein, the DMA’s Deputy Director, will establish a dataset that will yield important information on the strengths and weaknesses of museum programming and the degree to which audiences are connecting and engaging with an institution.

I like the DMA program, and I qualified my endorsement of it above for only one reason: it’s new, and early success doesn’t always lead to long-term success. Here, I hope it does.

 

A New Look In The Great Plains

GreatPlainsMuseumI smiled when I read this article in the Daily Nebraskan, and so thought I’d share it with you. Especially since I read the headline thinking something bad might be happening. It read: Great Plains Art Museum redesign aims to improve visibility, and the story began:

The Great Plains Art Museum was renovated over the summer in hopes of attracting more visitors and is now showing off its new design.

“We basically wanted to figure out a way to stand out from the other buildings in the area,” said Katie Nieland, publications specialist for the Center for Great Plains Studies. “Hopefully, as people are passing by, they will see it.” …It received a paint job and a new logo, with prairie grass embellishing the walls and windows.”

But the photo illustrating the article eliminated my fears — what sounded as if it might be kitschy is actually quite attractive (to me).

It’s not formal or classic in any way; but it suits the area.

Jon Humiston, the creative director for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Office of University Communications who designed the look, told the newspaper that he wanted to link the grass near the sidewalk to the museum, that the colors were chosen to recall a prairie sunset, and that the words “Great Plains depict the lines of the horizon, streams and trails of the Midwest.”

The museum focuses on art of the Great Plains, and gets a small number of visitors. Will this help? I hope so.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Daily Nebraskan

 

 

Museum Behavior…We Don’t Have It So Bad

Sometimes we think we have problems in art museums: too many people snapping pictures, looking at their cell phones instead of the art, etc. They pale in comparison with a notice I just saw Ukraine. I was both surprised and amused to see this sign posted at the entrance to the Mystetskyi Arsenal. The Arsenal is, according to its website:

…one of Ukraine’s most promising projects in the field of culture and has a fair chance of becoming one of the world’s largest museums.

The mission of Mystetskyi Arsenal is to combine many Ukrainian cultural achievements and initiatives into one conceptual national project thus presenting the Ukrainian historical and artistic heritage as part of world cultural heritage.

Tall order, especially if they have to contend with behavioral problems, as this sign suggests (sorry about the fuzziness in some parts).

DearVisitor

Museums in Ukraine have a long way to go. I visited two in L’viv and three in Kiev, and hope to post a bit more in the coming days.

 

How The Asia Society Museum is Evolving

110412_Melissa_ChiuI’m still away, but the news never stops. Actually, I finished an article on Melissa Chiu’s vision for the Asia Society Museum before I left the U.S., and it was published in today’s Wall Street Journal. Headlined A Society Evolves, it is pegged to the opening this weekend of an exhibition on art created in Iran between 1950 and the 1970s, while the Shah was in control. He allowed, surprisingly, relative freedom in the arts. I am looking forward to seeing the show; so far I’ve looked only at the catalog.

But my article is broader than that, and I hope you’ll have a look.

Chiu said her exhibits are more about history than art history, though they involve both, obviously — they are, she hopes, topical.

The Asia Society Museum is surely different from many other museum, and it was good for us to hear Chiu out and think about that difference.

I am in Ukraine, btw, and have visited some museums. I’d say that someone else might consider an effort parallel to Chiu’s with Asian museum directors here in the former east bloc. (Yes, I know there have been some efforts over the years – but can’t get into that from this far away — and not much computer access.)