Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

American Art Benefits: A Little Noticed $100 Million Gift

Everyone I know is reading more news these days–until they give up and decide to avoid news altogether. Either way, some good news in the art world is not getting enough attention.

Last week, for example a $100 million gift to Colby College Museum of Art came and went with barely any notice. Therefore, I’m putting it here, even I’m a few days late, too busy with other things.

It came from Peter and Paula Lunder, who had already given about $100 million in art and in funds to the Colby museum. This time, per the press release, the donation:

will add nearly 1,150 artworks to the museum’s collection and will launch the Lunder Institute for American Art, establishing Colby as the only liberal arts college with a world-class art museum and a global research center on American art.

…The gift includes paintings, sculptures, photography, and works on paper, dating from a 1501 engraving by Albrecht Dürer to a 2014 aquatint by Julie Mehretu, by more than 150 artists, including Mary Cassatt, Jasper Johns, Nina Katchadourian, Jacob Lawrence, Maya Lin, Joan Mitchell, Claes Oldenburg, Betye Saar, Vincent Van Gogh, Rembrandt van Rijn, Ai Weiwei, Fred Wilson, and James McNeill Whistler. The gift brings the total number of works given by Peter and Paula Lunder, longtime benefactors to the college and the museum, to more than 1,500—joining hundreds of pieces previously promised and given in 2007, valued at more than $100 million.

You can read more at the link above or at this article in the Portland Press Herald. Or this one in the Boston Globe.

Maine, as I have written here and in The Wall Street Journal before, is now critical to the story of American art. You have to visit the museums there.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Press Herald

 

In Philadelphia: Revolutionary Art

In today’s New York Times, I wrote about the conservation and erection of George Washington’s surviving field headquarters tent. a fragile thing, as you may well imagine. It was published in the print edition under the clever headline Washington Plotted Here. Online, the headline is Where George Washington Slept (Perhaps Not Well).

That in itself says a little something about the world we live in–but it’s the topic I want to mention.

The new Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, which owns the tent, will use it as the centerpiece. Visitors will enter a dedicated theater, watch a 10-12 minute film about Washington’s leadership, and then see the tent revealed, dramatically: After the screen, a scrim and another layer rise, the tent comes into view behind shatter-resistant glass. Leaving their seats, people can press their noses up against the glass to see this national treasure.

In my article, I mentioned some of the other artifacts that will be on view:  Aside from those I mention in my article, they include personal items, letters and diaries from the revolutionary era, including a soldier’s wooden canteen “branded with “UStates” at a time when the phrase was merely an aspiration.”

There will also be some paintings. Perhaps the most interesting one, though, will be an exact replica of Louis Charles-Auguste Couder’s Siege of Yorktown (1781), showing Washington and Rochambeau. The original is in Versailles.

Details about the work will be announced this coming Friday, and you’ll be able to see it in person when the new museum opens on Apr. 19, the 242nd anniversary of “the shot heard ’round the world.”

Click on the link above for my article to see what the tent will look like at the museum. The one I’ve posted here gives a look at the tent outside in the snow.

The opening of this museum is particularly timely, as Carol Cadou, Mount Vernon’s Senior Vice President for Historic Preservation and Collections wrote to me in an email exchange:

At a time when we see conflicts across the globe, and when we see division in our country and others, it seems particularly relevant for a museum to address the principles and mission George Washington, the Continental Army, and their allies fought for so bravely, so admirably, and with unity.  The Museum of the American Revolution offers a great opportunity to make our nation’s early struggles relevant and meaningful to today’s audiences at a time when Americans need perspective and inspiration.

 

 

 

What Goes With Gouthiere?

Why Marivaux, n’est ce pas? A year ago, many of us had never heard of, or heard much about, Pierre Gouthiere, the master gilder many of whose works are now on display at the Frick Collection. But now we know him, at least a little. The exhibition, on view for another few weeks, presents clocks, vases, firedogs, wall lights, and mounts for Chinese porcelain and hardstone vases that he gilded–at the French court, for Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Roberta Smith, in The New York Times, called it a “rare and sumptuous” exhibition, and added:

This show is a study in ultra-refinement in which art, craft and invention collude in a burnished glow. It introduces a man who took a minor art to new heights in the last decadent decades of the ancien régime.

And now the Frick will make a new introduction–to a little-known (here) French eighteenth-century playwright named Pierre de Marivaux. His one-act play, The Constant Players, will be performed in the galleries.

This, to me, is totally appropriate for the Frick’s galleries–a situation in which the visual art will add to the theatrical art.

I sometimes find that museums, seeking broader audiences by putting entertainment in galleries, go too far astray from the art in the galleries. This is the opposite, I think–so good for the Frick.

From the release:

The most esteemed successor to the seventeenth-century playwright Molière, Marivaux’s innovative language reveals the close relationship between refined artistry and raw emotion.  The play is adapted and directed by Mériam Korichi with actors Joan Juliet Buck, Catherine Eaton, Adam Green, and Sophie Orloff; opera singers Clarissa Lyons (soprano), Ashley Kerr (soprano), Nicholas Martorano (baritone), and Alexander Swan (tenor); and pianist Gerald Martin Moore.

…The galleries of the museum will come to life as a period setting, with the actors moving between the Fragonard Room [above], the Dining Room, and Music Room—making for a completely unique experience. Additionally, Marivaux’s work is rarely translated or preformed in New York, allowing American audiences the opportunity to discover one of the most important French dramatists of the eighteenth century.

It’s the first time an entire play will be performed in the Frick’s galleries and it will happen twice, on Feb. 2 and Feb. 4, at 7:30 p.m.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Frick

A New One on Me: What To Call Art

Branding is important, and language matters. Let’s start from that point.

Last fall, I was privileged to speak to the Private Art Dealers Association, which used to be made up largely of Old Master dealers, about getting more people interested in the art they sell. And language came up.

Apparently, some people today don’t want to buy “Old” Masters. Have you noticed that Christie’s, while still labeling its department “Old Masters,” has created a week called “Masters” week, dropping the old. And, when it existed, the spring fair at the Park Avenue Armory was called “Sping Masters,” no reference to the dreaded “old” word.

In the fall, some people suggested “historical art” or “traditional art.” Others proposed “classic art.”

But I was truly surprised by the word last week from the Worcester Art Museum: it received an $825,000 grant from the Luce Foundation “in support of pre-contemporary American art.” Huh? Are we now dating art of the past by referencing today’s art?

The grant has an excellent purpose–here’s ArtForum:

“Since its earliest days, the museum has prioritized the acquisition of American art and, as a result, we have an exemplary collection of paintings, prints, drawings, and decorative arts from the 1600s to the present day,” said Jon L. Seydl, director of curatorial affairs and curator of European Art at WAM, in a statement. “However, many of these works have received less attention for research and exhibition in the last twenty years as the museum focused on presenting its colonial and 20th Century holdings. This crucial support from the Luce Foundation makes it possible for the museum, led by our curator of American art, Elizabeth Athens, to re-engage vigorously with many of these compelling works and explore new ways to present them to the public.”

But I am still shocked by the terminology. I think we have a branding problem.

Photo Credit: Audubon Print Courtesy of the Worcester Art Museum

What About The “Art Strike”? It’s Not So Simple

A group of artists, critics and gallerists have called for an art strike on Jan. 20. Inauguration Day. Names like Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Julie Mehretu, Richard Serra, Joan Jonas and Lucy Lippard have asked for a shutdown of museums, galleries, studios, etc. (see picture) They have every right to do so, and I have no quibbles if they want to. These are extraordinary times.

But I do quibble with the idea that museums should join in–at least public museums. It’s going to be counter-productive in the long run. Museums will need public support in the four years–the broader the better.

Besides, it sends the wrong message. If the arts are to be inclusive, museums have to welcome people of all ideologies. Otherwise, they are just as bad as the other side.

Jonathan Jones, in The Guardian, makes other points, including:

…the notion that museums will help anything by closing their doors, or students will scare middle America into its senses by cutting art classes, tastes not of real hard-fought politics but shallow radical posturing by some very well-heeled and comfortable members of a cultural elite. These eminent artists come across as people who are used to being listened to without having to try. Worse, there is something nostalgic about the petition, as of this were the 1960s all over again.

Rather than close their doors, they should open them wide. Take the high road.

In fact, I admire what Adam Weinberg, the director of the Whitney Museum, told the press last night at a press reception (also a nice touch)–the Whitney will remain open on Jan. 20 and it will be free.

Perhaps others, if they are in a fit fiscal position, might follow his lead.